What Would Lebron Really Mean in New York?
By Evan Weiner
July 1, 2010
http://www.examiner.com/examiner/x-3926-Business-of-Sports-Examiner~y2010m7d1-What-Would-Lebron-Really-Mean-in-New-York
(New York, N. Y.) -- New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg wants the Knicks to sign Lebron James. Bloomberg's city is a financial mess with teachers getting fired and services being cutback. New York State is a financial disaster. Of course Bloomberg should not even be the city's mayor as he bypassed a law that term limited city elected officials to two terms (Rudy Giuliani left office because of term limits) but that is a story for another day. Bloomberg won last November for a third time and is the mayor.
Here is the rub with Bloomberg and his want of Lebron James in Manhattan.
Madison Square Garden does not pay city property taxes. It may be as much as $14 million a year that does not go into the city's coffers. Lebron James salary would be about $14 million a year. If the Garden's owners, the Dolan family (a family that made their fortune off of the government because of laws governing the cable TV business) paid the tax, perhaps some of those Knicks fans who are losing their jobs because the city is broke might be retained in their jobs.
(The Dolans did not negotiate the property tax deal, they inherited the break when they bought the Garden in 1995 with the ITT Corporation.)
The Dolans themselves have been cutting back on their "media empire" for a long time. Their News12s in various parts of the New York City metropolitan area have seen a departure of reporters and the Dolan's newspaper, Newsday, just got concessions from workers which will result in five to 10 percent wage cutbacks. The Dolans have money for players but seem to have short arms when reaching into their pockets when it comes to paying reporters and property taxes.
But sports is fantasyland and Lebron James going to the Knicks would be a feel good story for long suffering Knicks fans.
The sports pundits will talk about just how much money Lebron James will pump into the city. That's assuming he lives in the city. There are New York players whose residents are in Florida or in other states where there is no state income tax. They happen to play in New York.
But the "Trickle Down" theory is in play. Surely Lebron would bring more people into New York to see him play for the Knicks and that would mean more money to the city?
That's not true.
The Knicks play two pre-season games in October, then just 41 games between November and April and those dates are scattered. The playoffs would bring a few more dates but certainly nothing that would add up for the city. With or without Lebron or a number of players who would make the Knicks better, the city would not stand to make much. Economic impact is very overrated. People have a finite amount of dollars to spend on entertainment, if it doesn't go to the Knicks, it would go somewhere else in the city or in the metropolitan area.
There would be few people who would plan a trip to New York because of Lebron. As far as being a tourist attraction, Lebron's presence in New York City would pale in comparison to the amount of people who want to see Broadway shows or maybe the Big East Tournament.
Most sports is local. There are few teams that can pull people in and those teams are basically college football teams who travel with large contingents and perhaps St. Louis Cardinals fans.
Lebron doesn't even have the pull of the New York City Marathon. You want an event that brings a multitude of people and a ton of money into town? The Marathon attracts runners globally. There are about 100,000 people who want a shot at the 2010 New York City Marathon. Only 37,000 runners get to participate and an awful lot of those runners are not from New York who rent hotel and motel rooms, dine at area eateries and put money into not only the city but surrounding areas. The Marathon has international travel partners in about 40 countries. Lebron is a one man corporation but he is not going to be a money making attraction to the city and Bloomberg's budget.
Lebron is not as valuable to Bloomberg as the shows in the Javits Center such as the Toy Show or the Jewelry Show. Lebron is not in the same league as the Model United Nations which brings about 5,000 teenagers from all over the world to participate. Lebron cannot compete with Fashion Week or Fleet Week. The Javits Center events, the UN events including the annual world leaders session and the Model United Nations bring not only participants but guests into the area and those guests use hotels/motels and restaurants. Lebron is not the same draw as the US Open in Flushing Meadows in the late summer. How many Europeans will buy plane tickets and book hotels with various travel packages to watch Lebron for a game here or there when they can see two weeks of championship tennis and be in New York City?
Cities compete for conventions.
Conventions make money, sports teams make money for owners and players but in many ways they cannot even compete with a local 24 hour a day supermarket in terms of real economic impact.
A few people might get jobs helping Lebron if he signs with the Knicks but as far as a municipal money making machine. He is not.
