Nets Basketball: First Newark, then Brooklyn ... and then the world
WEDNESDAY, 16 JUNE 2010 22:31
http://www.newjerseynewsroom.com/professional/nets-basketball-first-newark-then-brooklyn-and-then-the-world
BY EVAN WEINER
NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM
So how do you push your way onto the world stage and become a global sports brand name like Manchester United, Michael Jordan and Tiger Woods? That is the question that Irina Pavlova will be attempting to answer in the upcoming months as she leads the campaign to make the New Jersey, soon-to-be Brooklyn Nets a player on the world stage.
The former majority leader of the United States House of Representatives Tip O'Neill joked that all politics is local and sports owners believed that all sports is local but that is no longer the case. Manchester United is better known as ManU and is a huge worldwide brand. ManU and other football (soccer) teams that have global name recognition but no National Basketball Association franchise is on that level.
New Nets owner Russia's Mikhail Prokhorov may be able to elevate the New Jersey, soon-to-be Brooklyn, Nets to that lofty perch but there is much work to be done locally whether it is in Newark or Brooklyn. Prokhorov's Nets franchise is scheduled to make a stop in Newark for two years before heading through either the Lincoln or Holland Tunnel and over either the Brooklyn or Manhattan Bridge or through the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel to the new Brooklyn arena.
So how do you make the Nets not only Moscow's team but Beijing's team?
"That's only the first step," said Pavlova, who is the President of Prokhorov's Onexim Sports and Entertainment, talking about her owner's purchase of the Nets. "We also have one of the two (NBA) Chinese players (Yi Jianlian) on our team that we are very excited about. I think really is no limit to how global the New Jersey Nets brand can become. I think Mikhail Prokhorov brings a new dimension to this team."
According to Nets President Rod Thorn, the Nets will be in China for pre-season games and will play two regular season games in London, England, which means the Nets franchise is about ready to enter the global stage. But again there is a matter of taking care of business at home.
"I think it is going to be a fluid process, it is not just three things we need to do get there," said Pavlova. "We have the move (from the Meadowlands to Newark), we have a very exciting summer ahead of us and I think we will look at it as more if you look at Michael Jordan or you look at Tiger Woods, there are both an international brand. I think our strategy is going to evolve around building the New Jersey Nets into something like that where the name transcends borders and cultures and countries."
The Nets franchise is moving. The Meadowlands is in the rear view mirror and there is a temporary stop in New Jersey before the migration across the Upper New York Bay to Brooklyn. Getting from point A (the Meadowlands) to Point C (Brooklyn) is not as easy as getting on Route 3 and hopping through the Lincoln Tunnel and turning to south to get to the Manhattan Bridge and then to the new Atlantic Yards building. How do you go from Point A to Point C?
"U-haul," laughed Pavlova. "Obviously it is a complicated process but it has been in the works for a while and we have a lot of support from a lot of our constituents. It is not easy but it is going to get done."
The Nets organization may have to go through three fan bases in the New York City area by the time the team is ready to become a player on the global stage. There is the fan base that was left behind at the Meadowlands, there will be an interim stop in Newark and then Brooklyn. NBA teams, along with those in all other sports, rely on a lot of corporate support. Will the corporate base that bought luxury boxes and club seats at the Meadowlands move to Newark and then will that money move to Brooklyn or will new corporate money be poured into the Nets and can the team induce the New Jersey corporate dollars to cross two tunnels or bridges to get to Brooklyn?
"We definitely hope our fans will follow us and that we gain new ones. We welcome everyone," she said.
The Brooklyn arena will be the fifth major venue in the New York area although it will be the newest one in 2012. There are plans to renovate the Charles Dolan-family owned Madison Square Garden in Manhattan, there are the two New Jersey buildings at the Meadowlands and Newark and the Nassau Coliseum out in Uniondale on the Island.
Chris Botta on his Islanders Point Blank website reported that the New York Mets ownership group, the Wilpon family (who are New York City real estate people), have brought in another real estate company – Jones, Lang and LaSalle – to kick the tires and explore the possibility of building an arena in Queens in the junkyards across the way from the Mets' new stadium.
