Why the NFL and the Super Bowl Are A Lot Like Socialism

Bill Maher is another of those rational thinkers who can use comedic satire to present compelling arguments.


Bill Maher - Irritable Bowl Syndrome from Fraser Davidson on Vimeo.

Here is another aspect of all professional sports. The stadiums and arenas that they play in are financed by taxpayer money through bonds that the taxpayer must pay. The teams are supposed to pay rent to use the stadiums, but some recent studies show that the cost of building and maintaining the stadiums exceed the rental paid by the teams and the other uses the stadium might generate revenue from, like music concerts.

The players and owners of these teams make millions of dollars, but can't afford to build these multimillion dollar stadiums on their own. There may be a few exceptions, such as the basketball arena in Salt Lake City built and paid for by the Utah Jazz owner, the late Larry H. Miller. But in the beginning he did rent the smaller arena attached to the Salt Palace Convention Center in which the building is owned by the County and the land by the LDS Church, talk about commingling of church and state.

So when you think about it professional sports is socialism because taxes are used to build entertainment facilities instead of the private sector sports teams building them for themselves. Why, they cost too much and most companies could not profit from such an overhead cost.

So if the Conservatives want to eliminate socialism, then they should be passing legislation that requires these private companies to purchase all these stadiums and arenas and hope for the best for profits to stay alive. If they cant' then they go out of business.

When the Utah Legislature was debating if they were going to bond for the building of a professional soccer stadium, the argument that they should is that it improves the quality of life for the citizens to have such a facility and having a professional sports team. They also stated that it would benefit the small businesses located near the stadium, such as restaurants, pubs, etc.

Well that is true, these business did increase business on the days the team played their home games, but the taxes related to this increase and the episodic nature of the schedule still does not produce the needed revenue to pay the bond used to build the stadium. So we the tax payer is paying for it and our public education is suffering because they are reducing funding to them so they can pay the bonds for this stadium. Now that is pure socialism created by one of the most conservative legislatures who always profess hatred for socialism. Hypocrites...

Now I don't know what Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconson is going to do with the Greenbay Packers, because the town of 100,000 owns the team and the stadium. This is the purist form of socialism and Gov. Walker is on a crusade to eliminate any and all socialistic program in the state.