But youre ignoring YOUR part in all this.
Fans DEMAND the new "sports palaces"
Fans DEMAND a winning product and the hundreds of millions of dollars in player and coach salaries that requires.
And if they dont get it? The fans stop coming. So owners have a huge amount of overhead and when they dont own the building, go to those that do, the muinicipalities, and say "Look....fans are demanding a product thats costs [huge money] to operate and amenities to YOUR building. So you gotta kick in or I cant sell tickets. And if I cant do that, Im out."
Charles Wang with the Islanders when through this. The guy poured tens of millions of his own money into the team. But the restrictive lease where he couldnt get any money back from consessions sold, plus a complete dump and broken down arena the local municipality outright refused to fix resulted in fans not coming any more. He then got absolutely killed financially each year. So he left.
Look...we, as fans have a right to and should demand such things like a winning team and a really nice place to go see it.
Im just saying you cant leave that part out of the equasion. Its not "leveraging emotional ties" as much as it is meeting consumer demand to stay in business.