When the Buffalo Bills open their $2.2 billion Highmark Stadium this September, they will be opening the NFL’s smallest venue: 60,108 seats, down from 71,608 seats at the old stadium. And to achieve this, New York State and Erie County paid $850 million in public funds, resulting in 11,500 fewer seats, with personal seat licenses (the mechanism that gives holders the right to purchase season tickets) costing up to $50,000 per seat. Starting prices on opening night are already $663 on the resale market.
The stadium was built largely with fans’ money. New York State contributed $600 million; Erie County contributed $250 million, totaling the largest public subsidy ever provided to an NFL facility. But the Bills Mafia’s new stadium is not unique in this regard: American sports see deal after deal in which the public finances a venue and the owner uses it to serve a wealthier, smaller audience.
How much did local and state governments spend on sports?
On the first day of the FIFA World Cup, FIFA President Gianni Infantino held a press conference in Mexico City and defended his tournament’s achievements sky-high ticket prices: “If we do something wrong, everyone in North America does something wrong.” It was his more pressing argument following his comments at the Milken conference in Aprilin which he blamed the design of the US market for driving these exorbitant prices. “We have to look at the market – we are in the market where the entertainment industry is the most developed in the world, so we have to apply market pricing.”
Between 1970 and 2020 State and local governments spent $33 billion in public funding for major league sports arenas in the US and Canada – with the average public contribution covering 73% of construction costs. That number has only accelerated: In 2024 alone, teams across all professional sports have proposed more than $13 billion in tax subsidies for new construction and renovations.
“Nobody has ever built a new stadium and offered more affordable tickets after the new stadium opened,” said Victor Matheson, an economics professor at the College of the Holy Cross who has studied sports subsidies for nearly 30 years. “It’s actually the exact opposite.”
How much do new stadium tickets cost?
Individual teams in most leagues do not have to share revenue from premium plans and luxury boxes with the rest of their league – while TV and merchandise revenue is pooled. This incentive pushes all owners in the same direction: rip out the cheap seats, build suites, limit supply, and get the most benefit from the fans with the biggest pockets.
Almost average NFL ticket prices tripled from 2015 to 2025, increased by 173% adjusted for inflation. The new Chiefs stadium is expected to have about 15% fewer seats than Arrowhead. New stadiums in the NFL, NBA and MLB consistently follow the same pattern: less general seating, more luxury suites, consistently higher prices.
“The money is going toward super-premium experiences rather than actually getting people into the seats,” Matheson said Assets. “The old model was: Build an 85,000-seat stadium and sell cheap grandstand tickets and hopefully buy some peanuts and Cracker Jack. That’s not the way anyone sells things anymore.”
“We are making stadiums and arenas smaller, but we are making them more beautiful,” Matheson continued. “You rip out a bunch of bleacher seats and put in a box with a handful of seats but a super-premium experience, because you can make a lot more money with a few seats for the right people than with a lot of seats for the working class.”
The incentive structure is strengthened: Teams do not have to share their bonus income with the league, making it the only source of income that they can maximize however they want.
FIFA increased prices for more than 90 of the 104 World Cup games between October 2025 and April 2026, with the three main ticket categories increasing by an average of 34%. FIFA says it has received 500 million requests for the 7 million World Cup tickets on offer. Infantino offered 130,000 tickets at $60 — out of a total of six to seven million — and called it “the right thing.” The Football Supporters Europe coalition filed a formal complaint accusing FIFA of abusing its monopoly power. The Attorneys General of New York and New Jersey summoned FIFA for alleged misrepresentation of seats and artificial price inflation.
How much do cities spend on tax subsidies?
The race for stadium subsidies has a direct parallel in the broader economy, as cities compete with each other and use public money to offer better tax incentives to companies and locate their businesses there.
In 2018 Amazon sought bids from 238 cities for its second headquarters. New Jersey offered $7 billion if Amazon sets up shop in Newark. Maryland has pledged $8.5 billion. New York ultimately offered $3.5 billion in tax incentives – less than half of the Newark package, yet Amazon still chose New York. Amazon executives said the decision was based primarily on where employees live rather than incentives, meaning Newark’s $7 billion was never really in the running and New York ultimately pulled out of the deal due to popular opposition.
Economists say that even though these cities already have the structural advantages to be gained, they are essentially throwing money into the void because these companies and stadium owners will always bet on them. Buffalo would realistically never lose to the Bills. The $850 million was effectively a ransom paid to prevent an exit that was never really an option.
We are experiencing an auction with data centers. States have offered Hundreds of millions in tax breaks to attract the AI infrastructure boom, and costs are skyrocketing unimaginably. Ohio’s data center tax exemption, Costs originally estimated at $136 million for fiscal year 2025 totaled nearly $1.6 billion– more than eleven times the estimate. The state has since suspended the program. Illinois followed with Governor JB Pritzker Suspension of tax incentives for data centers After lawmakers failed to hold the facilities responsible for their own electricity costs, he was one of many voices in the debate to argue that the buildings create few jobs relative to their footprint, use enormous amounts of energy and water, and are deteriorating growing resistance in the community.
Who wins when tickets are so tight?
Judd Kessler, professor of business administration at the Wharton School and author of Happiness by naturesaid the dynamic of stadium subsidies is a hidden market failure at a structural level. When a venue is built with public money and whose owner then deliberately restricts and increases amenities and premiums, taxpayers are funding the creation of a shortage from which they are personally priced out. When venues price below what the overall market would tolerate, the excess moves sideways into bots, queues and resale platforms. And if so, between 25 and 35% fees apply to each transaction.
“We as customers and fans should look at these fees and be angry about them,” Kessler said Assets“Just as much – possibly even more – than we are annoyed by very high initial ticket prices.” This fee structure was crucial Antitrust litigation between Ticketmaster and Live Nationin which a jury decided this in April Live Nation had an illegal monopoly over the live events industry. Kessler argues that this is one of the reasons that innovation in ticket market design has stalled: too many players in the system benefit from the opacity.
The pattern appeared prominently at Madison Square Garden earlier this summer. Mayor Zohran Mamdani paid nearly $1,000 for a standing-room ticket to Game 3 of the NBA Finals while also announcing a free viewing party at Bryant Park for 5,000 fans who couldn’t afford to attend. The same dynamic played out in Central Park in July, when New York state spent $6 million to host a free watch party for 50,000 residents who couldn’t afford one World Cup ticket at MetLife Stadium less than 10 miles away on the other side of the river.
Do tax incentives for sports stadiums ever work?
Every new stadium deal is sold with some version of the same promise: jobs, tourism, civic pride, economic revitalization. The economic literature is almost unanimously that these promises will not come true. A 2017 survey found that 80% of economists believe the costs of stadium subsidies outweigh the benefits.
“This profit-maximizing concept while asking regular taxpayers for handouts is appalling,” Matheson said. “Requiring workers to pay higher taxes so that the wealthy and upper middle class can watch games in shiny new stadiums is absolutely one of the worst public policy moves ever.”
A version of this story originally published on Fortune.com on June 11, 2026.
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