Oh yeah? Well I'll start off by saying making stupid, ****ty numbered lists rather than point-by-point responses is worse. If you don't like, tough; deal with it.
They get an arena, theirs to manage free-and-clear, bought and paid for with taxpayer money. If you can't comprehend how this enriches them at the taxpayers' expense I don't know how to make it any clearer to you; maybe a diagram with stick figures carrying little sacks with dollar signs on them would help? Refer to my reply to your sixth point for more info.
So who's building these "other destinations"? What are they? Where are they? How can you say "the situation around the Saddledome [...] is irrelevant"? The new arena will be built
literally 400 feet away:
it is "the situation around the Saddledome". What is this new arena going to do differently that will make it an "anchor for redevelopment", that the Saddledome did not do?
Oh but they're
savvier now! The magic beans of "business savvy" will make it so!
This is a common trope of people who were suckered into believing the team owners. Which taxes are you talking about? The only taxes the City of Calgary levies are property taxes, which the arena won't be assessed, because the City will own it. So where's all this tax revenue going to come from? Oh right, the "other destinations" that the savvy developers' magic beans will cause to sprout up.
Surrender?
Submit?
Succumb? Which one would you like me to use? It means to yield to an unwelcome demand from an antagonist. But I guess you don't see the teams as antagonists, so that's why it doesn't make sense to you.
No, you have not made it explicitly clear there are "good deals" and "bad deals" because you can't define what a "good deal" and "bad deal" are. You literally just said "[The Flames deal is] fair because it's a fair deal." Clear as mud!
No they're not. Public parks and many museums I can enjoy for free. There's a colossal difference between a venue where professional athletes each making an average of over $2M (USD) per annum play hockey for a team owned by multi-billionaires, and something like the Jack Singer Concert Hall where the entire Calgary Philharmonic Orchestra's annual budget is less than what Johnny Gaudreau makes.
(By the way the Philharmonic had their grant money cut as part of the $60M cuts announced concurrently with the arena deal.)
Ah, so not-so-savvy developers of the past could manage to build arenas with private money and make oodles of profit, but the savvy ones today have to make them "anchor projects for redevelopment" and therefore need to be subsidized with public money. Makes sense. </sarcasm>
"Vegas is entirely different situation [because] Vegas really needed an arena and there was a demand to build one." Ah, I see, so because Calgary "really needs an arena" (because it's "oldest in the league"!) and there is a demand (from the Flames, at least) to build one, we need to fund it with public money? Sure seems that by your reasoning "private interests [in Vegas] knew they could make a profit off an arena", conversely an arena in Calgary won't be profitable, so... the taxpayer has to pay for it and soak up the financial losses? If it's a money-loser then why should the City fund it? Going back to your first point: if it's a money-losing proposition how is this not, by definition, enriching owners at taxpayers' expense?
What's the "something" the city gets out of it, besides being stiffed with the bill? (Don't trot out the tired old horse that is "civic pride"...) All you've said here is "other municipalities have paid for sports arenas, so Calgary must too 'cause that's just how it's done." But that's plainly not true, because like I said before there are plenty of privately-funded arenas...
How can Atlanta manage to be a "destination hub for business and entertainment" if they don't have a precious hockey team? How massive was the blow to Winnipeg and Quebec City when their pro hockey teams left, other than to people who base their civic pride on the performance of a pro hockey team? Did the economy crumble? Were there mass exoduses?
(Hint: no.)
All you've really argued here is "a city of Calgary's size requires 'sufficient big ticket attractions' to remain a 'top city'," which is nothing more than marketing pap.
You misconstrued what I wrote. I wrote "Pro sports teams do not generate wealth, pro sports teams go to cities where wealth already exists." I did NOT write "teams will stay just because a city is wealthy." Every market has a pool of discretionary income that is spent on entertainment; pro sports teams, or the lack thereof, just shift the monies in this pool around but they neither create nor destroy any money within that pool.
The Grizzlies and Thrashers moved because they failed to adequately compete for their requisite share of those pools of discretionary spending. You're really just reinforcing my point: neither city was impacted economically when their pro sports teams left, at all. Neither were Winnipeg or Quebec City. The sky did not fall.
Again, pro sports teams are not net generators of wealth. The only people who get wealthy from pro sports are the owners and the players (and a select few of the front office staff). Read the works of every single economist who has ever studied the matter.
"The relationship between a city and a professional franchise" is better described as
parasitic rather than symbiotic. The pro sports team will leech money from the market's pool of discretionary spending:
it will not create any new money.
