This is the Reason Interview, where we go deep with the artists, entrepreneurs, and academics

who are making the world more libertarian, or at least a little more interesting.

I'm Eric Bame, filling in for Nick Gillespie.

This week, our guest is J.C. Bradbury, an economist at Kennesaw State University

and one of America's foremost critics of taxpayer-funded sports stadiums.

Bradbury is also the author of a

forthcoming book about the false promises and fiscal realities of stadium subsidies available later this

year from Oxford University Press. In our conversation, we discuss how team owners manipulate

politicians and the media to make stadium subsidies look like better economic deals than they

really are,

and why Bradbury believes America is on the cusp of another stadium building boom.

I also ask him about next week's Super Bowl and the upcoming Olympic Games, which often come with huge price tags for local taxpayers.

And now, the Reason Interview with J.C. Bradbury. J.C. Bradbury, thanks for

talking to Reason. Yeah, thanks for having me on, Eric. Happy to talk with you. So you are one of my

favorite Twitter follows, which is I think how I first came across your work, but you are also the

author of an upcoming book. This time, it'll be different

false promises and fiscal reality of publicly funded sports stadiums. That'll be coming out later this year.

I think in July is the publication date there. You've been an economist for a long time and published

many studies on exactly that topic of the kind of foolishness of sports stadium subsidies.

We will talk a lot about that today. Your day job is as a professor of economics at Kennesaw State

University, Go Owls, which is right outside of Atlanta, Georgia. So let's start with the obvious

question here, J.C. Why do you hate sports? Well, you know, people often ask me that. In fact, I love

...