I agree that owners take advantage of the communities. Most owners are scumbags milking their respective states for every dollar they can get whether that be through public funding, cable TV packages, or raising ticket prices because they opened a new stadium bought with public money. But, how do you fight it? By refusing to deal with these scumbags and leaving the citizens without something they all had as common ground? That's important and you don't realize how important it is until it's gone. Everybody in Minnesota said good riddance to Norm Green and the North Stars but it left a huge void and everybody realized how important a pro hockey team was to Minnesota. Luckily, the league saw that too and we got another team fairly quickly but that's only because we're a huge hockey state. Most cities losing a pro sports team probably won't get one for a long time, if ever. Seattle doesn't have a hockey team so they essentially have no pro sports team from December-March.
