city governments throw at other businesses when they decide where to build a large factory or distribution center, or where to move their corporate headquarters. It's pretty standard practice for large businesses to ask for this type of financial support from the locations that are under consideration. And locations compete with each other to attract the investment. In my experience, it's actually pretty rare these days for a large business to not get some sort of local/state government support when making a significant investment in a large new facility or operation.

Sports stadiums/teams aren't really different from this, in most ways. I would prefer that government stay out of these sorts of subsidies/deals, for sports and all other businesses, but at least we can say that sport businesses aren't really different from many other types of large businesses, in this respect.