An interesting Wall Street Journal article tries to put a dollar value on the “intangible” value of a professional sports team to the fans . . . in this case, the Minnesota Vikings:
Christopher Slinde, a lifetime Minnesota Vikings fan who has endured decades of heartbreak and lots of overpriced beer in supporting his team, believes Vikings fandom is priceless. According to economists, it’s worth $530.65.
“This is deep,” said Mr. Slinde, a 33-year-old X-ray technician, outside the Park Tavern near Minneapolis on Sunday. He had been handed a recent economics paper that is tattooed with equations and attempts to value, in dollars, the joy and pain Minnesotans get from the Vikings.
“Don’t economists spend their time on more serious stuff?” he asked, after thumbing through the paper in the cold.
As fans pack stadiums and couches to watch the National Football League’s divisional playoffs this weekend, they care about victory. Economists are tackling a more abstract challenge: putting a price on the emotional benefits of having a pro sports team in town.
Interestingly, the one question that doesn’t come up is why non-fans (the rest of the taxpayers being asked to pay for a new Vikings stadium) should use their tax dollars to subsidize their sports-mad fellow citizens. The answer is, of course, that if Minnesota won’t then some other state or city will do. It seems reasonable to me to ask the billionaire owners of these sports franchises to pay for their own buildings . . . but there’s a long, inglorious history of these very well-off, well-connected folks being able to get politicians to pry the coffers open and paying public money to benefit private interests.
