This One Will Be Different

For more than a century, America's sports stadiums have evolved from modest, private ballparks into billion-dollar play-palaces for the rich-built increasingly on the backs of taxpayers. Government commitments to major-league venues are approaching $50 billion, and a looming wave of new construction threatens to double public outlays by the end of the next decade. Elected leaders justify the massive subsidies by arguing that stadiums are economic catalysts, despite overwhelming evidence that sports venues are unwise public investments. Why does this keep happening? The refrain is always the same: This one will be different. The Atlanta Braves's Truist Park in Cobb County, Georgia is the latest example. Marketed as a game-changing mixed-use development that would create a year-round economic hub, the project has fallen far short of its boosters' lofty projections-just like all the venues that came before it. In This One Will Be Different, sports economist J.C. Bradbury draws from decades of academic research and his up-close and personal experiences with the Cobb Braves stadium deal to elucidate why publicly funded venues never deliver on their promises. Moving beyond the standard explanations of monopoly leagues and special-interest lobbying, Bradbury reveals how pliable politicians-drawn to the prestige and perks of professional sports-buck the will of their constituents to approve increasingly generous taxpayer handouts to billionaire team owners. Authoritative yet accessible, this book blends economic analysis, political insight, and vivid storytelling to examine why politicians continue to fall for the stadium grift and presents practical steps for reform. Bradbury argues that improved transparency, greater understanding, and giving voters a direct say at the ballot box have the potential to break the stadium subsidy cycle.

J.C. Bradbury is Professor of Economics at Kennesaw State University, which is located a few miles north of Truist Park in Cobb County, where his family has lived for generations. He's one of the country's leading sports economists, publishing numerous academic journal articles on the economics of sports, and the author of The Baseball Economist and Hot Stove Economics. He is the past-President of the North American Association of Sports Economists and serves as an associate editor for Journal of Sports Economics.