About Bulls Markets

When it opened in 1994, the United Center, home of the NBA’s Chicago Bulls, drew praise from policymakers, journalists, and academics—inside and outside Chicago—as a marvel of private entrepreneurship and corporate responsibility. Owners allegedly funded the stadium privately, signed a community benefits agreement that took into account the needs of longtime residents, and sparked the economic revitalization of the surrounding neighborhood.

Using a wide array of sources—mapped census data, campaign contribution records, court documents, and tax records, to name a few—Bulls Markets argues that this story is mostly myth. Government subsidized a significant portion of the arena's cost through property tax breaks, the community benefits pact largely ignored public housing residents, and the arena's planning actually hindered local growth.

This book will interest anyone curious about Chicago politics, urban revitalization, economic inequality, or the history of the sports business.  

reviews

“Highly recommended….This excellent book contributes to the body of work confirming that publicly subsidized sports facilities are unwise investments for taxpayers….By telling the story of property tax breaks and other corporate welfare in building the United Center, Dinces reminds readers that their beloved sports teams will take advantage of an adoring public every time. The only thing left to figure out is why people allow it to happen again and again." —Choice (reviewed by Humberto Barreto, Noblitt Professor of Economics and Management, DePauw University)

“Dinces effectively uses Jordan and the Bulls to analyze complicated issues surrounding the economics of professional sports in the late twentieth century….Bulls Markets demonstrates how scholars can use sports as a lens to analyze important issues, such as economic inequality, that touch all Americans regardless of whether they root for the home team." —Journal of American History (reviewed by Courtney Smith, Associate Professor of History and Political Science, Cabrini University)

“The role of sports teams in revitalizing cities is too often taken for granted by sportswriters and urban commentators alike. In Bulls Markets, Dinces does the invaluable work of taking a no-holds-barred look at what the Michael Jordan Bulls meant to Chicago—both economically and emotionally—to determine once and for all what the city gained from a championship team, and which segment of a changing city reaped these spoils.” —Neil deMause, author of Field of Schemes and The Brooklyn Wars

“Bulls Markets is a penetrating and provocative account of the role of Michael Jordan and the championship Bulls in Chicago’s cultural and economic development. Dinces brings together a wealth of interesting research that asks important questions about the role of sports in urban growth, spatial evolution, and social inequality. Dinces’s analysis will have resonance for the citizens and politicians in many cities and should be required reading for public servants contemplating investment in sports infrastructure.” —Andrew Zimbalist, Robert A. Woods Professor of Economics, Smith College, and author of Circus Maximus: The Economic Gamble Behind Hosting the Olympics and the World Cup

“Bulls Markets is a terrific book: fine sports history, of course, and excellent urban history. Dinces reveals how wealthy owners hijack our beloved teams, and how politicians and league cartels do the bidding of the rich. Drilling deep into the story of the Bulls and Chicago, Dinces shows us that sports are part of the larger transformation of contemporary cities. Meticulously researched and beautifully written, this is an important book for anyone interested in urban history, politics, and economics.”
—Elliott Gorn, Joseph A. Gagliano Chair in American Urban History, Loyola University Chicago, and author of Let the People See: The Story of Emmett Till

“Bulls Markets is a must read for anyone interested in the intersections of sport, politics, and the economy. It’s suitable for any class employing a multi-disciplinary approach to the study of cities, with particular relevance in the areas of urban history, sociology, and political science.” —Journal of Urban Affairs (reviewed by Aaron Howell, Assistant Professor of Sociology, University of Mount Union)

“The book provides a fascinating case study of how private-public sports infrastructure projects are done.” —Canadian Journal of Urban Research (reviewed by Duane Rockerbie, Professor of Economics, University of Lethbridge)

“In Bulls Markets…Dinces analyzes how Michael Jordan and the Chicago Bulls of the 1990s altered the global image of Chicago and transformed the city’s urban landscape in the postindustrial era of twentieth century [….] Bulls Markets is a welcoming addition that extends the debate on sports stadiums and serves as a caution to sports fans.” —Journal of Sport History (reviewed by Raja Malikah Rahim, doctoral candidate in history at the University of Florida)

“A well-written, highly readable account [….] suitable for advanced courses in urban studies, planning, and community development.” —Journal of Planning Education and Research (reviewed by Edward Goetz, Director, University of Minnesota Center for Urban and Regional Affairs)

“The United Center, like the Chicago Stadium it replaced, was built in Chicago’s Near West Side, an area whipsawed by the structural transformations of the US economy. Yet, as Dinces’ multilayered account conveys, team owners did not have a clear path to the turf they coveted. He traces the organizing work of community groups and religious organizations, which pushed back, and, in some instances, won crucial concessions, and he recovers a sense of the degree to which the stadium’s backers worked to erase poor people from their facility’s horizons. He does all of this by making stellar use of municipal collections and the private papers of planners, which, in the absence of team archives, have frequently been valuable surrogates for scholars of US sports. What Dinces captures, with subtly and skill, is both the actual influence that the ‘urban sports business’ exerted over recent phases of urban development, and the sector’s exaggerated claims in accounts of neighborhood revitalization.” —International Journal of the History of Sport (reviewed by Andrew Fearnley, Lecturer in History at the University of Manchester)

“Dinces debunks myths about the restorative nature of professional sports for struggling areas by those who argue that they stimulate broader redevelopment beyond benefit to the owners of stadiums or arenas themselves.” —Journal of Urban History (reviewed by Jill Jensen, Visiting Assistant Professor Business Administration and Management at the University of Redlands)

“Dinces is keen to stress–and here lies his critical intervention–that billion-dollar sports franchises such as the Bulls do not exist in a vacuum; they are a product of a US socio-political system that aids and abets wealth accumulation on a scale unseen since the first Gilded Age.” —Urban Studies journal (reviewed by Glenn Houlihan, Ph.D. student in American Studies at the University of Iowa)

Awards

Choice Magazine Outstanding Academic Title, 2019

North American Society for Sport History Book of the Year (Monograph) Award, 2019

Illinois State Historical Society (ISHS) Award for Superior Achievement in Scholarly Publication, 2019
According to the ISHS press release, “Sean Dinces addresses a vital though usually overlooked question in our sports-obsessed nation: To what extent do publicly funded sports stadiums actually help local economies and taxpayers? Using both traditional and statistical…sources, Dinces demonstrates that in the case of Chicago, the results failed to match the promises. This book is an important contribution to Illinois history and the debate over publicly financed sporting venues nationally. As Dinces notes, the financing and tax rebate structures enabling construction of the United Center should be of profound concern, not just to Chicagoans, but to America at large….This exceptionally well researched and challenging book…deserves the attention of every serious fan of professional sports.”