海角大神

The NFL鈥檚 Chargers franchise will relocate from San Diego to Los Angeles, the club鈥檚 ownership announced in a letter on Thursday morning, two months after San Diego residents rejected a tax hike on local hotels to fund the construction of a new stadium.

鈥淪an Diego has been our home for 56 years. It will always be part of our identity,鈥澛爓rote owner Dean Spanos.

鈥淏ut today, we turn the page and begin an exciting new era as the Los Angeles Chargers.鈥�

The franchise changed their name and unveiled a new logo on Twitter, though they plan to keep using their old logo, according to ESPN.com.聽And San Diegans were registering their bitterness on social media and in real life alike, with jilted fans discarding old gear in front of Chargers Park.

Somewhere among the embitterment (and glee), the relocation will probably stir up a debate that brings out the crabbiest of econocentrists and the breeziest of sports boosters: Just what good does a professional sports team ever do for the cities that host them?

The econocentrists have a point.

鈥淎s a general matter, public investment in a stadium doesn鈥檛 represent a productive investment for the local economy,鈥� Andrew Zimbalist, chair of the economics department at Smith College in Massachusetts, tells 海角大神 in a phone interview.

That has become a mainstream view among scholars who study the effect of sports on local economies. And the question of whether or not a team gets funding from its host city is often decisive: Exhibit A would be the Dodgers, whose flight from Brooklyn so many decades ago came after urban planning czar Robert Moses refused the owner鈥檚 plan to replace Ebbets Field.

Not that investment is always a losing bet: Some stadiums are built as part of a larger development that can bring benefits, for instance.

And the Chargers鈥� plan to share a new $2.66 billion stadium with the Los Angeles Rams in Inglewood, Calif., in coming years will rightly be greeted by one group of area residents as a stroke of good fortune, says Dr. Zimbalist. 鈥淭he construction industry is going to get a lot of work.鈥�

But he and other scholars have analyzed how owners tend to sell their pitches to cities using deeply flawed promotional studies that exaggerate or fabricate estimates of their projects鈥� financial returns, leaving out hidden public sector costs in infrastructure, business relocations, and public services like police and medical technicians, among others.

Local governments often love the idea anyway 鈥� perhaps for the personal honor of turning one鈥檚 city into a 鈥渕ajor league鈥� town, but many scholars argue that it is essentially a kind of investment in the emotional glue of civic order.

鈥淎cross more than two millennia, those in power have incorporated sports and sports facilities into social systems,鈥� wrote a group of researchers led by Cleveland State University urban affairs professor Mark Rosentraub in 2008.

鈥淔or example, the Romans built the Coliseum and staged hundreds of events to attract and retain political support.鈥�

Games can be manipulated, too, as a distraction from social problems. And the intangible benefits of building a stadium and hosting a franchise are uneven: Dr. Rosentraub's survey of Indianapolis Colts fans found 58 percent of them would actually be willing to pay to keep the team in Indiana, but other towns have told researchers that the cultural significance of their franchise鈥檚 presence didn鈥檛 mean much 鈥� not enough, at least, to want them around if they weren鈥檛 contributing to the economy.

Chargers fans who come to watch in Los Angeles, now at least a two-hour drive from San Diego, will get an unusually intimate glimpse for the next two years, since the team will be playing in the 30,000-seat StubHub Center in Carson, Calif.聽

In a statement, Los Angeles mayor Eric Garcetti welcomed the 鈥渆xtraordinary contributions鈥� the team would make 鈥渢o our entire region.鈥�

鈥淟.A. already has more visitors than ever before. The Chargers will make our NFL tradition even richer, and give sports fans everywhere one more reason to be in Los Angeles.鈥