When Football and Basketball Were Just Games
By Evan Weiner
January 14, 2011
http://www.examiner.com/business-of-sports-in-national/when-football-and-basketball-were-just-games
(New York, N. Y.) -- As the National Football League playoffs roll on and the "drama" continues to unfold surround the will the Denver Nuggets trade Carmelo Anthony to the New Jersey Nets so he can sign a huge multi-million dollar before the opportunity dissipates should the National Basketball Association owners change working conditions in the next collective bargaining agreement, it should be remembered that at one time that being a "big league" athlete was job a seasonal job.
Back in the 1940s, 20-somethings played ball for fun, a little money or used it as time filler until a real job opened up.
Sports began to change in the 1950s when municipalities started building stadiums for baseball (and football) teams and television began sprinkling money into the leagues because sports programming filled up television schedules. Today major league sports in the United States cannot live without government support (stadium or arena funding, the waiving of TV antitrust issues for sports leagues, cable TV rules and corporate tax breaks on big ticket items such as luxury boxes and club seats at stadiums and arenas), cable TV and corporations buying tickets.
Today, the National Football League is a multi-billion dollar business; the National Basketball Association is a multi-billion dollar global entity with ties to Europe and China. Back in the 1940s, baseball in the United States was "the" sport but boxing and horse racing also had rabid followers. There was little interest in the pro basketball leagues at the time and the NFL was barely a notch above semi-pro status.
There is only one athlete who was been a member of a pro basketball championship squad and a pro football championship team in the same calendar year. Neither league is in existence today although the two leagues' DNA can be found both in the National Basketball Association and the National Football League.
As you continue reading and trying to figure out the answer, here is a little clue for you all. It happened after World War II and the player in question went to college (Northwestern) on a basketball scholarship and needed to be talked into playing football. Yet the player is in the Pro Football Hall of Fame in Canton.
A little background is needed.
The defunct basketball circuit was the National Basketball League. The NBL was the only pro basketball league at the time and had franchises in small Midwest cities and those teams usually were company teams with the players working for a piston manufacturer or tire companies in some cases. The Rochester Seagram’s were a semi-pro independent team which was sponsored by a distillery. After World War II ended in August 1945, the NBL invited Les Harrison to bring his team into the pro league.
Harrison brought athletes to Rochester. His collection included baseball players Del Rice and Chuck Connors and an eventual Pro Football Hall of Famer, Otto Graham who led the Cleveland Browns to championships in both the All American Football Conference and the National Football League. Baseball players flocked to basketball in the off season for a chance to make a few extra bucks and the emphasis here is on the words "a few." Graham is the answer to the trivia question. He is the only athlete to win “major league” championships in basketball with the 1945-46 Royals and the 1946 Cleveland Browns of the All American Football Conference in the same calendar year.
The NBL was not a fulltime enterprise. The All American Football Conference was organized by Chicago Tribune sports editor Arch Ward with teams in New York, Brooklyn, Buffalo, Miami, Cleveland, Chicago, San Francisco and Los Angeles and started play in 1946.
Graham ended up with the Browns and quarterbacked Paul Brown's championship squad in 1946 and in 1947 and in 1948 and in 1949. Graham became a football superstar and one of football’s highest paid performers, something that was not going to happen in Rochester playing basketball.
"We won the championship in all four years there (AAFC)," said Graham. "We played in the championship game six straight years (1950-55) in the NFL and won three of the six there. I went to college on a basketball scholarship. I didn't even play football I played intramural football," he said. ”I played with the Royals the season before the All American Football Conference had started. My teammates were Del Rice, Chuck Connors, the Rifleman of TV fame, Bob Davies, Red Boltzmann, Fuzzy Levine and we won the championship.
"I think I'm the only guy to have played on a championship basketball team and football team in the same year (1946). I played in Fort Wayne, Indiana and in fact they did dominate professional basketball at that time. We knocked them off. It was fun. But basketball took up too much time and I couldn't play football and basketball both, so I stuck with football.
"The NBL was the best league in the world. The Browns hadn't started yet and the Browns and the All American Football Conference didn't start until the fall of 1946. So I had nothing to do at that time, so after I started football, it overlapped with basketball and I didn't go back."
Graham was the quarterback on the dominant team of the AAFC. Rochester wasn’t too shabby either. The team won two NBL “pennants” but lost to George Milan in the NBL championships twice. Rochester joined the NBA in 1948 and won an NBA title in 1951.
Graham on the other hand had four AAFC crowns and one NFL title by 1950. The Baltimore Colts, Cleveland Browns and San Francisco 49ers entered the NFL after a merger of sorts between the AAFC and NFL after the 1949 season. Graham and the Browns quickly showed the NFL how good they were.
"It (the AAFC) was a good league. The NFL people would say our worst team could beat your best team. Go get a football before you think about playing our teams.
"Paul Brown, who was very intelligent, he was a great coach not because he knew more football necessarily. But he brought organization to professional football. I was really very lucky to have played for Paul Brown. I was drafted by Detroit (in 1944) and if I had gone to Detroit to Detroit and Paul Brown had gotten Bobby Layne, I would have liked to see what would have happened when those two collided,” recalled Graham in the 1990s.
