Desus Nice unpacks the issues with billionaire franchise owners using taxpayer money to build sports stadiums while the taxpayers don't receive many benefits from their investment. Desus then sits with WNBA champion, Sydney Colson, to talk about her recent win with the Los Vegas Aces and the increased visibility of the WNBA. He also chats with Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah and learns about the inspiration behind Nana's first novel "Chain-Gang All Stars."
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Growing up, I lived across the street from Yankee Stadium. I could hear the crowd. I could smell the Glizzies, white people. Those are hot dogs. When Red Sox fans asked me for directions to the stadium, I point them straight to the projects.
It was beautiful. Then in two thousand and.
Nine, they built a new Yankee Stadium right next to the old one, and it looked basically the same. It was like Drake's last two albums. You couldn't tell them apart. But there was one huge difference, the cost to the public. The city handed over twenty acres of public parkland and a billion dollars of tax paper money. So the house that Ruth built really became the house that you and I built. Well, most of you. I'm a softign sistan. I don't pay taxes. But this happens all the time. Just last year, New York gave the Buffalo Bills six hundred million dollars to build a new stadium.
Six hundred million. That's almost as much.
As NYPD spends to stop fifty thousand dollars worth of turnstile jumper.
So how does this happen.
Why are billionaire owners getting welfare to build stadiums? It's something I want to talk about in tonight's long story short all right, right now, We're in a sports stadium building boom, and just about every one of them is funded by taxpayers. So how are billionaire team owners able to get these sweetheart deals easy? When asking for taxpayer subsidies? Teams come to a community like a dude asking for open marriage. Now, girl, it's not just good for me, it's good for you too. Now, they say these stadiums will spread economic growth throughout the community, construction jobs, restaurants, Taylor Swift, body doubles.
Come on, now you think she's.
Watching Travis Kelce and do show an Argentina an hour later? Nah, that math is not math?
Then come on. Yeah.
See Now these owners also claim these stadiums will increase property values, which is one of the biggest lies in the world. What kind of cycle was like, Yeah, I want fifty thousand drunk idiots pissing on my.
Stoop every night. No way, bro, If any drunk.
Idiot is gonna piss on my stoop, it's gonna be me. Next, they promise to donate money to the community or build affordable housing.
And if none of that works, they threaten to move the.
Team, and it usually works because even though using taxpayer money in stadiums is usually unpopular, losing the team could end the politician's career, like, for example, if Mayor Eric Adams lost us the Knicks.
He would be deported.
All the way back to his real home in New Jersey.
But the truth is a lot of.
The time those owners are bluffing, and we know that because they admit it.
David Samson, the former president of Marlins, largely credited with pulling off the worst stadium deal for Miami day taxpayers. It's actually a pretty easy playbook.
I get a lot of credit for doing the Marlins Park deal, but it really wasn't very difficult because Miami did not want to lose its baseball team, and all we had to say is that we're ready to leave Miami if we don't get a deal done.
Let me ask you, were the Marlins going to leave Miami?
David truly absolutely not.
See these guys are full of shit.
They were never going to leave Miami because no one ever leaves Miami, even people who are just visiting.
Don't leave Miami.
Not a cousin who went to a bachelor party six months ago. He's still in a club partying with bbls. So the teams get their free subsidies and now that they have their brand new stadium, that boost their value. But don't worry because in return, the city gets hundreds of millions of dollars worth of jackshit. Economists who study stadium subsidies say little or none of the money makes it back to taxpayers.
One economist estimated that the contribution of a professional baseball team is similar to that of a mid sized department store. As a University of Chicago economist aptly put it, if you want to inject money into local economy, it would be better to drop it from a helicopter than invest it in a new ballpark.
Wait, that's an option, yo.
I wish they'd drop a giant bag of money in my neighborhood, like rested peace of the person that lands on.
But it'd be a payday for rest of us.
So the economic boostay promise doesn't pan out. And I know that personally because I saw that in the Bronx. In exchange for that twenty acres of parkland, the Yankees promise to donate forty million dollars to affected areas, but the media community has not seen a dime from the team immediately. They're more importantly, we haven't seen a World Series in like twenty years, or.
Like, if you want to screw my community out of forty.