Dolan's Newsday newspaper dismissed Botta's story but that property has been eyed by developers and once was mentioned by Donald Trump back in 1984 as a possible home for a new football stadium for his United States New Jersey Generals. Can six arenas in such a small area co-exist?
"To be honest with you, I am not following everything to same extent you mention, so I am not familiar with the Islanders situation," said Pavlova. "We broke ground in March (in Brooklyn), we are going ahead with it. So far everything is going smoothly and we are hope it will continue to go that way. We are planning to open in two years. So the season of 2012-23, we plan to be there."
How far into the building process is the Brooklyn arena?
"They're digging," said Pavlova.
The Nets basketball franchise has been around since 1967, first as the New Jersey Americans, Teaneck-based American Basketball Association squad then as the New York Nets between 1968 and 1977 in various buildings on Long Island and then back to New Jersey in 1977.
The team moved into the Meadowlands in 1981. Despite having Dr. J and winning two ABA titles in 1974 and 1976 and joining the NBA in 1976, the team has never captured the attention of the tri-state area like the Manhattan-based New York Knicks. Getting equal attention in New York has been a tough go for decades, so will it be easier to get global attention?
"I can't tell you exactly how it is going to go," said Pavlova. "Obviously we will have a marketing team that will work on that. It is not an overnight process but that's in the plan."
A Russian owner, a pre-season in China and regular season games in London could change the Nets perceived perception. People have a perceived perception of the Nets which is probably not deserved. New Jersey has had some NBA success but the Meadowlands and New Jersey have never been fairly compared to the Garden by the New York media even though Sumner Redstone once threatened to move his New York Rangers franchise to New Jersey and his Knicks to the Nets old Nassau Coliseum venue if he didn't get a break in property taxes and the electric bill at the Garden in the early 1980s. Redstone got both. Redstone had no problems with New Jersey for his hockey team but the New York media has never bought New Jersey or Long Island for that matter as the big time even though the National Football League Giants and Jets played across the street from the Meadowlands Arena and the Jets trained next to the Nassau Coliseum.
Again, it is all about perceived perception.
Rod Thorn, an NBA lifer who played in the league when teams were still moving from city to city back in the 1960s, would like to elevate the Nets franchise onto the global stage.
"I think that certainly is a lofty goal," said Thorn. "Something that we will obviously aspire to. We have a leg up by having an owner like Mikhail who is known all over the world and has owned sports teams before. That is something to really look forward to. I think our going to China has more to do with us having Yi right now than it does anything else and then we are also going to London in March to play regular season games. So, it is exciting, there are a lot of experiences that we are going to have here in the next couple of years and everybody is looking forward to it.
"Basketball is an international sport, teams play all over the world. So there is a base for basketball virtually anywhere. Pre-season for China. Two games in London."
Thorn started in the NBA in 1963 when the league barely had a TV contract, the NBA was not seen on national TV in the United States in 1961-62, and Chicago had just moved to Baltimore. Thorn was drafted by the Baltimore Bullets in 1963. Thorn also played for the St. Louis Hawks, a franchise that moved to Atlanta in 1968. The NBA of Thorn's youth only shares the initials NBA with today's league which is an international business.
"Not really," was Thorn's response when asked if he thought the NBA would grow into a global presence. "But during my time over there (with the NBA office between 1986-2000), the league really became more involved in international play with the McDonald's Open first (in 1987) and by participating in the Olympics and World Championships, so it happened while I was there, I didn't even think about things like that."
Now Thorn is running a team with an owner who plans to make the Nets brand a global presence along side of Manchester United and icons like Michael Jordan, Tiger Woods and Lebron James. It is all about getting the product in front of people whether it is in Moscow, Beijing or London. Prokhorov is planning to push the Nets onto the global stage which is so un-Nets-like.
Evan Weiner is an author, radio-TV commentator and lecturer on "The Politics of Sports Business" and can be reached at evanjweiner@yahoo.com
LAST UPDATED ( WEDNESDAY, 16 JUNE 2010 22:31 )
Showing posts with label Michael Jordan. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Michael Jordan. Show all posts
Thursday, June 17, 2010
Thursday, November 5, 2009
“Money, It’s Gotta Be the Shoes.”
http://www.mcnsports.com/en/node/7568
“Money, It’s Gotta Be the Shoes.”