"We did dominate the (AAFC) league and so we joined the NFL and they were going to run all over us. Well, the very first game, (NFL Commissioner) Bert Bell scheduled us to play against the Eagles who had won the two previous years in the NFL in Philadelphia and we kicked the hell out of them, 35-10 and we proved we had a good football team.
"Bert Bell said it was the best organized football team he had ever seen. From that time on we were a dominant football team. We beat the Rams in the championship 30-28 on a field goal by Graze. We proved we belong."
NFL teams targeted the Browns. The Browns were 47-4-3 in the AAFC, but the league was considered second rate.
"Our feeling, quite frankly, we did so well that every team we played against we knew was going to give their utmost to beat us because we at that time were the top team. So we never had an easy schedule because even the worst team is going to play their best game against us. Paul Brown just prepared us to do our best. We were well prepared. No other team in history was as well prepared as us,” Graham said.
Graham said the entire the 1950 season was the highlight of his career. He on occasion gave some thought about playing both sports simultaneously and with the basketball and football season not having much of an overlap except in November and December; it could have been possible for Graham to do both. But travel was limited to buses and trains in both football and basketball and that was a deterrent.
"Rochester is now out in Sacramento after going to Cincinnati and Kansas City and Fort Wayne is in Detroit,” said Graham in the 1990s. “I remember one train trip. We played a ballgame in Rochester; we spent the night on a train, not a sleeper but sitting up all night long. I was so mad and we had to go to Oshkosh two nights later. That's the way it was in those days. Our owner (Lester Harrison) wanted to save money.
"It's tough to do both sports," he said of Deion Sanders and Bo Jackson, "but if I was paid they kind of money they got, I would be tempted."
Graham made $25,000 in his best season with Cleveland. He was the NFL’s highest paid player, NBA teams were going out of business at a rapid rate and the league was down to just eight teams while Graham was quarterbacking. The All American Football Conference is just a footnote in NFL history now. The NFL took AAFC three teams, the Baltimore Colts, the Cleveland Browns and San Francisco 49ers. By 1949, Chicago could not support a third team after the Bears and Cardinals, the Los Angeles Dons were financially tapped out, the Brooklyn Dodgers had merged with the New York Yankees. Buffalo supported its Bills but was not an NFL city. Buffalo was left out of the NFL-AAFC merger.
“They were going out of business and we just felt that getting a west coast team was important and getting Cleveland was important. We also brought in Baltimore but they didn’t make it at that particularly. But the 49ers and Cleveland Browns and were very important at that particularly time to get a national scope,” said Pittsburgh Steelers owner and now American Ambassador to Ireland Dan Rooney. "That was a good move."
The other "good move" for putting money in the pockets of owners and players and front office staff was television. Television development, which was halted during World War II, resumed. That would be the important component to the skyrocketing popularity of sports in the 1950s. An interesting side note to Graham's teams. The Rochester Royals also called Cincinnati, Kansas City, Omaha and Sacramento home. The franchise could be on the move again. Graham's Browns ended up in Baltimore in 1996. The new Cleveland franchise in the NFL started in 1999. The 1946 Cleveland Browns replaced the Cleveland Rams in the city after Rams owner Daniel Reeves took his franchise to Los Angeles. The Cleveland Rams started life in the second American Football League in 1936 and joined the NFL in 1937. The franchise moved to Anaheim in 1980 and to St. Louis in 1995.
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Evan Weiner, the winner of the United States Sports Academy's 2010 Ronald Reagan Media Award, is an author, radio-TV commentator and speaker on "The Politics of Sports Business." His book, "The Business and Politics of Sports, Second Edition is available at www.bickley.com, Barnes and Noble or amazonkindle. He can be reached at evanjweiner@yahoo.com
Showing posts with label NBA. Show all posts
Showing posts with label NBA. Show all posts
Friday, January 14, 2011
Thursday, July 22, 2010
Forget Lebron — bigger NBA stories are on tap for the summer
Forget Lebron — bigger NBA stories are on tap for the summer
By Evan Weiner - TheDC 2:07 AM 07/22/2010
http://dailycaller.com/2010/07/22/forget-lebron-bigger-nba-stories-are-on-tap-for-the-summer/print/
The National Basketball Association’s biggest public splash of the summer is the Miami franchise signings of Lebron James and Chris Bosh and getting Dwayne Wade to stay in South Florida and forming the nucleus of a “super” team.
That story is garnering a lot of attention globally, but underneath Heat owner Ted Arison’s opening the checkbook and getting three stars on his roster, there is a boat load of trouble brewing in NBA Commissioner David Stern’s world. The sale of the Golden State Warriors by Chris Cohan to a group led by Jacob Lacob for a reported $450 million is a silver lining because it means there are still people willing to put up big money for a franchise for Stern, but it is one of the few pieces of good news that the NBA bean counters will get in the next 12 months.
In Stern’s world, two immediate problems have cropped up. And in the somewhat distant future, there is a possibility that the owners will lockout the players on July 1, 2011 in an attempt to rein in salaries as part of a new collective bargaining agreement. Stern’s owners allegedly lost $400 million in their business last year.
In California, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has threatened to cut state employees hourly wages to the minimum wage of $7.25 because of California’s extreme budget crisis, and that is not good news for the Sacramento Kings ownership group looking for funding for a new arena in California’s state capital. A good many workers in Sacramento are state employees and might not be able to afford Kings games if they lose money or their jobs. How can the Maloof brothers, the Kings owners, ask for public funds when there is nothing but fiscal bad news coming out of the state house on a daily basis?
