new football stadium--will it be a success or flop (Minneapolis: insurance, home)

[nickerman]

I have some uneasy feelings about that new billion dollar stadium. In the first place tickets to the games are going to be real expensive. Along with that new TVs are almost as big as walls which makes staying at home and watching the game really enjoyable. But another thing is that football has hit its peak a few years back and one of the owners of a team(can't remember name) said that in the next 10 years football is going to implode. Think the opposite of explode. The game has been over hyped for a long time. And adding to all that is the law suites that are happening and I think people who are struggling with monthly bills are turned off seeing some players getting millions of dollars a year. I think the choice to build that stadium was a bad one.

[rzzz]

NFL will lose steam and eventually morph into something else due to CTE concerns but it will probably take 20 years. The stadium will have the same effect on the rest of town as the dome did. On game days it will cause traffic delays and send a lot of post game business to Hubert's.

[Astron1000]

If the NFL implodes (unlikely) then the new stadium will be just fine with MLS.

[Yosh01]

It will be a success for the fans and moneyed people who gain financially, but flop for the rest of us.

[r_shackleford]

A few people will ignore any objective facts and declare it a colossal success. Others will ignore all facts and proclaim it a failure. The rest of us will forget it's there except on the occasion that we drive through Minneapolis on 35W.

[BillWallace]

It will be a success at keeping the Vikings in Minnesota and competitive which is what's important to me

[Glenfield]

Originally Posted by rzzz

NFL will lose steam and eventually morph into something else due to CTE concerns but it will probably take 20 years. The stadium will have the same effect on the rest of town as the dome did. On game days it will cause traffic delays and send a lot of post game business to Hubert's.

I mostly agree but think it will be concussions at the high school level that will be the undoing of the NFL. Insurers will soon refuse to cover school districts for lawsuits involving football. Some are already. With no insurance, school districts will not sponsor teams, and without the high school feeder system, college football will die, and that will be the end of the NFL. It will not take 20 years. All this will come to pass within 10 years. And while a MLS may relocate to the ex-Vikings stadium, it is unlikely to be popular enough to make the stadium financially viable.

[Texamichiforniasota]

I think NFL football will remain popular. I don't think the new stadium will add much for Minneapolis other than higher taxes. There might be some development on the East side of downtown, but that is mostly because the Star-Tribune is selling off all those dead-zone surface parking lots for development. 8 home games + 2 preseason games a year just doesn't add enough business to build up a neighborhood, even if you have a couple of home playoff games. Baseball stadiums may have a little more effect since there are home games about 25% of the days in a year. In the end, Zygi Wilf gets a giant gift of taxpayer money from the government, and everyone else gets higher taxes.

[Unsettomati]

The stadium is a success if your name is Zygmunt Wilf or a Minnesota resident with profoundly misguided notions of allocating limited public resources.

Otherwise, to call it merely a flop is to misstate the fiscal travesty that it is.

[wushuliu]

NFL will definitely not go under. There is too much money at stake. No major sport I can think of in modern history has ever imploded in such a fashion and its unlikely to happen now. Especially as most Americans are in denial about the dangers.

Realistically what will likely happen is that high school football will 'improve' the protective gear and some of the physical aspects of gameplay. Corporate sponsored researchers will announce en masse that 'studies' show CTE to be minimized by these changes. There will be some pushback but with enough media confirmation telling parents basically what they want to hear the whole controversy will be buried or at least delayed for the foreseeable future. The NFL will enact some changes of their own, admit to some culpability, give a big payout which they'll write off (remember they're a Non-profit organization! LOL), haul out the same 'studies' as the high schools and pronounce CTE minimized, followed by potentially increased pay for players who must also sign an even more insane contract wherein the NFL is absolved of any culpability for any brain damage, their brains are owned by the NFL, and everything proceeds as normal.

Football is just too much a part of American culture to fail, and the ritual of the game too embedded in our nature as a species to view from any rational perspective regardless of political beliefs, religion, etc. And the NFL makes oogobs of money, enough to keep the problem at bay for decades to come.

That's my .02