GPWizard F1 Forum
Everything Else => Off Topic => Topic started by: cosworth151 on October 17, 2017, 04:47:14 PM
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This summer, for the first time in 60 years, I didn't go to Columbus Motor Speedway. That's because it was shut down last September. It was in the Columbus suburb of Obetz. That village forced it to close so that they could expand the training facility of the Major League Soccer Columbus Crew. The
Who? Crew demanded it. A sad end to a great track that had been around since the late 1940's.
Now, one year later, Crew owner Anthony Precourt says he will move the team to Austin Texas if the city of Columbus doesn't build him a new, taxpayer funded downtown stadium. Right now, they play in a taxpayer funded, soccer-only stadium just north of downtown at the Ohio Expo Center.
Don't let the door hit you in the backside on your way out, Tony. May you do to Austin what you did to Columbus. |-(
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That crap is going on everywhere (but here - sanity exists in Switzerland...if you want to build a stadium, go find a sponsor and let THEM pay for it). Calgary is being blackmailed by the Flames (hockey), and the city is contemplating life without the Flames. Everyone wants a new stadium, but when a billionaire owner is demanding the city build it and then the hockey team gets all future revenue for concerts and other events, kind of puts it over the top for the average taxpayer. Basically they want the city to simply GIVE them $300million and then go away.
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I don't know why they keep trying to make soccer happen in the USA. Anyone who wants to watch it has cable/streaming for the European leagues. No other 'major' leagues needed government subsidies to become major; governments pay billions to keep major league teams that bring in revenue and civic pride.
(Don't get me wrong, I used to love soccer, but I've never been to a TFC game. 2/3 the cost of their stadium was from the governments, the rest footed by the Toronto Maple Leafs, the richest sports team in Canada, and owners of TFC)
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That crap is going on everywhere (but here - sanity exists in Switzerland...if you want to build a stadium, go find a sponsor and let THEM pay for it). Calgary is being blackmailed by the Flames (hockey), and the city is contemplating life without the Flames. Everyone wants a new stadium, but when a billionaire owner is demanding the city build it and then the hockey team gets all future revenue for concerts and other events, kind of puts it over the top for the average taxpayer. Basically they want the city to simply GIVE them $300million and then go away.
Montreal, Toronto, Vancouver and Ottawa all built their own hockey rinks, at their own expense. (Ottawa was required to pay for the highway to their arena (which is in a suburb of Ottawa), Montreal had to reimburse the city for the parking meters out of commission during construction, and Toronto was being gouged so badly for their new land that the bought the Toronto Raptors (basketball) specifically to buy their new stadium and convert it to a hockey rink. (It's technically the worst rink in Canada for watching professional hockey, since it was designed for basketball!))
Edmonton, on the other hand, got government funding for their hockey rink (paid for half, a rich guy who owns pharmacies paid for the other half). For those that don't know, Edmonton and Calgary are the two largest cities in Alberta (a province in Canada) and have the most intense rivalry amongst Canadian cities. Historically politicians are very careful to treat the cities 'fairly'. In this case the Calgary Flames are asking for far more money than Edmonton got. If they'd asked for the same amount Edmonton got, people probably would have grudgingly accepted, but the Flames asked for more money, and people immediately (and rightly) branded them greedy.
(As an aside, the Winnipeg Jets, Canada's 7th NHL team was bought by the arena company... the company had built the arena privately, hoping to get an NHL team and waited 7 years before acquiring a team from Atlanta. Both Hamilton, Ontario and Quebec City, Quebec have built NHL calibre rinks, with hopes of getting NHL teams but so far have not.)
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Columbus's current soccer stadium says a lot about the MLS. It was the taxpayer funded, the first purpose-built professional soccer stadium in the U.S. The naming right have been sold to a Spanish insurance company that doesn't even do business in the States. It has become a fairly decent outdoor concert venue.
The Crew won the MLS championship a while back. Most people didn't even know that it happened. The first I heard about it was when somebody here on GPW mentioned it.