Schwarzenegger had a court’s backing to cut the salaries of some 200,000 state workers until a state budget is passed. Schwarzenegger’s leverage in the political process disappeared last Friday. The Sacramento area could have lost as much as $60 million a week in wages if Schwarzenegger went ahead with the plan. But Schwarzenegger’s idea has been blocked by Judge Patrick Marlette of Sacramento County Superior Court for the time being.
On Tuesday, the Sacramento City Council passed a resolution asking Schwarzenegger to reconsider his order as one in five Sacramento workers are state employees.
Schwarzenegger promised that the pay cuts will be rescinded when the state comes up with a budget. None of this can please NBA Commissioner David Stern who stepped into the Sacramento arena battle in December 2006.
On November 7, 2006, Sacramento voters flatly turned down Proposition Q 72-28 and Proposition R 80-20; both measures would have provided funding for a new arena.
Sacramento voters just did not want to fork over anything extra for a sports arena for the Maloofs, but that did not made Sacramento politicians and business leaders any less determined to build a new venue for an NBA team. Nearly four years later, there are still options on the table.
Stern hired John Moag, who helped negotiate the deal which brought Art Modell and his Cleveland Browns to Baltimore. Modell cut the deal with Maryland in the fall of 2005 and moved his NFL team to Baltimore for the 1996 season. Moag has been working at an arena proposal for years but hasn’t delivered one quite yet.
Sacramento politicians were prepared to give the Maloofs something no other California city would agree to in 2006. There was five hundred millions of dollar available for a sports facility. But the Maloof brothers didn’t really like the Sacramento deal as presented. Compared with New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago, Sacramento is a weak TV and corporate market, so the Maloofs needed every penny generated in the arena for their business and wanted no competing businesses near the building. The Maloofs wanted a parking lot, not a rebirth for a depressed economic area, by the rail yards. The parking lot would have been a revenue generator for the Maloofs, the city wanted to build on the parking lot in an effort to create businesses, jobs and a tax base.
The parking lot was a deal breaker as the Maloofs went to the sidelines during the 2006 arena campaign because business development was not good for them.
In Stern’s world — as in that of other big league sports commissioners — every team should be viewed as a three-legged stool. All three legs are needed or the stool falls over. In sports, the three all-important legs are big press and broadcast dollars, corporate support, and government. And if you can separate emotions and apply rationality to this issue, the Stern Theory makes a lot of sense.
Government: Without the support of a local mayor, city council, county officials, state government, governor, and federal government, you can’t operate a franchise. Local and state governments typically raise taxes to build arenas and stadiums or give land away for a sports owner to build on in exchange for payments (in lieu of taxes) and a promise that the arena or stadium will serve as an economic engine that will spark a local economy and create jobs.
There is a lot of local government support in Sacramento to build a new arena, an absolute necessity yet there are questions about where to put the building and how the construction will be funded.
Sports owners and sports leagues need government to give them total control of the revenues a municipally built facility generates, including on-site arena restaurants and stores and — a big revenue source — parking. Owners also need a government that will give them sweetheart leases and create special tax districts within the facility so that if a team owner contributes to the cost of the building, he/she can pocket some of the sales taxes collected and earmarked for government coffers.
Owners also don’t necessarily want to see development (such as restaurants and bars) outside their arena, because those establishments become competition for the dollar. The idea is to keep customers in the building, where they’ll spend on products and franchise-owned enterprises that their owners can cash in on.
For the Maloofs, a parking lot is more valuable than the potential for new businesses to pop up around the arena. It’s that simple: The brothers keep parking lot revenues and don’t have to compete with other businesses that might attract their customers.
Local Broadcasting: Comcast probably overpaid to land the Sacramento Kings cable TV rights so it could in turn launch a profitable San Francisco Bay Area regional sports network. Sports owners make billions from cable television, which Congress deregulated in the 1980s. Because of deregulation, everyone who has basic expanded cable pays for sports channels even if they never watch a regional sports network or tune in to national networks like ESPN and TNT. Hapless cable subscribers may pay anywhere between $7 and $12 a month for sports channels alone, and sports are the most costly part of the monthly cable bill. Congress refuses to address a la carte pricing, which would allow cable subscribers to choose which channels they want, in part because the financial toll could wipe out many cable TV networks and have serious impact on sports finances.
Corporate Support: Part three of the Stern trilogy. Someone has to pay for high-end seating like luxury boxes and club seats, and it’s not the everyday fan. In fact, owners don’t court fans; they want customers who can afford luxury suites and seats surrounding the basketball court or rink side seats at a hockey game. Corporate types buy seats and reap the tax write-off, whether they’ve gone to the games because they’re fans or just looking to be seen.
You can’t really blame the Maloofs for playing hardball in 2006. They were just following Stern’s three-legged sports business philosophy; Sacramento got a lesson in what it means to be a small market in the major leagues.
In Indianapolis, Herb Simon got another city bailout to help the “struggling” Indiana Pacers franchise. These two storylines are far more important to the financial health of the NBA than the Miami singings although the loss of Lebron James in Cleveland will return the northeastern Ohio city back into the NBA doldrums and that could add Cleveland owner Dan Gilbert to the list of financially hawks who might want to shut down the NBA next year when the collective bargaining agreement ends on June 30, 2011.
