Emotions Trumps Facts in Sports Stadium Debates

There are a lot of theories about communication. What makes effective communication? Is it pulling on the heartstrings? Is it emotion? Is it the fact? Is it how you look? And of course, all of those things can be a factor. Aristotle wrote about how Eddie's speech, Eddie presentation is partly what the person says, partly how they say it, and partly who that person is, that person's stature. I like to think of myself as a rational, intelligent human being, and I'm sure all of you do. Everybody likes to think of themselves as smarter than average, rational, intelligent, and of course, we are all fueled by emotions and passions and irrational impulses. I get that. I'm not saying I'm necessarily better than anyone else. But there's one particular form of public argument that I see time and time again in communities all over the United States and all over the world, frankly. And it is when people get up to make arguments about using taxpayer funds for sports stadiums. Now folks, I'm not some knee jerk libertarian who says government spending is always bad. And you know, you're spending money on a government stop sign and that's an unwelcome intrusion. All taxes are theft. No, that's not my point at all. My point is you have professional sports where the teams are owned typically by billionaires. The players often make $10 million a year or more of any single industry in the entire world. If you were looking at this from a rational standpoint, you would say that is the absolute last industry that should receive any government funds. Subsidies, direct subsidies, indirect subsidies, tax abatements, bonds. And yet they are the first ones with their hands out. And I've just seen countless politicians across the spectrum, liberal and conservative, say, no, no, stop. We can't waste money like this. And they are ignored. Case in point, there's a current battle going on in Las Vegas. The Oakland Raiders want to move their football team to Las Vegas. But the owners of the Oakland Raiders, like most owners of football teams everywhere, are wildly greedy and they're socialist as long as the spoils of society go to them and almost exclusively to them. The Raiders want a 65,000 seat stadium and they want taxpayers in the Las Vegas area to cough up about $750 million. The governor of Louise of Nevada, Brian Sandoval, is calling a special session in the legislature next week to debate this issue. And it doesn't, frankly, look like there's going to be much of a debate. Everybody's lining up. I've seen this in city after city. If you are a city council member or a county commissioner Or a state legislator. And you say you don't want to spend tax dollars on a stadium that's going to be used eight times a year. You are the skunk at the party. You are the devil. You are the killjoy. You're the big loser. And it doesn't matter what sort of argument you make, it falls on deaf ears. Folks, I'm a big believer, as you know, I've premised my whole career on this, that public speaking is important. Crafting rational arguments important, persuading people important. All of that unfortunately you can throw out the window when it comes to sports. Now I'm not anti sports. I love sports. I like playing sports more than I like watching sports. But for the life of me, I cannot understand how otherwise sane rational people take limited tax dollars and give it away to businesses that would be perfect, perfectly fine without it. On a place like Las Vegas, their schools are notoriously, shall we say, substandard. I mean, just look at how many of their graduates don't even talk about the people who dropped out of 10th, 11th, 12th grade. Look at their graduates and what they're doing. They for the most part have jobs in the service sector, in the casinos. You know, waiting on Sheldon Adelson, the billionaire who is behind this, this push to get the Raiders in and who is putting up some of his own money too for the stadium. But the people of Las Vegas are, let's just face it, they're not. They're not seeing the top 50% of their graduates go to MIT and Harvard and Yale. Not that that's the only standard of success the world. But for the most part, the schools are lousy and the people have garbage jobs after that. Sorry if that sounds condescending, but it's true. Think of what a place like Las Vegas could do by putting nearly a billion dollars into improving its school system. Could actually create some world class schools might attract better teachers, the students might learn more, they might create more, they might create a more vibrant economy. And yet they don't want to spend money on that. I've seen this again and again and again. And I'm sorry if this doesn't seem like a pure communication issue, but at some point it's communication breakdown. Because I'm telling you, you can line up a thousand economists and if you simply eliminate the ones who are not on the payroll of a major sporting team or a sporting league or a huge casino, you're not going to find a single economist who will tell you that it really pays off to invest tax dollars into Stadiums, they're just not going to do it because it doesn't exist. Well, T.J. what about the multiplier effect and all the people who come in. It just doesn't exist. Add up. Money is fungible. Money is tangible, and money is very, very specific. You can. What you use in one thing you can't use in someplace else. If you're not using this money on stadiums, you could use it on schools, you could use it on better infrastructure. You could use it on better roads, better airports. And for whatever reason, economists are not able to communicate this point to policymakers, liberals who'd rather see the money spent on education, social welfare, infrastructure that could benefit all the people in the community, they can't communicate it. Libertarians and true conservatives who see this as somewhat of a fascistic trend of big government supporting big businesses, they don't seem to be able to communicate this issue, the problem of this socialism for billionaires any better, and they're equally as concerned about it. So I guess it's gonna happen. These football players, baseball owners, football owners, they're great at playing one city off of another. And the devastation. I mean, they. They come to a city and say, give us a billion dollars or else the city will build in the stadium. And then they just leave a few years later and leave that city with a massive, massive debt. It's happened time and time again. You've got a place like St. Louis, which is still paying $144 million in debt for an NFL team, the Rams, which left St. Louis, so they're paying massive debt to house a team that has abandoned them. And did any politicians pay the price? Not that I'm aware of. So, folks, I'm sorry to sound like a downer. I usually believe that there's some communications solution to anything. You can put a spin on something. You can put a perspective on something. You could come up with some analogy to get people to see your position in a way that feeds their self interest. It's especially easy, typically, if