Sunday, March 07, 2004
STADIA QUEST
So I have this map due tomorrow at 5p for my computer cartography class. It's being done in CorelDraw11. Basically, I'm putting in little symbols to denote publicly-funded stadiums that have gone up since 1990. I'm putting in four levels of dots/circles to denote how much money one city or metropolitan area has spent on constructing these stadiums.
So I'd done a bunch of Google searching and stuff, I'd been using a bunch of data from Ballparks.com, which is great, but maybe not for this project, because it didn't always have a public/private financing breakdown for the stadium construction.
Then I stumbled on a gold mine.
I didn't know that Marquette has a Sports Law Department, which quite frankly, sounds very awesome. If I wasn't a geology major, and was about four years younger and lived in Wisconsin, I'd totally jump on the possibility of sports law.
Anyway, what I got from them were four handy-dandy PDF files. Basically these files gave me the percentage for public funding for all of the arenas that have gone up. If you have some time or even just a thirst for knowledge, see how this checks out for baseball, football, basketball, and hockey.
This stuff helped me a ton. I laid it all out on an Excel spreadsheet. With minimal number crunching, I'll give you the top five cities for public contribution to professional sports stadiums...
1) Seattle ~$703.34M (counting Safeco Field and Seahawks Stadium...I made KeyArena a renovation as opposed to a new facility, so it doesn't count toward that dollar figure, though it would have tacked on $74M more)
2) Cincinnati ~$672.9M (Great American Ball Park, and Paul Brown Stadium...if you find out how far the football stadium went over budget, you just might soil yourself)
3) Houston ~$656.92M (Minute Maid Park, Reliant Stadium, Toyota Center)
4) Atlanta ~$643.285M (Turner Field, Georgia Dome, Philips Arena -- Turner's funding depends on where you look...I saw somewhere that said it was privately funded through the Atlanta Olympic Committee)
5) Phoenix ~$467.15M (Bank One Ballpark, America West Arena, Glendale Arena...yes, I counted Glendale, and yes, the Coyotes are now playing in their second arena since they moved from Winnipeg before the 1996-97 season)
Hopefully my map can whoop some booty. You should see the little baseball, basketball, football, and hockey (stick blade and puck) symbols I made with CorelDraw11. It's beeyatchin'.
So I'd done a bunch of Google searching and stuff, I'd been using a bunch of data from Ballparks.com, which is great, but maybe not for this project, because it didn't always have a public/private financing breakdown for the stadium construction.
Then I stumbled on a gold mine.
I didn't know that Marquette has a Sports Law Department, which quite frankly, sounds very awesome. If I wasn't a geology major, and was about four years younger and lived in Wisconsin, I'd totally jump on the possibility of sports law.
Anyway, what I got from them were four handy-dandy PDF files. Basically these files gave me the percentage for public funding for all of the arenas that have gone up. If you have some time or even just a thirst for knowledge, see how this checks out for baseball, football, basketball, and hockey.
This stuff helped me a ton. I laid it all out on an Excel spreadsheet. With minimal number crunching, I'll give you the top five cities for public contribution to professional sports stadiums...
1) Seattle ~$703.34M (counting Safeco Field and Seahawks Stadium...I made KeyArena a renovation as opposed to a new facility, so it doesn't count toward that dollar figure, though it would have tacked on $74M more)
2) Cincinnati ~$672.9M (Great American Ball Park, and Paul Brown Stadium...if you find out how far the football stadium went over budget, you just might soil yourself)
3) Houston ~$656.92M (Minute Maid Park, Reliant Stadium, Toyota Center)
4) Atlanta ~$643.285M (Turner Field, Georgia Dome, Philips Arena -- Turner's funding depends on where you look...I saw somewhere that said it was privately funded through the Atlanta Olympic Committee)
5) Phoenix ~$467.15M (Bank One Ballpark, America West Arena, Glendale Arena...yes, I counted Glendale, and yes, the Coyotes are now playing in their second arena since they moved from Winnipeg before the 1996-97 season)
Hopefully my map can whoop some booty. You should see the little baseball, basketball, football, and hockey (stick blade and puck) symbols I made with CorelDraw11. It's beeyatchin'.
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