Should Chris Christie be considered one of the most powerful people in sports?
TUESDAY, 12 OCTOBER 2010 16:22
http://www.newjerseynewsroom.com/professional/should-chris-christie-be-considered-one-of-the-most-powerful-people-in-sports
BY EVAN WEINER
NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM
THE BUSINESS AND POLITICS OF SPORTS
It is silly season again as a S. I. M. magazine "the only global sport business magazine targeting a dual readership that focuses exclusively on influence and affluence in today's ever-changing world" is polling readership and asking readers to name the most influential people in the world of sports. For the record, this United Kingdom-based publication has Joseph Blatter, the President of FIFA (Soccer) out in front in the voting followed by the President of the International Olympic Committee, Dr. Jacques Rogge and Herbert Hainer, the Chairman and CEO of adidas in the top three slots. The first American on the list and coming in at number four is Heidi Ueberroth, which is a head turner. Ueberroth's father Peter, of course, ran the 1984 Los Angeles Olympic Committee and was the Commissioner of Major League Baseball but his daughter simply doesn't belong as high on this list as President of NBA International. Her boss David Stern as the Commissioner of the National Basketball Association has more power.
Stern is ninth on the list well ahead of NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman who is at 50. NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell, who cannot get his league market attention and traction outside the North American continent unlike Stern, Bettman and Major League Baseball Commissioner Bud Selig, who is 11th. Selig is 32nd, one spot ahead of CBS Sports President Sean McManus, which makes no sense. McManus just gave the NCAA billions of dollars in a partnership with Turner Sports for the NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament. McManus' Turner Sports Partner David Levy is ranked 54th.
For some reason, S. I. M. magazine has San Francisco 49ers owner Denise DeBartolo York in the Top 100. York doesn't run the football team, her 29-year-old son Jed with a rather thin business resume does.
Stern, the former Teaneck resident, understands where the real power in sports is located. Stern's three legged stool formula for success always starts with government. In the United States and in a great many countries, elected officials either directly give money to sports (as in Malaysia) or set up laws that funnel money into sports whether it is through tax breaks, tax incentives, the building of facilities at taxpayers' expense and in America, the federal government changed the cable TV laws which allowed owners like the Yankees George Steinbrenner, the Mets Fred Wilpon and the Dolan-family owned New York Knicks, New York Rangers and New York Liberty to make enormous sums of money from cable TV. The feds also give tax breaks to corporations buying high item sports event seats for "business purposes."
In New Jersey, Chris Christie as Governor is more important to the sports world than the state's highest paid employees, the Rutgers football coach and the Rutgers men's and women's basketball coach. Christie has to decide the fate of the Meadowlands at some point soon along with the horse racing industry in the state. Horse racing is a sport even though none of the top 100 on S. I. M.'s list represent horse racing.
Governors, mayors, state elected officials are major players in sports as they control the purse strings. The Meadowlands complex never would have opened without government support.
When publications and websites put out lists of the Top 100 this, the Top 100 that, they are should always to be taken with a grain of salt. In 2007, BusinessWeek posted a list of the Top 100 Power People in sports with National Football League Commissioner Roger Goodell on the top of the list. BusinessWeek should have asked me to be part of their panel because their list is filled with questionable choices and omissions.
BusinessWeek asked the wrong people — players, agents, sports gadflies, for their opinions and didn't know that there is a formula for sports success — government support, a large local cable TV deal and corporate support, the latter two made possible by government assistance.
It's too bad because that Power 100 list might be far more accurate with real sports business experts than the BusinessWeek 100 that was presented. There really is nothing on the list that indicates that the panelists thought about the UEFA 2008 football tournament. That happens to be the second most watched sports event in the world behind the World Cup.
There is nothing about cricket or boxing on the list. The National Hockey League Commissioner is rated just 27th on the list even though the NHL has lots of eyeballs watching its product in Europe far more eyeballs than the NFL on that continent.
The list also was too United States-centric. The oddity here is that NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell heads a highly successfully United States business that is attempting to catch up with Soccer, Major League Baseball, the National Basketball Association and yes even the downtrodden National Hockey League in the global community. The list places Los Angeles Kings, Los Angeles Galaxy and AEG owner Phillip Anschutz at number 21. Anschutz may be the most powerful man in sports globally. Anschutz's LA Kings opened the 2007-08 National Hockey League season in London in the London arena he owns against the Anaheim Ducks. .
Anschutz controlled most of the franchises in Major League Soccer and brought David Beckham to America. National Basketball Association Commissioner David Stern will tell you that London, England is the most ready city in Europe for an NBA franchise thanks to Anschutz.
Anschutz is also a major force behind the 2012 London Olympics.
The list has International Olympic Committee President Jacques Rogge but absent was the heads of the 2008 Beijing Summer Games, the 2010 Vancouver Winter Games, the 2012 London Summer Games and the 2014 Sochi Winter Games. That is worth noting because US Presidential candidate Mitt Romney launched his political career by running the 2002 Salt Lake City Winter Games. From there he ran for Governor of Massachusetts and may be attempting to get the Republican nomination for President in 2012.
Of course sports can be a great stepping stone. United States President George W. Bush was a two percent owner of the Texas Rangers baseball team and its general managing partner but he was never considered a Top 100 performer in sports during his days as a minority owner of a baseball team.
Texas Rangers and Dallas Stars owner Thomas O. Hicks, a major financial support of George W. Bush's 1994 and 1998 gubernatorial races in Texas and 2000 and 2004 Presidential bids is not on the list. Hicks and Montreal Canadiens owner George N. Gillett, Jr. purchased Liverpool P. C. in the English Premiere League and are building a football stadium in the English city that is more known for being the home of the Beatles John Lennon, Paul Mc Cartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr to Americans but Liverpool football has a long history. Tampa Bay Buccaneers owner Malcolm Glazier isn't on the BusinessWeek 100 Power list either. Glazier owns the most recognizable sports brand internationally, Manchester United. Manchester United football is a lot better known globally than the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.
Hicks and Gillett recently sold Liverpool to Boston Red Sox owner John Henry.
Two glaring omissions in the 2007 list came from the world of the original cable TV investors, Ted Rogers in Canada and Chuck Dolan in New York . Rogers owns the Toronto Blue Jays and Sportsnet, which carries Blue Jays baseball, five NHL teams telecasts and has the rights to the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics and the 2012 London Summer Olympics. Dolan, who helped found HBO, owns Madison Square Garden, the New York Knicks, New York Rangers, New York Liberty, the Madison Square Garden Network (which has Knicks basketball and the three New York City area hockey teams, the Rangers, Islanders and New Jersey Devils hockey as part of its programming along with the Liberty and other sports) and Radio City Music Hall.
Another cable TV guy, Altitude Sports and Entertainment Network-Colorado Avalanche-Denver Nuggets-St. Louis Rams-Colorado Crush-Colorado Rapids and Arsenal FC owner Stan Kroenke is also not highly thought of by BusinessWeek either. Nor is New York Islanders owner Charles Wang who is trying to raise hockey interest in China, nor are the Toronto Maple Leafs Sports and Entertainment Chairman of the Board Larry Tannebaum a player on BusinessWeek's 100. Tannenbaum runs the NHL Maple Leafs, the NBA Raptors, the MLS Toronto FC, two Toronto arenas Leafs TV, Raptors TV and Maple Leaf Square which includes office space and residential living.
Why is Arnold Palmer on this list? Palmer was a great golfer in his day and businessman but if you include Palmer how do you leave off Jack Nicklaus and Greg Norman who are major figures in golf course development?
There is something else that is puzzling on the BusinessWeek 100 when it comes to NFL owners. Jerry Jones, Daniel Snyder, Robert Kraft, Robert Mc Nair and Jeffrey Lurie are the five most powerful NFL owners in that they stuck together and tried to break the NFL's "Leaguethink" philosophy during the last owners squabble over revenue sharing but neither Mc Nair nor Lurie are on the list. Denver owner Pat Bowlen was on the NFL TV committee, a group that helped negotiation the league's huge TV deals with Rupert Murdoch's FOX, General Electric's NBC, Disney's ESPN and Sumner Redstone's CBS along with DirecTV but he isn't on the list.
Where are politicians on this list? Without Anthony Williams, the former Washington mayor, there is no new baseball park in Washington; there is no Major League Baseball in the city period. Russian President Vladimir Putin belongs on this list. Putin lobbied the International Olympic Committee to get the 2014 Winter Olympics for Sochi and Putin was behind that the formation of a state corporation, which will supervise the infrastructural development of Sochi and the construction of the Olympic facilities.
