(The Center Square) – The Wisconsin Professional Park District approve a new lease and non-relocation agreement for the Milwaukee Brewers that will cost taxpayers $500 million for renovations and makes good a project approved by the Legislature and signed into law by Gov. Tony Evers last year.
The deal includes $366 million from state taxpayers and $135 million from taxpayers in Milwaukee and Milwaukee County for American Family Field over the next 27 years while the Brewers agreed to stay in the state until 2050.
Those numbers include $67.5 million from both Milwaukee County and the city of Milwaukee.
The deal also includes a ticket tax for non-baseball events at the stadium expected to collect $20.7 million over the length of the new lease.
The Brewers will pay $150 million for the stadium over the term of the lease with $50 million for stadium renovations and maintenance along with nearly $3.4 million each year in lease payments from 2024 through 2045 before it rises to nearly $5.4 million annually from 2046 through 2050.
“The Brewers have long been a critical part of our history and our heritage in Wisconsin with billions of dollars in annual economic impact and hundreds of local, family-supporting jobs,” Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers claimed in a statement.
Economists, however, have consistently shown that professional sports stadiums do not bring the promised economic benefits that economic impact reports claim.
Instead, studies have shown that politicians make those claims in order to gain traction with donors while sports team owners make those claims in order to benefit themselves financially.