I like watching men in leotards fly around a track on their bicycles, but I haven't asked my municipality to pay for my personal athletic boondoggle. It's not clear to me why my tax dollars should subsidize others' athletic boondoggles either, especially when they come in the form of privately-owned teams, stadiums, etc. I'd perhaps feel less strongly about this if the state retained ownership of their investment, but that's not the deal in any case that I've seen so far.
It is often the case that so-called "lesser" sports not only don't get public subsidies, they pay taxes that the bigger sports don't.
For example, I enjoy watching curling. Granite Curling Club in Seattle is one of only two curling-specific facilities on the west coast and while it is a non-profit organization, it still pays property taxes, something that the Seattle Seahawks[0] and Seattle Mariners[0] do not. While the relative amounts are small, to be sure, to take the Mariners for example they pay $1.5 million in rent to the county yet the public expense is much higher than that[1].
This isn't a slam on the concept of sports--I also am a lifelong baseball fan--just how they are paid for, on which I think we agree.
0 - https://dor.wa.gov/sites/default/files/2022-02/InLieu_Leaseh...
1 - https://www.seattletimes.com/sports/mariners/king-county-cou...
Not everything needs to be put to a vote to know that it reflects what people want. Specific policies that are unpopular become campaign issues. For example despite being quite democrat leaning, Marylanders don’t like public transit, so Larry Hogan won two terms as a Republican promising to cancel transit projects and shift funding to highways. But if anyone proposed defunding the Baltimore Ravens they’d get booted out of office.
Also, even if that was true, there’s lots of public funding for cultural projects that probably wouldn’t fly if put to a ballot measure. The New York State Arts council has a budget of $90 million a year. The current Bills stadium is almost 50 years old. Even if the new Bills stadium lasts only 30 years, the arts council will receive almost $3 billion over that time. Which do you think would be more likely to pass in a ballot state wide ballot measure? $850 million for a stadium of $3 billion for arts?