Million, fine, that's business. But me not getting a ring, that's personal. I mean, at the very least, these teams could toss out some more shirts during games, Like how do you have twenty five thousand fans in the arena and only toss out ten T shirts?
And they're all sizes excel? Do mediums costs more?
And also, could we please get a T shirt cannon that could hit the three hundreds?
What the fuck up top? And the row up top?
And the thing that really gets me heated, these stadiums aren't.
Even that old.
Stadiums for the Braves and the Rangers last like twenty years before they built new ones. You can't be replacing a stadium that Leonardo.
DiCaprio was still hit. I'm not going to be a Titanic too.
Sorry, But you know what the worst part is how much it sucks for the fans because suddenly the team they've been rooting for their whole lives, starts extorting them for a fortune, and all they can do about it is to go to the stadium and cut out the owner, which is what they did in Oakland.
Check this out A's fans packing the Oakland Coliseum for the first time in what seems like forever to send a blunt message to the athletics.
Top brass a season best crowd of nearly twenty eight thousand A's fans came out to the coliseum for what was deemed a reverse boycott, which encouraged owner John Fisher to sell the team so it can remain in Oakland instead of moving to Las Vegas.
Fornight the coliseum corrupted with one of a fine chance and cheers.
Thirty thousand people are going to show up tonight the show John Fisher that he sucks.
That's how you do it.
Listen, I'm an East Coast boy for Oakland, paying twenty dollars to cuss out of man you've never met is Big New York Energy you specs. But long story short, politicians got to stop falling for the stadium griff. If we're getting ripped off by team owners, it should be the old way with fourteen dollars butt lights.
Welcome back to the Daily Show. My guy tonight is a two time.
WNBA champion who plays for the Las Vegas Aces. Please welcome Sydney Colesa. Wow, Sidney, congratulations on another championship.
Listen. Thank Okay, we got Vegas fans here?
Youah Vegas fans everywhere? Sad this is supposed to be Liberty Turf right. You know I've been Liberty garn. Did you come here to glote?
No?
I'm yes, actually talk that talk, but actually I don't have to.
Most of them were cheering for the Aces.
I love it.
Okay, Wow, man, we got I think we just got.
W fans here though.
I appreciate it.
Yes, yeah, yeah, because I'm actually at that game and it was the highest rated game.
In the w NBA history. This season, people are actually watching the game. People coming out, y'all are coming out.
What does it feel like to be part of that movement? We're now like you're more visible and people are really rocking with the WNBA.
It's incredible. I think about when I came in the league in twenty eleven and what it looked like them versus what these arenas will look like today, and what how many how many times we'll see players on commercials, on TV shows, on just a.
Variety of things.
This wasn't anything I ever expected to see in like my time that I was playing, but especially as like a young black player, to see women that look like me doing it and killing it.
I was like, I just gotta keep working, Okay.
All right now doing in the game for you were down two star players, and that's the game.
You had choice words for all the doubters. Oh yeah, I think we have a clip. Okay.
People wanted to count us out because we had two hours starters down.
But they don't know we got some dogs on this team. Shaw got two words to say night guys.
Wow wow, I mean she got But do you feel you're one of the best trash talkers in the WNBA When.
I tell you, I'm not even a trash talker.
I'm not.
This particular moment blew up and it makes me look like such.
I'm loving it, a douche bag, I'm loving your villain.
I'm like, I didn't even know I would be in it, but I'm like people, I'm troubling people at this point.
One because I don't care. They're like, you only had two points. She's not two points on the Daily Show. That's gonna be there today? I mean speaking at two points.
It kind of got cooked on Twitter today by Asia.
I know, right, it be your own teammates.
Be all teammate.
She said, you thought the whole team was gonna see Usher, and she tweeted and response to youl since scores two points in game four and thinks she's gonna get Usher tickets.
Oh wow, you gonna take that.
I'm not gonna take that, I responded to. And I know you saw that.
Okay? Is this like playful rivalry?
This is for sure?
I love that.
Yes, just like we haven't seen that before in the WNBA. Just like even like the rivalry between the Liberty and you.
But it's so you.
Guys respect each other on such a level.
For sure. It's like when you're a sibling or you got cousins that you grew up with, like you rag on each other, you joke on each other.
But you love them. Got you, got you.
You're not working on a new unscripted comedy series called The Sid and TP Show.
Are you trying to take my jobs?
No?
No, tell me about your show.
So the long Line is like two WNBA bench warmers who try to become the face of the league even though nobody asks them to, and it's just hilarious.
There's a lot of.
Like man on the Street type stuff, a few like sketches that we do and else just anybody who knows our personalities or have seen us like on the Asist Social I think they'll enjoy it.
You gotta have me on season two. We're hoping for it. Let's go say yes, come on, I see you on Fools Channel and food go for my guest tonight is.
The best selling author is Labis book Chain Gang also is the finalist for the National Book Award. Please welcome my man, not not Quamina.
Okay, okay, now full disclosure. You currently reside in what Borough the Bronx. Yes, I'm only telling y'all because if you see the Drip, you'd wonder.
Okay, So your first novel, tell us about it because it's super popular everyone.
I'm telling to everyone I talk to, I was saying, I'm having you on.
The should Everyone's like ever that book already, So what I'm missing on Thank you?
I appreciate it.
So my first novel is about an imagined future in which convicted wards of state can opt out of a sentence of at least twenty five years and participate in death matches.
So it's really.
About abolition the prison system, but in a fun way.
So basically, incarcerated people can fight to the death to become free.
They become gladiators and they're fighting for their freedom.
Yeah.
Yeah, don't give Eric Adams that idea, man, I'm volid.
This is a satirical book, Eric Adams.
Please, Is it hard to write a dystopian novel because we're kind of living in a dytopian novel right now.
Bro.
It is crazy to see it.
I started this book about seven years ago, almost eight years ago, and in the process of writing it, you, I sort of watched the world become more and more aware of some of the things I was thinking about because it was becoming more and more true. We're seeing just how heinous the system was in so many different ways, and so it's it's difficult, but also makes me feel like, you know, maybe I'm doing something that needs to be done.
Got you And now in your book, it's a for profit prison system, yeah, which is kind of similar to all the NFL.
Do you see any parallels?
Yes, well, no, I mean I think that in general, our sort of consumer culture, where we have this idea where people's bodies are things for us to be entertained by, we've gotten really comfortable just viewing humans as a means to an end, you know, or outside of it being a means in and of themselves. So I think the NFL is particularly heinous. I think that's like the Big JUNGERDD of evil white men telling black bodies to go hurt yourself. But but I think that paradigm exists in a lot of other places.
Too, Got You, Got You, And in this book, your protagonist is a black woman.
Yes, was that a conscious choice? Absolutely? It was.
I think that there's a particular way in which the black women can be both respected but also disrespected in the same breath. I think if you think about Serena Williams, both Serena Williams and the bron for example, understand a particular way of existing in the world. But I think Serena understands something that's particular to her, which is always being sort of like disrespected or reduced to sexuality, her image and so many other type of little weird, little jabs that they give her. I think that that intersection of being a woman, being an athlete, being someone who's in the eye of the public, all those things from important for this book, and so it made sense for the protagonist to be a woman sense Okay.
I recently hosted the gala for the Bronx Defenders, their public Defenders in the Bronx.
He's the name, but your father is also a defense attorney. Yep, he was.
Did that affect your view on the just criminal justice?
It absolutely absolutely did.
He told me about how he was in the middle of defending someone who had committed a murder got and I remember then being like, dang, Like, okay, I guess my father's a villain.
He's a bad guy.
And I remember him telling me it's not that simple, And just in that little moment, I was probably like eleven tennis. A little seed was planned. That I think is a big part of how this book came to be.
How satisfying does it feel to actually complete your first book?
Oh my god, it's it's the biggest reward, to be honest. The day where I sent it in and it was like done, done, done, done. It's bigger than any reward I can get. So I'm just grateful it's out there. I'm grateful people are reading it. I'm grateful people are thinking about the prisons some and how we can maybe be more compassionate. So that's really the big gift.
Okay, this might be a little disrespectful to you, Mary Kill Tony Morrison or and Neil Hurston, James.
Bodwin, my English teacher is gonna kill me.
Tony's the god, so I want to marry her, and then I feel bad to even say it. Zoora and Neil Hurston and I would.
Have some relations.
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