Can BusinessWeek explain Vladislav Tretaik's 2007 exclusion on the list? Tretiak, the President of the Russian Ice Hockey Federation, refused to sign off on the International Ice Hockey Federation-National Hockey League transfer deal that allows young Russian players to play on an NHL in exchange for financial considerations.
Business Week also enlisted ESPN: The Magazine for data. Another mistake. ESPN may own TSN in Canada and ESPN International may carry North American sports around the world but you would never know it from the Power 100 list. Depending on ESPN reporters for business information is risky because ESPN reporters are clueless when it comes to business. What do Shane Battier, Amanda Beard, Bill Cowher, Carl Edwards, Brad Faxson, Martina Hingis, Mark Kreigel, Tommy Lasorda, Lisa Leslie and Mark Spitz know about dealing with politicians to secure taxpayers dollars for the Olympics, World Cup, Super Bowl and other major sports events globally for stadiums and arenas? What do they know about the difficulties in getting tax abatements, payment in lieu of taxes, tax increment financing in the United States, getting dollars from provincial hockey lotteries in Alberta, converting US dollars into pounds, Euros and Yuans?
If BusinessWeek did an honest list of the real power figures about 50 percent of the Top 100 would be gone. BusinessWeek failed to identify the real power behind sports, particularly in the United States. It's a fun list to scan but its little more than that. It is sort of like the Forbes list of what North American sports franchises are worth. Interesting reading but in reality a franchise is worth want someone is willing to pay for the business.
BusinessWeek's 2007 list was filled with glaring holes. In 2009, BusinessWeek had Tiger Woods as its most powerful sports player followed by Goodell and Stern. As always, no government people were on the 2009 BusinessWeek list. The S. I. M. 2010 list will be no better. BusinessWeek had Goodell ranked too high. Goodell is powerful in the US but is pretty feeble internationally compared to MLB Commissioner Bud Selig, NBA boss David Stern, NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman and FIFA President Blatter.
That will tell you a lot about that list.
Evan Weiner is an award winning author, radio and TV commentator and speaker on the "Business and Politics of Sports. He can be reached at evanjweiner@yahoo.com
Showing posts with label Gary Bettman. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Gary Bettman. Show all posts
Tuesday, October 12, 2010
Saturday, December 26, 2009
Major League Soccer's actions may provide a clue to the likelihood of a 2011 NFL lockout
By Evan Weiner
December 26, 2009
For those who follow the National Football League, here is a suggestion. Take a good, hard look at what could happen with Major League Soccer players in February because what the MLS owners, which include the New England Patriots’ Kraft family, the Kansas City Chiefs Hunt family, Seattle Seahawks owner Paul Allen, could lockout their players around February 1.
At least that is the opinion of one of Allen’s employees, Seattle Sounders goalkeeper Kasey Keller.
Keller has outlined some of the sticking points between the two sides and it sounds a lot like any other management-players association dispute centering on free agency, guaranteed contracts and money. The players want a bigger share of the revenues and the owners want to keep as much of the revenues that are generated.
Major League Soccer is not the National Football League, but collective bargaining agreements end in the NFL and the National Basketball Association in 2011. The National Hockey League might also have a contract negotiation in 2011 if the owners or players decide to pull out of their present collective bargaining agreement a year early and Major League Baseball’s collective bargaining agreement is done in 2012.
If you take a close look at the money behind the MLS, you begin to see that the same people who are behind the NFL, NBA, NHL and MLB run the MLS. In 2004, the National Hockey League ownership group decided to play hardball with the players association and locked out the players in September of that year and shut down the league for a year.
Bettman is thought to be the father of the National Basketball Association’s salary cap that was implemented in 1984.
The NHL owners wanted cost containment and a salary cap. NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman gave the owners exactly want they wanted. One of Bettman’s owners in 2004 was Phil Anschutz of the Los Angeles Kings. Anschutz is still the power behind Major League Soccer with ownership of the Los Angeles Galaxy and the Houston Dynamo. At one time, Anschutz owned six MLS teams, if Phil Anschutz wants to lock out the players; chances are good that the MLS will not be preparing for the 2010 season in February.
The NHL labor action of 2004-05 had a profound affect on other sports. The National Basketball Association Commissioner David Stern, who had been Bettman’s NBA boss between 1984 and 1993, kept a close eye on the NHL negotiations and certainly had a lot of leverage in his negotiations with NBA players. Stern could always point to the NHL players and tell NBA players look we can do the same to you.
There was a quick agreement between the NBA owners and players in 2005 and Major League Baseball, whose interim commissioner Bud Selig in 1994 when the baseball players went on strike was emotional at a news conference when the baseball playoffs and World Series were about to go down the drain in saying he heard from a hockey owner, presumably Chicago’s Bill Wirtz, that the baseball owners needed to hang in and not cave into the players.
Whether people or fans want to believe this or not, Major League Baseball, the National Basketball Association and the National Hockey League are tied at the hip through overlapping ownership of not only teams (Texas Rangers-Dallas Stars Tom Hicks, the New York Knicks- Rangers Cablevision/Dolan Family, the Philadelphia Flyers and 76ers, Comcast, Chicago White Sox-Bulls, Jerry Reinsdorf. The Toronto Maple Leafs-Raptors-Toronto FC/MLS, Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment to just name a few), there are overlapping ownership of regional cable TV networks as well (Reinsdorf, the Wirtz and the Chicago Cubs each have a piece of the Chicago regional network, the New York Yankees and the New Jersey Nets have an agreement with the YES Network, the Boston Red Sox group owns 80 percent of the New England Sports Network with the other 20 percent in the hands of the Boston Bruins group just to name a few).
The MLS has ties to the NHL (Anschutz, the Maple Leafs, St. Louis’ Dave Checketts, Colorado’s Kroenke Sports Enterprises), the NBA (Kroenke), Major League Baseball (Oakland’s Lewis Wolff, San Francisco’s William H. C. Chang) so this is not a minor league even though the MLS is not recognized as one of the top soccer leagues in the world. In fact, it is probably more of a minor league based on talent and the league has problems attracting major talent because of the salary cap.
The exception being Anschutz’s signing of David Beckham. But it is Anschutz’s league, he can write the rules if he so chooses.
The MLS is in a bit of a bind. Will American football fans notice if the league doesn’t operate in 2010 with the World Cup taking place? The World Cup supersedes the English Premiership and all the other more prominent leagues globally and people cheer for their home country. The World Cup qualifier in 1969 set off a four-day war between El Salvador and Honduras. Earlier this year,
Egypt and Algeria nearly had an international incident after reports that Algerian fans attacked Egyptian partisans after Algeria beat Egypt in a qualifier in Khartoum, Sudan that escalated into a rowdy protest by Egyptian partisans at the Algerian Embassy in Cairo that ended with 20 arrests, dozens of Egyptian police suffering injuries and 15 cars damaged.
There is not that sort of passion for football in the United States or Canada.
Of course the same thing was said about the National Hockey League in 2004 and 2005, did fans really miss the NHL? The truth is that owners don’t want fans, they want customers who don’t mind paying top dollar or loonie to attend games, corporations bought tickets then as an inducement for business and since the regional sports cable TV networks are owned by teams or people like Rupert Murdoch (who is heavily involved in funding Major League Baseball, the NFL and teams in both the NHL and NBA), there was no pressure from the regionals to settle the dispute.
To this date, no cable subscriber in the United States has been reimbursed for missed games from the 1994 NHL lockout or the 2004-05 lockout, nor has more been returned from the 1998-99 NBA lockout or the various Major League Baseball work stoppages.
The corporate ticket buyers along with marketing partners returned to the NHL. The MLS has major TV partners, major sponsors and is building a corporate base and has been successful in getting municipalities to fund new stadiums around North America. More than likely, any potential lockout will blow over but you won’t see the baseball-like diehards screaming they will never attend a game again because of greedy players.
It is still too early in the negotiating game to say there will be or will not be an MLS lockout. But owners like Kraft, Hunt and Allen (presuming his health problems will allow him to monitor the situation, Allen is a minority owner of the Sounders) could tip their collective hand in the National Football League's bargaining by backing a MLS lockout. The MLS might be an after thought to most of the remaining American newspapers sports editors and to American sports talk radio, but it is the rabbit in the race, the MLS will set the pace in what might be a very tumultuous few years in sports starting in February.
evanjweiner@yahoo.com
December 26, 2009
For those who follow the National Football League, here is a suggestion. Take a good, hard look at what could happen with Major League Soccer players in February because what the MLS owners, which include the New England Patriots’ Kraft family, the Kansas City Chiefs Hunt family, Seattle Seahawks owner Paul Allen, could lockout their players around February 1.
At least that is the opinion of one of Allen’s employees, Seattle Sounders goalkeeper Kasey Keller.
