This fall, tens of thousands of football fans will gather in stadiums across the state of Texas for the kickoff of the high school football season. In the McKinney Independent School District, located outside of Dallas, officials are hoping to see enough fans to fill the seats at the opening of their new, 12,000-seat, $70 million stadium.

The high price tag of the new stadium is a sign of what some in Texas are calling an “arms race,” as school districts attempt to out-do each other with extravagant new stadiums. In the fall of 2017, Katy ISD, located about 30 miles outside of Houston, opened a $72 million, 12,000-seat stadium. The price tag of Katy’s Legacy Stadium gives it the title of most expensive high school stadium in the country. These stadiums have become the rule, rather than the exception, in the Lone Star State, and all are paid for with taxpayer funds.

The rise of multimillion-dollar stadiums in Texas echoes what has occurred on the national level. Professional teams, such as the now-Los Angeles Chargers of the National Football League, demand extravagant stadiums paid for by taxpayers and threaten to leave town if their wishes go unfulfilled. Unlike the NFL, a high school or school district cannot uproot its team and move elsewhere. Instead, these districts raise money by attaching funding for new stadiums to bonds voted on by residents that are purported to be used for “school infrastructure.”

The first attempt to fund the $72 million Legacy Stadium was included in a $99 million bond proposed in 2013, which provided $65.5 million for a stadium. After voters rejected this plan, the district inserted $58 million for a stadium in a $784 million bond funding new schools and renovations in 2014, which was approved. The stadium, then priced at $58 million, was only 7 percent of the total bond. During the construction process, the cost of the stadium increased by $14 million, which was not approved in the bond.

Supporters of taxpayer-funded stadiums argue that they will bring additional revenue. However, a Jan.31, 2017 University of Chicago survey found that 83 percent of economists agree that public financing of professional stadiums leads to greater losses than benefits for cities. These results are clearly worse for high school stadiums, which have little use outside of sports.

The massive amounts of spending on high school sports isn’t limited to Texas. Throughout the country, school districts have begun to use new facilities to entice corporations to pay to have athletic facilities bear their names. Television networks make deals with high school sports associations to film and broadcast games.

For example, in 2011, the California Interscholastic Federation signed an $8.5 million deal with Time Warner Cable to broadcast high school sports championship games over 15 years. While schools often see increased attendance at sporting events after gaining increased exposure, the increase in revenue does not justify millions in taxpayer money to build the stadiums. In addition, only a select few school districts will see attendance benefits from television deals, and most of the people paying to attend games will be the same taxpayers who funded the stadiums in the first place.

Even with revenue from corporate deals, districts come up short of the amount they were willing to put into their athletic complexes. These deals do far more to benefit the corporations, while taxpayers are left to cover the cost of the athletic facilities, which never pay for themselves.

All of this is driven by an “if you build it, they will come” mentality that has no basis in reality and has failed to provide benefits for local communities spending millions on sports. The approach that many school districts are taking to promote athletics is a prime example of local government waste.

Schatz, the president of taxpayer watchdog group Citizens Against Government Waste in Washington, D.C. CAGW has more than 148,000 members in Texas and more than one million nationwide.