"You know what would be a really good web page, and a useful public service? An authoritative list of scalping laws in all major sports markets. I know some jurisdictions don't even allow you to sell your tickets at or below face value. "It also would be interesting to see how much of the legal prohibitions were initiated by the professional teams."

That is a fantastic idea. Does anyone know if something like this exists? There are new services available like StubHub.com to help with getting tix, and people get them thru eBay and CraigsList and broker services, but this would help the casual fan on a road trip a lot.

USA Today reports on a study by University of Dayton economists Marc Poitras and Larry Hadley: privately financed sports stadiums pay for themselves. Tax dollars aren’t necessary to make them viable. Somehow I doubt that the study will slow the pace of publicly financed sports stadiums. While it may make it more embarrassing for franchise owners to ask for public handouts, what’s a little stigma among friends? The success of the begging strategy is mainly due to the threat of exit—owners demand public financing as a way of extracting money from cities fearful that teams will leave. There isn’t free entry into sports leagues—leagues tightly control new entrants—so cities are always vulnerable to the threat of a team leaving.

It's a form legal extortion. And Russ Roberts is right, it will do nothing to slow the pace of publicly financed stadiums. But just remeber this the next time you hear that a taxpayer funded stadium will "pay for itself." There may be reasons to go ahead with it anyway, but "paying for itself" isn't one of them.