Keller has outlined some of the sticking points between the two sides and it sounds a lot like any other management-players association dispute centering on free agency, guaranteed contracts and money. The players want a bigger share of the revenues and the owners want to keep as much of the revenues that are generated.
Major League Soccer is not the National Football League, but collective bargaining agreements end in the NFL and the National Basketball Association in 2011. The National Hockey League might also have a contract negotiation in 2011 if the owners or players decide to pull out of their present collective bargaining agreement a year early and Major League Baseball’s collective bargaining agreement is done in 2012.
If you take a close look at the money behind the MLS, you begin to see that the same people who are behind the NFL, NBA, NHL and MLB run the MLS. In 2004, the National Hockey League ownership group decided to play hardball with the players association and locked out the players in September of that year and shut down the league for a year.
Bettman is thought to be the father of the National Basketball Association’s salary cap that was implemented in 1984.
The NHL owners wanted cost containment and a salary cap. NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman gave the owners exactly want they wanted. One of Bettman’s owners in 2004 was Phil Anschutz of the Los Angeles Kings. Anschutz is still the power behind Major League Soccer with ownership of the Los Angeles Galaxy and the Houston Dynamo. At one time, Anschutz owned six MLS teams, if Phil Anschutz wants to lock out the players; chances are good that the MLS will not be preparing for the 2010 season in February.
The NHL labor action of 2004-05 had a profound affect on other sports. The National Basketball Association Commissioner David Stern, who had been Bettman’s NBA boss between 1984 and 1993, kept a close eye on the NHL negotiations and certainly had a lot of leverage in his negotiations with NBA players. Stern could always point to the NHL players and tell NBA players look we can do the same to you.
There was a quick agreement between the NBA owners and players in 2005 and Major League Baseball, whose interim commissioner Bud Selig in 1994 when the baseball players went on strike was emotional at a news conference when the baseball playoffs and World Series were about to go down the drain in saying he heard from a hockey owner, presumably Chicago’s Bill Wirtz, that the baseball owners needed to hang in and not cave into the players.
Whether people or fans want to believe this or not, Major League Baseball, the National Basketball Association and the National Hockey League are tied at the hip through overlapping ownership of not only teams (Texas Rangers-Dallas Stars Tom Hicks, the New York Knicks- Rangers Cablevision/Dolan Family, the Philadelphia Flyers and 76ers, Comcast, Chicago White Sox-Bulls, Jerry Reinsdorf. The Toronto Maple Leafs-Raptors-Toronto FC/MLS, Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment to just name a few), there are overlapping ownership of regional cable TV networks as well (Reinsdorf, the Wirtz and the Chicago Cubs each have a piece of the Chicago regional network, the New York Yankees and the New Jersey Nets have an agreement with the YES Network, the Boston Red Sox group owns 80 percent of the New England Sports Network with the other 20 percent in the hands of the Boston Bruins group just to name a few).
The MLS has ties to the NHL (Anschutz, the Maple Leafs, St. Louis’ Dave Checketts, Colorado’s Kroenke Sports Enterprises), the NBA (Kroenke), Major League Baseball (Oakland’s Lewis Wolff, San Francisco’s William H. C. Chang) so this is not a minor league even though the MLS is not recognized as one of the top soccer leagues in the world. In fact, it is probably more of a minor league based on talent and the league has problems attracting major talent because of the salary cap.
The exception being Anschutz’s signing of David Beckham. But it is Anschutz’s league, he can write the rules if he so chooses.
The MLS is in a bit of a bind. Will American football fans notice if the league doesn’t operate in 2010 with the World Cup taking place? The World Cup supersedes the English Premiership and all the other more prominent leagues globally and people cheer for their home country. The World Cup qualifier in 1969 set off a four-day war between El Salvador and Honduras. Earlier this year,
Egypt and Algeria nearly had an international incident after reports that Algerian fans attacked Egyptian partisans after Algeria beat Egypt in a qualifier in Khartoum, Sudan that escalated into a rowdy protest by Egyptian partisans at the Algerian Embassy in Cairo that ended with 20 arrests, dozens of Egyptian police suffering injuries and 15 cars damaged.
There is not that sort of passion for football in the United States or Canada.
Of course the same thing was said about the National Hockey League in 2004 and 2005, did fans really miss the NHL? The truth is that owners don’t want fans, they want customers who don’t mind paying top dollar or loonie to attend games, corporations bought tickets then as an inducement for business and since the regional sports cable TV networks are owned by teams or people like Rupert Murdoch (who is heavily involved in funding Major League Baseball, the NFL and teams in both the NHL and NBA), there was no pressure from the regionals to settle the dispute.
To this date, no cable subscriber in the United States has been reimbursed for missed games from the 1994 NHL lockout or the 2004-05 lockout, nor has more been returned from the 1998-99 NBA lockout or the various Major League Baseball work stoppages.
The corporate ticket buyers along with marketing partners returned to the NHL. The MLS has major TV partners, major sponsors and is building a corporate base and has been successful in getting municipalities to fund new stadiums around North America. More than likely, any potential lockout will blow over but you won’t see the baseball-like diehards screaming they will never attend a game again because of greedy players.
It is still too early in the negotiating game to say there will be or will not be an MLS lockout. But owners like Kraft, Hunt and Allen (presuming his health problems will allow him to monitor the situation, Allen is a minority owner of the Sounders) could tip their collective hand in the National Football League's bargaining by backing a MLS lockout. The MLS might be an after thought to most of the remaining American newspapers sports editors and to American sports talk radio, but it is the rabbit in the race, the MLS will set the pace in what might be a very tumultuous few years in sports starting in February.
evanjweiner@yahoo.com
Saturday, December 12, 2009
Bad week for Toronto hockey writers
http://www.examiner.com/examiner/x-3926-Business-of-Sports-Examiner~y2009m12d12-Bad-week-for-Toronto-hockey-writers#
Bad week for Toronto hockey writers
By Evan Weiner
December 12, 2009
(New York, N. Y.) -- It has not been a good couple days for the Toronto sports media, rather the Toronto hockey fan sportswriters. National Hockey League Commissioner Gary Bettman met with Quebec Premier Jean Charest and the Quebec premier is under the impression that Bettman would like to see a franchise in Quebec City.
Then came the story that Bettman would prefer expanding the league rather than relocating teams and on top of that there seems to be a group ready to buy the financially troubled Phoenix Coyotes willing to keep the team in Glendale, Arizona.
The stars are not aligning for the Toronto hockey scribes who were waving their red and white pom poms last summer and basically begging a United States bankruptcy judge to let Jim Balsillie pick up the Coyotes franchise and move the team to Hamilton, Ontario.
That didn’t happen as Judge Redfield Baum decided to let the NHL handle the sale of the Coyotes franchise. Balsillie, one of the BlackBerry founders, appealed to Canadian nationalism in his bid to buy the Coyotes and the Toronto hockey writers acted as if they were a Balsillie flack instead of journalists who researched sports league’s constitutions or previous denials of sports teams ownership transfers or relocation such as Major League baseball saying twice no to Edwin Gaylord in the 1980s in his attempt to but the Texas Rangers because he owned a “superstation” in Dallas and Gaylord’s Dallas TV station would air Rangers games nationally and devalue other baseball TV contracts.
That opened the door for George W. Bush to eventually join a group that would buy the Rangers in 1989. A little research would have helped Toronto hockey writers understand how leagues operate.
Now the Toronto writers are facing a dilemma. What if Quebec City really has the wherewithal to finance a new arena? In 1995, Quebec Nordiques owner Marcel Aubut and Bettman tried to persuade Quebec politicians to come up with public financing for a new arena to replace Le Colisee and failed. Aubut sold the team to Charlie Lyons and Ascent and the franchise ended up in Denver, Colorado.
The Toronto writers have been tearing apart Bettman for years about a perceived perception that Bettman has anti-Canadian stance and never include in their critiques of the “New York lawyer” or the “diminutive” commissioner helped prevent the Edmonton Oilers owner Peter Pocklington from selling his team to Houston sports owner Les Alexander who planned to take the team to Texas in 1998. Bettman also helped broker a deal to keep the Ottawa Senators in the Canadian capital, although technically the Senators home arena is in Kanata, which is west of Ottawa.
Bettman also fought to keep franchises in Pittsburgh, Nashville and Glendale, Arizona (Phoenix). He pushed for Edmonton and Calgary to get a share of the Alberta hockey lottery.
Under Bettman’s watch, Quebec City, Winnipeg and Hartford (three former World Hockey Association teams) have relocated. Quebec City to Denver in 1995, Winnipeg to Phoenix (now Glendale) in 1996 and Hartford to Raleigh, North Carolina in 1997. All three cities simply did not have state of the art 1990s hockey arenas. Connecticut Governor John Rowland, who ended up in prison, seemed smitten with New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft snooping around Hartford looking for a stadium for his National Football League team and didn’t really play ball with Hartford Whalers owner Peter Karmanos.
