because what will happen is that they'll all of a sudden turn into the Golden State Warriors by pure luck, win multiple championships while we struggle through mediocrity forever and pain! and you know those seattle fuckers are douchebags to the 10x level
You do realize that if it's privately funded then a portion of the ticket sales is part of the income the owner uses to offset the cost of construction right? No matter how you slice either income to offset cost or tax on the ticket sales the "customers" aka "public" is paying for it.
I do understand that. But why should the city front the money for a billionaire or conglomeration of millionaires? It's a business - let the business owners pay the operating costs and recoup them from their customers. If they can't run a successful business why should the tax payers be responsible for covering the costs of their failure?
Bottom line: We don't pay for Nordstrom's new consultation stores do we? You know, the stores that literally have no clothes? It's their "brick and mortar" business and they pay for their own buildings. What is different about stadiums? Nothing IMO. They are certainly brick, and certainly mortar, places that you purchase products from. Build your own store.
Billionaires need to pull themselves up by their bootstraps and pony up for their own businesses. When the fuck did we start to swallow this bullshit? It's the whole reason Seattle doesn't have a team. Clay Bennett could've built his own stadium.
Whoa whoa whoa. Leave swallowing out of this. That took men a long period of convincing, we don't want to ruin it.
If you're a billionaire, and you have the opportunity to get someone else to pay for something for you, you take that opportunity whenever possible. One of many reasons they're billionaires, I'm sure. The reason they can get cities to pay for these stadia is because the citizenry generally wants the team more than the owner wants the specific city. As long as they have the leverage, they're going to use it.
That still doesn't make it right and that still doesn't mean we have to settle for it. We didn't do that with PA did we? In 2025 when the RG lease is up do you think he'll try and shake us down for stadium improvements?
No doubt. That's why I said "as long as they have the leverage". When cities say no, they remove the leverage from the billionaires.
When cities say no, they run the risk of losing a team. See what happened to Seattle. See how long LA was without a football team. As long as we have the free market, billionaires will do things that make them billionaires. Cities can say no, but they run the risk of losing their team.
Then one desperate city will say yes, and get a team they otherwise wouldn't. A lot more likely then everyone standing strong together.
Not sure if this hypothetical is even more unlikely than BGD's from the other day. Never. Gonna. Happen.
