Stadiums: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO) 

Cause you know, stadiums are more important than schools and health carem

so, in America, there's no public funding for important things such as health but you publically fund stadiums?

As a European, the idea of a team just moving to a different city if they don't get what they want just seems unthinkable

Got pushed into my auto play today, and just want to say that I'm so proud of my home state of Rhode Island for not dealing with the Pawtucket red Sox to build a new stadium, letting the team walk to another state, and announcing a plan to tear down the old stadium and build a state of the art high school for the city of Providence! This is a true win for the city and the entire state.

I have been saying this for YEARS. There is no reason stadiums should be paid for with public funds.

She just tasered the mayor??? Am I the only person whose mind was just blown???

That's what I loved about Jesse Ventura, he refused to tax the people for a new vikings stadium, and instead put it into education. And I'm a Vikings fan.

Here in North Texas, we use Cowboys Stadium as a tornado shelter, nothing touches down there.... I'll show myself out...

"Disrespectful and childish"? wanting to have more money for schools, emergency services, and hospitals is childish? gods I fucking hate sports.

Fans should be angry at the teams for threatening to abandon them if they don't get money that should be put to better uses rather than the people trying to stand up to them.

“Sports, the thing you weren’t good enough for your dad to love you” One line in and I’m already sad

All three of the teams mentioned in this have moved cities as of 2020. Insane.

Reminds me of those arguments between children and their parents. 'Buy me this new toy or I'm running away!'

How stupid does our society have to be to think that a professional sports team is more important to a community than infrastructure, public health and safety, and education? I mean, they had to sell a fucking hospital!? I guess little Timmy with cancer will never get to meet his favorite baseball player because he died.

I try to imagine a soccer club here leaving for another city. The fans would wave goodbye with one finger. The new city would always see them as rivals and traitors. That new stadium would be empty.

"[SUBJECT]...... It's that thing you never think about, until I devote a segment to it." - Every John Oliver show

Make them pay.

Kinda reminds me of my own high school back in my hometown >blows 3 million on brand new stadium >"we just can't afford new computers this year!"

"What you're doing is childish" -Lady who goes to a public hearing wearing a full sports jersey

Oliver: “speech” Me: This is literally the closest I’ve ever come to giving a single sh*t about sport.

This sounds like the very definition of an abusive relationship. These clowns don't deserve fans.

It's funny how we let people get away with forcing our communities to pay for businesses we don't need in promise for jobs and income that never really materializes. We should fight back against this kind of sick coercion, especially when it comes to sports stadiums. Threatening to move to another city if their demands are not met should be responded to with the laughter and ridicule it deserves.

Can we please show some love for John’s locker room speech? It was freaking awesome.

Clearly John's never driven in wisconsin at night. Fear of the deer is very real.

We replace stadiums with public money but not bridges.

I think we have enough stadiums. Why don't we try to use the money on...I don't know, education?

I know I'm 5 years late, but props to the Arizona Mayor for getting tazed for charity.

"...the Oakland Raiders, the St. Louis Rams, and the San Diego Chargers..." Man that feels weird to hear now, but it worked out better for the cities they left. Imagine having to *share* a stadium (minus the Raiders)

Sports, the thing you weren't quite good enough at for your dad to love you. -John Oliver Hit the nail right on the head, the painful head....

So American taxpayers don't pay for universal healthcare but they have to pay for stadiums? smh

how hilarious that the rams, chargers, and raiders, mentioned at the beginning, all moved within 5 years of this video

Every time I see a Stadium with a corporate name, I'm immediately reminded of the Tampax Stadium from BASEketball.

This is actualy a worldwide phenomenon, remember World cup football stadiums and olympic stadium are virtually unused after they are built.

The #1 rule of being rich is that you NEVER use your own money for anything. There will always, always be chumps willing to throw their hard earned money at you if you can convince them that you will double it for them. Or, politicians willing to use tax money if it means they get those sweet, sweet kickbacks that fund their vacations and retirement plans.

10 years later, and i imagine the city of Glendale is probably pretty pleased that they let the Coyotes go. Probably one of the best decisions they ever made.

