Taking Pass on NFL Debate

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The most refreshing aspect of the quest to return the Rams to Los Angeles was this: We didn’t have to suffer through a yearlong academic argument about whether or not an NFL team would boost the local economy.

Usually, when a city is in the midst of luring a professional sports team, a tussle of economic studies breaks out.

Cities and counties and sports enthusiasts invariably trot out studies designed to show that a sports team is good for a local economy by, among other things, attracting visitors, who tend to linger in town and spend money on other stuff.

But independent economists seem unified in their belief that professional teams provide scant help to a local economy. Their main argument is that the team itself doesn’t create widespread local wealth or worker income, other than for a relative handful of well-paid execs and office workers. Most game-day employees are low-wage part-timers.

And fans aren’t really spending new money on their local sports teams. The money they spend to, say, attend a football game is money they don’t spend on dinner and movie, bowling, Zumba classes or any number of other discretionary recreational purchases. A sports team has about the same salubrious effect as a big department store, they say.

But over the past year leading up to last week’s decision to bring the Rams back to Los Angeles, we were blissfully excused from such warring studies. We didn’t have to debate it. That’s because the owner of the Rams, Stan Kroenke, promised to pay for construction of his football stadium in Inglewood. And since there is to be no taxpayer outlay, at least nothing apparently substantial, there was no need to try to convince taxpayers to cowboy up and pay out for a stadium under the flimsy guise that it would be good for the local economy.

That is rare and, as mentioned, refreshing. When was the last time a professional team relocated or talked about relocating and the city didn’t have to endure the good-for-the-economy, not-so-good-for-the-economy debate? What’s more, when was the last time an owner promised to bankroll the cost of a stadium? And when was the last time most economists agreed about anything?

By the way, professional sports teams may be of negligible help for a local economy, but they can be of enormous overall help to a city. They give people something to rally around, to commiserate about, to share and talk about. Sports teams are kind of like your city’s ambassador to the rest of the country. And they’re fun.

A city with sports teams is more interesting, enjoyable and complete. That’s their real civic value.

• • •

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: American Apparel needs Dov Charney.

I know, I know. He’s got more baggage than the Queen Mary in its prime. But he’s also the creative genius most likely to turn around L.A.’s biggest clothing company. Besides, he couldn’t do much worse than the current managers have done.

As you can see in the article on page 1 of this issue, the investors who want to buy American Apparel out of bankruptcy plan to reinstall Charney as a kind of chief creative officer so he can do what he does best – design and market apparel – and wisely hire professionals to manage the business aspects of the company.

“He just needed better lieutenants behind him,” Chad Hagan, the main investor, said in the article. “We plan to bring him back in a co-CEO position so he can continue to do what he did best, which was to be a merchant.”

Charles Crumpley is editor of the Business Journal. He can be reached at [email protected].

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