All politics is local, especially when it comes to the game of landing a big business in your jurisdiction. The wooing is done with what politicians call “incentives.” You and I might think of them as sweeteners or, if we are cynics, corporate bribes. Leaving aside any judgments on the methods, we can agree that the competition over major corporations can be as brutal as the wooing of an athletic franchise.
The stakes are similar. Sports franchises are supposed to bring tax revenues of various kinds, jobs, development around the stadium, perhaps, and psychic rewards of promoting the city spirit. All of these benefits are debatable. Many economists have concluded that sports franchises and the stadiums they require the public to build are actually bad deals for taxpayers.
