Sports · Public Funding · June 30, 2026

Utah Wanted $900 Million From Taxpayers for Baseball. Now It Wants $1 Billion More for Hockey.

Two years ago, Utah lawmakers told residents that landing a Major League Baseball team would take at least $900 million in public money. They built the machinery to raise it. Now the same coalition of state and Salt Lake City leaders is asking taxpayers for roughly $1 billion more— this time to anchor the NHL’s new Utah Mammoth and remake downtown around them.

Add it up and Utah has committed, or stands ready to commit, close to $2 billionof public financing to two sports venues for two of the wealthiest ownership groups in the state. The baseball bid, the Salt Lake Tribune reported on June 27, is now seen by league insiders as a “heavy favorite” for an expansion franchise — which means the $900 million ask is no longer hypothetical.

This is a sports story and a taxpayer story at the same time. The teams are real, the renderings are gorgeous, and the civic pride is genuine. But the economic claim underneath — that public stadium money pays for itself in growth — is one that the overwhelming majority of economists who have studied it reject. This page lays out the figures, the financing, the named officials behind it, and what the research actually says.

~$900M — public bonding the Utah Legislature authorized in 2024 toward an MLB stadium — up to half the cost of a ballpark a private group projects near $1.8 billion · Source: Salt Lake Tribune; KSL
~$1 billion — bonds Salt Lake City can issue for an NHL arena district, repaid by a citywide sales-tax increase for up to 30 years (SB272) · Source: Salt Lake Tribune; Utah News Dispatch
~$2 billion — combined public commitment across the two venues — what watchdogs and one Tribune analysis flagged as the real headline number · Source: Salt Lake Tribune; Field of Schemes
7.75% → 8.25% — the 0.5-point sales-tax increase Salt Lake City enacted downtown for the project; about $54M a year, ~$66M collected so far · Source: Deseret News; KSL
80%+ of economists — call public subsidies for pro sports stadiums a bad use of taxpayer money; only 3–4% call them good (2005 & 2017 surveys) · Source: Andy Larsen / Salt Lake Tribune
130+ studies — reviewed by economists Bradbury, Coates & Humphreys (1974–2022): local economic activity is, by and large, unaffected by sports venues · Source: Journal of Policy Analysis and Management

§ 01 / The Two-Stadium Ask: Nearly $2 Billion

During the 2024 legislative session, Utah’s Republican-supermajority Legislature passed two bills that together set up close to $2 billion in public financing for major-league sports. The first targeted baseball: a bill carried by Rep. Ryan Wilcox (R-Ogden)created a special taxing district on Salt Lake City’s west side and authorized bonding for up to half a stadium’s cost — capped around $900 million— for a ballpark a private group, Big League Utah, projects at roughly $1.8 billion.

The second targeted hockey and basketball. SB272, sponsored by Sen. Dan McCay (R-Riverton), let Salt Lake City carve out a downtown “sports and entertainment” district and issue up to $1 billionin bonds, repaid by raising the citywide sales tax half a percentage point — from 7.75% to 8.25% — for as long as 30 years. Both bills passed easily, with bipartisan support, and were signed by Gov. Spencer Cox (R). Months later, the NHL awarded Utah a franchise; the team is now the Utah Mammoth.

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§ 02 / How the Money Actually Works

The mechanism is what makes these deals easy to wave through and hard to track. Neither plan hands a team a check. Instead, the state and city create geographically bounded districts and let them levy or divert taxes inside the lines — an energy and telecommunications tax and a rental-car tax in the baseball district, and a half-point sales-tax increase in the downtown arena zone — then borrow against those future revenues by issuing bonds. Taxpayers don’t see a line item; they see a slightly higher receipt at the register and a slightly higher car-rental bill.

Cartoon satire: a politician at a podium points to a glowing 'SPECIAL TAX DISTRICT' map while a small printed receipt grows a tiny extra 0.5% sales-tax line, shoppers shrugging in the background — The financing trick: special districts and a half-point sales-tax bump let officials borrow against future tax revenue without a single up-front appropriation. The cost shows up quietly on receipts. Source: Utah News Dispatch; KSL.

Salt Lake City already turned the arena tax on. Mayor Erin Mendenhall (D)championed the downtown district, calling the roughly $1 billion plan “truly transformative,” and the city imposed the 0.5% increase in late 2024. By spring 2026 it had collected nearly $66 million— on track for about $54 million a year — flowing toward Smith Entertainment Group’s remake of the blocks around the Delta Center. The baseball district’s rental-car surcharge, by contrast, only switches on if and when MLB actually awards Utah a team, with a 2032 deadline written into the law.

