When a major league sports franchise threatens to quit a locality, public officials typically engage in a frantic scramble to assemble a subsidy package to retain the team. Local governments subsidize publicly owned stadiums and arenas to the tune of an estimated $500 million annually (p. 20). In order to justify taxpayer dollars going to benefit private businesses, boosters put out glowing estimates of the huge multiplier effects the expenditures will have on the regional economy. In fact, these estimates of the economic benefits of professional sports franchises are usually wildly exaggerated. For the most part, professional sports franchises do not expand regional economies; they simply redirect consumption expenditures from one entertainment venue to another.

When pressed, sports boosters often acknowledge that the direct economic benefits of sports franchises are exaggerated but stress that there are many intangible benefits that are impossible to quantify. Major league teams give cities national visibility and priceless publicity. You cannot be a major league city without a major league team. Sports teams act as a “civic adhesive” (p. 28), bonding citizens across the divides of race, religion, and class. A professional sports franchise can help a central city to acquire an identity that it can use to market itself as an exciting destination in the expanding leisure economy. In short, the symbolic benefits of sports franchises justify deep public subsidies.

Integrating the insights of cultural studies without any of the jargon, It's Hardly Sportin' is a scholarly evaluation of the symbolic benefits of sports franchises. At the center of Costas Spirou and Larry Bennett's analysis is a basic question: What is the relationship between cultural or symbolic production and capital accumulation or growth?

The second characteristic that sets this book apart from most of the literature on sports franchise relocation is its emphasis on the impact of sports stadiums and arenas on their immediate neighborhoods. By generating foot traffic, stadiums can stimulate neighborhood retail opportunities, especially bars and restaurants. The negative effects on the neighborhood, however, are often overlooked: noise, traffic congestion, litter, rowdy fans, and crime. In the long run, a stadium can change the whole ambiance of a neighborhood, its mix of residents and even its identity. This is one of the best scholarly treatments available of the neighborhood impacts of sports stadiums and arenas.

Spirou and Bennett employ a comparative case-study method to examine their issues. By choosing their three cases from Chicago during the 1980s and 1990s, they control for a wide range of factors and thus are able to isolate the effects of key variables, such as neighborhood political strength. Their three examples are 1) the tearing down of the old Comiskey Park and the building of a new one in a poor area (South Armour Square) just south of the Loop; 2) the successful effort to allow night games at Wrigley Field, home of the Chicago Cubs, in the affluent cosmopolitan Lake View area north of the Loop; and 3) the building of a new arena, the United Center, to house the Bulls and the Blackhawks, in the poor, largely minority Near West Side. The three cases are similar enough to make the comparisons valid, yet different enough to make them interesting.

In an early chapter, entitled “From Urban Renewal to the City of Leisure,” the authors argue that urban development has changed from the bad old days of urban renewal with its extensive displacement and unfeeling, overscaled projects, to a new postindustrial approach that enhances places by integrating projects into the urban fabric. I am skeptical that the old urban renewal approach is dead. Indeed, the authors show that the new Comiskey Park, an island in a sea of asphalt parking lots that displaced hundreds of residents and local businesses, looks very much like urban renewal, only without federal funding.

The authors cite Wrigley Field as a positive example of a stadium that is integrated into the fabric of the neighborhood. Until 1988, Wrigley Field was the only major league stadium that did not allow night games. When the Cubs demanded the right to have night games, the powerful neighborhood organization successfully negotiated a compromise, limiting the number of night games to 18 and initiating a series of actions to mitigate negative neighborhood effects. As a result, the neighborhood is thriving, with home values appreciating and young people flocking to local bars and restaurants.

Spirou and Bennett demonstrate that capital and community do not necessarily conflict, at least with regard to stadium development. Stadiums, like Wrigley Field and Coors Field in Denver, can be designed to enliven, rather than damage, surrounding neighborhoods.

One of the ironies of the sports franchise relocation game is that team owners with less power often do better than those that are able to dictate to their cities and neighborhoods. Because the Cubs were profitably rooted in a unique ballpark drenched in an urban vernacular that fostered intense fan loyalty, the threat of the owners to move was never taken very seriously. A well-organized neighborhood association was able to negotiate a compromise that resulted in a win-win out-come: The neighborhood is prospering at the same time that fan loyalty is boosting the Cubs' bottom line.

By contrast, lacking the Cubs' fan loyalty and solid roots in the neighborhood, the White Sox threat to move to St. Petersburg, Florida, had to be taken seriously. In addition, the South Armour neighborhood, riven by economic and racial divisions, was politically weak. Holding all the cards, the Sox were able to dictate the design of the new Comiskey Park to accommodate suburban fans and their immediate profit goals. By tearing down local businesses, the Sox insured that they would monopolize the sales of food, beer, and souvenirs. In the long run, however, the way Comiskey was built undermined not only “a demonstrably decent neighborhood” (p. 107) but also the profitability of the White Sox franchise. Fans have not gotten over the Sox threats to move and their destruction of McCuddy's Tavern across the street from historic Comiskey Park where Babe Ruth supposedly went for a quick beer between innings.

It's Hardly Sportin' is a provocative, insightful, and carefully researched study of the relationship between stadiums and urban development. By focusing on the symbolic effects of sports franchises on neighborhoods, the book breaks new ground. Firmly grounded in the scholarly literature, the book is sprinkled with colorful characters, engaging stories, and helpful photographs that make it suitable for advanced undergraduate as well as graduate classes.