In a fiscal-conservative state, Indianapolis officials through the city’s Capital Improvement Board and Simon have adjusted a 1999 lease agreement and the city will give Simon $33.5 million over three seasons for expenditures to operate the city’s arena.
There will be a $10 million per year bailout to operate the arena along with $3.5 million for capital improvements between 2010 and 2013. The Capital Improvement Board, which is cash strapped, hopes to use funds from a one percent hike in the Indianapolis hotel tax to pay some of the $33.5 million they have committed.
Indianapolis has spent over a billion dollars on the arena and a new football stadium. Simon’s original lease gave him the ability to control the operations of the building, pay virtually no rent and keep all of the revenues from Pacers games and other events in the building. Despite the one-sided nature of the lease where Simon got virtually all of the revenues and the city got whatever was left, Simon has claimed his losses are staggering.
Simon’s Pacers will continue to play in the building for the next three years which ends Simon’s threat of moving the franchise for the time being. In 2013, Simon can move the team if his annual losses exceed $2 million. Should Simon find a greener pasture (Kansas City, Louisville, and Newark, New Jersey—the New Jersey Nets franchise does relocate to Brooklyn— he would have to give back a portion of the $30 million and pay money for breaking the 1999 lease that he signed with Indianapolis officials. Simon is free to leave without penalty in 2019.
Indianapolis is a small market and cannot compete with major markets on the same economic playing field and has given team owners the wherewithal with taxpayers dollars to be on an even playing field monetarily with New York, Los Angeles, Chicago and together big market cities.
Jim Irsay’s Indianapolis Colts National Football League franchise keeps rights to all football-related revenue in the almost new Indianapolis taxpayers funded stadium, as well as half the annual non- football revenue, up to $3.5 million. Irsay pays no rent to use the facility and has a lease until 2034. Irsay receives all revenues from a stadium name, signs and sponsorships in the stadium. The Capital Improvement Board picks up the tab for stadium maintenance and game-day expenses.
In the United States, local and state governments have been pouring millions of dollars into building sports facilities since Milwaukee funded County Stadium in 1950. Milwaukee pioneered giving away the store philosophy when the city finally got a Major League Baseball team. Lou Perini moved his Boston Braves to Wisconsin and got a gift, a stadium to use 77 times a year in 1953 (and beyond) in exchange for $1,000 in rent. Perini had some guilt about paying $1,000 in rent and keeping all the concession money so he gave Milwaukee $25,000 for rent after nearly 1.9 million people paid to see Braves baseball in Milwaukee in 1953. There is no real reason that municipalities spend billions on sports facilities other than it gives an area a sports identity and a meeting place where people to bond watching a game. But it sure seems rather expensive to prop up the sports business.
Evan Weiner is an author, radio-TV commentator and speaking on “The Politics of Sports Business” and can be reached atevanjweiner@yahoo.com
Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2010/07/22/forget-lebron-bigger-nba-stories-are-on-tap-for-the-summer/print/#ixzz0uPcY5MXt
By Evan Weiner - TheDC 2:07 AM 07/22/2010
http://dailycaller.com/2010/07/22/forget-lebron-bigger-nba-stories-are-on-tap-for-the-summer/print/
The National Basketball Association’s biggest public splash of the summer is the Miami franchise signings of Lebron James and Chris Bosh and getting Dwayne Wade to stay in South Florida and forming the nucleus of a “super” team.
That story is garnering a lot of attention globally, but underneath Heat owner Ted Arison’s opening the checkbook and getting three stars on his roster, there is a boat load of trouble brewing in NBA Commissioner David Stern’s world. The sale of the Golden State Warriors by Chris Cohan to a group led by Jacob Lacob for a reported $450 million is a silver lining because it means there are still people willing to put up big money for a franchise for Stern, but it is one of the few pieces of good news that the NBA bean counters will get in the next 12 months.
In Stern’s world, two immediate problems have cropped up. And in the somewhat distant future, there is a possibility that the owners will lockout the players on July 1, 2011 in an attempt to rein in salaries as part of a new collective bargaining agreement. Stern’s owners allegedly lost $400 million in their business last year.
In California, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has threatened to cut state employees hourly wages to the minimum wage of $7.25 because of California’s extreme budget crisis, and that is not good news for the Sacramento Kings ownership group looking for funding for a new arena in California’s state capital. A good many workers in Sacramento are state employees and might not be able to afford Kings games if they lose money or their jobs. How can the Maloof brothers, the Kings owners, ask for public funds when there is nothing but fiscal bad news coming out of the state house on a daily basis?
Schwarzenegger had a court’s backing to cut the salaries of some 200,000 state workers until a state budget is passed. Schwarzenegger’s leverage in the political process disappeared last Friday. The Sacramento area could have lost as much as $60 million a week in wages if Schwarzenegger went ahead with the plan. But Schwarzenegger’s idea has been blocked by Judge Patrick Marlette of Sacramento County Superior Court for the time being.
On Tuesday, the Sacramento City Council passed a resolution asking Schwarzenegger to reconsider his order as one in five Sacramento workers are state employees.
Schwarzenegger promised that the pay cuts will be rescinded when the state comes up with a budget. None of this can please NBA Commissioner David Stern who stepped into the Sacramento arena battle in December 2006.
