[Congressional Record Volume 145, Number 64 (Wednesday, May 5, 1999)]
[Senate]
[Pages S4815-S4816]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




             STADIUM FINANCING AND FRANCHISE RELOCATION ACT

 Mr. BIDEN. Mr. President, I am pleased to join Senator Specter 
today in introducing legislation that will create a fund to finance the 
building and renovation of stadiums and ballparks for major league 
baseball and professional football sports leagues across America. For 
too long, baseball and football teams have threatened to move if state 
and local governments do not ante up the money to renovate or build 
new, publicly financed stadiums for the home teams. The scene is, by 
now, a familiar one: multi-millionaire team owners demand new, 
taxpayer-funded state-of-the-art stadiums, so that they and their 
players can make even more money for themselves--at taxpayer expense, 
of course. The taxpayers are impaled on the horns of a dilemma: either 
pony up or risk losing the team.
  This bill will strike an equitable arrangement between teams and 
local governments to share the costs of stadium renovation and 
construction--ensuring that professional sports teams put up their fair 
share. The way the bill would accomplish this is straightforward. Team 
owners owe much of their wealth to revenue from network

[[Page S4816]]

telecasts of their games, a boon they receive courtesy of the antitrust 
exemption granted by us--the Congress. The antitrust exemption 
contained in the Sports Broadcasting Act permits teams to pool their 
television rights, yielding annual revenues of $2.2 billion to the 
National Football League and $425 million to Major League Baseball.
  This legislation would require, as a condition for retaining this 
lucrative antitrust exemption, that Major League Baseball and the 
National Football League place into a trust fund 10 percent of the 
revenues the Leagues receive from network telecasts. Each sport's trust 
fund, in turn, would be used to finance up to one half the cost of 
constructing a new stadium or park, or renovating an older one, for any 
of the teams seeking such financing--so long as the local government 
has agreed to provide one dollar for every two furnished by the trust 
fund. In other words, if a pro team in Wilmington wanted to build a 
$200 million stadium, it could obtain $100 million from the trust fund, 
a government entity in Delaware would have to kick in $50 million, and 
the remaining money would have to come from the team owner or some 
other source. In addition to allowing the Leagues to retain their 
current antitrust exemption, the bill would expand the exemption to 
give the Leagues the authority to prevent member clubs from moving 
their franchises.
  To my mind, this bill strikes just the right balance. Let us not 
saddle cities and taxpayers with the exorbitant--sometimes mind-
boggling--costs of building new stadiums while the teams and their 
owners sit back and wait for the highest bidder. If the Leagues want to 
keep their antitrust exemption, the major source of their millions, 
they should be willing to do their fair share. This legislation's 
condition that in exchange for the exemption, the teams set aside 10 
percent of their broadcast revenues, is a reasonable and much needed 
measure to restore some balance to a negotiating process that is out-
of-whack.

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