These prior posts have been following Jerry Jones‘ efforts throughout this year to obtain lucrative public financing for a new stadium in the Dallas area, which resulted in Arlington voters approving a financing deal for Jones and the Cowboys this past eletion day.
Economist Craig Depken has done a good job of criticizing the dubious economic arguments in favor of the stadium deal, and has compiled a good list of articles regarding the pros and cons of the transaction. Professor Sauer over at the Sports Economist has also chimed in often on the questionable basis of claimed economic benefits derived from public financing of such stadium deals.
Nevertheless, despite the evidence of relatively nominal economic value, publicly-financed stadium deals continue to be popular. Noting this, economists Jerry Carlino and Ed Coulson claim in this recent paper that opponents of such stadium deals have tended to underestimate the intangible value that people derive from their sports teams:

We found that once quality of life benefits are included in the calculus, the seemingly large public expenditure on new stadiums appears to be a good investment for cities and their residents.

The authors go on to compare an NFL team to an old-growth forest for a city, which is another way of saying that the stadium is something that people enjoy even if they never visit it. In addition, citizens enjoy a certain amount of civic comraderie that results from supporting and discussing the team.
I will leave a review of the authors’ methodology to those more qualified than I in such matters, but my sense is that reasoned opponents of publicly-financed stadium deals will not really quibble much with the conclusions contained in this paper. Rather, most economists who oppose publicly-financed stadium deals do so because of the way such deals are pitched, not because they are necessarily critical of the public’s love of their professional sports team.
If proponents of a stadium deal admitted in campaigning for the deal that the economic benefits of the deal were questionable, but that the intangible benefits to the community overrode the financial risk of the deal, then most reasoned opponents of such deals would be satisfied. They might not be persuaded to support the deal on that basis, but at least they would have the comfort that voter assessment of the deal would be based upon an honest presentation of the issues. As it stands now, the presentation of the economic issues in most stadium campaigns is muddled by well-financed and highly questionable assertions of direct economic benefits derived from such deals.
In short, let’s just have truth in advertising in regard to such deals.
Meanwhile, Daniel Akst over at Marginal Revolution also makes an interesting observation about the intangible value of a sports team in relation to the size of a city:

. . . my guess is that the intangible value of an NFL team would be inversely proportionate to the importance of a city. You can’t take the Packers out of Green Bay, but Los Angeles doesn’t seem to mind having no team at all. Then again, maybe it’s just the weather.

Update: Professor Sauer’s typically insightful post is here on the Carlino and Coulson piece, with cites to other resources on the issues relating to public financing of stadiums.