On November 7, 2006, Sacramento voters flatly turned down Proposition Q 72-28 and Proposition R 80-20; both measures would have provided funding for a new arena.
Sacramento voters just did not want to fork over anything extra for a sports arena for the Maloofs, but that did not made Sacramento politicians and business leaders any less determined to build a new venue for an NBA team. Nearly four years later, there are still options on the table.
Stern hired John Moag, who helped negotiate the deal which brought Art Modell and his Cleveland Browns to Baltimore. Modell cut the deal with Maryland in the fall of 2005 and moved his NFL team to Baltimore for the 1996 season. Moag has been working at an arena proposal for years but hasn’t delivered one quite yet.
Sacramento politicians were prepared to give the Maloofs something no other California city would agree to in 2006. There was five hundred millions of dollar available for a sports facility. But the Maloof brothers didn’t really like the Sacramento deal as presented. Compared with New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago, Sacramento is a weak TV and corporate market, so the Maloofs needed every penny generated in the arena for their business and wanted no competing businesses near the building. The Maloofs wanted a parking lot, not a rebirth for a depressed economic area, by the rail yards. The parking lot would have been a revenue generator for the Maloofs, the city wanted to build on the parking lot in an effort to create businesses, jobs and a tax base.
The parking lot was a deal breaker as the Maloofs went to the sidelines during the 2006 arena campaign because business development was not good for them.
In Stern’s world — as in that of other big league sports commissioners — every team should be viewed as a three-legged stool. All three legs are needed or the stool falls over. In sports, the three all-important legs are big press and broadcast dollars, corporate support, and government. And if you can separate emotions and apply rationality to this issue, the Stern Theory makes a lot of sense.
Government: Without the support of a local mayor, city council, county officials, state government, governor, and federal government, you can’t operate a franchise. Local and state governments typically raise taxes to build arenas and stadiums or give land away for a sports owner to build on in exchange for payments (in lieu of taxes) and a promise that the arena or stadium will serve as an economic engine that will spark a local economy and create jobs.
There is a lot of local government support in Sacramento to build a new arena, an absolute necessity yet there are questions about where to put the building and how the construction will be funded.
Sports owners and sports leagues need government to give them total control of the revenues a municipally built facility generates, including on-site arena restaurants and stores and — a big revenue source — parking. Owners also need a government that will give them sweetheart leases and create special tax districts within the facility so that if a team owner contributes to the cost of the building, he/she can pocket some of the sales taxes collected and earmarked for government coffers.
Owners also don’t necessarily want to see development (such as restaurants and bars) outside their arena, because those establishments become competition for the dollar. The idea is to keep customers in the building, where they’ll spend on products and franchise-owned enterprises that their owners can cash in on.
For the Maloofs, a parking lot is more valuable than the potential for new businesses to pop up around the arena. It’s that simple: The brothers keep parking lot revenues and don’t have to compete with other businesses that might attract their customers.
Local Broadcasting: Comcast probably overpaid to land the Sacramento Kings cable TV rights so it could in turn launch a profitable San Francisco Bay Area regional sports network. Sports owners make billions from cable television, which Congress deregulated in the 1980s. Because of deregulation, everyone who has basic expanded cable pays for sports channels even if they never watch a regional sports network or tune in to national networks like ESPN and TNT. Hapless cable subscribers may pay anywhere between $7 and $12 a month for sports channels alone, and sports are the most costly part of the monthly cable bill. Congress refuses to address a la carte pricing, which would allow cable subscribers to choose which channels they want, in part because the financial toll could wipe out many cable TV networks and have serious impact on sports finances.
Corporate Support: Part three of the Stern trilogy. Someone has to pay for high-end seating like luxury boxes and club seats, and it’s not the everyday fan. In fact, owners don’t court fans; they want customers who can afford luxury suites and seats surrounding the basketball court or rink side seats at a hockey game. Corporate types buy seats and reap the tax write-off, whether they’ve gone to the games because they’re fans or just looking to be seen.
You can’t really blame the Maloofs for playing hardball in 2006. They were just following Stern’s three-legged sports business philosophy; Sacramento got a lesson in what it means to be a small market in the major leagues.
In Indianapolis, Herb Simon got another city bailout to help the “struggling” Indiana Pacers franchise. These two storylines are far more important to the financial health of the NBA than the Miami singings although the loss of Lebron James in Cleveland will return the northeastern Ohio city back into the NBA doldrums and that could add Cleveland owner Dan Gilbert to the list of financially hawks who might want to shut down the NBA next year when the collective bargaining agreement ends on June 30, 2011.
In a fiscal-conservative state, Indianapolis officials through the city’s Capital Improvement Board and Simon have adjusted a 1999 lease agreement and the city will give Simon $33.5 million over three seasons for expenditures to operate the city’s arena.
There will be a $10 million per year bailout to operate the arena along with $3.5 million for capital improvements between 2010 and 2013. The Capital Improvement Board, which is cash strapped, hopes to use funds from a one percent hike in the Indianapolis hotel tax to pay some of the $33.5 million they have committed.
Indianapolis has spent over a billion dollars on the arena and a new football stadium. Simon’s original lease gave him the ability to control the operations of the building, pay virtually no rent and keep all of the revenues from Pacers games and other events in the building. Despite the one-sided nature of the lease where Simon got virtually all of the revenues and the city got whatever was left, Simon has claimed his losses are staggering.
