Field of Schemes is a play-by-play account of how the drive for new
sports stadiums and arenas drains $2 billion a year from public
treasuries for the sake of private profit. While the millionaires
who own sports franchises have seen the value of their assets soar
under this scheme, taxpayers, urban residents, and sports fans have
all come out losers, forced to pay both higher taxes and higher
ticket prices for seats that, thanks to the layers of luxury
seating that typify new stadiums, usually offer a worse view of the
action. The stories in Field of Schemes, from Baltimore to
Cleveland and Minneapolis to Seattle and dozens of places in
between, tell of the sports-team owners who use their money and
their political muscle to get their way, and of the stories of
spirited local groups—like Detroit’s Tiger Stadium Fan Club and
Boston’s Save Fenway Park!—that have fought to save the games we
love and the public dollars our cities need. This revised and
expanded edition features the first comprehensive reporting on the
recent stadium battles in Washington DC, New York City, and Boston
as well as updates on how cities have fared with the first wave of
new stadiums built in recent years.