Study after study has shown the myth that sports stadiums are good for local businesses to be just that, a myth.
Let's think about the typical scenario. People going to a game will:
- Spend an hour or so getting ready to go
- Spend 20-30 minutes driving to the game (most season ticket holders live outside of St. Pete)
- Spend 20-30 minutes looking for and/or getting to a parking place (even if they have pre-purchased parking, they will still have to wade through a lot of traffic to get to their spot)
- Walk 10-30 minutes to the stadim, depending on where they parked, in the heat and humidity
- Pay a whole lot of money for tickets
- Pay a whole lot of money for food, drinks, and souvenirs
- Sit outside in the hot sun for hours
And after all that (up to six hours and hundreds of dollars later) they would still have to walk 10-30 minutes to their cars and drive another 20-30 minutes back to their homes.
Yet we're supposed to believe that any significant number of them will stick around and visit our shops, restaurants, galleries, museums, etc?
There is a basic concept in Economics called Opportunity Cost, which occurs when people spend time and money on one thing and are therefore unable to spend that same time and money on something equally desirable. It's a fundamental concept.
But they want us to believe there somehow won't be any opportunity cost when it comes to the new stadium, that both time and money will magically become more abundant, just because there is now a new thing to spend them on. Not likely.
What's IS likely is that all the other people (you know, the tens of thousands who aren't going to the game) will stay away from our downtown area on game days because they won't want to deal with all the traffic, let alone looking for a place to park.
The result? A sharp decline in business. Couple that with the increased competition from all the NEW businesses at the redeveloped Trop site and you can see why this would really hurt current downtown business owners.
Bottom line: please don’t let them sell you on this being “good for business.” That’s the same thing they said about the Trop, and it never happened. Fool me once…