Since World War II, professional baseball, football, basketball and hockey teams in the United States have commonly used public money to help build new venues or to facilitate teams moving to a new city. Onlookers sometimes speculate about why tax dollars are being used to build a stadium for a team that is privately owned, often by billionaires. Questions about the appropriateness of public funding have swirled in public discourse for decades.
Q&A: Sports arenas: The importance of politics, fan response and public money
