Review: Field of Schemes

Although the days of of new sports stadiums popping up left and right constantly have dwindled, there are still many stadiums being financed by the public. Field of Schemes breaks down how pro sports stadiums are being financed.

Since 1998, we have been casting a critical eye on the roughly $2 billion a year in public subsidies that go toward building new pro sports facilities.

Design

Clean design, easy to read font, and a well contrasted color scheme make this an attractive site to browse. There are no tags or categories, and postings are archived by month. However, the search option should make it easy enough to find any information you need

Content

Relatively short posts, with plenty of links to resources provide a great overview of the stadium arena (no pun intended). Readers learn about the new Yankee Stadium, the ongoing conflict for the new Nets arena, and many other potentially shady stadium deals with the government. Each post is informative and insightful without being too long. I like the way there are many outgoing links so if I’m interested in a specific stadium issue that I’ve learned about on the site, I can easily research it further.

Links

Speaking of outgoing links, Field of Scheme has many interspersed throughout the site that link back to where their information has come from. There are also more than 20 links on the sidebar to stadium activist groups, economic studies on stadiums, blogs on stadium financing, and other relevant websites.

Price

Content on the website itself is free. If you want to subscribe to feeds in an RSS reader you can read excerpts for free. For a small fee of $10/year you can subscribe to the entire content. Not a bad deal at all, especially considering that I haven’t seen any ads on the site at all so this is how it’s supported. You can also buy a few Field of Schemes products here.

Overall

I really like this website. It’s easy to read, yet informative. I should note that this is actually the companion website to the book Field of Schemes: How the Great Stadium Swindle Turns Public Money into Private Profit (2nd edition from 1999). I haven’t read the book, but I’m sure it would be very informative. In the meantime, for a shorter read, keep reading Field of Schemes to stay updated on all the dirty stadium deals.