What's another $75 million between friends, right? 

Last week, the Las Vegas Stadium Authority board voted unanimously to give the NFL's Las Vegas Raiders a large chunk of money from the public treasury to "enhance" the north entrance of Allegiant Stadium. 

To be fair, the Raiders are going to pitch in on the cost as well by ponying up the remaining $83 million needed for the project. But that begs the question, "Why doesn't the team just pay for it all?"

Stadium Authority Chairman Steve Hill said that because of how important the stadium is to the local economy, the public has a natural interest in funding part of the renovation. "We need to make sure that the project is a benefit to the public," Hill added, underscoring the importance of fiscal responsibility as the board subsidizes the cost of the Raiders' home field while the team rakes in the profits. 

But wouldn't it be far more beneficial for "the public" if the private entities poised to grow richer off such improvements were the ones footing the bill?

After all, it's not as if the team — or its wealthy owner — are short of cash at the moment. Since taxpayers first doled out $750 million to build the stadium, the team's reported value has skyrocketed from $2.1 billion in 2016 to roughly $13 billion in 2026. And the personal wealth of team owner Mark Davis has ballooned to more than $3 billion, from a mere $500 million prior to asking Nevada lawmakers for a new NFL playground in the Mojave.  

Unlike the initial subsidy that brought his team to Vegas, however, at least this round of corporate cronyism won't require any new tax increases. Instead, the public's share will come from the same hotel room tax hikes approved by lawmakers for the stadium's initial construction in 2016. 

Apparently, that tax increase has generated a fair bit of extra revenue. After all, the fund created by that tax is apparently flush enough to dole out a cool $75 million with nothing more than a 10-minute agenda item during an afternoon board meeting. Good thing there's nothing better to do with all that excess revenue than help a profitable private sports franchise further pad its bottom line, right?

Naturally, cheerleaders for sports-centric corporate welfare will argue that the economic benefits of "investing" otherwise scarce public monies into such ventures are too numerous to count. As evidence, they'll likely point to just how financially successful Allegiant Stadium has been since opening its doors in 2020. 

And make no mistake, it has been financially successful. The Roomba-looking structure west of Interstate 15 is widely considered one of the most profitable sports venues in the world, underscoring Hill's assertion that it has become "a critical community asset," for Vegas that is "driving tourism" as visitation numbers remain otherwise unpredictable. 

And the venue's popularity is only climbing. 

Allegiant Stadium is slated to host the Super Bowl, the College Football Playoff National Championship, NCAA playoff games and countless other concerts, events and spectacles — not to mention all the regularly scheduled NFL home games. 

Considering how much cash all those big-ticket events are bound to bring in, however, it's difficult to imagine there wouldn't be enough profit to fund the needed "improvements" without tapping into public funds. At the very least, prospective profits on such eye-catching events should be enough to entice plenty of private investors to happily hand over a few million in exchange for a slice of future revenues.  

Or, to put it another way, if the stadium is such a rousing financial success, why must taxpayers continue subsidizing it?

Well, for private-sector entities that profit off such public "investments," the answer is simple: Traditional private-sector partners tend to demand an explicit return on their investment through revenue-sharing agreements or loan repayments. 

Taxpayer-funded subsidies, on the other hand, come with no such requirements.  

It's hard to imagine a single corporate boardroom in America that would agree to a $75 million investment without some form of revenue-sharing agreement. Even a first-year business student would scoff at the idea of handing over tens of millions of dollars in exchange for a vague promise that peripheral economic activity will, somehow, trickle down in large enough quantities to recoup costs. 

And yet, that's exactly what governments agree to all the time with stadium deals — as well as when they agree to partially fund subsequent enhancements to those same stadiums. Obviously, that's not a bad deal for the politically connected billionaires and sports moguls who benefit from such handouts, but for the rest of us, economic projections aren't quite as rosy.  

Study after study, from economists on either side of the political divide, have found little, if any, benefits to the broader community for taxpayer-funded sports stadiums. And yet, as we're seeing here in Nevada, the desire among government officials to lavish sports franchises with public dollars never seems to go out of fashion, even long after a stadium has already been built. 

Maybe the decision-makers in government reckon that if we start forcing private sports teams to pay for their own facilities, they won't remain local for much longer. Indeed, the Raiders' move to Las Vegas was motivated, in part, by Oakland failing to offer generous enough leasing terms. And nationally, there has been no shortage of teams threatening relocation in an attempt to secure more generous taxpayer handouts. 

A team willing to relocate merely because it's forced to pay its own way, however, can't possibly be considered a beneficial, economically sound or socially meaningful partner in a local community — nor should it be considered worthy of the money it demands from a public treasury. 

After all, even between friends, $75 million is an awful lot of money. When it's tax dollars being doled out unnecessarily to a highly profitable sports franchise, however, it starts to feel pretty extortive as well. 

Michael Schaus is a communications and branding expert based in Las Vegas 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 on Twitter @schausmichael or on Substack @creativediscourse.