it is quite a racket.
the cities pay for the stadiums, the owners get all the profit
“...the cities pay for the stadiums, the owners get all the profit...”
That’s the reason Paul Allen bought the Seahawks from Ken Bearing. Bearing was hated because he was from California and Washington didn’t want to even make legit improvements to the outdated and unsafe King Dome. So he moved the team as he said he would. And when they stopped him with local court decisions, he put it up for sale. But Allen refused to buy it unless a new stadium was build. So they tried to get it into state wide taxes and the people to the south and east said absolutely no. But that didn’t stop the state.
Lumen Field (formerly Seahawks Stadium), the home of the Seattle Seahawks, was funded through a public-private partnership capped at $430 million. Voters approved Referendum 48 in June 1997, providing $300 million in public funding through state lottery revenues, stadium taxes (parking and ticket sales), and extension of existing county taxes. But the voting in Washington is based upon King Country and a piece of anyone else. King is ultra liberal.
So having another person buying it for the same reason is par or the course.
wy69