There is some other nonsense about New York being the biggest stage in the world. Lebron's popularity began while he was in prep school and he has been in Cleveland, a decaying rust belt city, for the past seven years. He can make the same endorsement money in Cleveland that he can in New York. This is not the 1960s where Mickey Mantle ruled the roost along with other New York Yankees and New York Giants football players in terms of Madison Avenue. Henry Aaron was an afterthought in Milwaukee in the 1950s and 1960s but that was a different time.
New York isn't even the biggest NBA stage. It is just another franchise in the 30 team NBA. The Garden is an overrated building that has been living off the glory days of another Madison Square Garden that was located about a mile north of the place. Garden officials were so disgusted with the four-year-old building in 1972 that they looked at possibly relocating the Knicks and the NHL's Rangers to the New Jersey Meadowlands. Gulf and Western didn't think so highly of the building a decade later after the bought the place in the mid-1970s. In the early 1980s, the Garden owners were screaming that they could no longer be competitive in the then 15 year old building and unless New York City and New York State gave them a property tax break, the Knicks would move to Nassau County and the Rangers to the Meadowlands.
So much for sentimentally. It is all business.
New York Governor Mario Cuomo and New York Mayor Ed Koch cut a deal with the Garden which relieved the arena ownership of the burden of paying city property tax and the arena's electric bill. Everyone in the Con Ed power grid got to pay a portion of the Garden's electric bill. That has gone on for nearly three decades even though neither Cuomo nor Koch though the law was passed by the legislature in Albany in 1982 would last in perpetuity.
Lebron is a money making machine for Lebron and his company along with a sports team, a league and his marketing partners. Knicks ticket prices will go up with Lebron, of course they go up even when the team is bad.
There isn't that much room to expand the fan base at the Garden for Knicks games as remarkably the team is still selling tickets at a high volume at 98.7 percent capacity in a building that seats about 19,500 people in 2009-10. With the teetering economy, a bad record and a lot of sports competition for the dollar in the New York area, it is actually incredible that the Knicks are still sellable. The Yankees cannot sell high priced home plate ticket in a new stadium with a championship team, the Mets attendance is way down and the New York Jets have slashed prices on about a quarter of the seats at the team's new stadium in East Rutherford, New Jersey.
Lebron would probably help Madison Square Garden's cable TV channel because more eyeballs would be on the channel and that would bring in advertising. The network might demand a higher licensing fee from multiple system operators who would then pass that along to cable TV customers which means that all cable TV subscribers that have the Garden's channel on their basic tier would have to pay for what maybe three or four percent of the audience watch---Knicks basketball.
In the world of fantasy---sports---Lebron James to the Knicks is a gift to Knicks fans. In the real world though, it is far far different. Bloomberg wants Lebron, he wanted a New Jersey-based Super Bowl also in 2014 which he got. He has green lighted hundreds of millions of dollars worth of tax breaks and subsidies for the construction of athletic facilities while presiding over job cuts because the city is broke.
Lebron James might save the Knicks from basketball mediocrity but he will do very little for the city's economy and job growth.
Evan Weiner is an author, radio-TV commentator and speaker on the "Politics of Sports Business and can be reached at evanjweiner@yahoo.com
Showing posts with label James Dolan. Show all posts
Showing posts with label James Dolan. Show all posts
Thursday, July 1, 2010
Saturday, May 8, 2010
A New York Tabloid’s Seduction of Lebron James
A New York Tabloid’s Seduction of Lebron James
By Evan Weiner
May 7, 2010
(New York, N. Y.) -- United States security officials are still investigating the Times Square bombing attempt, Greece is falling off the economic cliff, there is a flood cleanup in the heart of Nashville, the BP oil spill has not been capped in the Gulf of Mexico, the stock market blew a fuse on Thursday, a volcano in Iceland is still throwing ash into the sky and causing some airplane disruptions in Europe, the United Kingdom had an election and Roland Martin wore an ascot on CNN which became a running joke on The Daily Show for two days yet the New York Daily News, Mort Zuckerman's New York Daily News had an open letter to Lebron James on the front page of May 8's edition, please come to New York and sign with the Knicks after James becomes a free agent on July 1. Zuckerman's headline writer had a plea to Lebron.
This Is Home.
Actually Akron, Ohio is home for Lebron.
