JumboBuc
Senior Member
- Joined
- Jun 26, 2013
- Messages
- 2,646
- Reaction score
- 1,515
Re: Site in Hub top choice for a soccer stadium
You realize that this is Boston we're talking about, right? There aren't any "local sports obsessed universities." Boston doesn't really do college sports, and the college sport we care most about (hockey) could never share a stadium with a soccer team. BC's the closest thing we have, and they are hardly "big time" (they've only been averaging about 30k attendance, or around 2/3 capacity, at football games lately). BU and NEU don't even have football, and Harvard's not gonna leave their 110+ year old stadium in the Ivy League. Everyone else is DIII.
I too hate it when municipalities and states build stadiums for professional sports teams (I'm looking at you especially, Georgia) or when universities build sports facilities with tax-deductible "charitable" donations, but that's not what we're talking about here. A privately financed soccer stadium would be a pretty good use of the Bayside Expo land, IMHO. Much better than whatever UMass Boston will do (or not do) with it in the foreseeable future.
Remember that Boston is the only city in America where teams in all four major professional sports leagues play in stadiums that were privately funded and constructed and are privately owned. We love our pro sports teams, but we're also generally pretty good about making them pay for their own shit. Stuff like the Red Sox lease of Yawkey Way gets criticized here, but that's small potatoes compared to the hundreds of millions of direct cash subsidies that other governments hand out to their teams.
They could partner with a local sports obsessed university to build a shared one I guess. I just hate giant structures built for a specialized purpose that only make use of the space sporadically at best. I can't hate on people loving sports just because I'm not into it, I just built up a hatred for how funds get wasted on stadiums from my college days, watching my tuition skyrocket while new stadiums were built on campus. Gave me a whole lot of time to think through what a waste that was while college students were being saddled with crippling debt.
You realize that this is Boston we're talking about, right? There aren't any "local sports obsessed universities." Boston doesn't really do college sports, and the college sport we care most about (hockey) could never share a stadium with a soccer team. BC's the closest thing we have, and they are hardly "big time" (they've only been averaging about 30k attendance, or around 2/3 capacity, at football games lately). BU and NEU don't even have football, and Harvard's not gonna leave their 110+ year old stadium in the Ivy League. Everyone else is DIII.
I too hate it when municipalities and states build stadiums for professional sports teams (I'm looking at you especially, Georgia) or when universities build sports facilities with tax-deductible "charitable" donations, but that's not what we're talking about here. A privately financed soccer stadium would be a pretty good use of the Bayside Expo land, IMHO. Much better than whatever UMass Boston will do (or not do) with it in the foreseeable future.
Remember that Boston is the only city in America where teams in all four major professional sports leagues play in stadiums that were privately funded and constructed and are privately owned. We love our pro sports teams, but we're also generally pretty good about making them pay for their own shit. Stuff like the Red Sox lease of Yawkey Way gets criticized here, but that's small potatoes compared to the hundreds of millions of direct cash subsidies that other governments hand out to their teams.
Last edited: