How a Ballpark Is Built and Financed

By 4Baseball Staff · November 5, 2026 · 12 min read

Who pays for a major-league ballpark and how: owner-built parks, the municipal stadium era, the public-private deals since Camden Yards, the tax and bond tools behind them, a worked bond example and what leases decide.

A major-league ballpark is among the most expensive buildings a city will ever help to put up, and almost nobody who sits in one knows who paid for it. The answer has changed three times in a century. The first great parks were built with the owner's own money. A wave of municipal stadiums in the 1960s and 1970s put the bill on cities and counties, with the club as a tenant. And since the early 1990s, most new parks have been built through a partnership in which public agencies and the team split the cost in proportions that are negotiated, argued about and rarely identical from one city to the next.

The details matter for a fan because they decide things that have nothing to do with the field. Who owns the building, who keeps the money from naming rights and parking, who pays when the roof needs replacing, and whether the team can leave for another city are all written into the financing and the lease. A ballpark is a piece of civic infrastructure and a piece of business property at once, and the argument over which it is has run through every new-park debate since the 1950s.

This article explains the pieces in plain terms: the eras, the financing tools, an example of the arithmetic of a public bond, the clauses a lease contains, how the money comes back and how a project moves from a site on a map to opening day. It does not give dollar figures for individual parks, because those numbers vary by source and by what is counted. The structure is what lasts.

The first parks were private bets

The earliest major-league ballparks were built by the people who owned the teams, on land they bought or leased, because there was nobody else to do it. Wooden grandstands went up quickly and cheaply and burned down regularly. The fire risk, and the money a successful club could make, pushed owners to build in steel and concrete. Shibe Park in Philadelphia and Forbes Field in Pittsburgh, both opened in 1909, are generally described as the first major-league parks of that kind. Fenway Park followed in 1912, Ebbets Field in 1913, Wrigley Field, then called Weeghman Park, in 1914, and Yankee Stadium in 1923, built by the club's owner Jacob Ruppert.

In this era the owner took all of the risk and kept all of the revenue. A club that built well and won could recoup the investment through tickets and concessions. A club that built badly or lost went broke, or sold. The public paid nothing directly, though cities often helped in indirect ways, such as street improvements and transit lines.

These parks also set a pattern in design. They were built into city blocks, squeezed by streets, and their odd shapes came from the lots rather than from a plan. The short wall in left field at Fenway Park is a product of the street behind it, not of a plan. Modern fans treat those quirks as charming. The people who built them were solving a property problem.

The municipal stadium era

After the Second World War the economics changed. Cities began to see a major-league team as a marker of civic standing, and teams began to see that they could move. The Braves went from Boston to Milwaukee in 1953 to play in a county-built stadium. The Dodgers and Giants went west after the 1957 season. The threat of relocation became the most useful tool a club had when it asked a city for a new building.

What followed was a generation of multipurpose stadiums, built with public money, owned by a city, county or stadium authority, and shared between baseball and football. The Houston Astrodome opened in 1965 as the first domed stadium and was financed by county bonds. Riverfront Stadium in Cincinnati and Three Rivers Stadium in Pittsburgh both opened in 1970, replacing parks that the clubs had used for decades. The clubs paid rent, and the public took the construction risk.

The multipurpose stadium was a financing idea as much as a design idea. A building that served two sports could be sold to taxpayers as a bigger civic asset, and it spread the debt service over more events. It also produced a generation of round, symmetrical, artificial-turf parks that fans came to dislike. By the 1980s those stadiums were aging, the football teams wanted buildings of their own, and the baseball clubs wanted the revenue from premium seating that the old stadiums were not designed to provide.

Camden Yards and the retro-classic wave

Oriole Park at Camden Yards, which opened in Baltimore in 1992, changed both the look and the finance of the modern ballpark. The Orioles had been playing in Memorial Stadium, an old multipurpose building. The new park was built for baseball alone, downtown, with a brick facade that referred to the older parks and an asymmetrical field. It was financed by the State of Maryland through a public authority, with lottery revenue as a main source, and the club leased it. The design and the finance together became a template.

The next decade saw the same idea repeated with variations. Cleveland's Jacobs Field opened in 1994 with funding from a county tax on alcohol and tobacco approved by voters. The Ballpark in Arlington, which opened the same year, was paid for in part by a city sales tax that Arlington voters approved. Other cities used hotel taxes, sales taxes or bonds backed by state money. Pittsburgh's PNC Park (2001) and Cincinnati's Great American Ball Park (2003), which have pages on this site, came from this wave.

A few parks went another route. Dodger Stadium, opened in 1962, was built privately by the club's owner Walter O'Malley, although the land came from a deal with the city of Los Angeles. San Francisco's ballpark, which opened in 2000, was largely privately financed, and it is often cited as the example for owners who want to avoid the political fight over public money. The Washington Nationals' park, which opened in 2008, was built with public financing by the District of Columbia as a condition of bringing the team to the city.

The financing tools

Whatever the split, a stadium deal is assembled from a short list of tools. The table describes them in general terms.

The bonds in this list are often issued by a government, which means interest paid to investors can be exempt from federal income tax. That lowers the cost of borrowing, and the lost tax revenue is a form of public subsidy that economists and legislators have argued about for decades. Revenue sources vary by place. Some deals put all of the bond payments on a dedicated tax, so that the general budget is protected. Others rely on the credit of the government and are ultimately backed by everyone who pays taxes there.

For an example of a revenue source that changes how the numbers work, see naming rights and the business of ballpark names.

A worked example: the arithmetic of a bond

Suppose a county issues 400 million dollars of 30-year bonds to pay for part of a ballpark and repays them in level annual installments. The annual payment depends on the interest rate. The table shows the standard calculation for three rates. It is a hypothetical illustration, not a description of any real stadium.

Two lessons come out of the table. First, the sticker price of the public share is far below what taxpayers will pay in total: at 5 percent, a 400 million dollar bond costs about 780 million by the time it is repaid. Second, a two-point difference in the interest rate changes the total by nearly 180 million dollars, which is why governments care about credit ratings and why tax-exempt status matters.

The calculation also shows why supporters and opponents often seem to be arguing about different numbers. Supporters cite the annual payment, which is modest relative to a county budget. Opponents cite the total, which is large. Both are correct.

What a lease says

The financing is half the deal. The other half is the lease, a contract that decides who gets what for decades. Common terms include these.

• Length. Leases often run for thirty years or more, matched to the bond term.
• Rent. The team may pay a fixed amount, a share of revenue or only a nominal sum, depending on how much it contributed to construction.
• Revenue splits. Naming rights, parking, concessions, advertising and non-baseball events can go to the team, the owner or be shared.
• Maintenance and capital repairs. The lease says who pays to replace seats, roofs and scoreboards when the building ages. This is a large cost over a thirty-year life, and a frequent source of later disputes.
• Non-relocation. The team promises to play in the building for the length of the lease, with penalties if it leaves. This is often what the public side is buying.
• Other tenants. Some leases give the owner the right to book concerts, soccer or other events.

A lease with generous terms for the team can turn a public building into a profitable private business, while one with stricter terms can leave the team paying a larger share of its upkeep. Because leases are negotiated one city at a time, there is no standard.

Why clubs want new buildings

The motive for a new ballpark is almost always revenue. A team that rents an old stadium shares its income with the landlord and has few of the features that bring in money: suites, club seats, a range of restaurants and bars, and sponsorship space. A new building built around those features can multiply what a team earns from a single game.

The main sources are tickets, premium seating, concessions, parking, advertising, naming rights and event bookings. Increasingly, teams also look at what surrounds the park. The Braves' move to a new ballpark in Cobb County, Georgia, which opened in 2017, came with a surrounding development of shops, offices and apartments; the St. Louis Cardinals helped develop an entertainment district next to their downtown park. Whoever owns the land around a stadium captures the benefit of the crowds, which is why such deals are negotiated as carefully as the stadium itself.

From site to opening day

Moving from an idea to an opening day normally takes years, and most of those years are political. A typical project follows a rough sequence.

1. A case is made. The team argues the old park is obsolete and, often, that it might consider other cities.
2. A site is chosen. Land must be assembled, sometimes through purchase and sometimes through the government's power to take property, with attention to roads, transit and parking.
3. A financing plan is negotiated. Public agencies, voters and the team agree on the sources, the lease and the protections for each side. Ballot measures may be required.
4. Design begins. Architects work out the seating bowl, the field dimensions, the position of the sun and the sightlines. The playing rules recommend a layout in which the line from home plate through the pitcher's plate runs east-northeast, so that the batter is not looking into the setting sun, though city grids and views often override the recommendation. The rules also set minimum distances to the outfield wall for parks built since 1958.
5. Construction. Building the park itself usually takes about two to three years, working around the baseball season of the old park if the team stays put.
6. Opening. The first games are played, often in a frenzy of ceremonies, and the lease and the revenue clauses take effect.

Some of the design choices are worth a separate look. Whether to play on grass or turf is covered in grass versus artificial turf in baseball, and whether to cover the field is in retractable roofs and domes.

Other kinds of ballparks

Major-league parks are the expensive end of a wide range. Minor-league clubs usually play in municipal or county-owned parks, often built for the purpose and financed by local governments, as described in minor league ballparks and the fan experience. Spring training facilities are built largely with local and state public money in Arizona and Florida, as part of a competition among communities for teams, and the story of those complexes is in spring training ballparks. In places like Cuba, where the leagues run through the state, ballparks are public facilities by default; the history of that is covered in baseball in Cuba.

Some old parks survive precisely because they were not replaced. Fenway Park and Wrigley Field are over a century old and have been renovated rather than rebuilt. Fenway's owners considered a new park and eventually chose to renovate. Keeping an old building means paying continuous maintenance but avoiding the political fight over a new stadium.

What the research says

Whether the public should pay is the most argued question in sports economics. The study of the subject by economists has produced a consistent finding: new stadiums rarely generate much net growth in local income or jobs, because the money spent at a ballpark is usually money that would have been spent elsewhere in the area on restaurants, movies or other entertainment. Supporters respond that a team has value beyond measured income, as a source of civic identity, and that cities need to keep teams to maintain their standing. Both points are fair, and neither can be settled by a spreadsheet.

The more practical question for a resident is what a given deal costs and what it buys. The answer depends on the lease. A deal that puts most of the revenue in the team's hands and most of the risk in the public's is different from one that shares both. The documents that matter are the bond statement and the lease, and both are public records in most places.

Common questions

Who owns most major-league ballparks? It varies. Some are owned by the team, some by a city, county or authority and leased to the team. Check the club's own information for any particular park.

Why do teams want new ballparks so soon? Mostly for revenue, from premium seating, restaurants and sponsorships that older buildings lack. Condition and capacity matter, but the money is the usual reason.

Do ballpark taxes get approved by voters? Sometimes. Some projects go to a ballot, while others are approved by a council, a commission or a state legislature without a public vote.

How long do modern ballparks last? There is no fixed answer. Several parks built in the early twentieth century are still in use after renovation, while some multipurpose stadiums of the 1960s and 1970s were replaced after about thirty years.

Does a new ballpark make a team win more? Not directly. A new building can raise revenue, which may help a club spend more on players, but the effect depends on the owner's choices.

Where to go next

If you want the business side of the park's name and signs, start with naming rights, then read about what the field itself is made of in grass versus artificial turf. You can see the dimensions and details of two parks from the Camden Yards generation on the site's PNC Park page and Great American Ball Park page, and the ballparks and fans topic page collects current stories.