" The Braves' real estate empire
At a 2016 meeting with shareholders in the Atlanta Braves' parent company, Liberty Media, CEO John Malone said, "The Braves now are a fairly major real estate business, as opposed to just a baseball club." That's putting it mildly. The Braves replaced their barely two-decades-old home stadium, Turner Field, in 2017 with SunTrust Park — a $722 million stadium in the Cobb County suburbs built with nearly $400 million in public funds. So great was the public's investment in the corporately owned baseball stadium that the county commissioners were forced to raise taxes to fund a depleted $40 million bond delegated for building and maintaining public parks. The Braves also had their spring-training facility and three minor-league stadiums funded by tens of millions of dollars in subsidies from small cities throughout the Deep South. According to Bloomberg Businessweek, the Braves extracted about a half-billion dollars in public subsidies for their stadiums. "If there's one thing the Braves know how to do," said Drexel University economist Joel Maxcy, "it's how to get money out of taxpayers.""
At a 2016 meeting with shareholders in the Atlanta Braves' parent company, Liberty Media, CEO John Malone said, "The Braves now are a fairly major real estate business, as opposed to just a baseball club." That's putting it mildly. The Braves replaced their barely two-decades-old home stadium, Turner Field, in 2017 with SunTrust Park — a $722 million stadium in the Cobb County suburbs built with nearly $400 million in public funds. So great was the public's investment in the corporately owned baseball stadium that the county commissioners were forced to raise taxes to fund a depleted $40 million bond delegated for building and maintaining public parks. The Braves also had their spring-training facility and three minor-league stadiums funded by tens of millions of dollars in subsidies from small cities throughout the Deep South. According to Bloomberg Businessweek, the Braves extracted about a half-billion dollars in public subsidies for their stadiums. "If there's one thing the Braves know how to do," said Drexel University economist Joel Maxcy, "it's how to get money out of taxpayers.""
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