In every big-time sport, wealthy team owners by the dozen are lining up for -- and usually getting -- new stadiums and sports arenas paid for by state and local taxpayers. Opponents of the subsidies contend that the money is needed for other government services, would be more productively invested by the private sector or could be applied to tax cuts for hard-pressed taxpayers.

Stadiums are usually financed through broad-based sales taxes, and numerous studies confirm that they do not expand local economies, as subsidy-supporters contend, but merely shift money around.

• At this point, 44 professional teams are counting, in part, on public financial support to build grand new facilities.

• They include two arenas in Miami, and possibly two in Los Angeles, then two each in Cincinnati, Detroit, Seattle and San Francisco.

• In New York, the owners of the Yankees and the Mets are looking for government aid, as are the Islanders in Nassau County.

• Critics say that almost daily multimillionaire sports team owners blackmail cities by threatening to move their teams elsewhere unless they receive a public-paid subsidy to build a grand new edifice.

Analysts warn that even cost over-runs -- which are common, given that governments are notorious for building things inefficiently -- will be billed to the public, politics being what they are. That adds insult to the originally costly public-subsidy injury, critics say.

Source: Richard Sandomir, "The Name of the Game is New Stadiums," New York Times, June 4, 1997.