Simon’s Pacers will continue to play in the building for the next three years which ends Simon’s threat of moving the franchise for the time being. In 2013, Simon can move the team if his annual losses exceed $2 million. Should Simon find a greener pasture (Kansas City, Louisville, and Newark, New Jersey—the New Jersey Nets franchise does relocate to Brooklyn— he would have to give back a portion of the $30 million and pay money for breaking the 1999 lease that he signed with Indianapolis officials. Simon is free to leave without penalty in 2019.
Indianapolis is a small market and cannot compete with major markets on the same economic playing field and has given team owners the wherewithal with taxpayers dollars to be on an even playing field monetarily with New York, Los Angeles, Chicago and together big market cities.
Jim Irsay’s Indianapolis Colts National Football League franchise keeps rights to all football-related revenue in the almost new Indianapolis taxpayers funded stadium, as well as half the annual non- football revenue, up to $3.5 million. Irsay pays no rent to use the facility and has a lease until 2034. Irsay receives all revenues from a stadium name, signs and sponsorships in the stadium. The Capital Improvement Board picks up the tab for stadium maintenance and game-day expenses.
In the United States, local and state governments have been pouring millions of dollars into building sports facilities since Milwaukee funded County Stadium in 1950. Milwaukee pioneered giving away the store philosophy when the city finally got a Major League Baseball team. Lou Perini moved his Boston Braves to Wisconsin and got a gift, a stadium to use 77 times a year in 1953 (and beyond) in exchange for $1,000 in rent. Perini had some guilt about paying $1,000 in rent and keeping all the concession money so he gave Milwaukee $25,000 for rent after nearly 1.9 million people paid to see Braves baseball in Milwaukee in 1953. There is no real reason that municipalities spend billions on sports facilities other than it gives an area a sports identity and a meeting place where people to bond watching a game. But it sure seems rather expensive to prop up the sports business.
Evan Weiner is an author, radio-TV commentator and speaking on “The Politics of Sports Business” and can be reached atevanjweiner@yahoo.com
Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2010/07/22/forget-lebron-bigger-nba-stories-are-on-tap-for-the-summer/print/#ixzz0uPcY5MXt
Thursday, July 1, 2010
What Would Lebron Really Mean in New York?
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
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
Monday, May 31, 2010
LeBron James, Dwayne Wade colluding to be N.Y. Knicks? Times have certainly changed in the NBA
LeBron James, Dwayne Wade colluding to be N.Y. Knicks? Times have certainly changed in the NBA
MONDAY, 31 MAY 2010 12:54
http://www.newjerseynewsroom.com/professional/lebron-james-dwayne-wade-colluding-to-be-ny-knicks-times-have-certainly-changed-in-the-nba#
BY EVAN WEINER
NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM
COMMENTARY
Let's get this straight. People are "concerned" that National Basketball Association free agents to be Dwayne Wade, Lebron James, Joe Johnson and Chris Bosh may meet to discuss whatever free agents-to-be need to discuss, such as playing together. Wade's agent now says there will not be a "summit" with the NBA's top available free agent talent but there probably will be some talks here and there. The New Jersey Nets, New York Knicks and Los Angeles Clippers can offer two "max" contracts and there is talk the Dolan-family owned Knicks (who probably don't pay a "max" salary of about $14 million a year in New York City property taxes on Madison Square Garden real estate) might go after Lebron and Wade. There is "concern" that players can collude but owners cannot and that the players will orchestrate where they will play which means the free agents could make or break franchises.
Nowhere in this "concern" is it mentioned that the NBA's Collective Bargaining Agreement with the players is up after the 2010-11 season and that the NBA wants huge financial rollbacks from the players which could scuttle the plans of any owner including Dolan or the Nets new moneyman Mikhail Prokhorov or even the Clippers Donald Sterling from going after two max players.
The NBA is still an owners toy because of a salary cap. Two great players might be on the same team, but good complimentary players may be passed over because of salary cap restrictions and that is a complication in building a team.
At one time, Dwayne Wade, LeBron James, Joe Johnson and Chris Bosh-like players would not have even been considered for employment in the NBA.
Prior to 1950, they all would have ended up with the Harlem Globetrotters. The NBA closed the doors to Negro players back then just like it closes the doors today to 18-year-olds of all stripes out of high school.
The NBA remains an exclusive and exclusionary club to certain people.
The Harlem Globetrotters were important to the NBA. The team and brand were bigger than the National Basketball League, the Basketball Association of America or the new National Basketball Association that was established in August 1949. In what turned out to be the dying days of the NBL, the match up of the Globetrotters and the Mikan led Minneapolis Lakers brought attention to the struggling Midwest-based league in 1948.
The Globetrotters were basketball troubadours who literally played anywhere as long as someone set up a basketball court and was willing to give Abe Saperstein some cash. The Globetrotters also provided the first half of a night's worth of entertainment at NBA games as a featured attraction in a double header.
"The Globetrotters would play the preliminary and the NBA would play the main attraction," said Marquis Haynes. "But it got to the point we people after our game, the Harlem Globetrotters game would start leaving before the halftime of the NBA game and they switched it around for them, the NBA teams to play the first game and the Harlem Globetrotters the second which made a lot of sense."
