Of Devils and Details: Bargaining for Successful Public/Private Partnerships Between Cities and Sports Teams (Report‪)‬

INTRODUCTION In November 2005, the National Basketball Association (NBA) Bobcats began play in a new downtown Charlotte arena. Earlier in 2005 Newark and team officials broke ground for an arena for the National Hockey League's (NHL) New Jersey Devils and Indianapolis initiated work for a stadium for the National Football League's (NFL) Colts. Arlington, Texas' voters passed a tax increase to pay a substantial portion of the costs of a new stadium for the Dallas Cowboys. Even New York City, with its economic vitality and well-defined image, has been pursuing public-private partnerships for new facilities for a basketball team in Brooklyn (Nets) and ballparks in the Bronx (Yankees) and Queens (Mets). New York will likely invest more than $1 billion in the three facilities. With seven new facilities scheduled to open between 2006 and 2010, and with 10 other communities currently in negotiations with teams for new facilities, the interest in hosting professional sports teams remains part of the public agendas in world cities and dominant cities in large metropolitan areas (Turner and Rosentraub 2002).