Here’s how every NHL arena was funded

Professional sports can be a very profitable endeavour. But it’s also expensive, particularly because one of the key inputs for having a professional sports franchise is often a building for games to be played in. The old saying is “you’ve gotta spend money to make money,” but when it comes to arenas and stadiums, whose money is being spent?

In light of the never-ending saga of the Calgary Flames and their arena, we dug into the murky corners of Wikipedia to answer a question: Just whose money went into building the 31 current NHL arenas?

(Disclaimer: Let’s not lie to ourselves here, every building gets some public money spent on it, even if it’s tax breaks, infrastructure tie-ins or land. When we discuss “Public Money” here, we mean that governmental bodies had to fork over a significant portion of the capital outlay for the building.)

Let’s break this down a bit…

Teams built their own buildings primarily out of their own pockets in every Canadian market (except for Calgary and Edmonton) as well as the major American markets (plus Vegas and Columbus).

Teams received significant public contributions to bring an NHL team to town in Calgary, San Jose, Anaheim, Nashville, Tampa, Minnesota and Carolina. (In Calgary’s case, the Olympic discussions also played a big part, but it’s unlikely they would’ve built an arena only for the Olympics without an NHL club.)

Public funds were provided to contribute to new arenas for St. Louis, Buffalo and Glendale, in part due to concerns that the teams would leave town without a new home. (The Blues had almost moved to Saskatoon in 1983 and the Kiel Center’s construction, combined with new local ownership, helped cement the team’s roots.)

Four cities with concerns about how sketchy their downtown areas were sunk considerable public funds into shiny arenas to spur development: Detroit, Edmonton, Brooklyn and Newark.

Dallas seems to be the exception to the rule. The Stars played for a few seasons in Dallas before they and the Mavericks started chatting about a new arena. The new arena was roughly a mile or so away from Reunion Arena, and essentially moved to a different part of downtown. Public funds went into the building, but the situation doesn’t fit the usual template.