The pep speech by Emilio estevez in the mighty ducks was pretty good I have to say

I don't understand how moving to another city is even an option in the US... Most European football teams are so intricately linked to their city, moving is not even an option. No one would support them anymore, not the old city, not the new one. Just shows how everything in the US is in the first place about business, and business alone. So sad.

Fucking nailed it. Also, random side note on the story by the Milwaukee mayor, it could actually be true, in China basketball is insanely popular, so the only reason a Chinese man would know of Milwaukee would in fact be from the Bucks.

This would be funny, if it weren’t so sad.

John: “Toby Maguire and Andrew Garfield were perfectly good, state of the art Spider-Men.” Kevin Feige: “I agree”

I don't see why my tax dollars should go to funding a bunch of overpaid, overpriced ball clubs. Let the fans pay for them. Another form of corporate welfare.

Give poor kids a school lunch? "THAT'S COMMUNISM. THAT'S EVIL Give a billionaire $100mil for literally no reason? _national anthem starts playing_ _eyes begin to water up_ **sniff** "Gawd bless this country"

>what your doing is childish Says the women in a sports jersey yelling at a politician for wanting to save money

Well, good news, Raiders didn't move to LA. They went to Vegas

Milwaukee resident checking in. The governor of Wisconsin, Scott Walker, actually gut our state university budget to help pay for that shitty stadium. It hasn't been built yet but the specs look absolutely ridiculous.

"Deers aren't scary they're timid forest ponies with sticks on their heads, I fear no deer" man the writing on this show is great.

Aaaaaand all 3 of those NFL teams ended up moving lol

As a Jags fan and Jacksonville native, we’re pretty happy those pools got installed in our stadium. It has provided endless entertainment during bad games, which we have a lot of. It’s also over 100 degrees at many of our home games so I promise you’d be happy to sit in that pool and watch the game.

I've never understood the allure of sports in this way but if I had a team I loved and they tried to extort something in that way that love would instantly become loathing. It blows my mind that they somehow retain fans who beg them to stay, like an abused spouse who begs for more.

I am now 395,625% sure that John Oliver is the reincarnation of Steven Colbert.

Whenever snippets of FNL come out, my eyes are clear and my heart is full.

if the game was at all interesting, and people were really there for the game, then there would be no need for all those stupid distractions at stadiums.

"If you love your city, you'll pay for our stadium" How about if YOU love this city, you'll pay for your own stadium and save the city a ton of money???

America: "It's the immigrants fault that we have homeless vets!" Also America: "This billionaire is too poor to build a new stadium"

The Spider-Man joke is suddenly relevant again

7:18 we now live I a world where all 3 of the teams John mentioned are in new locations

As a San Diego native, I am glad we told the Chargers to pound sand when they demanded the city give them the land and pay for a new stadium

Privatize gains and socialize losses.

“You might have to hang onto the bengals”..yeah..the only thing the comes to mind is skyline chili and I’m from Cincinnati 😂

"The Oakland Raiders, the Saint Louis Rams, and the San Diego Chargers..." Hearing that sentence in 2024 is wild.

I will never understand why in the US sports teams can leave a town, in Europe this would cost you all of your fans and you would never find new ones.

Nobody should be spending Public Money without open books!

John needs to do an episode on the annual Federal Subsidy that the NFL receives. It’s in the billions.

13:52 And now the Arizona Coyotes are no more, which is hilarious.

So stupid that public $$ to build ridiculous stadiums, when our roads, bridges and dams are over 60 years old and in deplorable disrepair 😠

ALL HAIL JOHN OLIVER AND HIS FRESHLY CUT HAIR!

Who else is watching this episode in the middle of a pandemic when basically all the stadiums can’t be filled with fans?

It's crazy how John can take the most banal, seemingly insignificant subject and make it genuinely interesting. He is the true successor to Jon Stewart as far as I'm concerned.

