Sports and Arizona's Relationship is Going to Become Quite Complicated Soon
By Evan Weiner
April 24, 2010
http://www.examiner.com/examiner/x-3926-Business-of-Sports-Examiner~y2010m4d24-Sports-and-Arizonas-relationship-is-going-to-become-quite-complicated-soon#
(New York, N. Y.) -- Has Arizona once again risked losing the Super Bowl?
No, this is not about the Arizona Cardinals football team bowing to the Pittsburgh Steelers in the 2009 Super Bowl and returning to the “Big Game”. That is merely a game on the field. But off the field there is now a big question.
How will the sports world react now that the Arizona Governor Jan Brewer and the state's two legislative bodies have passed a tough immigration law? Could Arizona lose major sporting events like the Super Bowl? The National Football League is in the midst of the league's draft and probably will not get around to comment on the new Arizona law but given the very political nature of the league and how the league is very sensitive to the NFL's image, it is probably a good thing that Glendale, Arizona is not in the running for the 2014 Super Bowl.
The new Arizona law will go into effect sometime this summer assuming that there are no court orders to stop it.
The National Football League has a history of pulling a Super Bowl from Arizona and putting the political weight of the entity known as the NFL into a lobbying position. Arizona "celebrates" Martin Luther King Day as the result of direct intervention by the National Football League in terms of dangling a Super Bowl in front of voters. In 1987, newly elected Arizona Governor Evan Mecham's first act in his new job was to erase Martin Luther King Day from the Arizona calendar as an official state holiday. That decision set off a boycott of the state with entertainers like Stevie Wonder refusing to perform in any venue in Arizona.
Governor Mecham's reasoning was simple. The Arizona legislature in 1986 and Governor Bruce Babbitt, in Mecham's opinion, created the holiday illegally.
The National Football League, in an attempt to help the Phoenix Cardinals owner Bill Bidwill to sell more seats after he misread the Phoenix-area market following the move of his Cardinals from St. Louis to Tempe in 1988, awarded Tempe the January 31, 1993 Super Bowl. But Mecham's decision created a number of problems for the league, specifically the National Football League Players Association was not too keen on playing the NFL's showcase game in a state where a governor took away the holiday and the action was supported by Senator John McCain.
In 1989, the Arizona state legislature approved a law making Martin Luther King Day a state holiday but voters needed to approve the measure. In 1990, Arizonans went to the polls and rejected the making Martin Luther King Day a state holiday. Shortly after the voters said no, the NFL said no to Arizona and pulled the January 31, 1993 game from Tempe.
The Super Bowl allegedly pumps money into the local economy although in the Phoenix-area's case it is not as much as say putting the "Big Game" in Pontiac, Michigan or Detroit or Minneapolis since a good number of "snowbirds" vacation or spent winters in warmer climates like the Phoenix-area, South Florida or the Tampa, Florida area. What the Super Bowl does do is bring "high rollers" into town and the local community hopes that the "high rollers" such as corporate CEOs like a local area and will leave a piece of their business in the area and open up a local headquarters and create jobs.
That rarely happens but it is a selling point for the local group hoping to land a Super Bowl.
The National Football League after pulling the 1993 game went back to Arizona and laid the cards out on the table telling voters if they approved the holiday in a November 1992 vote, the NFL would award the next available Super Bowl to Tempe. Arizona voters approved the 1992 ballot initiative and five months later the NFL lived up to their part of the bargain and granted Tempe the January 28, 1996 game.
The next available Super Bowl is the 2014 game but Glendale and Arizona officials are not bidding for that event which is probably a good thing for everyone involved at this point. The NFL also holds a spring meeting once every four years or so at the Arizona Biltmore in Phoenix.
There is another real sports prize that could impacted by the new Arizona law. The Glendale, Arizona stadium, that is the home to the NFL's Arizona Cardinals and hosted the 2008 Super Bowl, is one of the 18 cities that has been proposed for use by USA Bid Committee in an effort to win the FIFA World Cup in either 2018 or 2022.