you can show people how your argument benefits their self interest. But when it comes to using taxpayer money for stadiums, and I know those of you who are Latin aficionados, I would say it's stadia, but no one ever really calls it stadia. That's the plural. It just seems to be a losing battle. Battle. So if you're a politician or you're a civic activist and you see the billionaires coming to your town with their handouts, I wish I had some better advice for you. I have not seen it Done successfully. Those of you who are in communities, if you have successfully fought off the attempts of billionaires to take your children's education money and your road money and your highway money to line their pockets, I would love to know how you did it. So please give me how you framed it. How did you communicate this? How did you convince people? Again, I've just found anytime professional sports or big time sports or college sports, or in the case of Texas, even high school sports come up, People simply turn their brain off. They open their wallets, they raid piggy banks, they raid tax coffers, and they just say to anyone in charge of sports here, take it all. Take as much as you want. Take an iou, Come take the shirt off my back. You can have anything you want. And that seems to be the mentality. And it's not a. It's not an American mentality. We saw that in Brazil this past year with the Olympics. There you have a society where people are living in wretched poverty. Forget having wealth and fancy schools. How about a little clean drinking water? And they're spending their money on stadiums, which every single Olympic country has shown is a complete waste of time and money. And they would have been so much better off creating decent schools and roads for their society. So it's not an American problem, it's a human nature problem. And folks, I get the attraction to sports. I love playing tennis. I do watch football, although it's typically just the super bowl, and that's it. But you know what? Here's the thing. Imagine if every single tax dollar tomorrow evaporated for public education. What will we get? What would be the downside? Well, the downside would be probably about 90% of kids in the world would be illiterate, would have no education, they'd be wilding in the streets, and our society would end. Now, picture this. Close your eyes and imagine that no single tax dollar could ever be spent on a sports stadium. What would the world look like? Well, I would suggest that the world would look pretty much the same. Maybe some of the stadiums are a little bit older. Maybe some of them aren't quite as fancy. Maybe the sky boxes aren't quite as plush. The cushions on the first row at Yankee stadium might be 3 inches thick instead of 8 inches thick. And they're nice there, believe me. And the billionaires, Instead of making 3 billion, when they sell a team, they'd make 2 billion. The football players and baseball players, Instead of making $10 million a year, they'd make $8 million a year. Would that really be so bad? No, I don't think so. So please, if any of you, sorry if this sounds like a political rant, but it really does relate to communication. And how do you, how do you communicate with people when their head says one thing, but emotionally they're just so for something or so against something that facts just can't penetrate. Let's focus on something a little more positive. Congratulations to Juan Manuel Santos. He is the President of Colombia and he's been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. This is, by most people's estimation, the most prestigious prize in the world. If you win the Nobel Peace Prize, you are granted essentially permanent lifetime status as somebody important in the world, someone whose message is important, somebody whose voice is important, somebody who's granted a permanent bully pulpit, whether it's Martin Luther King Jr. Whether it's Mohamed ElBarade who was head of the International Atomic Energy Agency. There's been so many great leaders throughout the world, statesmen and stateswomen who have been recognized by the Nobel Committee. Now, are they given any formal powers? No. Are they given vast sums of wealth? No. The money is a little less than a million dollars. Nothing to sneeze at, although it typically goes to an organization that has supported the individual. But it confers status, it confers prestige. Part of the thinking, according to news reports coming out of Oslo, is that the Nobel Committee wanted to give extra status, prestige to President Santos to help him really make the peace solidify in Colombia. They've had guerrilla warfare going there for 50 some years. And unfortunately, part of the settlement, the peace settlement, was just voted on by the public and they voted it down. The thinking goes that the Nobel Prize Committee wants to put extra pressure on the people of Colombia and in that region to think again about peace initiatives and to come up with something. Now, I've only been to Colombia once. It's been almost 20 years. This was pre 9 11, so that was kind of my first time being in airports, public places, even beaches, and seeing guys walking around with machine guns everywhere. It was a bit unsettling to me. And I certainly was told, be very careful everywhere you go, even in fancy resorts in the north. It was just machine gun, armed guard, culture, gates on everything. It's been war torn country for a long, long time. So I hope President Santos can make some progress, bring the people together. And beyond that, I'm hoping he uses his voice for peace for a long time to come. Because here's the thing, you and I get announced that we're giving a speech somewhere, maybe Some people show up, maybe they don't. If you've won the Nobel Peace Prize, it confers such respect, you're basically guaranteed an audience for the rest of your life, whether you're Nelson Mandela, Martin Luther King, regardless of who you are. It's a rich, rich tradition. Now, not everybody likes every selection. There are many who scoffed at the notion of giving Barack Obama the Nobel Peace Prize when he'd only been in office for a few months. Time will tell if that was a or history will tell if that was a wise choice or not. But you cannot disagree with the, with the esteem, respect, and the opportunities that flow to anyone who wins the award. So congratulations to President Santos and good luck trying to make things more peaceful in that country. I'm T.J. walker. I appreciate you spending time with me this Sunday. Now, later today is the big event. It's the second presidential debate here in the United States of the year between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. I'll be giving you full analysis tomorrow morning, so click on the podcast. And by the way, if you haven't subscribed yet, if you just occasionally dabble, please subscribe. If you haven't left the review yet, please leave a review. It's helpful. Better yet, share it with your friends on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and spread the word. I'm TJ Walker. Thanks so much for joining me today.