In recent months, a tug of war over professional sports unleashed untold sturm und/or drang upon our nation’s capital. But the end result of all that sound and fury?We here at the Department of Data are dedicated to exploring the weird and wondrous power of the data that defines our world.
We called economist J.C. Bradbury, who helped build a database of all 220 major sports facilities constructed in North America since 1909, updating the data that Judith Grant Long gathered for her. Billionaire owners aren’t always forthcoming, so they often base their work on “ballpark” estimates from press accounts and other public sources.
The second wave hit in the late 1990s: An incredible 56 facilities rose from 1995 to 2004 as owners realized they could tap into fresh fire hydrants of money by swapping their generic sports buckets — most still perfectly functional — for venues tailored to specific sports and larded with restaurants, clubs and luxury suites.
Propheter’s data shows sports team leases, like bell-bottom pants and confused cicadas, are on a roughly 30-year cycle with nearly three-quarters lasting between 25 and 40 years. Since the last sports building boom started around 1995, we could be staring down the barrel of another construction wave: The leases of about 44 teams across four different leagues will expire in the next decade.