ALONG with framed family photos and magazine articles trumpeting his career, fifteen shovels adorn the walls of Steve Sisolak’s office. As the chair of the Clark County Commission, Mr Sisolak presides over many groundbreakings. He hopes to soon add a shovel to the wall to commemorate the start of construction on a 65,000-seat football stadium. The stadium proposal is at the crux of a plan to lure the Raiders football team to Sin City from Oakland, where the team currently shares a 1960s stadium with the Oakland Athletics baseball team. On January 19th the Raiders filed paperwork with the National Football League (NFL) expressing their intent to move to the Silver State. For this to go forward, 24 of 32 NFL team owners must approve it in a vote at the end of March.

Subsidising sports stadiums increased with the Tax Reform Act of 1986, says Ted Gayer of Brookings, a think-tank. The law intended to clamp down on the tax exemption of bonds used to finance many sports stadiums (though not the proposed Las Vegas arena). But in practice, it incentivised the federal government to match local subsidies. In order to woo or retain professional sports teams, offering up public money has become almost mandatory for states. When they were scrambling to keep the Rams from moving to Los Angeles, St Louis offered to chip in $400m in state and local tax dollars to build a new $1.1bn waterfront stadium. To keep the Raiders in California, Oakland offered $200m in infrastructure and 105 acres (42 hectares) of land to construct a new home for the team. A Brookings report which Mr Gayer co-authored suggests that from 2000 to 2014, 36 of the 45 major-league sports stadiums that were either constructed or renovated received some sort of governmental subsidy.

The Las Vegas stadium would cost $1.9bn, making it among the world’s most expensive. The Raiders would pony up $500m and Sheldon Adelson, a casino magnate, has promised $650m, though his participation has recently become less sure. The remaining $750m would come from a hike in Clark County hotel room taxes—a record stadium subsidy. Additionally, a report by the Nevada Department of Transportation estimates that it would also require $899m for highway upgrades. That report surfaced mysteriously on the day Nevada’s state legislature was meant to vote on the stadium tax; the department’s bleary-eyed director was called from bed at midnight to explain.

Mr Sisolak, who will probably run for Nevada governor in 2018, and the project’s other supporters insist that the stadium will be a boon for the local economy. Gesturing at his shovels he says: “To me, these represent jobs. The stadium would mean thousands of new jobs.” The Southern Nevada Tourism Infrastructure Committee suggests the stadium will create 19,000 construction jobs and 6,000 permanent positions. It projects that football games, concerts and other events held in the stadium would draw 450,000 new visitors to Las Vegas each year, bringing in $35m in annual public revenue (and, if accurate, repaying the direct subsidy over 21 years). And anyway, the extra taxes levied to build the stadium will mainly come out of tourists’ bedazzled pocketbooks.

Roger Noll, an economist who studies sports-stadium subsidies at Stanford University, says he has never witnessed the construction of a football stadium that has had a significant positive impact on the local economy. Chris Giunchigliani, the only Clark County commissioner to vote against the tax bump needed for the stadium, argues the project should have been funded entirely by the private sector. Mr Adelson, many sceptical of the stadium protect note, is worth around $30bn. “If it’s good for business, let business pay for it,” Ms Giunchigliani reasons.