Study: Sports Welfare Tough to Kill 'Like Cockroaches'

A “sports welfare” study details how tough it is for lawmakers to get rid of loopholes and tax benefits used by sports organizations. 

According to the Sportsonearth.com study, “like cockroaches,” the “awful truth about sports welfare” is that it “dies hard.”

“Try to go after corporate welfare,” says a frustrated Capitol Hill staffer told the publication. “No one wants to do it. Nobody will pull the trigger. They won’t put their name on anything specific. It all comes down to money. [Lawmakers] are all beholden to various people who raise money for them. Or their lobbyists. Who even knows?”

The study details numerous examples–such as the Miami Dolphins’s Sun Life Stadium and the Minnesota Vikings’s new stadium–of sports welfare and concludes:

“Sports Welfare is not a one-off summer blockbuster. It’s an all-encompassing franchise, complete with sequels (the Atlanta Falcons getting $554 million to replace the 20-year-old Georgia Dome), spin-offs (the Philadelphia Eagles gearing up to ask for public money to upgrade 10-year-old Lincoln Financial Field) and reboots (the new ‘College Football Playoff’ being just as tax-exempt as the old BCS Championship).”