American sports has a major problem relating to teams moving away, leaving the communities that they had become intertwined with. There are certain examples in the past, like the Colts moving from Baltimore to Indianapolis in 1984 or the Oilers moving from Houston to Tennessee in 1997 and becoming the Titans in 1999.
The past decade has seen that problem increase exponentially. Team owners have begun to shake down state legislatures for tax payer money in order to fund stadium renovations or entirely new stadiums.
If they can not get the legislatures to agree they begin to shop their team to other states, knowing that they can be a massive economic cornerstone to any local economy.
The most prominent example of a community having its sports team ripped from them with no say by the fans was what happened to Oakland over the past decade.
Starting in 2019, the city of Oakland lost all three of its major sports teams. The first to go were the Warriors, who moved across the Bay from Oakland to San Francisco to become the Golden State Warriors in 2019.
The Warriors were followed by the Raiders who moved to Las Vegas starting in 2020, though the process began as far back as 2016, leaving the city with just the Athletics.
They were the last to leave, abandoning the Coliseum following the 2024 season with a plan to play in Las Vegas once the stadium’s construction is finished in 2028. For now, they simply go by the Athletics while they play in Sacramento to nearly no fans.
Both the Raiders and Athletics played at Oakland Coliseum, one of the most historic stadiums in American sports history. The problem both teams had was that it was built in 1966 and had received little renovations. The teams wanted the city of Oakland to pay for renovations but the city refused.
For this reason both teams, which were deeply tied to the local community, left for Vegas.
The Chicago Bears are the current face of this issue, as there is a chance they may build a new stadium in Hammond, Indiana when they have never played a single game outside of Illinois since they were founded in 1920.
This decision comes down to if the Illinois general assembly does two things. The first is the passage of the PILOT Act during their spring session, an act that would freeze property taxes on “megaprojects.”
The second decision is if they agree to give over the $855 million that the Bears are asking for in order to fund stadium infrastructure.
Bears ownership is willing to end over 100 years of tradition simply because they do not want to pay a bit more in property taxes or pay for their own stadium, despite being a franchise valued at $8.2 billion according to Forbes.
This rampant abuse of leverage by team owners has led Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and Representative Greg Casar (D-TX) to introduce the Home Team Act.
The Home Team Act would allow local communities, city or state, to purchase sports teams from owners. This is in order to stop owners from moving teams from communities where the teams are part of the economy and interwoven in the culture.
The act would require owners to inform of an intention to move or sell the team a year prior to actually doing so, giving local governments time to get a fair market value of the organization in order to buy it.
The bill itself claims that it has the power to regulate sports teams like this under Article I, Section 8, Clause 3 of the Constitution, which gives Congress the power to regulate interstate commerce.
The claim of these teams falling under interstate commerce is due to their games being broadcasted across the country and that visiting fans and teams will travel to other cities to play or watch games.
While the bill will allow local communities to purchase professional teams, it specifies that priority of sale will be given to a local government entity. To quote, “A nonprofit organization that operates in the community or a public-private partnership composed of a local government entity or State government entity with a home community cooperative or nonprofit organization headquartered in such unit of local government or State” or “A private person, private consortium, or company that resides in the community or operates in the community.”
Senator Sanders in a press release said that he got the idea for this bill from both the Green Bay Packers, which is owned by the local community and fans of the team, and the soccer teams of Germany.
Sanders specifically points out that the price to go to games in Germany are significantly cheaper than in America, costing just $110 for a family of four.
In that same press release Sanders said that, “In my view, professional sports teams should be owned and controlled by the fans who love them, not by the multibillionaire oligarchs who are getting even richer by charging outrageous prices and getting taxpayers to pick up their extravagant costs.”
Representative Casar shared similar sentiments, stating that “Sports in America should be about more than just making billionaire owners even richer…”
So far this bill has only been introduced in the House Committee of Energy and Commerce. If it can pass and become a law, it will bring in a new era of sports in America. Hopefully, it can bring an era where teams are no longer just businesses meant to turn profit, but actual sports organizations built to compete and be a part of the community around it.