Rowland not only lost a hockey team but probably Compuware jobs as Karmanos wanted to establish a Connecticut outpost for his computer company.
Rowland lost the Whalers and Kraft never really had any intention of moving his Patriots from the Boston metropolitan area and simply used Rowland as leverage to get a new stadium in Foxboro next to his old stadium. Kraft is further developing that property in Foxboro. He may be using United States government stimulus funding for his project.
The Toronto media, at least one of the hockey fans, er writers, Randy Sportak is urging the NHL to go into Toronto or Hamilton and while Quebec City or Winnipeg would be great additions to the league, Toronto deserves a second team. Sportak is also suggesting that the league move the New York Islanders or the Nashville Predators to southern Ontario.
Lazy journalism on Sportak’s part if he thinks the Islanders will move. Sportak probably has no idea how lucrative the Islanders cable TV deal with Cablevision’s Charles Dolan really is. The deal runs until 2031 and it behooves Dolan, the owner of Madison Square Garden, the National Basketball Association’s Knicks and the NHL’s Rangers and the MSG Network, to keep paying. You see Dolan needs the Islanders to stay in Uniondale or move to the proposed Brooklyn arena or the proposed building that could end up on Shea Stadium’s former site or in the junkyards at Willets Point adjacent to the US National Tennis Center to keep his cable TV franchises on Long island.
Here is how it works. Dolan can go before any town, village or city board on the island in both Nassau and Suffolk County when his cable TV systems franchise licensing agreement is up and say I have two things other cable operators don’t have. The Islanders and News 12. Dolan uses the same strategy in New Jersey with the Devils and News 12. Dolan is a major benefactor of New Jersey Devils hockey.
That is how sports operators. Islanders owner Charles Wang is hoping that he can develop the area around the Nassau Coliseum in Uniondale. If he cannot, you can be sure that New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who found funds for new baseball stadiums for the Yankees and Mets, will be chatting up Brooklyn and Queens with Wang.
No matter how lucrative the Toronto market might be, and this is no slight about Toronto, T. O. is not the Big Apple even if hockey is king in Toronto.
There is no suggestion at present that Nashville is ready to give up on the Predators.
If there is expansion, Quebec City and Winnipeg are on top of the charts for the NHL. In fact, the founder of the Russian-based Kontinental Hockey League Alexander Medvedev, the Deputy Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Russian Gazprom energy company, thinks that Quebec City is long overdue for an NHL team. An expansion of the league would mean a good deal of money for NHL owners. Even if the league sells the franchises for $150 million each, which is probably a low figure, two franchises would mean the NHL owners would split the $300 million 30 ways and give each owner $10 million.
It has not been a good week for the Toronto sports media. Quebec City wants an NHL team and Gary Bettman is listening, the NHL favors expansion over relocation, New Jersey Nets owner Bruce Ratner wants a hockey team in his proposed Brooklyn building, presumably the Islanders, and Ice Edge wants the Coyotes and has a plan to use Saskatoon, Saskatchewan as a second home for five games which should cause the Toronto writers to break out the pom poms again. But Saskatoon is not Southern Ontario nor is Quebec City and that is a problem for the Toronto scribes.
evanjweiner@yahoo.com
Bad week for Toronto hockey writers
By Evan Weiner
December 12, 2009
(New York, N. Y.) -- It has not been a good couple days for the Toronto sports media, rather the Toronto hockey fan sportswriters. National Hockey League Commissioner Gary Bettman met with Quebec Premier Jean Charest and the Quebec premier is under the impression that Bettman would like to see a franchise in Quebec City.
Then came the story that Bettman would prefer expanding the league rather than relocating teams and on top of that there seems to be a group ready to buy the financially troubled Phoenix Coyotes willing to keep the team in Glendale, Arizona.
The stars are not aligning for the Toronto hockey scribes who were waving their red and white pom poms last summer and basically begging a United States bankruptcy judge to let Jim Balsillie pick up the Coyotes franchise and move the team to Hamilton, Ontario.
That didn’t happen as Judge Redfield Baum decided to let the NHL handle the sale of the Coyotes franchise. Balsillie, one of the BlackBerry founders, appealed to Canadian nationalism in his bid to buy the Coyotes and the Toronto hockey writers acted as if they were a Balsillie flack instead of journalists who researched sports league’s constitutions or previous denials of sports teams ownership transfers or relocation such as Major League baseball saying twice no to Edwin Gaylord in the 1980s in his attempt to but the Texas Rangers because he owned a “superstation” in Dallas and Gaylord’s Dallas TV station would air Rangers games nationally and devalue other baseball TV contracts.
That opened the door for George W. Bush to eventually join a group that would buy the Rangers in 1989. A little research would have helped Toronto hockey writers understand how leagues operate.
Now the Toronto writers are facing a dilemma. What if Quebec City really has the wherewithal to finance a new arena? In 1995, Quebec Nordiques owner Marcel Aubut and Bettman tried to persuade Quebec politicians to come up with public financing for a new arena to replace Le Colisee and failed. Aubut sold the team to Charlie Lyons and Ascent and the franchise ended up in Denver, Colorado.
The Toronto writers have been tearing apart Bettman for years about a perceived perception that Bettman has anti-Canadian stance and never include in their critiques of the “New York lawyer” or the “diminutive” commissioner helped prevent the Edmonton Oilers owner Peter Pocklington from selling his team to Houston sports owner Les Alexander who planned to take the team to Texas in 1998. Bettman also helped broker a deal to keep the Ottawa Senators in the Canadian capital, although technically the Senators home arena is in Kanata, which is west of Ottawa.
Bettman also fought to keep franchises in Pittsburgh, Nashville and Glendale, Arizona (Phoenix). He pushed for Edmonton and Calgary to get a share of the Alberta hockey lottery.
Under Bettman’s watch, Quebec City, Winnipeg and Hartford (three former World Hockey Association teams) have relocated. Quebec City to Denver in 1995, Winnipeg to Phoenix (now Glendale) in 1996 and Hartford to Raleigh, North Carolina in 1997. All three cities simply did not have state of the art 1990s hockey arenas. Connecticut Governor John Rowland, who ended up in prison, seemed smitten with New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft snooping around Hartford looking for a stadium for his National Football League team and didn’t really play ball with Hartford Whalers owner Peter Karmanos.
Rowland not only lost a hockey team but probably Compuware jobs as Karmanos wanted to establish a Connecticut outpost for his computer company.
Rowland lost the Whalers and Kraft never really had any intention of moving his Patriots from the Boston metropolitan area and simply used Rowland as leverage to get a new stadium in Foxboro next to his old stadium. Kraft is further developing that property in Foxboro. He may be using United States government stimulus funding for his project.
The Toronto media, at least one of the hockey fans, er writers, Randy Sportak is urging the NHL to go into Toronto or Hamilton and while Quebec City or Winnipeg would be great additions to the league, Toronto deserves a second team. Sportak is also suggesting that the league move the New York Islanders or the Nashville Predators to southern Ontario.
Lazy journalism on Sportak’s part if he thinks the Islanders will move. Sportak probably has no idea how lucrative the Islanders cable TV deal with Cablevision’s Charles Dolan really is. The deal runs until 2031 and it behooves Dolan, the owner of Madison Square Garden, the National Basketball Association’s Knicks and the NHL’s Rangers and the MSG Network, to keep paying. You see Dolan needs the Islanders to stay in Uniondale or move to the proposed Brooklyn arena or the proposed building that could end up on Shea Stadium’s former site or in the junkyards at Willets Point adjacent to the US National Tennis Center to keep his cable TV franchises on Long island.
Here is how it works. Dolan can go before any town, village or city board on the island in both Nassau and Suffolk County when his cable TV systems franchise licensing agreement is up and say I have two things other cable operators don’t have. The Islanders and News 12. Dolan uses the same strategy in New Jersey with the Devils and News 12. Dolan is a major benefactor of New Jersey Devils hockey.
That is how sports operators. Islanders owner Charles Wang is hoping that he can develop the area around the Nassau Coliseum in Uniondale. If he cannot, you can be sure that New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who found funds for new baseball stadiums for the Yankees and Mets, will be chatting up Brooklyn and Queens with Wang.
No matter how lucrative the Toronto market might be, and this is no slight about Toronto, T. O. is not the Big Apple even if hockey is king in Toronto.
There is no suggestion at present that Nashville is ready to give up on the Predators.