On pages 8 and 9 of the tabloid, there were articles and then a comparison between New York and Cleveland and why New York is better. This is not an unusual Daily News tactic. When the Knicks played Indiana in the playoffs in the 1990s, the tabloid poked fun at Indianapolis and Indiana using the headline "The Knicks Versus the Hicks".
Disrespectful yes, but tabloids have no time for hurt feelings. Especially New York tabloids in the midst of in what seems to be the Hundred Years' (tabloid) War.
The "This is Home" complete with pictures of the Statue of Liberty and Lebron front page (Emma Lazarus probably wasn't thinking of Lebron when she wrote give me your tired and poor line as part of her sonnet, The New Colossus which is immortalized on a plaque at the Statue of Liberty) was just the latest New York media's love note to Lebron, the wooing of Lebron in the New York papers is akin to the Knicks trying to recruit Lebron and it appears Knicks owner James Dolan has no problem with the New York tabloids gushing over Lebron who is a free agent come July 1. Dolan who himself owns a newspaper -- Newsday -- has been quiet on the subject, he could be accused of tampering with a player under contract to another team and Newsday has not been out in front of showing love and affection for the Cleveland Cavaliers player.
Zuckerman, whose paper (along with Rupert Murdoch's New York Post, the New York Times and Newsday) put up money for the establishment of the NYC2012 Olympic Committee and himself a part owner of the Washington Redskins, cannot be serious or can he? The Daily News is in a struggle with the New York Post for tabloid domination in the New York market, neither paper puts out much of a useable product as both are filled with mayhem, murder, entertainment and sports news with a lot of sensationalism and on top of that ESPN's new New York website poached Zuckerman's product and took a number of sportswriters.
The Daily News needs readership and if Lebron and the Statue of Liberty and "This is Home" sells papers, that is fine.
The Lebron on the Saturday cover and two-page in the non-sports section articles along with a blow up of Lebron in a Knicks uniform is a thoroughly unprofessional of a journalistic endeavor however and sophomoric at best. The paper seems to be on collectively hands and knees in begging mode, please Lebron look at me status. The only thing missing was Zuckerman's star writer, Mike Lupica (who in the 1990s was Garden President Dave Checketts stenographer and MSG's chief welcome wagon host in his love letters in the sand to MSG columns and Lupica is still pining for those days when the Knicks and Rangers mattered and the Garden was either the hippest or coolest spot on Earth---perhaps he can again hire people like he did back in the 1990s to tell him how the Rangers played and write coherent columns about hockey as well) did not write the valentines to Lebron pieces but that will soon be coming from the Daily News superstar political and sports columnist as the days dwindle down to July 1.
(Love Letters in the Sand was written by J. Fred Coots. Coots also wrote Santa Claus is Coming to Town and the Rangers Victory Song – the New York Rangers fight song back in the 1930s and 40s and beyond.)
The New York tabloid papers basketball coverage have been nothing more than let’s hope Lebron falls in love with New York cheerleaders and the papers are perhaps one step ahead of the New York sports talk radio shows in their infatuation. The hosts of those radio shows also pine for Lebron's love for New York.
Zuckerman, who has the very serious magazine, US News and World Report, has not mentioned in any of his coverage that Lebron's maximum annual NBA contract would allow him to make about $14 million a year is about the same amount of money that Madison Square Garden would pay in property taxes except Dolan doesn't have to pay property taxes. Dolan doesn't pay because in the early 1980s, Gulf and Western, then Garden owners, somehow convinced Mayor Ed Koch, the New York State Legislature and New York Governor Mario Cuomo that the NBA's Knicks and the NHL's Rangers could not be financially viable and could not compete with small market teams for talent without a reduction in property taxes and help with the Con Ed electric bill.
The Knicks and Rangers stayed in a valuable parcel of real estate not far from Macy's or Times Square, Gulf and Western got the property off the city's books and Con Ed customers paid for the privilege of having the two teams stay in Manhattan by picking up the Garden's electric tab. The New York State-Garden deal seems to be one of those that will last in perpetuity or eternity.
