“Its more awful that taxpayers are funding buildings for millionaires & billionaires owners and players!”
The NBA would not exist without subsidies. It is a creature of the corporatist welfare society:
1) The development of its athletes are subsidized in the farm system (colleges and universities). In turn the higher education system in the US is highly subsidized with taxpayer money.
2) As you pointed out the sports arenas and training centers are paid for by local taxpayers in most instances. Most of these taxpayers, from whom money is extorted by the government, never see a game or visit these facilities.
3) Despite the fact the facilities are owned by the public, the agreements with the teams often allow the teams to control the revenue from concessions and parking as well as lease the facilities for below market rates. The local government (i.e. taxpayer) is on the hook for depreciation and maintenance of the facility at a cost that far exceeds the revenue from rents.
4) Every decade or so, owners declare facilities outdated and threaten to move the team if they don’t get multimillion dollar upgrades or a new facility, funded of course by the taxpayer. Almost without exception, local government cave to this extortion.
5) Television revenues, not ticket sales, fund the extraordinary salaries and lifestyles of the players. Without forced bundling of sports cable channels, such as ESPN, television revenues would not be nearly as high. Essentially bundling is a forced subsidy of professional sports, including the NBA. Cable customers who never watch a game are forced to pay for the sports networks who in turn pay to televise the games. Unbundle cable, moving to a pay for channel or pay per view system and watch television sports revenue drop precipitously, putting the leagues, owners and players in a huge bind.
6) No doubt there are special tax breaks and direct subsidies the teams, if not the players, receive we don’t even know about.
The owners and players of professional sports franchises are multimillionaires and billionaires subsidized by the taxpayer. It is long past time to get the taxpayer out of professional sports and stop forcing consumers of cable television to subsidize sports networks. If owners had to pay for their buildings, their player farm system, and cable services were unbundled the economics of the game would change overnight as market forces came into play. There would be fewer teams, player salaries would drop, consumer cable television bills would be lower (except for those who want to watch the games) and the ownership and maintenance costs for arenas would be privatized.
Let the billionaire owners and players compete in a free, unsubsidized market for a while and perhaps their boorish behavior would improve.
Neither would the NFL, NHL, or MLB.