By Evan Weiner
November 5, 2009
4:00 PM EST
(New York, N. Y.) – American sportswriters can rejoice, the college basketball season has started and now American sports journalists like Seth Davis can get back to what they enjoy the most --- watching college basketball games --- without the little interruptions of the off season of 2009 like the troubles at the Binghamton University in central New York, Rick Pitino’s extortion problem with a waitress in Kentucky, and coach John Calipari jumping to Kentucky just before the NCAA invalidated his Memphis State 2008 NCAA tournament runner up finish because one of Calipari’s players -- Derrick Rose -- had his SAT invalidated by the NCAA. USC coach Tim Floyd’s resignation after the NCAA’s investigation of the recruitment of O. J. Mayo, some players backing out of their commitments to play at a school.
Davis wrote in August in his CNNSI column that college basketball needed some feel-good stories and that he was not feeling too good about the off-season.
Davis and his ilk don’t like it when outside business influences college basketball but college basketball is a business and in the college industry it is just second to college football complex in producing revenues for members of the National Collegiate Athletic Association.
The sports writing community still buys into the student athlete fairytale that sprang up in the 1920s despite all the evidence that suggests that college sports is made up of money partnerships between the colleges and TV networks, colleges and marketing partners, money that pours in from boosters, the building of new or renovation of arenas and stadiums complete with revenue producing club seats and luxury boxes and in-venue eateries with big prices on parking and heavy duty sales of school related merchandise.
The NCAA gets $545 million annually from CBS following the 2006 signing of a CBS-NCAA partnership that is worth $6 billion over an 11-year period. The NCAA also enjoys a federal gift -- tax-exempt status.
The feel good start to the season has already evaporated because Michael Jordan’s son decided to wear an Air Jordan brand basketball shoe instead of an adidas shoe in a game. The problem is that Marcus Jordan is a member of the University of Central Florida’s basketball team and that school had a five-year deal with adidas that requires all University of Central Florida athletes to use and wear adidas products.
Jordan wore his father’s shoe, which is manufactured by NIKE, in a game against St. Leo. adidas didn’t like that so the sneaker company terminated the deal with the school and cost the school money.
College sports is a business and this is where the sportswriters created college sports fantasy meets reality. Marcus Jordan has lived very comfortably because of his father’s deal with Phil Knight and NIKE. Sure Jordan has a multi-year contract with the school and let’s get right to the point, a college athletic scholarship is a multi-year deal that gives him the right to play sports at the school in exchange for a scholarship. Any athlete also gives up various rights to the school including his (or her) name on merchandise which the school or the school’s license holder sells to consumers with the athlete receiving nothing in return.
The whole issue of sponsorships and marketing partnerships between NCAA member schools and the NIKE, adidas and other companies like EA Sports is never really addressed with any sort of constant seriousness. The old saw is the players get a scholarship and they should be happy with that and the schools run deficits in having many athletic teams with the only money makers being football and basketball.
So the attitude is shut up with any criticism and let us run our business and be grateful you are covering a major event and don’t make waves. Sports journalists who follow college usually tow the line and enjoy the game. That is the beauty of sports; newspapers give free coverage along with magazines which helps market the product.
Television networks, regional and national cable TV networks have to pay for games or engage in a revenue sharing deal and then colleges allow some highlights from games as the non-rights holders (and even rights holders) are restricted to a certain amount of time. Still there is some free coverage at news conferences and after game interviews. But over-the-air TV is not capable of producing investigative reporting and most cable TV news reporting is either endless highlights with grade D talent trying to deliver funny lines or like in the news division, people on talk shows saying nothing while making a lot of noise. Radio is just carnival barking so real issues are never brought up except in a few cases. Partners like CBS and ESPN will not do true investigative reports into the industry.