If there is expansion, Quebec City and Winnipeg are on top of the charts for the NHL. In fact, the founder of the Russian-based Kontinental Hockey League Alexander Medvedev, the Deputy Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Russian Gazprom energy company, thinks that Quebec City is long overdue for an NHL team. An expansion of the league would mean a good deal of money for NHL owners. Even if the league sells the franchises for $150 million each, which is probably a low figure, two franchises would mean the NHL owners would split the $300 million 30 ways and give each owner $10 million.
It has not been a good week for the Toronto sports media. Quebec City wants an NHL team and Gary Bettman is listening, the NHL favors expansion over relocation, New Jersey Nets owner Bruce Ratner wants a hockey team in his proposed Brooklyn building, presumably the Islanders, and Ice Edge wants the Coyotes and has a plan to use Saskatoon, Saskatchewan as a second home for five games which should cause the Toronto writers to break out the pom poms again. But Saskatoon is not Southern Ontario nor is Quebec City and that is a problem for the Toronto scribes.
evanjweiner@yahoo.com
Saturday, May 23, 2009
The Phoenix Coyotes Bankruptcy and the Curious Toronto Globe and Mail Editorial About Gary Bettman
http://www.mcnsports.com/en/node/7196
By Evan Weiner
May 23, 2009
4:30 PM EDT
(New York, N. Y.) -- To those editorial or opinion writers at the Toronto Globe and Mail, the War of 1812 ended nearly two centuries ago and you know what, Canada won. But if you are among those who still read newspaper editorials, as if newspaper opinion pieces have any relevancy anymore and frankly the sad truth is they don't, the Globe and Mail guys apparently think National Hockey League Commissioner is lobbying bombs into Manitoba instead of just protecting his league as Jim Basillie is attempting a hostile takeover of the bankrupt Phoenix Coyotes and moving the franchise to Hamilton, Ontario.
The whole sordid mess is being played out before a bankruptcy judge in Phoenix, Arizona and there could very well be other fronts in what has become a full scale sports league skirmish that Basillie and Phoenix Coyotes owner Jerry Moyes are conducting against the National Hockey League and probably against the National Basketball Association and the National Football League. Basillie has also drawn the wrath of two United States Senators and the town of Glendale, Arizona is about ready to unleash a lawsuit protecting the city from losing the Coyotes with decades left on the lease between the NHL team and the municipality in the building that was paid by taxpayers. More on that later, first things first, it is time to examine newspapers and how journalists in Canada have become cheerleaders for Basillie.
The Globe and Mail editorialists have accused the NHL and Bettman of a "slap" in the face of Canadians and Basillie by attempting to block the sale of the Phoenix hockey franchise to Basillie. It is the latest in a long line of criticisms of Bettman by the Canadian media who have been ticked off for years that a "New York lawyer" has been in charge of the league. In some instances, the "New York lawyer" could be viewed as a code for something else. Perhaps Canadian hockey writers and Jesse Jackson can compare notes about people who live in New York City and the city's suburban areas. For the record, this writer is a life long New Yorker, born in Manhattan, lived in Queens, Ramapo (Jackson and the Canadian writers would have a blast there) and Westchester. There has always been an underlying tone in prose from Canada about the "New York lawyer."
At last look, Bettman wasn't leading a group ready to invade Manitoba nor was he part of the Fenian Raids of Canada between 1866 and 1871 nor did he call Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper a swine or a worm or an upstart (you have to watch Duck Soup with the Marx Brothers to understand that line, but Rufus T. Firefly did smack Trentino across the face after being called an upstart). The New York lawyer also made sure that Edmonton maintained an NHL franchise in the late 1990s but the Globe and Mail has equated Bettman to rogue status while forgetting that Balsillie owes all of his riches to Canadian taxpayers who funded BlackBerry research and that Basillie has become so used to living on taxpayers handouts that he asked Hamilton city officials for money to renovate the city's arena and got it.
Perhaps it is that editorial thinking that has landed newspapers in dire straits fiscally although it is more likely that newspaper publishers ignored the evolving technology and never thought a recession would sink the industry. While Basillie and Hamilton politicians were exchanging wedding vows to provide high cost entertainment, Canadian Auto Workers were coming to terms with the General Motors and Chrysler bankruptcies. The auto workers make up a chunk of Ontario's workforce. Some of them hockey fans who if they lose their jobs can follow the Hamilton or the Southern Ontario team on cable TV, radio or websites which provide quicker access to information than say the stately old Globe and Mail. Some of those out of work former auto maker employees may see some of their future taxes go to pay off repairs for an arena they may never step into for Basillie's hockey team. The same Basillie who has become a billionaire with their financial help. Basillie played by the rules with BlackBerry, but Canadian journalists should be pointing out facts instead of being infatuated with the technology genius.
Canadian newspapers have been acting like teenagers in love with the Basillie moving the Phoenix franchise to Southern Ontario trek. American sports pages are ignoring what will be the biggest sports story of the year, and probably sports biggest case since Cleveland Mayor Mike White and the Cleveland city council threatened to sue the National Football League in 1996 following Cleveland Browns owner Art Modell's relocation of his football team to Baltimore with three years left on the Browns-Cleveland lease at the city's stadium.
White and NFL Commissioner Paul Tagliabue worked out a deal whereby Cleveland would drop a lawsuit and would build a new football facility. Cleveland was promised a new team and the city retained the team's name, the Browns, the team logo and colors and the team record book. Cleveland got an expansion franchise in 1999.
The inclusion of New York's two United States Senators in this battle of sports is rather interesting because New York and Ontario are sizeable trading partners but the relocation of the Phoenix team to Hamilton, which is not far from Buffalo might impact Buffalo Sabres tickets, advertising revenues and could seriously harm the franchise in what is a very weakened economic area, western New York State. Buffalo cannot make it without Canadians attending games; the NFL's Buffalo Bills have regionalized the franchise by holding training camp in Rochester and scheduling games in Toronto. The National Hockey League, the National Basketball Association and the National Football League do not enjoy the same antitrust exemption that Major League Baseball was given by the United States Supreme Court in 1922. Could Senators Charles Schumer and Kristen Gillibrand introduce legislation, which certainly would be welcomed by Bettman, NBA Commissioner David Stern and NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell along with their owners that would strengthen league's by-laws to make sure leagues are in control of where they place franchises and who owns teams?
Oddly enough, the Globe and Mail has not come out against Canadian protectionism of the Canadian Football League. In the 1970s, the World Football League, which lasted one and half seasons, wanted to put a team in Toronto for the 1974 season and Canadian lawmakers threatened to make sure any American football league would never play in Canada. Parliament never pursued the protectionism after John Bassett moved the Toronto franchise to Memphis.
Bettman and his legal team have NHL owners saying no to Basillie's buyout, they have drawn Congressional interest, they have MLB, the NBA and NFL on their side and the city of Glendale will unleash a major lawsuit to make sure taxpayers, the people ultimately responsible for paying the debt on the city owned facility protected. Glendale claims it is owed a $700 million fee if the hockey team is moved as the lease between the league and the team has 26 years remaining. This should be a troubling notion to all of the cities and municipalities across the United States who have spent billions upon billions of dollars for new sports facilities. If Moyes can declare bankruptcy and just sell off the assets and get out of paying the lease, who will be next? Taxpayers need protection as well and a Glendale suit should be avidly watched by every municipality which forked over money either in building a facility, or in granting programs like payment in lieu of taxes or tax incremental funding.
Of course the Globe and Mail, the paper that accused Bettman of slapping Canadians and Basillie in the face, has sportswriters like Allan Maki covering the business end of hockey. Mr. Maki sounds like Rush Limbaugh in hoping Bettman fails in court and that will be the end of his term. Of course a hockey writer doesn’t understand the nuisances of owners meetings and that Bettman is just doing what the owners want him to do. Mr. Maki needs to study sports league and history or maybe ask Fay Vincent what happens when owners fall out of love with their commissioner. Fay Vincent was fired by the Lords of Baseball although technically Vincent resigned after owners voted 18-9 that they had no confidence in him in 1992. One of those owners who said no, Chicago White Sox and Chicago Bulls owner Jerry Reinsdorf, the man who wants to buy the Phoenix Coyotes.
Mr. Maki needs to understand that until Los Angeles Kings owner Phil Anschutz and others are done with Bettman, he will stay on the job. Of course Maki is a writer for the Globe and Mail, a haughty position within the newspaper community and perhaps he is preaching to his fellow Canadian hockey writers in calling for Bettman's ouster. At least Mr. Maki didn't call him the "New York lawyer."
By the way, Mr. Maki did not mention that the NHL is a more than $2 billion a year business. He mentioned the United States cable TV contract with Versus. Mr. Maki, like many of his fellow writers in Canada, fails to understand that ESPN did not want NHL games and Versus stepped in with some money. Perhaps someone who understands the cable TV business would be better served as a critic but the Globe and Mail has a hockey writer.
