As structures are cleared from old Burnham Yard and rumors are fanned about moving the Denver Broncos to Aurora or Lone Tree, it’s obvious we football-obsessed Colorado taxpayers will be coughing up buckets of money in tax breaks or straight-up subsidies for a new multibillion-dollar stadium very soon.

Most of the negotiations are on the down-low so far, but with the lease on Empower Field at Mile High set to expire in 2030, the team’s owners clearly figure there’s no time to lose and no need to draw undue attention to a deal before it’s sealed.

We’re on a need-to-know basis at this point.

But soon, when a site is secured, the sports media juggernaut will shift into high gear and before fans can say Super Bowl LXIV, they’ll be convincing each other that more bars, more luxury boxes, and more real estate development opportunities for the team are absolute necessities.

They will believe we owe it to our team, our boys, our heroes.

We’re soooo easy.

Just look at us. Football season is just weeks away and soon cars will be flying Broncos flags; fans will be wearing team jerseys to church on Sunday; and kids will be decked out in orange and blue. 

It’s the closest thing to civic pride we have, which means the team has us right where it wants us. 

We want to believe we’re winners, so of course we’ll find a billion or so to keep the Broncos owners happy, no matter how extravagant the project.

Who cares if it’s irrational.

For someone who’s only been to Empower Field maybe half a dozen times in its 24-year existence — and I think only once for a football game when I memorably witnessed Ed McCaffrey being wheeled off the field with a career-ending injury — I still need some serious convincing that the venue is obsolete.

Jeez, it seems fine to me. 

But that’s not the point. I’m not a fan. I’m irrelevant.

In the magical thinking about how intrinsic football is to our collective identity and how valuable it is to our local economy, a splashy new subsidized stadium makes perfect sense. That’s despite 30 years of economic data to the contrary.

The NFL is a $13.8 billion business, after all. The Broncos and every other team raked in $432.6 million from the league last year, mostly from media contracts. That’s big. It’s roughly one-fourth of the annual budget for the whole City and County of Denver. 

And yet few dare question the need for a new publicly subsidized stadium. 

Even those who could never afford the price of a ticket end up supporting stadium projects. To object feels disloyal.

Support for the new stadium was substantial back in 2000.

Empower Field, which replaced the 53-year-old Mile High Stadium, cost $400.7 million (what would be a few billion now in inflation-adjusted dollars) to build. Seventy-five percent of that cost was born by Colorado taxpayers through a stadium tax; the team paid the remaining 25% of the cost. 

And then another $100 million in private money was invested in the property a couple years ago for a bigger scoreboard, fancier hospitality suites, elevators and other renovations. 

Apparently, that’s still not good enough.

So, here we are again, only the price tag will likely be much higher. There are no bargain-basement football stadium projects.

SoFi Stadium in Southern California cost $6.75 billion (adjusted for inflation) to build in 2016 and claims the top spot as the most expensive football stadium in the country. Still, people complain that it’s a dump because there’s no air conditioning and fans get wet when it rains. 

The Raiders’ stadium in Nevada cost $2.33 billion (adjusted for inflation) in 2017.

A proposed new stadium in Washington, D.C., is expected to cost about $4 billion with the city expected to put a billion dollars toward the project. In an effort to curry favor with skeptical Washingtonians, it will include 6,000 housing units and some open space, if approved.

We can only speculate at this point about what a new Broncos’ stadium will include, how much it will cost and what will become of the Empower Field site once it is abandoned. Apparently we don’t need to know yet.

One thing’s for sure though, in a country where money for food stamps is being slashed, a state facing serious budget constraints and a city losing revenue from persistent vacant office space, somehow we’ll find a way to erect a spectacular monument to our beloved team.

Count on it.

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Type of Story: Opinion

Advocates for ideas and draws conclusions based on the author/producer’s interpretation of facts and data.