The NCAA is making millions off of football players even when they aren’t playing in the video game genre. The NCAA cannot use a players name but in the video games there a major similarities between well known college players and the players portrayed in a game, so much so that Sam Keller filed a class action suit on behalf of himself and others because he feels EA Sports and the NCAA used his likeness in a video game and he did not receive compensation.
The NCAA claims it does not violate any players rights and the sports organization has by-laws that prohibit the commercial licensing of a player’s name picture of likeness. Of course if that were the case, CBS would not be able to promote the NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament with video of players in commercials pushing the tournament. Nor could ESPN, various regional sports cable TV networks or other NCAA partners. But there is a Form 08-3a that a player must sign in order to receive a scholarship that allows the NCAA or a third party NCAA partner (like CBS) to use a players name in championships, activities, events and programs.
The student-athlete gives up marketing rights. His or her coach does not nor does the school. The player is getting a scholarship and that should be more than enough. The players should be grateful that a sneaker company is giving them a shoe.
The school’s coach gets endorsement money from the sneaker company, the athlete – the stars of the show – get nothing. Jordan is in a unique position, he has money unlike a good many college athletes in Division I who are barred from making more than a NCAA dictated set amount of money for the year.
The whole college sports industry never gets a close scrutiny from Davis and his colleagues and that also may stem from the newspaper industry’s cozy relationship with sports. Newspaper executives (and sportswriters) believe that sports coverage is a driving force in newspaper daily sales (although the industry continues to lose readership and newspaper circulations have fallen about 10 percent in the last year). There is major interest in sports though as television ratings are up but people are getting sports news, really team and game information, from sources other than newspapers.
Perhaps if newspapers began reporting, real reporting, on issues that might attract more interest. It might even sell newspapers.
Jordan’s shoe story will produce a predicable response of he should be more of a team player, his decision is costing his school money and what do you expect from a spoiled rich kid? NIKE more than David Stern’s NBA publicity machine defined the Michael Jordan business brand in his early days with the Chicago Bulls. Jordan’s son understands business.
There is money in the shoes.
College sports is a business.
Marcus Jordan understood that when he wore his father’s shoes. As Mars Blackmon once said in a NIKE-Jordan commercial, “Money, It’s Gotta Be the Shoes.”
“Money, It’s Gotta Be the Shoes.”
By Evan Weiner
November 5, 2009
4:00 PM EST
(New York, N. Y.) – American sportswriters can rejoice, the college basketball season has started and now American sports journalists like Seth Davis can get back to what they enjoy the most --- watching college basketball games --- without the little interruptions of the off season of 2009 like the troubles at the Binghamton University in central New York, Rick Pitino’s extortion problem with a waitress in Kentucky, and coach John Calipari jumping to Kentucky just before the NCAA invalidated his Memphis State 2008 NCAA tournament runner up finish because one of Calipari’s players -- Derrick Rose -- had his SAT invalidated by the NCAA. USC coach Tim Floyd’s resignation after the NCAA’s investigation of the recruitment of O. J. Mayo, some players backing out of their commitments to play at a school.
Davis wrote in August in his CNNSI column that college basketball needed some feel-good stories and that he was not feeling too good about the off-season.
Davis and his ilk don’t like it when outside business influences college basketball but college basketball is a business and in the college industry it is just second to college football complex in producing revenues for members of the National Collegiate Athletic Association.
The sports writing community still buys into the student athlete fairytale that sprang up in the 1920s despite all the evidence that suggests that college sports is made up of money partnerships between the colleges and TV networks, colleges and marketing partners, money that pours in from boosters, the building of new or renovation of arenas and stadiums complete with revenue producing club seats and luxury boxes and in-venue eateries with big prices on parking and heavy duty sales of school related merchandise.
The NCAA gets $545 million annually from CBS following the 2006 signing of a CBS-NCAA partnership that is worth $6 billion over an 11-year period. The NCAA also enjoys a federal gift -- tax-exempt status.
The feel good start to the season has already evaporated because Michael Jordan’s son decided to wear an Air Jordan brand basketball shoe instead of an adidas shoe in a game. The problem is that Marcus Jordan is a member of the University of Central Florida’s basketball team and that school had a five-year deal with adidas that requires all University of Central Florida athletes to use and wear adidas products.
