Minor League Baseball Stadium Subsidies Database

This dataset documents $7 billion in state and local government spending on 134 minor league baseball stadiums for MLB affiliates. It was created by John Charles Bradbury to analyze the prevalence and policy implications of public subsidies for these facilities. The data covers all Minor League Baseball stadiums operating in 2025.

Use Cases

• Analyze the $7 billion in total public spending across 134 stadiums to assess subsidy magnitude.
• Compare funding patterns for stadiums associated with different MLB affiliates.
• Investigate the relationship between stadium subsidies and municipal fiscal policy in moderately sized cities.
• Use the 2025 operational stadium list as a baseline for studying the impact of MLB's minor league reorganization.

Strengths

• Quantifies total public spending with a specific figure: $7 billion.
• Provides a complete census of 134 minor league stadiums operating in 2025.
• Focuses on a systematically undocumented area of sports facility financing.

Limitations

• The specific data fields, column structure, and sample size are unknown.
• Data may be limited to a single point in time (2025) without historical time series.
• Potential geographic bias if coverage is limited to U.S. stadiums for MLB affiliates.

Provenance

Source

John Charles Bradbury, ICPSR Harvested Dataverse.

Collection Method

Introduced as a new database for measuring stadium funding prevalence and magnitude; methodology details not specified.

Time Range

Covers stadiums operating in 2025.

Freshness

Last updated on 2026-02-23.

Geography

Presumably focuses on the United States, given the context of MLB affiliates and state/local government spending.