Zuckerman seems to be trying to play the Jack Murphy role in getting two big league sports franchise in San Diego in 1961 and 1969 in the pursuit of Lebron James. There is no secret that newspapers like to shape public opinion and make endorsements for political candidates and public policy. But a newspapers main goal is not reporting news per se. The news is the lure or the bait for people to look at the newspaper and check out the advertisements. It is the ad money that newspapers have lived and died with. Ad money has been evaporating for newspapers over the past decade and the product has suffered as writers have been let go.
The Lebron on the front cover is a ploy to get people to sample the Daily News. Zuckerman is not Jack Murphy though. Jack Murphy is a forgotten figure in sports and probably belongs in the Pro Football Hall of Fame and the Baseball Hall of Fame as a contributor. Murphy was a columnist and the sports editor of the San Diego Union in the 1950s. San Diego was a quiet, navy town in the 1950s but Murphy reached out to the owner of the American Football League's Los Angeles Chargers, Barron Hilton (the grandfather of Paris Hilton) and began a city pursuit of Hilton's football team. Murphy did convince Hilton that San Diego was a much better venue for his fan-challenged Los Angeles Chargers but there was a potential short term and long term problem.
San Diego lacked a suitable professional football stadium. With Hilton's team ready to move southward but not having a home, Murphy began writing that the Chargers needed a real stadium not the patchwork Balboa Stadium (some renovations at the facility to make it an acceptable AFL stadium were done by Chargers players including Jack Kemp and Paul Maguire) which sat 34,000 people. Murphy pushed to get public support in a referendum to build a real stadium and voters responded by passing the $27 million stadium ballot in November 1965. The new stadium opened in 1967 with the Chargers football team as the main tenant. After Murphy passed away in 1980, San Diego Stadium became Jack Murphy Stadium. The name didn't stick along as changing economics forced a naming rights partner's logo on the stadium in exchange for multi-million dollar checks that went to help pay off players salaries.
A series of factors led both the American and National Leagues in baseball to expand in 1969. Neither league had an expansion plans on the table but when Kansas City A's owner took his team to Oakland after the 1967 season, Missouri Senator Stuart Symington threatened Major League Baseball with stripping the antitrust exemption that the Supreme Court gave the game in 1922. Senator Symington demanded a replacement for Finley's A's as soon as possible which meant 1969.
Initially, the National League did not want to add teams until 1971 but with Symington breathing down Baseball's neck and the American League committing expansion franchises to Kansas City and Seattle, National League owners took San Diego as one territory and Montreal or Buffalo for the other expansion team. Montreal officials were about to secure a ballpark while San Diego had a major league stadium ready to go. Buffalo did not get a team and was a fallback in the event Montreal could not produce a stadium.
Murphy got two franchises into San Diego. Zuckerman waves pom poms for the Knicks. It would be interesting to see how Zuckerman would have reacted if he had more of a financial stake in the Washington Redskins and papers in other markets wanted the Redskins best player and spent years courting the superstar player.
NBA Commissioner David Stern cannot stop Zuckerman's bouquets to Lebron and Stern must know that the Knicks from Dolan to the team's president Donnie Walsh to others in the Garden, while not actively encouraging sportswriters and the papers to seduce Lebron are also not discouraging writers to blow kisses at Lebron. Sportswriters for all their talk about being professionals are fans too and are happy to cover a winning team. The New York Knicks basketball franchise has not been a good product for years.
Lebron is not going to sell any papers anyway. Those days are long gone; newspapers have too much competition from other media sources. But don't tell that to Mort on Rupert. They are in a tabloid war and if Lebron or Dwayne Wade, individually or together, don't come to New York, there is always Carmelo Anthony waiting for free agency in 2011. In fact some New York basketball fans, rather writers, think that Lebron will spurn them and are already making eyes at the Denver Nuggets player. Until Lebron makes a decision, the newspaper seduction of Lebron James will continue in New York.
Evan Weiner is an author, radio-TV commentator and a lecturer on "The Politics of Sports Business." He is available for speaking at evanjweiner@yahoo.com
By Evan Weiner
May 7, 2010
(New York, N. Y.) -- United States security officials are still investigating the Times Square bombing attempt, Greece is falling off the economic cliff, there is a flood cleanup in the heart of Nashville, the BP oil spill has not been capped in the Gulf of Mexico, the stock market blew a fuse on Thursday, a volcano in Iceland is still throwing ash into the sky and causing some airplane disruptions in Europe, the United Kingdom had an election and Roland Martin wore an ascot on CNN which became a running joke on The Daily Show for two days yet the New York Daily News, Mort Zuckerman's New York Daily News had an open letter to Lebron James on the front page of May 8's edition, please come to New York and sign with the Knicks after James becomes a free agent on July 1. Zuckerman's headline writer had a plea to Lebron.