The FIFA World Cup is the biggest sports event on earth.
The new law will not play well with the FIFA delegates or some of the members of the USA Bid Committee which include Houston Dynamo and Los Angeles Galaxy owner Philip Anschutz, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, comedian and Seattle Sounders FC part-owner Drew Carey, former Goldman Sachs Vice Chairman (Asia) Carlos Cordeiro, U.S. Men’s National Team player Landon Donovan, Executive Director David Downs, U.S. Soccer CEO and General Secretary Dan Flynn, U.S. Soccer Foundation President Ed Foster-Simeon, Major League Soccer Commissioner Don Garber, U.S. Soccer President and USA Bid Committee Chairman Sunil Gulati, U.S. Women’s National Team former player Mia Hamm, Walt Disney Company President and CEO Robert Iger, former U.S. Secretary of State Dr. Henry Kissinger, New England Revolution and New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft, Motion Picture Director Spike Lee, California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, University of Miami President Donna Shalala, ESPN Executive Vice President for Content John Skipper, Univision CEO Joe Uva and Washington Post CEO and Publisher Katharine Weymouth.
The Glendale stadium hosted the highest attended soccer match in the state of Arizona on February 7, 2007 when 62,462 fans watched the U.S. National team defeat Mexico, 2-0. Will the new Arizona law put a halt to international football "friendlies" in Arizona featuring Mexican teams?
Major League Baseball might be keeping a close eye on the developments in Arizona. The Chicago Cubs and the Milwaukee Brewers are looking for improvements at spring training bases in Mesa and Maryvale for their teams. Naples, Florida officials have made an offer to Cubs ownership to relocate the team's spring training facilities from Mesa to Naples.
If the National Hockey League's Phoenix Coyotes remain in Glendale, the franchise's new owners could be to host the 2012 or 2013 NHL All-Star Game. Glendale was supposed to venue of the 2011 event but the club's bankruptcy filing and financial uncertainty forced the league to move the game to Raleigh, North Carolina.
The National Collegiate Athletic Association held a "March Madness" men's basketball tournament event in Glendale in 2009. Will the NCAA bypass Glendale because of the new law?
Then there is another issue. Will athletes speak up either in favor or against the new law? Athletes now tend to shut up on issues with the exception of a handful of performers like then Dallas Mavericks basketball player Steve Nash who spoke out against the Iraq War. Wayne Gretzky supported the Iraq War. Ironically Nash now plays in Phoenix and Gretzky coached in Glendale.
Arizona is a hub of sports activities. Glendale is the home of the NFL's Arizona Cardinals and the NHL's Phoenix Coyotes. The NBA Suns and Major League Baseball's Diamondbacks reside in downtown Phoenix. There is a NASCAR event along with golf and tennis events. Fifteen Major League Baseball teams hold spring training in the Phoenix area, there are major college football, basketball and baseball programs along with minor league baseball and hockey teams scattered throughout the state. The United Football League holds training camp in Casa Grande.
There is a belief that sports is the "toy store" of life and that it is just a game, an entertainment diversion. The truth is that the toy store yarn that is constantly spun is a lie. The NFL proved that in 1991 and 1992 in Arizona. There will be a sports reaction to the legislation signed into law by Arizona Governor Jan Brewer, it is just a matter of time before a powerful sports group reacts and it just might cost Arizona a big event if history is any indication.
Evan Weiner is an author, radio-TV commentator and lecturer on "The Politics of Sports Business" and "Sports in Society." He can be reached at evanjweiner@yahoo.com
Showing posts with label NASCAR. Show all posts
Showing posts with label NASCAR. Show all posts
Saturday, April 24, 2010
Friday, June 12, 2009
NASCAR and a GM Boycott
http://www.examiner.com/x-3926-Business-of-Sports-Examiner~y2009m6d12-NASCAR-and-a-GM-Boycott
NASCAR and a GM boycott
June 12, 10:57 AM
Sam Donaldson once related his experience in what is known as talk radio, Sam was hosting a show on a Washington radio station about five years ago and his ratings were not up to par, whatever par is for these infantile, puerile, juvenile shows hosted by some desultory individual whose main job is to be a carnival barker or a pencil neck geek between commercials.
