The “economic impact” math just doesn’t add up to justify subsidies for a proposed minor-league soccer stadium in Pawtucket, R.I. As CEA President John Mozena points out in the Providence Journal, stadiums just don’t bring in enough people to make a big difference in local economies:
Even in the best-case scenario where every one of the Pawtucket stadium’s proposed 7,500 seats was filled for every single match in a USL season, that’s still an average economic impact of just 350 customers a day being brought into the stadium district. That’s roughly equivalent to the annual customer traffic of just one decently busy Dunkin’ store.