NFL Rejects Stadiums Bill

June 23, 1999 / 2:13 AM EDT / AP

Proposed legislation that would require professional sports teams to set aside 10 percent of TV revenues for new stadiums was panned Tuesday by NFL representatives, who said it would hurt small-market teams and lead to labor strife.

The measure, proposed by Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., would require major league baseball and the NFL to put 10 percent of TV revenues into a construction trust fund that would pay up to 50 percent of the costs of building and renovating stadiums.

Specter said the bill was needed to stop what he called the "legalized extortion" of teams threatening to relocate if local communities don't pay for new stadiums. Under the bill, leagues that don't set up the trust fund could lose their exemptions from antitrust laws.

Testifying before the Senate Judiciary Committee, NFL commissioner Paul Tagliabue said the bill was "unnecessary and would have negative, unintended effects."

He said it would increase revenue disparities between small and large market teams, ignore local decision-making and threaten the league's collective bargaining agreement with the players.

Gene Upshaw, an executive director of the National Football League Players Association and a former star player for the Oakland Raiders, agreed that Specter's bill could create serious problems by affecting hundreds of millions of dollars in TV revenues that go into determining NFL player salary caps.

He said it was an "unprecedented intrusion by Congress" into collective bargaining and antitrust agreements between the players and NFL management.

But Specter argued that if the league wants antitrust protections, it should pay for its own stadiums. He said this was a major issue in Pennsylvania, where taxpayers are paying for two-thirds of the $1 billion cost of four new sports stadiums around the state.

And in Cincinnati, he said, the public is paying $190 million of the cost of a $240 million stadium, while in Baltimore, they're paying $200 million of $224 million.

Tagliabue replied that there has been a steady growth in private investment in NFL stadiums and that in the past 10 years the league and its teams have contributed more than $1.5 billion to construction and renovation.

He said walling off 10 percent of TV revenues would be particularly hard on small-market teams that rely heavily on that source of income.

Jerry Richardson, owner and founder of the Carolina Panthers, told the panel that the team's hometown, Charlotte, N.C., is the 28th largest television market in the country, "and it is of great significance to us that the Panthers share television revenues equally with teams located in far larger communities."

Richardson, the NFL's stadium committee chairman, said it was also not accurate that voters give the NFL a blank check to build stadiums. He noted that voters in Arizona and Pittsburgh recently rejected new stadium financing proposas, and that Minneapolis voters turned down a proposal for a new Minnesota Twins baseball stadium.

Rep. Russ Feingold, D-Wis., said he supported the goals of the Specter measure, but is "particularly concerned with how it would impact small media market teams, like the Green Bay Packers."

Holding up a jarful of dirt from the Packers' Lambeau Field, Feingold said TV revenues were crucial to the Packers' ability to stay in Green Bay, and that the financing of stadiums should be resolved at the state and local level, not by federal authorities.