The Globetrotters popularity might have had something to do with blacks being accepted into pro basketball with no fanfare. In 1942/43, the Toledo Jim White Chevrolets and the Chicago Studebakers of the National Basketball League had black players in their lineups. Both teams folded, but the NBL was integrated four and a half years before Jackie Robinson broke Major League Baseball's color barrier.
Mikan and the Lakers would face the Globbies before a sellout crowd at Chicago Stadium on February 20, 1948 in a game that was conceived by a Chicago sports editor, Arch Ward. (Ward came up with the idea for the American and National League All-Star Game in baseball and pushed for the formation of a new football league, the All America Football Conference in 1946 and the College All Star Game against the NFL in Chicago).
Mikan's Lakers seemed to be really good and the Globetrotters team was thought to be the best in the world. Ermer Robinson, Ducky Moore, Sam Wheeler, Goose Tatum, Haynes, Babe Pressley, Ted Strong, Vertes Ziegler, and Wilbert King defeated Mikan, Jim Pollard and the Lakers, 61-59, before a crowd of 17,823 at Chicago Stadium. Robinson won the game on a last second, two-handed 20-foot set shot.
"I was told by several NBA owners at the time that that was the beginning of them deciding to draft or recruit players from the Harlem Globetrotters and the black colleges," said Haynes in an interview in the mid-1990s.
Minneapolis, along with three other teams, joined the BAA in the 1948 off season. Wade, LeBron, Johnson and Bosh would not have been able to follow the Lakers, Rochester Royals, Fort Wayne Pistons or Indianapolis into the newer league. Despite enormous talent, Negroes were "unofficially" barred from the BAA. There seems however to be an exception in the case of the New York Knicks player, the Japanese-American Wataru Misaka, who played with New York in 1947-48 and is now considered the first non-white in the BAA.
Haynes never played in the NBA but he and his Globetrotter teammates helped open the door. It took a while for the NBA to consider top notch players. It was not until 1950 that the league would give a Negro player a try out.
NBA integration would not happen until October 31, 1950 when the Washington Capitols' roster included Earl Lloyd. Years later Lloyd would downplay the significance of his breaking of the color barrier.
Lloyd had a head start on the Knicks Sweetwater Clifton, whose contract was purchased from Saperstein's Harlem Globetrotters, and the Boston Celtics Chuck Cooper, who was taken out of college.
Black college coach John McLendon, who was at North Carolina College, was instrumental in getting Lloyd signed.
"The Washington Capitols were the first team to have historically black schools products on the team. They preceded Boston by one week." said John Mc Lendon (who was the first African-American coach of a pro team as he was hired by the American Basketball League's George Steinbrenner-owned Cleveland Pipers in 1961 and fired by Steinbrenner even though Cleveland won the Eastern Division because McLendon refused to tell a player Steinbrenner had traded him to that evening's opponent — McLendon then got as far away from Steinbrenner as possible and went to Malaysia as a basketball instructor). "There were two guys ahead of Cooper, Harold Hunter and Earl Lloyd.
"I took them to a tryout in Washington, D.C. They had 20 something guys in there and they put them in threes and no combination could be the three guys. The owner, (Mike) Uline, and the general manager called me upstairs, and said, ‘hey coach get those guys dressed and bring them up here.' I have a copy of the contract they signed."
Lloyd made the Capitols, Hunter didn't. McLendon said the first two black athletes who actually signed NBA contracts were Hunter (who played for McLendon at North Carolina College) and Lloyd with Washington and the Celtics signed Cooper after drafting him in the second round of the 1950 Draft a week later.
"I took them, I was there," said McLendon. "I asked the Basketball Hall of Fame just to note five pioneers in the game. They had it up for six months and then took it down because it caused too much controversy, people were arguing about who is the first one, who was the first under contract, the first one on the floor, the first one drafted. The first two in the NBA under a tryout were Harold Hunter and Earl Lloyd.
Lloyd and the rest of the players in the NBA were not playing for the money.
"We wasn't making more money with the Globetrotters." said Haynes. "In fact in those years, league teams weren't making much money either. They (NBA players of the 1940s and 1950s) were like we were, we had to keep in touch with different businesses in our hometown or in the area of our hometowns while the season was still going on. Hopefully, in keeping in touch with them, we were able to gain employment during the summer to be able to afford ourselves until the next season started. So the NBA players were in the same position as we were in keeping up to the money part."
The Globetrotters would eventually lose games to the Lakers but still got their share of talented players after their monopoly on black players was broken by the Lloyd signing. The Globbies did get quite a few players including Wilt Chamberlain who left Kansas to play with Saperstein's team in 1958-59 for a $50,000 salary, which was out of the NBA's range. Chamberlain was ineligible to play in 1958-59 in the NBA because he had not put in four years at college. Had Chamberlain been 18 years old in 2010, he would be ineligible for the NBA because he was not one year out of high school.
If there should be any player collusion, talented high school graduates should be filing lawsuits against the NBA for discrimination for not allowing them to apply for a job because of age. An 18-year-old can fight a war yet not play on an NBA team because Commissioner David Stern and his owners have decided that either colleges or overseas leagues should develop a player who can command millions sitting on the bench with an entry level contract. The National Basketball Players Association and NBA owners have agreed to banning 18-year-olds in the NBA and the harmed players can do nothing about it under US labor laws.
