by Aj Brady

Created on: March 25, 2008   Last Updated: October 31, 2008

In this day and age of transparent governing, and the ability of the media to act as the voice of the citizens to "keep the politicians honest", it is very rare for governments to dupe an increasingly-educated an socially-aware constituency into allowing them to blow millions of dollars on a stadium that will become derelict an underused, a "white elephant" if you will, in a few short decades.

Governments will generally only take a risk on building such expensive stadiums if there are concrete numbers pointing towards a community profit in the not-too-distant future.

The upside that the building and updating of professional sporting stadiums bring to a town include: increased business, increased tourism, added capital and greater national and international exposure through mass media coverage.

Whatever costs may be incurred in the development of such stadiums, usually they are received ten-fold over the years through such benefits.

Such sports stadiums become community assets as well, and provide opportunities for communities to come together for various reasons, whether it be for business conferences, community sporting days, etc.

It is very unlikely that a professional sporting stadium will be purely used for professional sporting events.

Local communities usually get to enjoy the physical benefits of such stadia, as well as the financial benefits down the track.

In some cases, the building of professional sports stadiums could even secure a locality a national or international sporting franchise where there previously wasn't one, and the benefits would be felt almost instantaneously by that locality.

There's also that sense of pride, of feeling like "we succeeded" in bringing this stadium together, whether a particular person had a physical hand in the building of the stadium or not.

Then, flowing on from that, the community comes together to take ownership of that locality's various sporting franchises, feeling it's "their team", and exuding passion and adrenalin the likes of which cannot be felt in any other realm.

Thus, building sports stadiums and housing sporting franchises can be a way to bring communities together as one, rooting for a common goal, and helping greater things be achieved in the community because everyone is batting on the same team.

Whilst during the initial development and construction phases, spending millions of taxpayers dollars building a professional sporting stadium may seem like a waste, over time, such stadiums will usually repay that particular community in bucketloads.

Learn more about this author, Aj Brady.
Click here to send this author comments or questions.