Baltimore is home to several world-class sports facilities. Oriole Park at Camden Yards was recently voted the best Major League Ballpark in the USA Today Readers’ Choice travel award contest, and M&T Bank stadium is full for many of their home game. Pimlico Racetrack, which has certainly seen better days, is an iconic location, home to the second leg of the Triple Crown.

Now, the state is prepared to spend more than a billion dollars improving them.

Are these improvements a good deal for fans and taxpayers? What models do other cities provide for what Baltimore might do with our stadiums?

We’ll talk about it today with Jon Morgan, an author who covered sports for many years at the Baltimore Sun, and Dennis Coates, a UMBC Professor of Economics and editor of The Journal of Sports Economics.