Economics
“A stadium isn’t just a place to host showpiece matches… A stadium should also be gainfully employed as a magnet for economic growth and for inward tourism. What is effectively a rural site to the west of Belfast is definitely not the right place to build a stadium.” (Business Eye, 2004)
The planned cost of the Maze is £85 million of taxpayers money and in the end it could, and indeed is likely to be, much, much more. For that kind of investment it’s not unreasonable to expect the stadium to pay for itself (remember the Belfast City plans are working on the basis that there will be no cost to the tax-payer/rate-payer).
Ordinarily the terms of reference for a project like this could be expected to include evaluation of economic benefits to the wider region (ie Northern Ireland). In this case however, that criterion was specifically omitted, allowing the Strategic Investment Board to reach a decision that runs contrary to the government’s recommendations of investment in urban areas and contrary to their plans to develop Belfast as an international city to benefit the whole province.
While having amenities like bars and restaurants around a stadium certainly make attendance at major events a more enjoyable experience for fans, there is also the economic benefits they bring. Studies from as far as America, where they attempted to move some baseball stadia to sub-urban or even rural locations in the 1960s and 1970s, there is wide-ranging evidence that “the economic benefits resulting from the crowds attending games [at out of town stadia] are minimized.”
Closer to home, we only need to look to the Millennium stadium in Cardiff for evidence of the benefits of a city-centre stadium to the surrounding area. The Cardiff Research Centre has estimated that 2,250 jobs and £180million in spending in the city centre can be attributed to the location of the stadium. In Northern Ireland, Gary Lennon, a senior figure in local tourism has described building the stadium in Belfast as “the simplest no-brainer ever.”
At Comiskey Park, the suburban stadium of Chicago White Sox (baseball team), it has been noted that, “Fans stream to the game in their cars, park in large decks, go directly back to those decks after the game and depart directly for home. This suburban model will tend to minimize the economic benefits.” (Baade and Dye, 1988)