The Toronto Sun also wants Bettman to go. Another newspaper editorial about his lack of getting a major TV deal in the United States. Across Canada, Bettman is seen as an enemy of the people, at least in the eyes of the media.
Of course the Globe and Mail editorial page, the Maki column and the Toronto Sun no confidence vote mean nothing except to create some chatter on radio talk shows and cable TV in Canada. The only person who counts is Phoenix Bankruptcy Judge Redfield Baum and this all goes back to bankruptcy, Jerry Moyes filed Chapter 11 and wants to cut his losses. Moyes owns the Coyotes franchise but does he really run the team is the first piece of this puzzle. The NHL apparently was paying the bills starting in November 2008, not Moyes. The second part of the puzzle is simple. Does the NHL have the right to govern itself? There are many instances in sports where the leagues have said no to prospective owners. In 1983, Ralston Purina had enough of owning the St. Louis Blues National Hockey League franchise and sold it to Saskatoon interests led by Bill Hunter. The NHL refused to let the sale of the relocation of the franchise go ahead and found another owner to take over in St. Louis. In 1994, the NBA blocked the move of the Minnesota franchise to New Orleans and found a local owner. In Major League Baseball during the 1970s, owners blocked the relocation of the San Francisco Giants to Toronto and the Oakland A's to Denver. In the 1980s, the Lords of Baseball twice refused to allow Texas Rangers owner Eddie Chiles to sell his team to Edwin Gaylord because of the fear that Gaylord would launch a cable TV superstation in Dallas. Chiles eventually sold his team to a group fronted by the son of the United States President at the time in 1989, George W. Bush. The rest is history.
Hockey is a sensitive subject for Canadians. It is a way of life. Hockey's biggest names, Gordie Howe, Bobby Orr, Bobby Hull never played NHL games with Toronto or Montreal back in the day and there is something still wrong some 37 years later that Bobby Hull was not allowed to play for Team Canada against the Soviet Union in the biggest global hockey series in the sports history because he signed with a World Hockey Association team, Winnipeg, and left the NHL's Chicago Blackhawks. Business is business after all.
The bankruptcy case, the Glendale lawsuit, the United States Senate intervention, the threat of subsequent lawsuits may keep going and going with the real winners being the lawyers with billable hours. The real loser here is journalism, the globally respected Globe and Mail being reduced to a puerile state with lines that seemingly came out of a 1933 Marx Brothers movie, Duck Soup. Perhaps both the Canadian and American media really need to have a broad introspective look and see where they lost their way in virtually everything they cover, but they again about 110 years ago, William Randolph Hearst invented a war, the Spanish American War where people died. Fortunately in this case, no one is in peril, Glendale may lose a hockey team or may not, life will go on no matter even for the editorial writers at the Toronto Globe and Mail and Sun Media and the Toronto Sun and a good number or Canadian journalists who are wearing their Team Canada shirts because they want Basillie to bring home a hockey team. It is just business, nothing personal.
eweiner@mcn.tv
By Evan Weiner
May 23, 2009
4:30 PM EDT
(New York, N. Y.) -- To those editorial or opinion writers at the Toronto Globe and Mail, the War of 1812 ended nearly two centuries ago and you know what, Canada won. But if you are among those who still read newspaper editorials, as if newspaper opinion pieces have any relevancy anymore and frankly the sad truth is they don't, the Globe and Mail guys apparently think National Hockey League Commissioner is lobbying bombs into Manitoba instead of just protecting his league as Jim Basillie is attempting a hostile takeover of the bankrupt Phoenix Coyotes and moving the franchise to Hamilton, Ontario.
The whole sordid mess is being played out before a bankruptcy judge in Phoenix, Arizona and there could very well be other fronts in what has become a full scale sports league skirmish that Basillie and Phoenix Coyotes owner Jerry Moyes are conducting against the National Hockey League and probably against the National Basketball Association and the National Football League. Basillie has also drawn the wrath of two United States Senators and the town of Glendale, Arizona is about ready to unleash a lawsuit protecting the city from losing the Coyotes with decades left on the lease between the NHL team and the municipality in the building that was paid by taxpayers. More on that later, first things first, it is time to examine newspapers and how journalists in Canada have become cheerleaders for Basillie.
The Globe and Mail editorialists have accused the NHL and Bettman of a "slap" in the face of Canadians and Basillie by attempting to block the sale of the Phoenix hockey franchise to Basillie. It is the latest in a long line of criticisms of Bettman by the Canadian media who have been ticked off for years that a "New York lawyer" has been in charge of the league. In some instances, the "New York lawyer" could be viewed as a code for something else. Perhaps Canadian hockey writers and Jesse Jackson can compare notes about people who live in New York City and the city's suburban areas. For the record, this writer is a life long New Yorker, born in Manhattan, lived in Queens, Ramapo (Jackson and the Canadian writers would have a blast there) and Westchester. There has always been an underlying tone in prose from Canada about the "New York lawyer."
At last look, Bettman wasn't leading a group ready to invade Manitoba nor was he part of the Fenian Raids of Canada between 1866 and 1871 nor did he call Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper a swine or a worm or an upstart (you have to watch Duck Soup with the Marx Brothers to understand that line, but Rufus T. Firefly did smack Trentino across the face after being called an upstart). The New York lawyer also made sure that Edmonton maintained an NHL franchise in the late 1990s but the Globe and Mail has equated Bettman to rogue status while forgetting that Balsillie owes all of his riches to Canadian taxpayers who funded BlackBerry research and that Basillie has become so used to living on taxpayers handouts that he asked Hamilton city officials for money to renovate the city's arena and got it.
Perhaps it is that editorial thinking that has landed newspapers in dire straits fiscally although it is more likely that newspaper publishers ignored the evolving technology and never thought a recession would sink the industry. While Basillie and Hamilton politicians were exchanging wedding vows to provide high cost entertainment, Canadian Auto Workers were coming to terms with the General Motors and Chrysler bankruptcies. The auto workers make up a chunk of Ontario's workforce. Some of them hockey fans who if they lose their jobs can follow the Hamilton or the Southern Ontario team on cable TV, radio or websites which provide quicker access to information than say the stately old Globe and Mail. Some of those out of work former auto maker employees may see some of their future taxes go to pay off repairs for an arena they may never step into for Basillie's hockey team. The same Basillie who has become a billionaire with their financial help. Basillie played by the rules with BlackBerry, but Canadian journalists should be pointing out facts instead of being infatuated with the technology genius.
Canadian newspapers have been acting like teenagers in love with the Basillie moving the Phoenix franchise to Southern Ontario trek. American sports pages are ignoring what will be the biggest sports story of the year, and probably sports biggest case since Cleveland Mayor Mike White and the Cleveland city council threatened to sue the National Football League in 1996 following Cleveland Browns owner Art Modell's relocation of his football team to Baltimore with three years left on the Browns-Cleveland lease at the city's stadium.
White and NFL Commissioner Paul Tagliabue worked out a deal whereby Cleveland would drop a lawsuit and would build a new football facility. Cleveland was promised a new team and the city retained the team's name, the Browns, the team logo and colors and the team record book. Cleveland got an expansion franchise in 1999.
The inclusion of New York's two United States Senators in this battle of sports is rather interesting because New York and Ontario are sizeable trading partners but the relocation of the Phoenix team to Hamilton, which is not far from Buffalo might impact Buffalo Sabres tickets, advertising revenues and could seriously harm the franchise in what is a very weakened economic area, western New York State. Buffalo cannot make it without Canadians attending games; the NFL's Buffalo Bills have regionalized the franchise by holding training camp in Rochester and scheduling games in Toronto. The National Hockey League, the National Basketball Association and the National Football League do not enjoy the same antitrust exemption that Major League Baseball was given by the United States Supreme Court in 1922. Could Senators Charles Schumer and Kristen Gillibrand introduce legislation, which certainly would be welcomed by Bettman, NBA Commissioner David Stern and NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell along with their owners that would strengthen league's by-laws to make sure leagues are in control of where they place franchises and who owns teams?
Oddly enough, the Globe and Mail has not come out against Canadian protectionism of the Canadian Football League. In the 1970s, the World Football League, which lasted one and half seasons, wanted to put a team in Toronto for the 1974 season and Canadian lawmakers threatened to make sure any American football league would never play in Canada. Parliament never pursued the protectionism after John Bassett moved the Toronto franchise to Memphis.
