If the All-Star Game is supposed to show off the best Major League Baseball has to offer, why is Marlins Park hosting?

When fans tune into baseball’s All-Star Game on Tuesday night — and few will, considering All-Star viewership has dropped from more than 16 million in 2001 to just 8.7 million last year — they’ll see an illustrated definition of the misappropriation of public funds. They’ll also be watching a virtual tour that would make Zillow proud, as Miami Marlins owner Jeffrey Loria attempts to sell the team for upwards of $1 billion — or well more than the $153.8 million he bought it for in 2002.

Before it opened in 2012, Marlins Park was paid for with $488 million in bonds from Miami-Dade County and the city of Miami itself, according to Georgia State University’s Sport and Urban Policy Initiative. That was more than 80% of the cost of the entire facility, with bond interest bringing the city and county’s total payout to $2.6 billion by 2049.

That bill has been a sticking point for both the city and the county. When Miami Mayor Manny Diaz’s term expired in 2009, city voters shunned Marlins-endorsed candidate Joe Sanchez and elected Tomás Regalado by a nearly 3-to-1 margin after Regalado called out former Mayor Diaz for his role in the ballpark project. Miami-Dade County, meanwhile, dumped county Mayor Carlos Alvarez in a recall election in 2011 and handed his seat to ballpark opponent Carlos Giménez. Both of those quick ousters, and some digging into city and county finances by the Miami Herald and Deadspin, led to an investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission that still continues to this day. If the SEC finds fault, it could turn the case over to the Justice Department or issue criminal charges itself.

The Marlins’ owner, who takes credit for drawing the All-Star game to Miami with his new ballpark, hasn’t exactly been watching from the cheap seats amid this ballpark debacle. He fudged profit numbers to secure public funding for Marlins Park. He sued fans and vendors who expressed displeasure after big crowds he promised never materialized. In the nearly six years Marlins Park has been open for business, Marlins attendance has ranked dead last in the National League five times. Even in its first year, the Marlins’ average attendance of roughly 27,000 per game ranked 12th out of 15 National League teams and fell far short of its 37,442 capacity (the lowest in Major League Baseball). This season, an Associated Press reporter counted just 1,590 fans at a Wednesday game against the Philadelphia Phillies. Announced attendance was 15,197.

But that’s what Loria does. An art dealer by trade, Loria takes objects of value and liquidates them. Before buying the Marlins in 2002, he’d owned the Montreal Expos for roughly four years. When Quebec wouldn’t give him a new ballpark and the Expos narrowly avoided being dropped by Major League Baseball after years of poor attendance, Loria bought up as big a stake in the Expos as he could, sold it to the league for $120 million and a $38.5 million interest-free loan and bought the Marlins from Boston Red Sox own John Henry. He also stripped the Expos of staff, data and even simple resources like computers and took them all with him.

Even after his Marlins won the World Series in 2003, he purged the roster of big-name, big-salary players while lobbying for a new home that wasn’t the Miami Dolphins’ stadium, where the Marlins played when they won the World Series. With the Marlins once again sporting a losing record and being kept out of the National League East’s basement only by the rebuilding Philadelphia Phillies, just about all that Marlins fans have left to root for is Loria selling the team before March. According to the Miami Herald, the City of Miami would be entitled to 5% of any profit Loria makes in a sale before that March deadline. If he can’t unload the team by then, the city loses its best chance of recouping at least some of its ballpark investment. Even if the city gets 5% of $1 billion ($50 million), that’s only about 2%of the $2.6 billion it will end up spending on Marlins Park.

So how do other cities prevent this from happening, especially considering that Miami and Miami-Dade voters never had the opportunity to cast ballots for Marlins Park funding? Quite simply, you make both legislators and team owners familiar with the word “no.” Make it very clear that approving public funding for a stadium without a public referendum will cost politicians their jobs. Once that’s established, make it clear to sports franchises that they’re on their own for stadium funding and upgrades. This may end up costing your city a team, but if your city is a destination all its own — like Miami and its giant television market — you and your fellow taxpayers have the leverage.

Miami learned that lesson the hard way, but it has since been put to good use. Miami Dolphins owner Stephen Ross got the message that his franchise wouldn’t get any stadium help after taxpayers got burned by the Marlins. Knowing that, and knowing that he had a team with a rich legacy in a major market, Ross managed to find $450 million in private funds to upgrade the National Football League franchise’s Hard Rock Stadium. He added a giant canopy to shade 92% of attendees from brutal early season Miami sun, he installed video boards, moved the sideline seats and built “living room”-style boxes with televisions and plush furniture.

While Ross also had to reduce capacity by more than 10,000 seats in 2015, the Dolphins have managed more than 100% attendance each year since. Not only did Hard Rock Stadium get right-sized without any taxpayer contributions, but it also landed a Super Bowl in 2020. Considering that the Super Bowl draws upwards of 111 million eyes toward Miami in the dead of winter while baseball’s All-Star Game struggles to draw 9 million when Miami is at its hottest and most humid, Marlins Stadium just keeps finding new ways to be a bad deal for local taxpayers.