This Is Home.
Actually Akron, Ohio is home for Lebron.
On pages 8 and 9 of the tabloid, there were articles and then a comparison between New York and Cleveland and why New York is better. This is not an unusual Daily News tactic. When the Knicks played Indiana in the playoffs in the 1990s, the tabloid poked fun at Indianapolis and Indiana using the headline "The Knicks Versus the Hicks".
Disrespectful yes, but tabloids have no time for hurt feelings. Especially New York tabloids in the midst of in what seems to be the Hundred Years' (tabloid) War.
The "This is Home" complete with pictures of the Statue of Liberty and Lebron front page (Emma Lazarus probably wasn't thinking of Lebron when she wrote give me your tired and poor line as part of her sonnet, The New Colossus which is immortalized on a plaque at the Statue of Liberty) was just the latest New York media's love note to Lebron, the wooing of Lebron in the New York papers is akin to the Knicks trying to recruit Lebron and it appears Knicks owner James Dolan has no problem with the New York tabloids gushing over Lebron who is a free agent come July 1. Dolan who himself owns a newspaper -- Newsday -- has been quiet on the subject, he could be accused of tampering with a player under contract to another team and Newsday has not been out in front of showing love and affection for the Cleveland Cavaliers player.
Zuckerman, whose paper (along with Rupert Murdoch's New York Post, the New York Times and Newsday) put up money for the establishment of the NYC2012 Olympic Committee and himself a part owner of the Washington Redskins, cannot be serious or can he? The Daily News is in a struggle with the New York Post for tabloid domination in the New York market, neither paper puts out much of a useable product as both are filled with mayhem, murder, entertainment and sports news with a lot of sensationalism and on top of that ESPN's new New York website poached Zuckerman's product and took a number of sportswriters.
The Daily News needs readership and if Lebron and the Statue of Liberty and "This is Home" sells papers, that is fine.
The Lebron on the Saturday cover and two-page in the non-sports section articles along with a blow up of Lebron in a Knicks uniform is a thoroughly unprofessional of a journalistic endeavor however and sophomoric at best. The paper seems to be on collectively hands and knees in begging mode, please Lebron look at me status. The only thing missing was Zuckerman's star writer, Mike Lupica (who in the 1990s was Garden President Dave Checketts stenographer and MSG's chief welcome wagon host in his love letters in the sand to MSG columns and Lupica is still pining for those days when the Knicks and Rangers mattered and the Garden was either the hippest or coolest spot on Earth---perhaps he can again hire people like he did back in the 1990s to tell him how the Rangers played and write coherent columns about hockey as well) did not write the valentines to Lebron pieces but that will soon be coming from the Daily News superstar political and sports columnist as the days dwindle down to July 1.
(Love Letters in the Sand was written by J. Fred Coots. Coots also wrote Santa Claus is Coming to Town and the Rangers Victory Song – the New York Rangers fight song back in the 1930s and 40s and beyond.)
The New York tabloid papers basketball coverage have been nothing more than let’s hope Lebron falls in love with New York cheerleaders and the papers are perhaps one step ahead of the New York sports talk radio shows in their infatuation. The hosts of those radio shows also pine for Lebron's love for New York.
Zuckerman, who has the very serious magazine, US News and World Report, has not mentioned in any of his coverage that Lebron's maximum annual NBA contract would allow him to make about $14 million a year is about the same amount of money that Madison Square Garden would pay in property taxes except Dolan doesn't have to pay property taxes. Dolan doesn't pay because in the early 1980s, Gulf and Western, then Garden owners, somehow convinced Mayor Ed Koch, the New York State Legislature and New York Governor Mario Cuomo that the NBA's Knicks and the NHL's Rangers could not be financially viable and could not compete with small market teams for talent without a reduction in property taxes and help with the Con Ed electric bill.