Bettman and his legal team have NHL owners saying no to Basillie's buyout, they have drawn Congressional interest, they have MLB, the NBA and NFL on their side and the city of Glendale will unleash a major lawsuit to make sure taxpayers, the people ultimately responsible for paying the debt on the city owned facility protected. Glendale claims it is owed a $700 million fee if the hockey team is moved as the lease between the league and the team has 26 years remaining. This should be a troubling notion to all of the cities and municipalities across the United States who have spent billions upon billions of dollars for new sports facilities. If Moyes can declare bankruptcy and just sell off the assets and get out of paying the lease, who will be next? Taxpayers need protection as well and a Glendale suit should be avidly watched by every municipality which forked over money either in building a facility, or in granting programs like payment in lieu of taxes or tax incremental funding.
Of course the Globe and Mail, the paper that accused Bettman of slapping Canadians and Basillie in the face, has sportswriters like Allan Maki covering the business end of hockey. Mr. Maki sounds like Rush Limbaugh in hoping Bettman fails in court and that will be the end of his term. Of course a hockey writer doesn’t understand the nuisances of owners meetings and that Bettman is just doing what the owners want him to do. Mr. Maki needs to study sports league and history or maybe ask Fay Vincent what happens when owners fall out of love with their commissioner. Fay Vincent was fired by the Lords of Baseball although technically Vincent resigned after owners voted 18-9 that they had no confidence in him in 1992. One of those owners who said no, Chicago White Sox and Chicago Bulls owner Jerry Reinsdorf, the man who wants to buy the Phoenix Coyotes.
Mr. Maki needs to understand that until Los Angeles Kings owner Phil Anschutz and others are done with Bettman, he will stay on the job. Of course Maki is a writer for the Globe and Mail, a haughty position within the newspaper community and perhaps he is preaching to his fellow Canadian hockey writers in calling for Bettman's ouster. At least Mr. Maki didn't call him the "New York lawyer."
By the way, Mr. Maki did not mention that the NHL is a more than $2 billion a year business. He mentioned the United States cable TV contract with Versus. Mr. Maki, like many of his fellow writers in Canada, fails to understand that ESPN did not want NHL games and Versus stepped in with some money. Perhaps someone who understands the cable TV business would be better served as a critic but the Globe and Mail has a hockey writer.
The Toronto Sun also wants Bettman to go. Another newspaper editorial about his lack of getting a major TV deal in the United States. Across Canada, Bettman is seen as an enemy of the people, at least in the eyes of the media.
Of course the Globe and Mail editorial page, the Maki column and the Toronto Sun no confidence vote mean nothing except to create some chatter on radio talk shows and cable TV in Canada. The only person who counts is Phoenix Bankruptcy Judge Redfield Baum and this all goes back to bankruptcy, Jerry Moyes filed Chapter 11 and wants to cut his losses. Moyes owns the Coyotes franchise but does he really run the team is the first piece of this puzzle. The NHL apparently was paying the bills starting in November 2008, not Moyes. The second part of the puzzle is simple. Does the NHL have the right to govern itself? There are many instances in sports where the leagues have said no to prospective owners. In 1983, Ralston Purina had enough of owning the St. Louis Blues National Hockey League franchise and sold it to Saskatoon interests led by Bill Hunter. The NHL refused to let the sale of the relocation of the franchise go ahead and found another owner to take over in St. Louis. In 1994, the NBA blocked the move of the Minnesota franchise to New Orleans and found a local owner. In Major League Baseball during the 1970s, owners blocked the relocation of the San Francisco Giants to Toronto and the Oakland A's to Denver. In the 1980s, the Lords of Baseball twice refused to allow Texas Rangers owner Eddie Chiles to sell his team to Edwin Gaylord because of the fear that Gaylord would launch a cable TV superstation in Dallas. Chiles eventually sold his team to a group fronted by the son of the United States President at the time in 1989, George W. Bush. The rest is history.
Hockey is a sensitive subject for Canadians. It is a way of life. Hockey's biggest names, Gordie Howe, Bobby Orr, Bobby Hull never played NHL games with Toronto or Montreal back in the day and there is something still wrong some 37 years later that Bobby Hull was not allowed to play for Team Canada against the Soviet Union in the biggest global hockey series in the sports history because he signed with a World Hockey Association team, Winnipeg, and left the NHL's Chicago Blackhawks. Business is business after all.
The bankruptcy case, the Glendale lawsuit, the United States Senate intervention, the threat of subsequent lawsuits may keep going and going with the real winners being the lawyers with billable hours. The real loser here is journalism, the globally respected Globe and Mail being reduced to a puerile state with lines that seemingly came out of a 1933 Marx Brothers movie, Duck Soup. Perhaps both the Canadian and American media really need to have a broad introspective look and see where they lost their way in virtually everything they cover, but they again about 110 years ago, William Randolph Hearst invented a war, the Spanish American War where people died. Fortunately in this case, no one is in peril, Glendale may lose a hockey team or may not, life will go on no matter even for the editorial writers at the Toronto Globe and Mail and Sun Media and the Toronto Sun and a good number or Canadian journalists who are wearing their Team Canada shirts because they want Basillie to bring home a hockey team. It is just business, nothing personal.
eweiner@mcn.tv
Tuesday, January 20, 2009
Islanders Moving? Read the Local Newspaper for the Answer
Islanders Moving? Read the Local Newspaper for the Answer
By Evan Weiner
Tuesday, January 20, 2009
12:30 EST
(New York, NY) -- New York Islanders owner Charles Wang wants Nassau County, New York, Hempstead, New York and all others who are required to give approval to his planned renovation of the Nassau Coliseum and something called the Lighthouse Project to give him the okay to move ahead with the rather ambitious development project. The problem is that no one has green lighted the Lighthouse Project and it is annoying Wang.
Owners are accustomed to politicians bowing to their whims and wants and when it becomes public knowledge, sportswriters quickly begin playing the role of being the owners stooges. Sportswriters start to wail about what a raw deal an owner is getting when that owner doesn’t get his way and that politicians better understand that or the community will lose the team to another city that is so desperate to get a team, that they will give a new building’s revenues away. And they could, because under the United States tax law, only eight percent of monies generated inside a publicly funded building can go off to pay the facility’s debt.
In the past week, the Pavlov Dog response in sportswriters has come out in Nassau County, particularly in Newsday, a paper that happens to be owned by a National Hockey League owner, the New York Rangers Charles Dolan, who also happens to be the owner of most of the cable TV franchises awarded to municipalities (Cablevision) in Nassau County and also the Madison Square Garden Network, the company that will be paying the Islanders multimillions of dollars for cable TV rights through 2031. Wang has a deal to develop 150 acres of prime property in Nassau County, the land around the Nassau Coliseum but he is waiting for various approvals and the approvals are moving too slowly.
Wang has not made any public threats to move the team.
Newsday is reporting that the Islanders will play the Los Angeles Kings in a pre-season game next September in Kansas City in what has to be a prelude to the Islanders eventual move to Kansas City. There is a relatively new arena in Kansas City that is controlled by Phil Anschutz’s AEG and AEG has promised Kansas City an NHL or NBA team. So fat that hasn’t transpired and with good reason.
Kansas City can barely support the NFL Chiefs and Major League Baseball’s Kansas City Royals. Most of the corporate sports support in the area goes to the Chiefs and whatever is leftover is spent on the Royals and NASCAR. David Glass, the Royals owner, is always the recipient of MLB revenue sharing. That is not a good sign even when AEG has guaranteed an NHL the lions share of whatever revenue is generated inside the relatively new Kansas City building.
Kansas City cannot compete with Dolan’s cable TV money. So far in all of Newsday’s accounts, there is no mention of that. Could Dolan, whose Cablevision company is not in the most robust shape, be looking to dump the lucrative Islanders TV deal? It is a question worth examining.
The Newsday theory is not limited to an exhibition game. Wang’s Islanders franchise will be conducting training camp in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan next September. Saskatoon is north of Middle America, so the Islanders are establishing a middle Canada presence in order to solidify a fan base in Kansas City. Makes a lot of sense. Newsday has done a feature on AEG’s CEO Tim Leiweke in an article called “The man who wants to steal the Islanders.” Another article is admonishing local politicians by claiming if the Islanders move, Long Island will never get another professional team and another piece dredged up an old Kansas City Scouts player named Guy Charron who thinks Kansas City would be a great NHL market. Charron didn’t provide any proof that Kansas City would welcome an NHL team.
Charron played in Kansas City back in the mid 1970s for the NHL Scouts, a franchise that was moved to Denver in 1976 after just two seasons in the then new city arena. Kansas City could not support an NFL, MLB, NBA and NHL combination then, and not much has changed in over three decades except sports depends far more on corporate spending than the average fan and Kansas City doesn’t have very many Fortune 500 companies or a good cable TV market. But Charron’s thoughts fit the Newsday narrative.
Newsday has done Wang’s work. The threat to move the franchise is on the table and now Nassau and New York politicians have to respond. Wang wants to get his projects started by July.
