Every year, American cities across the country spend billions of dollar in public money in order to build shiny new sports stadiums we probably don’t need. As John Oliver explained on the latest Last Week Tonight, these stadiums are increasingly designed to look like “coked-up Willy Wonka” coliseums with expensive features like swimming pools and party cabanas.
“We don’t just help teams build stadiums, we let them keep virtually all the revenue those stadiums produce,” Oliver said on Sunday.
The segment goes onto show, stadium financing often hurts the local economy and surrounding businesses, even blocking cities from paying for crucial things like hospitals—all this as wealthy stadium owners only get richer with empty promises of economic growth.
“I’m not saying we shouldn’t have giant aquariums in ballparks full of terrified fish. Of course we should, this is America! If we don’t have them, no one else will! But we should not be using public money to pay for them.”