If your team leaves you for LA and you're left with a giant fucking stadium - there is so much you can do with a little imagination and forward-thinking. Get rid of the seats and make a fucking open-air tiered market out of the thing - and at the bottom have a beautiful green space full of flowers and trees to sit in, or a skating rink/pool for more northern climates. Make it into a space FOR THE PEOPLE of that city - who gives a rat's ass about the teams, who leave it standing there doing virtually nothing in the off-season? Fill the arena with tiny houses and make it a community for people who can't afford over-inflated housing prices - and make the concession area a market with amenities for the community. Put an art gallery and a garden in there. Recycle every part of the arena and turn it into building material for green energy structures. You could conceivably turn the stadium into an algae biofuel pit. Turn the stadium into a university - you could retrofit it. We have science now. It can be done! Hell, it would be better off as a tiered landfill or garbage recycling centre. At least it would be serving a purpose for the city instead of acting as a giant money pit for fucking asshole billionaires who can't possibly spend their money in their lifetime (unless they buy a gold Bentley or something - then the fuckers deserve to go broke while watching their car get melted down). The hockey team in my city keeps threatening to leave if we don't build a new stadium for them - in a downtown core that's already strained for available land area. Fuck off, hockey teams - you're parasites. The team from my city was on my flight to Hawaii after they lost a Stanley Cup bid and they spent their time whoring in Honolulu. Don't tell me they weren't prostitutes - everyone in Honolulu knows that the girls who wear the clear plastic heels are prostitutes. Seriously - anyone who has worked in the hotel industry knows how much you assholes whore around and treat hotel staff like fucking shit. I used to work at the Westin (where a metric fuck ton of hockey teams stayed) and we would time the prostitutes - 15 minutes, every fucking time - and a call to Room Service right afterwards (and threaten to beat up the server because your order took a little too long because the entire team called at the same fucking time - boo fucking hoo, Africa's weeping for the poor hungry hockey millionaire). Yeah, no bitter memories there at all. LMAO! Do we really, as a society, want to support this shit? This is INSANE. Personally, I'd rather watch gamers play against each other - it's exciting, requires intelligence and they don't need a stadium built on public money to play their fucking sport.

Spend billions on stadiums=yes Spend anything on infrastructure=nah

As a student, I lived in the neighbourhood of Jade Stadium in Christchurch. Apart from the stadium it was basically an industrial/commercial area. Factories, warehouses, garages. No reason to be there except for gameday when the streets would briefly fill with fans walking home. The one time I was burgled was while living there.

I LOVE YOU JOHN OLIVER!!! THESE DAYS YOU ARE THE ONLY ONE THAT CAN MAKE SENSE!!!! GOD BLESS YOU!!!!! AND YESSS , YESSS WE CAN!!!!! MAKE THEM PAY!!!!

we need a John Oliver in every country.

Wearing a hockey jersey in a court room..... calls others childish. Ice hockey in Arizona is insane

Me, seeing the title, "Oh... What depressing things does he have about stadiums?"

11:30 yeah!!! Do that!

Any sports team: “We’ll relocate if you don’t give us-” Me: “Bye, Felicia!”

I hate to say it, but it starts at high school; especially here in Texas. We have football stadiums that can easily seat 16,000 people, I’m not kidding. High school football coaches can easily make $98,000 a year while teachers make an incredibly less amount of money. Then in many colleges and Universities sport athletes with great skills but low gpa’s can get into these schools but others that are actually going for an education get turned away. I know it’s about money, but we sure do need more engineers and doctors.

Watching this after the Rams went to LA is hilarious, just like the monologue. Great stuff, John!

The rams being in here at the end is hilarious in retrospect

Me 19 minutes ago: "Stadiums? How is this news worthy?" Me now: "John Oliver you news human inspiration"

Am I the only one who hates sports? I grew up in a family that was obsessed with them and I went from not caring about them to out right hating them. I remember how hard it was to get to sleep whenever a hockey game was on. Literally the whole house would scream when anything happened.

I love having these to watch again when I'm discussion an issue that John has covered and I need to remember the talking points and details. 👍

Watching this video after the Rams moved to LA is so satisfying while also making me a bit bitter. I’m a St. Louis native, and we ended up NOT paying for a new stadium and lost the Rams anyway. Now, the city has a winning baseball and hockey team, half a billion dollars of the Rams owner’s money, an upcoming soccer league and stadium, and an XFL team moving into the stadium Kroenke thought wasn’t good enough for him. We’re doing fine without a football team and fancy new NFL stadium.

If students have to show bank statements and receipts to increase the amount of school loan money they can get (that they will have to pay back!), its ludicrous that sports teams don't have to show their bank books to get public land and money they DON'T have to pay back. I don't want to hear any city complain of bad infrastructure anymore. In fact, after the next environment disaster don't even file a state of emergency. Go sit in your stadium and look at the fishes.

