Financing and economics in Swedish stadiums

Abstract: Stadiums are being built over the country and the discussion is whether it is profitable for the municipalities or not. The municipalities are namely owners or part owners or have in some way contributed to the financing by subvention or grants. A purpose with the project is to show different aspects to why different operators want to own/finance stadiums when they are not profitable. That means that we are examining municipalities’ incentives to invest in these stadiums. The purpose is therefor to examine how you can see on added value created by stadiums. The project is limited to investigate stadiums with an audience capacity of 10 000 people, because we want to focus on multi-stadiums that has a bigger ability to affect the society it is built in. Politicians who have been elected from the citizens in the municipality govern municipalities. It is the city council that takes the decisions. The municipality’s largest source of income is the local taxes, it stands for about 70 per cent of the municipality’s incomes. We have chosen to do an explorative examination by a quantitative collection of information to seek answers to our questions. We are assuming after our examination that municipalities consider it important with stadiums to promote a municipality’s reputation and also to promote the sporting activities and try to increase the interest for sports among young people. Even if it is not economically profitable it is contributing to community benefits and therefor they are willing to contribute