Readers here, and people who know me, are well aware of my status as a long- long-term racing fan. And as such, I typically applaud efforts to improve race tracks to better the racing, the fan experience, and the like. Today, I’m making a big exception to that general policy.
There are several notable track expansion, restoration or improvement projects going on now that are being performed, sometimes in large part, with public money. In Nashville, the Governor has allocated $17 million in taxpayer money to help the Bristol Motor Speedway folks renovate the Nashville Fairgrounds racetrack in hopes of luring NASCAR back to the track at some level (link), so that those same folks can manage the event there. Admittedly, there are a couple other hurdles to the transaction, but the direction is clear – public money is being used to benefit a private corporation and its endeavors.
Bristol Motor Speedway is owned by the now-private Speedway Motorsports Inc. (hereinafter referred to as SMI, because I am lazy), a $1 billion (yes, with a B) company formed by Bruton Smith and now managed by his son Marcus Smith. It is a company we have discussed here before (link) and which has become remarkably effective at turning the business of racing into cubic dollars, acquiring or building many racetracks over the years and hosting events at NASCAR’s highest levels. And on the surface, at least, it looks like a company that hardly needs any public money to further its interests. However, as the late Ron Popeil used to say, “But wait, there’s more!”.
Turns out that SMI is also the beneficiary of *more* public funding of its profitable efforts via some $31 million in federal funding from the (wait for it) American Rescue Plan, as allocated by North Carolina’s government (link). Yes, NC has managed to take so-called ‘stimulus’ money and given it to the aforementioned SMI company to effect improvements to its own Charlotte Motor Speedway and to the North Wilkesboro Speedway properties it owns. (Disclosure: I have been to the Charlotte facility, and it is a *great* place to watch a race.) The former is of course a perpetual money-making machine, and the latter is being renewed in hopes of, again, luring NASCAR back for events in its upper series after they all left in the 1990’s. But I have to wonder – why on earth am I (and you) paying for these facility improvements?
Part of the answer lies in Americans’ obsession with sports, with teams, and with the allure of having major league teams and facilities in one’s town. What we are seeing with racetracks is just a subset of what we see with all manner of sports facilities; that is, public funding of enterprises owned by fabulously-wealthy people. In Buffalo, for example, the city is expending piles of money (defined as a $1Billion with a B) to build a new stadium to appease the Bills and guarantee their continued presence in the city (link). A couple of years ago, the city of Atlanta coughed up $700 million towards a new stadium for the Falcons (link). Usually these stadium deals, like racetrack deals, tout the wonderful and plentiful jobs that will result, but more often than not it equates to a few dozen security jobs, a half dozen groundskeepers, and a few dozen people selling nachos for a day eight times a year.
Part of the cycle seems to circle around politicians who don’t want to perceived as ‘the one’ that lost the local team to some other city, and hence endanger their reelection hopes. Mayors, congressional representatives, senators all trip over each other trying to be the person that secures the public funding to keep the beloved team in the city. But they are all missing the key point that will eventually doom to failure even their best efforts; somewhere, there is another city out there that will offer a new, bigger stadium, a new tax exemption, new infrastructure money or racetrack improvement funding, to keep The Game in town. They forget that they are dealing with the corporate equivalent of extortion, where the once-beloved team will literally threaten to take their ball and go play somewhere else. There is always a higher bidder, somewhere. Or, as Qui-Gon Jinn said in that Star Wars film, “There’s always a bigger fish”.
In no particular order 