At any rate, Donaldson's program director came in and gave the long time ABC News correspondent a primer in what makes a good talk show host. Donaldson needed to be angry about everything which wasn't going to happen in 2004 for Sam who was enjoying life. Donaldson's radio show soon went the way of all flesh, radio programmers want vile and bile because that is good radio and that is all they care about. That "good radio" mantra is killing what is left of the radio industry as young people have found alternatives to radio listening and it is being reflected in radio losing ad revenue and having audiences getting older and older. Listen to the ads on “news” talk radio and it appears that everyone listening has a major illness and a drug is available for the ailment or needs life insurance or should be preparing their estates.
President Bill Clinton's signature on the 1996 Telecommunications Act which allowed radio consolidation and put a great many radio stations under the ownership of either Clear Channel or Infinity was a total disaster for the industry and radio is still reeling from that legislation.
For the record, I was a repeating guest on Donaldson's ABCNewsNow web cast in 2005.
Rush Limbaugh provides vile and bile and his act can only play in the talk radio format or perhaps the cable TV news circuit where people never let the truth get in the way of a good rant about something they consider bad. It is only entertainment.
When Limbaugh took the act to ESPN to be part of their football crew on their Countdown show in 2003, he self destructed. He went on some blather about Philadelphia Eagles quarterback Donovan McNabb which was pointless and resigned. ESPN executives knew the act and gambled that it would play well in the football field. It didn't.
Limbaugh has stayed out of the sports business since then and his act continues even though his radio bosses are bleeding money and firing people left and right. Limbaugh tangentially re-entered the sports business a few days ago when he told his listeners that they should boycott General Motors because of President Barack Obama's policies. Limbaugh wants Obama's policies to fail.
There is no need to go into Limbaugh's logic or dogma but you kind of wonder whether the France family, the people who own and run NASCAR, really agree with the radio host who by the way makes millions of dollars a year for his daily ratings and has a lifestyle that includes a luxurious Palm Beach, Florida address that is totally at odds with his listeners, some of them General Motors workers who may be out of work shortly.
General Motors, you see, is a major part of the NASCAR business. A smaller General Motors is not a good thing for France's business which has leveled off somewhat after years of growth. General Motors, Chrysler, Ford and Toyota are major players in NASCAR in funding race teams and in marketing deals including race naming rights and television ads.
France's business depends on GM to provide factory support in the various car and truck races. It appears GM will be cutting that support for a few teams and that is not good news. With both GM and Chrysler on the ropes, NASCAR needs to look elsewhere but the entire auto industry is faltering as consumers either have no money or cannot get credit to buy new cars.
If Limbaugh's listeners, and Limbaugh is not the only carnival barker out there wanting a GM boycott, shun GM, NASCAR is also going to be greatly impacted. Last July, GM dropped four of its NASCAR marketing partnership and more cuts are coming. Whether the multimillionaire Limbaugh realizes this or not, and the chances are he doesn't or will not acknowledge it, some of his listeners are being hurt by GM's rapid deterioration but that is not a concern of the desultory, as that would not make good radio. NASCAR fans are more likely to be in Limbaugh's camp because the industry tends to attract Republican supporters and started as a rural southeastern United States business which expanded nationally. That is a non disputably fact and in the 2004 Presidential Election Kenneth Mehlmann, the campaign manager for Bush-Chaney 2004 told me that he was going after "NASCAR dads" which included President George W. Bush showing up at the Daytona 500 while the Republican National Committee set up shop at the racetrack in an attempt to register potential voters.