@LastWeekTonight Wow. This actually puts something into perspective for me. When I was a kid, my family were huge fans of the Richmond Braves, the closest minor league baseball team to our town. The stadium was SUPER old and falling apart by the time I was in middle school. Every bit of the stadium the fans were allowed in was gross and/or broken, but we learned that things weren’t much better for the players, either. I know that must have been true because a lot of the players were super down to earth and told us themselves. A few of them had taken a particular shine to my little brothers with autism and would sometimes have genuine conversations with them before the games. Eventually, the team started talking about moving because no one would fix their broken stadium. All of us fans were heartbroken. We blamed the city for not funding the team’s demand for a new (or extensively repaired) stadium, but now as an adult I have to wonder why. The Richmond team was probably the most important farm team for the Braves. It was AAA and a lot of the guys my little brothers talked to were pulled up to the Atlanta team right from Richmond. The area around the Richmond stadium was also very run down even though it was an important part of the city, so I seriously doubt that Richmond had any more money to spend on the Braves. They ended up moving to Gwinnett, right outside Atlanta. All the Richmond fans were happy that the players would be in better facilities, but we were all devastated. There was a lot of crying at their last Richmond game. A year later, my family was still following the Gwinnett Braves and went down for a game. Their new stadium was BEAUTIFUL and the game was sold out because they were now in Braves territory. Somehow, the Gwinnett organization had learned that my little brothers were coming to that game and they gave us the VIP treatment. They comped all our food, took us behind the scenes, gave us special merch, and had even reserved a luxury box for our family. They NEVER would have been able to do that in Richmond. We were extremely grateful, but opted to watch the game in the seats we had bought down closer to the field so we could actually be part of the game. My brothers did get to talk to a few players. We could tell they were much happier in a stadium that people other than diehard fans actually wanted to come to, but they told us how much they missed the fans and spirit in Richmond. The Braves fans in Gwinnett were just that, Braves fans. They only looked at the Gwinnett team as the subset of Atlanta they really were. We were RICHMOND Braves fans and they knew that we cared deeply about their team in particular. We only cared about the big team because of our strong love for the little team. We all blamed the city of Richmond for years and years for “driving the Braves away.” Now that I’ve grown up, I’ve actually been wondering lately why the Atlanta organization didn’t cough up the money to keep their connection in Richmond. When you think about it, wouldn’t it make sense to fix up the stadium to spread and fortify their fan base across the nation? But I’ve come to realize that they don’t care about the people who make them rich, they just care about the money. Thanks for making this video, because now I know I’m not just being a cynical bitch. 😅❤️

800 million on a new stadium, after a 870 million cut to family support

Who’s back here after hearing the coyotes are moving?

The dumbing down of America is complete. They obviously care more about sports then our education systems.

That woman is infuriatingly ignorant.

10:15 FEAR THE DEER!!!! 2021 NBA CHAMPIONS MILWAUKEE BUCKS!!!

Crazy to come back to this video after all those nfl teams moved

America: "how will we ever pay for healthcare? Its so expensive! Also America: "let shell out money to have pools and aquariums in our stadiums! Everybody needs that right?!"

How the hell did the mayor agree to being tased?

sports and love are like an hourglass, the heart fills up as the brain is emptied

I'm from Amelia Ohio and John Oliver just talked about us I've never been so sad and proud

As a Wisconsinite, I feel it is my duty to inform you that deer are among the most likely things to kill you in this state, followed closely by alcohol and wandering cows, and are therefore very worthy of your fear.

This is the sort of shit that makes me laugh whenever someone says "It's impossible to pay for free education in the USA!! Where would the money come from??" But you'll happily pay for Stadiums that the team owners should damn well buy themselves...

If you like your team to have a big stadium, pay for it! Most people don't care so it shouldn't be paid with tax money. Everybody likes hospitals, roads and schools without gun violence. Fund that.

Just in case you don't follow American sports and are watching this in the present day, both the St. Louis Rams and San Diego Chargers ended up moving to Los Angeles in 2016 and 2017 respectively. The Raiders also moved to Las Vegas in 2020