Andy Larsen · Salt Lake Tribune

@andyblarsen · Feb. 2024· paraphrase

There are better ways to spend nearly $2 billion than on sports stadiums. The data is lopsided: in repeated surveys, more than 80% of economists say public stadium subsidies are a bad idea, while only 3–4% defend them. The money goes to construction with little measurable benefit for the wider community.

§ 03 / The Teams, the Billionaires, and the Pitch

The two beneficiaries are among the most powerful business interests in Utah. The baseball bid runs through Big League Utah, led by the Larry H. Miller Company— the Miller family, former owners of the Utah Jazz, with CEO Steve Starks driving the plan. Their site, the roughly 100-acre “Power District” on the city’s west side, broke ground in October 2025 and aims to be shovel-ready for a ballpark by October 2026, timed to MLB’s expansion window.

The hockey side runs through Smith Entertainment Group, the Ryan Smith–led company that owns the Jazz and the Mammoth and has pledged some $3 billion of its own into the downtown district. The public pitch is identical in both cases: the venues will revitalize neighborhoods, create jobs, and generate enough new tax revenue to justify the subsidy. It is a pitch nearly every American city has heard — and one the economic literature has spent five decades poking holes in.

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Field of Schemes

@fieldofschemes · Mar. 2024· paraphrase

Utah just passed roughly $2 billion in MLB and NHL stadium subsidies — and now all it needs is the MLB and NHL teams to spend it on. Another state joins the public-money-for-private-sports-profit parade.

§ 04 / What Economists Actually Find

This is the part the renderings leave out. In 2024, economists J.C. Bradbury, Dennis Coates, and Brad Humphreys published a review of more than 130 studiesof stadium economics spanning 1974 to 2022. Their conclusion was blunt: local economic activity is, by and large, unaffected by sports venues, and the subsidies governments hand out routinely exceed any benefit that can be measured. Spending at a new ballpark is mostly money that would have been spent elsewhere in the same metro — a reshuffling, not a windfall.

Cartoon satire: an economist at a chalkboard pointing to a flat line labeled 'LOCAL ECONOMIC IMPACT' next to a giant arrow labeled 'PUBLIC SUBSIDY' pointing way up, a hopeful mayor looking away — The research gap: across 130+ studies from 1974–2022, economists find sports venues barely move local economic activity, while the public subsidy keeps climbing. Source: Bradbury, Coates & Humphreys, Journal of Policy Analysis and Management (2024); Brookings.

That isn’t a fringe view. Tribune data columnist Andy Larsen pointed to professional surveys in which more than 80 percent of economists called public stadium subsidies a bad idea, with only 3 to 4 percent defending them. Even in Utah’s own legislature, the deals drew dissent: Sen. Nate Blouin (D-Salt Lake City)said the arena bill arrived as if “a gun was being [held] to our head,” and Americans for Prosperity-Utah called it “a lose-lose for Utah taxpayers, who will face higher taxes and fewer public services.”

“Sports stadiums are poor public investments. The level of venue subsidies typically provided far exceeds any observed economic benefits.”
Bradbury, Coates & Humphreys, 'The Economics of Stadium Subsidies' (2024)

Who Is on the Hook — and Who Benefits

Public money: up to ~$900M in bonding toward an MLB stadium and up to ~$1B in bonds for the NHL arena district — roughly $2B combined — repaid through sales, rental-car, and other taxes inside special districts.

Decision-makers: Rep. Ryan Wilcox (R), Sen. Dan McCay (R), and Gov. Spencer Cox (R) at the state level; Mayor Erin Mendenhall (D) and the Salt Lake City Council on the downtown sales-tax increase.

Private beneficiaries: the Larry H. Miller Company / Big League Utah (baseball) and Ryan Smith’s Smith Entertainment Group (Mammoth, Jazz). Both are putting in private money too — but the public is underwriting the venues themselves.

§ 05 / The Bottom Line

Utah may well get its baseball team, and the Mammoth are already on the ice. Big-league sports can be a real civic good — pride, identity, weekend nights downtown. None of that is in dispute. What is in dispute is the economic bargain being sold to taxpayers: that close to $2 billion in public financing will pay for itself in growth. On that specific claim, the evidence is one-sided, and it runs against the pitch. The honest framing is the one the numbers support — this is a subsidy to two wealthy ownership groups, chosen by named elected officials, financed by a higher sales tax that every shopper in the district pays. Voters are entitled to decide it is worth the price. They are also entitled to be told, plainly, what the price is and what the research says they will get for it. We will update this page as the MLB expansion decision and the arena financing move forward.

The Salt Lake Tribune

@sltrib · June 27, 2026· paraphrase

MLB insiders now call Salt Lake City's expansion bid a "heavy favorite." That moves the Legislature's $900 million public-stadium commitment from hypothetical to imminent — on top of the ~$1 billion already in motion for the downtown NHL arena district.