New York City spends $2 billion on stadiums while slashing public funds

Yankee Stadium in the Bronx, which opened 85 years ago, will be replaced by a new structure that is going up right across the street, on the current site of Macombs Dam Park. The new stadium is expected to cost at least $1.3 billion, making it the most expensive stadium ever built in the US. The $1.3 billion figure does not include at least $500 million that the city is spending for garages and to replace the parkland handed over for the new stadium.

Meanwhile, the same thing is happening in the borough of Queens. Right next to Shea Stadium, since 1964 the home of the New York Mets, the new CitiField is going up, named after banking giant Citigroup, which is paying $20 million annually for the naming rights for the next 20 years. The cost of building CitiField will run between $700 million and $800 million.

The spectacle of two new stadiums going up in the shadows of two perfectly serviceable old onesat a cost of well over $2 billionis a fitting symbol of the greed and irrationality of the profit system in general and privately owned professional sports franchises in particular.

In a prime example of corporate welfare, the New York City and state governments have come up with $204 million for the new Yankee Stadium and $166 million for CitiField. They are also spending more than $300 million for parking garages and new parkland to replace what was taken for the new stadium in the Bronx.

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