Jordan wore his father’s shoe, which is manufactured by NIKE, in a game against St. Leo. adidas didn’t like that so the sneaker company terminated the deal with the school and cost the school money.
College sports is a business and this is where the sportswriters created college sports fantasy meets reality. Marcus Jordan has lived very comfortably because of his father’s deal with Phil Knight and NIKE. Sure Jordan has a multi-year contract with the school and let’s get right to the point, a college athletic scholarship is a multi-year deal that gives him the right to play sports at the school in exchange for a scholarship. Any athlete also gives up various rights to the school including his (or her) name on merchandise which the school or the school’s license holder sells to consumers with the athlete receiving nothing in return.
The whole issue of sponsorships and marketing partnerships between NCAA member schools and the NIKE, adidas and other companies like EA Sports is never really addressed with any sort of constant seriousness. The old saw is the players get a scholarship and they should be happy with that and the schools run deficits in having many athletic teams with the only money makers being football and basketball.
So the attitude is shut up with any criticism and let us run our business and be grateful you are covering a major event and don’t make waves. Sports journalists who follow college usually tow the line and enjoy the game. That is the beauty of sports; newspapers give free coverage along with magazines which helps market the product.
Television networks, regional and national cable TV networks have to pay for games or engage in a revenue sharing deal and then colleges allow some highlights from games as the non-rights holders (and even rights holders) are restricted to a certain amount of time. Still there is some free coverage at news conferences and after game interviews. But over-the-air TV is not capable of producing investigative reporting and most cable TV news reporting is either endless highlights with grade D talent trying to deliver funny lines or like in the news division, people on talk shows saying nothing while making a lot of noise. Radio is just carnival barking so real issues are never brought up except in a few cases. Partners like CBS and ESPN will not do true investigative reports into the industry.
The NCAA is making millions off of football players even when they aren’t playing in the video game genre. The NCAA cannot use a players name but in the video games there a major similarities between well known college players and the players portrayed in a game, so much so that Sam Keller filed a class action suit on behalf of himself and others because he feels EA Sports and the NCAA used his likeness in a video game and he did not receive compensation.
The NCAA claims it does not violate any players rights and the sports organization has by-laws that prohibit the commercial licensing of a player’s name picture of likeness. Of course if that were the case, CBS would not be able to promote the NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament with video of players in commercials pushing the tournament. Nor could ESPN, various regional sports cable TV networks or other NCAA partners. But there is a Form 08-3a that a player must sign in order to receive a scholarship that allows the NCAA or a third party NCAA partner (like CBS) to use a players name in championships, activities, events and programs.
The student-athlete gives up marketing rights. His or her coach does not nor does the school. The player is getting a scholarship and that should be more than enough. The players should be grateful that a sneaker company is giving them a shoe.
The school’s coach gets endorsement money from the sneaker company, the athlete – the stars of the show – get nothing. Jordan is in a unique position, he has money unlike a good many college athletes in Division I who are barred from making more than a NCAA dictated set amount of money for the year.
The whole college sports industry never gets a close scrutiny from Davis and his colleagues and that also may stem from the newspaper industry’s cozy relationship with sports. Newspaper executives (and sportswriters) believe that sports coverage is a driving force in newspaper daily sales (although the industry continues to lose readership and newspaper circulations have fallen about 10 percent in the last year). There is major interest in sports though as television ratings are up but people are getting sports news, really team and game information, from sources other than newspapers.
Perhaps if newspapers began reporting, real reporting, on issues that might attract more interest. It might even sell newspapers.
Jordan’s shoe story will produce a predicable response of he should be more of a team player, his decision is costing his school money and what do you expect from a spoiled rich kid? NIKE more than David Stern’s NBA publicity machine defined the Michael Jordan business brand in his early days with the Chicago Bulls. Jordan’s son understands business.
There is money in the shoes.
College sports is a business.
Marcus Jordan understood that when he wore his father’s shoes. As Mars Blackmon once said in a NIKE-Jordan commercial, “Money, It’s Gotta Be the Shoes.”
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