How Public Stadiums Keep Some Profits Private

In April, the Chicago Bears unveiled a nearly $5 billion proposal for a new stadium. According to the headline of the press release, this new property would be publicly owned. It was a polite way of describing an arrangement in which taxpayers would put more than $2 billion into the construction costs—two decades after they footed more than $400 million in the renovation bill for Soldier Field—and in return would get a vague $8 billion in “regional economic impact.”

“An enclosed stadium is essential for Chicago to attract year-round events like the Super Bowl and major concerts—unlocking billions in tourism revenue,” the release read. But is it?

Last year, Soldier Field hosted country star Luke Combs’s not creatively enough named World Tour and Ed Sheeran’s way too creatively named + – = ÷ x Tour for a night apiece, in addition to two nights of Beyoncé’s Renaissance World Tour and three nights of Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour. That might not seem like a lot, but it’s actually above average for NFL stadiums. In fact, the Chicago Park District—the public entity that owns Soldier Field—called it a “banner year” in its own budget report. It also anticipated that 2024 would be “another great year,” with concerts from Metallica and George Strait.

According to research by Victor Matheson, an economist at Holy Cross, the average NFL stadium between 2000 and 2019 hosted just three non-sports ticketed entertainment events per year. And there’s no evidence to suggest that newer stadiums attract bigger or better concerts.

“The No. 1 reason there aren’t a lot of shows is: There just aren’t a lot of Taylor Swifts or Beyoncés in this world,” Matheson said. “The list of artists who can sell out NFL stadiums gets thin pretty quickly. There’s a reason that they’re the queens.”

In 2023, Beyoncé and Swift combined to play more than 80 nights at 25 NFL stadiums across the country, breaking scores of revenue and attendance records along the way. In July and August alone, Beyoncé set boxscore records at homes of the Titans, Lions, Commanders, and the shared home of the Jets and Giants. (A boxscore is a report that measures the total sales of every show at a single venue on a single tour.) Meanwhile, Swift set the biggest single-day attendance records at stadiums in Nashville, Pittsburgh, and Seattle. (Sheeran has since bested her in Seattle.)

The supposed economic benefits of public funding for stadiums have been broadly debunked for years by economists, and these record-breaking concerts are an illustrative example of why. Finding out just how much money these concerts brought in for local governments requires entering a maze without an exit.

“How do contracts work?” Matheson said. “It’s wildly idiosyncratic. Most that I see are that the NFL team is in charge of recruiting the events and managing the events. In most circumstances, even if the city has paid for the stadium, the team is in charge of the events. Most contracts I’ve seen have had some revenue sharing. But it can be very small.”

Defector Media attempted public record requests for contracts between local authorities and Swift and Beyoncé’s tour companies to 12 of the NFL stadiums where they both performed last year in the United States. Of those 12, nine responded to say that the contracts were not a matter of public record because the public authorities subcontracted out the work of operating the stadium, often back to the same NFL team and ownership that received the tax subsidies in the first place. The circuitous setup meant that aside from quarterly or annual financial disclosures, there were almost no available public records about the revenue that those companies brought in from these concerts—or returned to the taxpayers.

In some cases, even requesting the records was rife with complications. Tennessee requests, for example, can only be made by state residents. A friend in the state made the request on our behalf, only to receive a reply saying that we should reach out to the Titans or Live Nation—which, if the process for buying concert tickets through its platform is any indication, would have delayed publication of this story until the early 2040s.

Further south, the Louisiana Stadium and Exposition District, which owns the Superdome, only fields requests through the physical mail. (The reporters of this story, who struggle to mail their respective holiday cards on time, did not file a request.) And the Detroit/Wayne County Stadium Authority, which purportedly operates Ford Field, doesn’t even have a website. 

“The owners have every incentive to keep this private, and we don’t question that too much because you’re a private business owner,” said Ryan Gauthier, a professor who specializes in sports law and has written about good governance in publicly funded stadiums. “But the fact that a government entity is allowing this to become a sort of shell game—that’s really concerning. If you can’t trace how the money goes from A to B to C, there’s no opportunity for public review or oversight. You’d expect more transparency from a municipal government.”

In Atlanta, we were told the Georgia World Congress Center, which owns the stadium, contracts out stadium operations to the Atlanta Falcons Stadium Company, LLC and any contracts would be with the LLC. But Swift did get a mention in their 2023 annual report (Beyoncé did not). When we requested the records for the Cardinals’ stadium in Glendale, Arizona, the Arizona Sports and Tourism Authority initially replied that there were no responsive records. After we followed up, a spokeswoman for a private communications firm provided us with a link to their fiscal year 2024 budget. These financial reports were all that were offered to us by the Las Vegas Stadium Authority, and the city of Arlington, Texas. The Washington State Public Stadium Authority’s website offers a “public benefits report and plan” from the private firm that operates the Seahawks’ stadium.

Those reports each took on their own form, but were uniformly unhelpful in response to our central question about public benefits.

In some cases, the lack of information was itself illuminating. In Kansas City, the Jackson County Sports Complex Authority gets only rent from its tenant, Arrowhead Events, per Jim Rowland, the Jackson County Sports Complex Authority executive director. In response to a request for those rent receipts, Rowland directed Defector to Jackson County officials. Multiple records requests from Defector to Jackson County went unanswered. Perhaps we could have made even more calls and more emails—or even gotten lawyers involved to sue for these records—but that would only obscure the very real issue of government agencies not complying with routine requests. It’s not supposed to be this hard.

(Earlier this year, voters in Jackson County rejected a proposed tax increase that would have funded renovations to the stadium. In response, Chiefs team owner Clark Hunt threatened to leave the state.)

In response to our records requests, the Chicago Park District did produce their agreement with the Bears to operate the stadium. It showed that the city already has quite favorable terms for big concert tours, which the contract calls a “national public sector event.” Per the agreement, the CPD “shall receive and retain all of the revenues derived” from those events. But it still didn’t provide us with any paperwork between its agency and the artists.

From contracts and other public records, including their monthly budget reports, Defector learned that the three Eras Tour concerts in Tampa in April 2023 brought in more than $12 million in revenue combined. The authority didn’t break out the total costs of the Eras Tour in their monthly financial statements, but in early estimates, the authority put that number at about $6.5 million, for an approximate gross profit of $5.6 million, mostly from ticket fees that go to the authority, a cut of merchandise sales (between 10 and 15 percent, depending on the type of purchase), concessions, and parking. Beyoncé’s Aug. 16 show, in an early estimate prepared from the authority, brought in more than $2.7 million in revenue and, minus costs, generated $1.3 million in gross profit. Those profits were split between the Buccaneers and the authority.

Defector sent an email to the authority requesting comment on the numbers, but did not hear back.

“Public-private partnerships aren’t automatically bad,” Matheson said. “Someone has to host these events, and the teams are probably well set up to do that. I don’t think most economists would be concerned about that arrangement. But as a citizen, I do find it personally appalling that taxpayers can’t easily get information about a public entity engaging with private businesses. We need more transparency.”

Swift has returned to complete the United States leg of the Eras Tour with dates in Miami Gardens, New Orleans, and Indianapolis before heading north to Canada. Her fans will no doubt descend on those stadiums in droves, but the dollars they spend will largely remain in the pockets of the billionaires—the team owners and, of course, Swift herself.