Certainly no major city has ever become a tourist mecca without an American football stadium paid for by the public but whose revenue goes to a few politically well-connected wealthy people. Everyone knows the only reason people go to New York is as a stopover point on the way to New Jersey to watch the Giants play. Amsterdam and London were little more than hellish malarial backwaters until NFL Europe came to town, bringing hordes of European fans of American football and their suitcases full of funny-looking colored money.