The Knicks and Rangers stayed in a valuable parcel of real estate not far from Macy's or Times Square, Gulf and Western got the property off the city's books and Con Ed customers paid for the privilege of having the two teams stay in Manhattan by picking up the Garden's electric tab. The New York State-Garden deal seems to be one of those that will last in perpetuity or eternity.
Zuckerman seems to be trying to play the Jack Murphy role in getting two big league sports franchise in San Diego in 1961 and 1969 in the pursuit of Lebron James. There is no secret that newspapers like to shape public opinion and make endorsements for political candidates and public policy. But a newspapers main goal is not reporting news per se. The news is the lure or the bait for people to look at the newspaper and check out the advertisements. It is the ad money that newspapers have lived and died with. Ad money has been evaporating for newspapers over the past decade and the product has suffered as writers have been let go.
The Lebron on the front cover is a ploy to get people to sample the Daily News. Zuckerman is not Jack Murphy though. Jack Murphy is a forgotten figure in sports and probably belongs in the Pro Football Hall of Fame and the Baseball Hall of Fame as a contributor. Murphy was a columnist and the sports editor of the San Diego Union in the 1950s. San Diego was a quiet, navy town in the 1950s but Murphy reached out to the owner of the American Football League's Los Angeles Chargers, Barron Hilton (the grandfather of Paris Hilton) and began a city pursuit of Hilton's football team. Murphy did convince Hilton that San Diego was a much better venue for his fan-challenged Los Angeles Chargers but there was a potential short term and long term problem.
San Diego lacked a suitable professional football stadium. With Hilton's team ready to move southward but not having a home, Murphy began writing that the Chargers needed a real stadium not the patchwork Balboa Stadium (some renovations at the facility to make it an acceptable AFL stadium were done by Chargers players including Jack Kemp and Paul Maguire) which sat 34,000 people. Murphy pushed to get public support in a referendum to build a real stadium and voters responded by passing the $27 million stadium ballot in November 1965. The new stadium opened in 1967 with the Chargers football team as the main tenant. After Murphy passed away in 1980, San Diego Stadium became Jack Murphy Stadium. The name didn't stick along as changing economics forced a naming rights partner's logo on the stadium in exchange for multi-million dollar checks that went to help pay off players salaries.
A series of factors led both the American and National Leagues in baseball to expand in 1969. Neither league had an expansion plans on the table but when Kansas City A's owner took his team to Oakland after the 1967 season, Missouri Senator Stuart Symington threatened Major League Baseball with stripping the antitrust exemption that the Supreme Court gave the game in 1922. Senator Symington demanded a replacement for Finley's A's as soon as possible which meant 1969.
Initially, the National League did not want to add teams until 1971 but with Symington breathing down Baseball's neck and the American League committing expansion franchises to Kansas City and Seattle, National League owners took San Diego as one territory and Montreal or Buffalo for the other expansion team. Montreal officials were about to secure a ballpark while San Diego had a major league stadium ready to go. Buffalo did not get a team and was a fallback in the event Montreal could not produce a stadium.
Murphy got two franchises into San Diego. Zuckerman waves pom poms for the Knicks. It would be interesting to see how Zuckerman would have reacted if he had more of a financial stake in the Washington Redskins and papers in other markets wanted the Redskins best player and spent years courting the superstar player.
NBA Commissioner David Stern cannot stop Zuckerman's bouquets to Lebron and Stern must know that the Knicks from Dolan to the team's president Donnie Walsh to others in the Garden, while not actively encouraging sportswriters and the papers to seduce Lebron are also not discouraging writers to blow kisses at Lebron. Sportswriters for all their talk about being professionals are fans too and are happy to cover a winning team. The New York Knicks basketball franchise has not been a good product for years.
Lebron is not going to sell any papers anyway. Those days are long gone; newspapers have too much competition from other media sources. But don't tell that to Mort on Rupert. They are in a tabloid war and if Lebron or Dwayne Wade, individually or together, don't come to New York, there is always Carmelo Anthony waiting for free agency in 2011. In fact some New York basketball fans, rather writers, think that Lebron will spurn them and are already making eyes at the Denver Nuggets player. Until Lebron makes a decision, the newspaper seduction of Lebron James will continue in New York.
Evan Weiner is an author, radio-TV commentator and a lecturer on "The Politics of Sports Business." He is available for speaking at evanjweiner@yahoo.com
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