Unsurprisingly, Allegiant Stadium is proving to be a big financial success — earning higher stadium concert revenue than anywhere else in the world, according to 2022 data. 

Which should raise the question: Why, exactly, was government money “needed” to get it built in the first place?

Despite a few disappointing seasons for the Las Vegas Raiders since moving from Oakland, the shiny black stadium just west of the Strip has proven to be a remarkably popular and successful facility — thanks largely to world-class concerts, sporting events and an endless stream of cash-flush tourists ready to make it part of their Vegas experience. 

As a result, it might be tempting to think that, possibly, the mountain of tax dollars local government put into the project was a good investment — as if such success neuters the objections put forward in 2016 when lawmakers decided to give a football franchise the largest stadium subsidy in NFL history at the time. 

However, the profitability of Allegiant Stadium doesn’t magically transform government’s $750 million gift into some sort of wise investment. In fact, it does quite the opposite, given that the agreement made no provision for sharing stadium revenue with taxpayers. One doesn’t have to be a savvy Wall Street banker to see that spending hundreds of millions of dollars so other entities can turn a profit isn’t exactly a winning investment strategy — and yet that’s precisely what Southern Nevada has done with Allegiant Stadium.

Or, as the Berkeley Economic Review puts it: “socializing the costs and privatizing the profits” creates a host of problems for public treasuries and local residents. 

It’s a grift that professional sports teams have enjoyed for decades — using local governments as ATMs full of “free money” to subsidize their capital investments. And, unfortunately, all too many politicians are more than eager to indulge the panhandling pleas of such politically-connected billionaire beggars.

The $750 million put toward the project by government makes up only a portion of the stadium’s nearly $2 billion price tag. The overall cost to the region is far greater. The total amount paid to service that debt will be roughly $1.3 billion over its 30-year term, and the Raiders received massive additional tax abatements and subsidies equal to roughly half-a million dollars per year as part of their lease agreement.

And yet, as mentioned above, taxpayers don’t even share in the profits being generated.  

So, while it’s nice to see that Allegiant Stadium won’t soon be the kind of abandoned monument to tax-funded hubris some other publicly funded stadiums have become, it’s cold comfort to those who believe public dollars should be used for public, not private, benefit. 

After all, Clark County is paying one heck of a public price for a facility that generates privatized profits for corporate interests that are already quite successful.

We’re told by the stadium’s defenders, of course, not to worry about the price tag. Ostensibly, only tourists are paying for our beloved Allegiant Stadium because it is funded through an increased room tax rate. However, such taxes — even if they are primarily paid by tourists from out of state — aren’t exactly “free” sources of revenue for local coffers. If they were, one would have to wonder why “tourist” taxes haven’t been used to fully staff our public schools, fix every pothole in Southern Nevada or eradicate homelessness. 

The obvious truth is because such taxes do, in fact, carry a cost… albeit a cost that is difficult to calculate. 

Each dollar spent on a room tax is a dollar that won’t be gambled at a roulette table, used to tip a bartender, nor spent with a local business. It’s a dollar that has been removed from the local economy before it ever had a chance to circulate throughout it. 

Likewise, every one of those $1.3 billion dollars spent to service the county’s 30-year debt obligation are not being spent on basic government services or other important public causes. Instead, each one of those dollars will be spent to fund a stadium that rakes in revenue for a select group of private interests — interests that were already wealthy enough to have funded the entire project on their own, had they only chosen to do so. 

Proponents of such subsidies often resort to the age-old claim that the stadium will attract enough extra tourism to give the surrounding region an economic boost it would otherwise not experience. However, it’s probably worth pointing out there’s no reason to believe private investors wouldn’t have spent their own money to continue driving up tourist numbers — especially considering Southern Nevada’s most prominent industry pretty much depends on such growth. 

It’s impossible to believe that, without the construction of a taxpayer-funded stadium, every resort executive and entrepreneurial casino magnate in Southern Nevada would have shrugged their shoulders and thought “Oh well… I guess this is as busy as Vegas will ever get.” It seems far more likely the industry would have done what it was doing before the construction of Allegiant Stadium: Spending its own money to attract tourists to Southern Nevada in record numbers.  

Yes, Allegiant Stadium appears to be a big success… but that was never the focus of the debate. Corporate welfare isn’t objectionable merely because it exposes tax dollars to some amount of risk — it’s objectionable because money in the public treasury shouldn’t be used to prop up the private profits of those who are already wealthy enough to lobby for such blatant political favoritism.

We should all be happy Allegiant Stadium is such a beautiful and profitable success. Moving forward, we should also be sure to protect against the kind of crony corporatism that brought it about in the first place. 

Michael Schaus is a communications and branding expert based in Las Vegas, Nevada, and founder of Schaus Creative LLC — an agency dedicated to helping organizations, businesses and activists tell their story and motivate change. He has more than a decade of experience in public affairs commentary, having worked as a news director, columnist, political humorist, and most recently as the director of communications for a public policy think tank. Follow him at SchausCreative.com or on Twitter at @schausmichael.