That is how it works in sports. Sportswriters, who generally are ignorant of government’s role in the sports superstructure, just keep throwing things out there. The Newsday pieces don’t talk much about the fact that Wang has a lease through 2015, the huge cable TV contract that he has and the fact that Kansas City probably is not a good fit for the Islanders. But Kansas City has become a destination city for owners like Rich DeVos of the NBA’s Orlando Magic and the Ron Burkle/Mario Lemieux Pittsburgh Penguins to use as Plan B if they didn’t get new arenas in their cities. It worked in those cases. Orlando and Pittsburgh will have new arenas.
The question of just how Wang’s project will be funded is another question that Newsday has not bothered to explore in the last week either.
Wang is also letting NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman do some of his work as well, Bettman has been pounding on Nassau County officials to get moving because the Islanders building is old and does not produce enough revenues.
The script is old but generally effective. Very few city business and political leaders want to lose a sports franchise. The newspapers raise the threat level forcing the owners and politicians to discuss building new facilities. Most of the time it works, on rare occasions it doesn’t. Seattle, King County and Washington state officials decided not to knuckle under to the NBA or owner Clayton Bennett’s threat to move the franchise to Oklahoma City and let him move last summer after reaching an out of court settlement which allowed Bennett to go and pay off the city which had two years left on a lease between the basketball team and the city.
Wang has five years left on his lease, 22 years left on that lucrative cable TV deal. According to Nassau County officials, no one from the Wang group has told them that the franchise could be moved. The Islanders franchise has been a real estate-TV business for years. The Howard Milstein- Steven Gluckstern group spend $195 million to but the franchise and the cable TV deal from John O. Pickett in 1998 with the hopes of developing the land around the Nassau Coliseum. Pickett, himself, used to pocket most of the team’s cable TV money for himself.
Wang bought the team in 2000. In 2003, Wang and Nassau County Executive Thomas Suozzi first talked about developing the land around the Coliseum and in November 2007, Wang came up with a detailed plan for the Coliseum project.
Will Wang move the Islanders? He can’t until 2015 and needs the team if he wants to develop the property. The New York Islanders hockey franchise came into being because the NHL wanted to keep the World Hockey Association out of the New York market, it became a solely cable TV show by 1983 and helped Dolan keep all of those franchises on Long Island as he could walk into municipalities and say here is our local programming, the Islanders and News 12 Long Island. Now the team is part of a real estate deal. It isn’t about hockey but business and Newsday is just a tool that is part of a business plan.
evanjweiner@yahoo.com
By Evan Weiner
Tuesday, January 20, 2009
12:30 EST
(New York, NY) -- New York Islanders owner Charles Wang wants Nassau County, New York, Hempstead, New York and all others who are required to give approval to his planned renovation of the Nassau Coliseum and something called the Lighthouse Project to give him the okay to move ahead with the rather ambitious development project. The problem is that no one has green lighted the Lighthouse Project and it is annoying Wang.
Owners are accustomed to politicians bowing to their whims and wants and when it becomes public knowledge, sportswriters quickly begin playing the role of being the owners stooges. Sportswriters start to wail about what a raw deal an owner is getting when that owner doesn’t get his way and that politicians better understand that or the community will lose the team to another city that is so desperate to get a team, that they will give a new building’s revenues away. And they could, because under the United States tax law, only eight percent of monies generated inside a publicly funded building can go off to pay the facility’s debt.
In the past week, the Pavlov Dog response in sportswriters has come out in Nassau County, particularly in Newsday, a paper that happens to be owned by a National Hockey League owner, the New York Rangers Charles Dolan, who also happens to be the owner of most of the cable TV franchises awarded to municipalities (Cablevision) in Nassau County and also the Madison Square Garden Network, the company that will be paying the Islanders multimillions of dollars for cable TV rights through 2031. Wang has a deal to develop 150 acres of prime property in Nassau County, the land around the Nassau Coliseum but he is waiting for various approvals and the approvals are moving too slowly.
Wang has not made any public threats to move the team.
Newsday is reporting that the Islanders will play the Los Angeles Kings in a pre-season game next September in Kansas City in what has to be a prelude to the Islanders eventual move to Kansas City. There is a relatively new arena in Kansas City that is controlled by Phil Anschutz’s AEG and AEG has promised Kansas City an NHL or NBA team. So fat that hasn’t transpired and with good reason.
Kansas City can barely support the NFL Chiefs and Major League Baseball’s Kansas City Royals. Most of the corporate sports support in the area goes to the Chiefs and whatever is leftover is spent on the Royals and NASCAR. David Glass, the Royals owner, is always the recipient of MLB revenue sharing. That is not a good sign even when AEG has guaranteed an NHL the lions share of whatever revenue is generated inside the relatively new Kansas City building.
Kansas City cannot compete with Dolan’s cable TV money. So far in all of Newsday’s accounts, there is no mention of that. Could Dolan, whose Cablevision company is not in the most robust shape, be looking to dump the lucrative Islanders TV deal? It is a question worth examining.
The Newsday theory is not limited to an exhibition game. Wang’s Islanders franchise will be conducting training camp in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan next September. Saskatoon is north of Middle America, so the Islanders are establishing a middle Canada presence in order to solidify a fan base in Kansas City. Makes a lot of sense. Newsday has done a feature on AEG’s CEO Tim Leiweke in an article called “The man who wants to steal the Islanders.” Another article is admonishing local politicians by claiming if the Islanders move, Long Island will never get another professional team and another piece dredged up an old Kansas City Scouts player named Guy Charron who thinks Kansas City would be a great NHL market. Charron didn’t provide any proof that Kansas City would welcome an NHL team.
Charron played in Kansas City back in the mid 1970s for the NHL Scouts, a franchise that was moved to Denver in 1976 after just two seasons in the then new city arena. Kansas City could not support an NFL, MLB, NBA and NHL combination then, and not much has changed in over three decades except sports depends far more on corporate spending than the average fan and Kansas City doesn’t have very many Fortune 500 companies or a good cable TV market. But Charron’s thoughts fit the Newsday narrative.
Newsday has done Wang’s work. The threat to move the franchise is on the table and now Nassau and New York politicians have to respond. Wang wants to get his projects started by July.
That is how it works in sports. Sportswriters, who generally are ignorant of government’s role in the sports superstructure, just keep throwing things out there. The Newsday pieces don’t talk much about the fact that Wang has a lease through 2015, the huge cable TV contract that he has and the fact that Kansas City probably is not a good fit for the Islanders. But Kansas City has become a destination city for owners like Rich DeVos of the NBA’s Orlando Magic and the Ron Burkle/Mario Lemieux Pittsburgh Penguins to use as Plan B if they didn’t get new arenas in their cities. It worked in those cases. Orlando and Pittsburgh will have new arenas.
The question of just how Wang’s project will be funded is another question that Newsday has not bothered to explore in the last week either.
Wang is also letting NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman do some of his work as well, Bettman has been pounding on Nassau County officials to get moving because the Islanders building is old and does not produce enough revenues.
The script is old but generally effective. Very few city business and political leaders want to lose a sports franchise. The newspapers raise the threat level forcing the owners and politicians to discuss building new facilities. Most of the time it works, on rare occasions it doesn’t. Seattle, King County and Washington state officials decided not to knuckle under to the NBA or owner Clayton Bennett’s threat to move the franchise to Oklahoma City and let him move last summer after reaching an out of court settlement which allowed Bennett to go and pay off the city which had two years left on a lease between the basketball team and the city.
Wang has five years left on his lease, 22 years left on that lucrative cable TV deal. According to Nassau County officials, no one from the Wang group has told them that the franchise could be moved. The Islanders franchise has been a real estate-TV business for years. The Howard Milstein- Steven Gluckstern group spend $195 million to but the franchise and the cable TV deal from John O. Pickett in 1998 with the hopes of developing the land around the Nassau Coliseum. Pickett, himself, used to pocket most of the team’s cable TV money for himself.
Wang bought the team in 2000. In 2003, Wang and Nassau County Executive Thomas Suozzi first talked about developing the land around the Coliseum and in November 2007, Wang came up with a detailed plan for the Coliseum project.
Will Wang move the Islanders? He can’t until 2015 and needs the team if he wants to develop the property. The New York Islanders hockey franchise came into being because the NHL wanted to keep the World Hockey Association out of the New York market, it became a solely cable TV show by 1983 and helped Dolan keep all of those franchises on Long Island as he could walk into municipalities and say here is our local programming, the Islanders and News 12 Long Island. Now the team is part of a real estate deal. It isn’t about hockey but business and Newsday is just a tool that is part of a business plan.
evanjweiner@yahoo.com
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