In 1980, I witnessed the closing of one car factory in Mahwah, New Jersey. It was a Ford plant, if Limbaugh and the other carnival barkers ever thought about how their nonsense plays out, Mahwah is a perfect study for them. When the plant closes, not only did the Ford workers lose their jobs, but all of the support industries around the plant suddenly had no need to exist. These people included the personal who drove the cars out of the factory to showrooms, auto parts suppliers, the little food businesses surrounding the plant and other businesses that sold various items to workers. Mahwah lost a major taxpayer when Ford departed. Someone had to make up those lost local taxes. There is an entire economic chain that comes attached to an auto plant.
The same thing played out in North Tarrytown, New York in 1993, 3,400 workers gone and North Tarrytown lost its biggest taxpayer by the time the place finally shutdown in 1996 although some of the employees were transferred. North Tarrytown, now known as Sleepy Hollow, is still struggling to replace the old plant.
It is playing out now in American Midwest towns. But the carnival barker, the pencil neck geek or the desultory cannot discuss that aspect of the story; it would not make good radio or cable TV news.
The auto industry is a huge sports sponsor but if GM and Chrysler monies disappear someone will have to make up the loss and companies aren't spending as much money on sports sponsorship these days. Getting back to the sports angle, the American Football League in 1965 got a huge contract from NBC which pretty much assured the league's survival. Where did NBC get a good chunk of that money to pay the league? From a Chrysler sponsorship, the joke of the first Super Bowl in January 1967 was not only was it the NFL versus the AFL, the Green Bay Packers versus the Kansas City Chiefs, but it was also CBS, the NFL's network, versus NBC, the AFL's network and Ford, the NFL's sponsor vs. Dodge, the AFL's sponsor.
Why people pay attention to the desultory or carnival barker, and really it is the news media that pays attention for whatever reason, is a good question. The desultory brings nothing to the table. Just ask NASCAR people what a boycott of GM would do and you probably would get a very different answer from the adults who run that business than the puerile, juvenile, desultory, pencil neck geek, carnival barker.
evanjweiner@yahoo.com
NASCAR and a GM boycott
June 12, 10:57 AM
Sam Donaldson once related his experience in what is known as talk radio, Sam was hosting a show on a Washington radio station about five years ago and his ratings were not up to par, whatever par is for these infantile, puerile, juvenile shows hosted by some desultory individual whose main job is to be a carnival barker or a pencil neck geek between commercials.
At any rate, Donaldson's program director came in and gave the long time ABC News correspondent a primer in what makes a good talk show host. Donaldson needed to be angry about everything which wasn't going to happen in 2004 for Sam who was enjoying life. Donaldson's radio show soon went the way of all flesh, radio programmers want vile and bile because that is good radio and that is all they care about. That "good radio" mantra is killing what is left of the radio industry as young people have found alternatives to radio listening and it is being reflected in radio losing ad revenue and having audiences getting older and older. Listen to the ads on “news” talk radio and it appears that everyone listening has a major illness and a drug is available for the ailment or needs life insurance or should be preparing their estates.
President Bill Clinton's signature on the 1996 Telecommunications Act which allowed radio consolidation and put a great many radio stations under the ownership of either Clear Channel or Infinity was a total disaster for the industry and radio is still reeling from that legislation.
For the record, I was a repeating guest on Donaldson's ABCNewsNow web cast in 2005.
Rush Limbaugh provides vile and bile and his act can only play in the talk radio format or perhaps the cable TV news circuit where people never let the truth get in the way of a good rant about something they consider bad. It is only entertainment.
When Limbaugh took the act to ESPN to be part of their football crew on their Countdown show in 2003, he self destructed. He went on some blather about Philadelphia Eagles quarterback Donovan McNabb which was pointless and resigned. ESPN executives knew the act and gambled that it would play well in the football field. It didn't.
Limbaugh has stayed out of the sports business since then and his act continues even though his radio bosses are bleeding money and firing people left and right. Limbaugh tangentially re-entered the sports business a few days ago when he told his listeners that they should boycott General Motors because of President Barack Obama's policies. Limbaugh wants Obama's policies to fail.
There is no need to go into Limbaugh's logic or dogma but you kind of wonder whether the France family, the people who own and run NASCAR, really agree with the radio host who by the way makes millions of dollars a year for his daily ratings and has a lifestyle that includes a luxurious Palm Beach, Florida address that is totally at odds with his listeners, some of them General Motors workers who may be out of work shortly.
General Motors, you see, is a major part of the NASCAR business. A smaller General Motors is not a good thing for France's business which has leveled off somewhat after years of growth. General Motors, Chrysler, Ford and Toyota are major players in NASCAR in funding race teams and in marketing deals including race naming rights and television ads.
France's business depends on GM to provide factory support in the various car and truck races. It appears GM will be cutting that support for a few teams and that is not good news. With both GM and Chrysler on the ropes, NASCAR needs to look elsewhere but the entire auto industry is faltering as consumers either have no money or cannot get credit to buy new cars.
If Limbaugh's listeners, and Limbaugh is not the only carnival barker out there wanting a GM boycott, shun GM, NASCAR is also going to be greatly impacted. Last July, GM dropped four of its NASCAR marketing partnership and more cuts are coming. Whether the multimillionaire Limbaugh realizes this or not, and the chances are he doesn't or will not acknowledge it, some of his listeners are being hurt by GM's rapid deterioration but that is not a concern of the desultory, as that would not make good radio. NASCAR fans are more likely to be in Limbaugh's camp because the industry tends to attract Republican supporters and started as a rural southeastern United States business which expanded nationally. That is a non disputably fact and in the 2004 Presidential Election Kenneth Mehlmann, the campaign manager for Bush-Chaney 2004 told me that he was going after "NASCAR dads" which included President George W. Bush showing up at the Daytona 500 while the Republican National Committee set up shop at the racetrack in an attempt to register potential voters.
In 1980, I witnessed the closing of one car factory in Mahwah, New Jersey. It was a Ford plant, if Limbaugh and the other carnival barkers ever thought about how their nonsense plays out, Mahwah is a perfect study for them. When the plant closes, not only did the Ford workers lose their jobs, but all of the support industries around the plant suddenly had no need to exist. These people included the personal who drove the cars out of the factory to showrooms, auto parts suppliers, the little food businesses surrounding the plant and other businesses that sold various items to workers. Mahwah lost a major taxpayer when Ford departed. Someone had to make up those lost local taxes. There is an entire economic chain that comes attached to an auto plant.
The same thing played out in North Tarrytown, New York in 1993, 3,400 workers gone and North Tarrytown lost its biggest taxpayer by the time the place finally shutdown in 1996 although some of the employees were transferred. North Tarrytown, now known as Sleepy Hollow, is still struggling to replace the old plant.
It is playing out now in American Midwest towns. But the carnival barker, the pencil neck geek or the desultory cannot discuss that aspect of the story; it would not make good radio or cable TV news.
The auto industry is a huge sports sponsor but if GM and Chrysler monies disappear someone will have to make up the loss and companies aren't spending as much money on sports sponsorship these days. Getting back to the sports angle, the American Football League in 1965 got a huge contract from NBC which pretty much assured the league's survival. Where did NBC get a good chunk of that money to pay the league? From a Chrysler sponsorship, the joke of the first Super Bowl in January 1967 was not only was it the NFL versus the AFL, the Green Bay Packers versus the Kansas City Chiefs, but it was also CBS, the NFL's network, versus NBC, the AFL's network and Ford, the NFL's sponsor vs. Dodge, the AFL's sponsor.
Why people pay attention to the desultory or carnival barker, and really it is the news media that pays attention for whatever reason, is a good question. The desultory brings nothing to the table. Just ask NASCAR people what a boycott of GM would do and you probably would get a very different answer from the adults who run that business than the puerile, juvenile, desultory, pencil neck geek, carnival barker.
evanjweiner@yahoo.com
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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