Wade and LeBron will get max contracts and the other guys, Bosh and Johnson won't be checking in with people in their hometowns for summer employment like Haynes and other NBA players once did.
Even if they collude.
Evan Weiner is an author, radio-TV commentator and lecturer on "The Politics of Sports Business" and is available for speaking engagements at evanjweiner@yahoo.com
MONDAY, 31 MAY 2010 12:54
http://www.newjerseynewsroom.com/professional/lebron-james-dwayne-wade-colluding-to-be-ny-knicks-times-have-certainly-changed-in-the-nba#
BY EVAN WEINER
NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM
COMMENTARY
Let's get this straight. People are "concerned" that National Basketball Association free agents to be Dwayne Wade, Lebron James, Joe Johnson and Chris Bosh may meet to discuss whatever free agents-to-be need to discuss, such as playing together. Wade's agent now says there will not be a "summit" with the NBA's top available free agent talent but there probably will be some talks here and there. The New Jersey Nets, New York Knicks and Los Angeles Clippers can offer two "max" contracts and there is talk the Dolan-family owned Knicks (who probably don't pay a "max" salary of about $14 million a year in New York City property taxes on Madison Square Garden real estate) might go after Lebron and Wade. There is "concern" that players can collude but owners cannot and that the players will orchestrate where they will play which means the free agents could make or break franchises.
Nowhere in this "concern" is it mentioned that the NBA's Collective Bargaining Agreement with the players is up after the 2010-11 season and that the NBA wants huge financial rollbacks from the players which could scuttle the plans of any owner including Dolan or the Nets new moneyman Mikhail Prokhorov or even the Clippers Donald Sterling from going after two max players.
The NBA is still an owners toy because of a salary cap. Two great players might be on the same team, but good complimentary players may be passed over because of salary cap restrictions and that is a complication in building a team.
At one time, Dwayne Wade, LeBron James, Joe Johnson and Chris Bosh-like players would not have even been considered for employment in the NBA.
Prior to 1950, they all would have ended up with the Harlem Globetrotters. The NBA closed the doors to Negro players back then just like it closes the doors today to 18-year-olds of all stripes out of high school.
The NBA remains an exclusive and exclusionary club to certain people.
The Harlem Globetrotters were important to the NBA. The team and brand were bigger than the National Basketball League, the Basketball Association of America or the new National Basketball Association that was established in August 1949. In what turned out to be the dying days of the NBL, the match up of the Globetrotters and the Mikan led Minneapolis Lakers brought attention to the struggling Midwest-based league in 1948.
The Globetrotters were basketball troubadours who literally played anywhere as long as someone set up a basketball court and was willing to give Abe Saperstein some cash. The Globetrotters also provided the first half of a night's worth of entertainment at NBA games as a featured attraction in a double header.
"The Globetrotters would play the preliminary and the NBA would play the main attraction," said Marquis Haynes. "But it got to the point we people after our game, the Harlem Globetrotters game would start leaving before the halftime of the NBA game and they switched it around for them, the NBA teams to play the first game and the Harlem Globetrotters the second which made a lot of sense."
The Globetrotters popularity might have had something to do with blacks being accepted into pro basketball with no fanfare. In 1942/43, the Toledo Jim White Chevrolets and the Chicago Studebakers of the National Basketball League had black players in their lineups. Both teams folded, but the NBL was integrated four and a half years before Jackie Robinson broke Major League Baseball's color barrier.
Mikan and the Lakers would face the Globbies before a sellout crowd at Chicago Stadium on February 20, 1948 in a game that was conceived by a Chicago sports editor, Arch Ward. (Ward came up with the idea for the American and National League All-Star Game in baseball and pushed for the formation of a new football league, the All America Football Conference in 1946 and the College All Star Game against the NFL in Chicago).
Mikan's Lakers seemed to be really good and the Globetrotters team was thought to be the best in the world. Ermer Robinson, Ducky Moore, Sam Wheeler, Goose Tatum, Haynes, Babe Pressley, Ted Strong, Vertes Ziegler, and Wilbert King defeated Mikan, Jim Pollard and the Lakers, 61-59, before a crowd of 17,823 at Chicago Stadium. Robinson won the game on a last second, two-handed 20-foot set shot.
"I was told by several NBA owners at the time that that was the beginning of them deciding to draft or recruit players from the Harlem Globetrotters and the black colleges," said Haynes in an interview in the mid-1990s.
Minneapolis, along with three other teams, joined the BAA in the 1948 off season. Wade, LeBron, Johnson and Bosh would not have been able to follow the Lakers, Rochester Royals, Fort Wayne Pistons or Indianapolis into the newer league. Despite enormous talent, Negroes were "unofficially" barred from the BAA. There seems however to be an exception in the case of the New York Knicks player, the Japanese-American Wataru Misaka, who played with New York in 1947-48 and is now considered the first non-white in the BAA.
Haynes never played in the NBA but he and his Globetrotter teammates helped open the door. It took a while for the NBA to consider top notch players. It was not until 1950 that the league would give a Negro player a try out.
NBA integration would not happen until October 31, 1950 when the Washington Capitols' roster included Earl Lloyd. Years later Lloyd would downplay the significance of his breaking of the color barrier.
Lloyd had a head start on the Knicks Sweetwater Clifton, whose contract was purchased from Saperstein's Harlem Globetrotters, and the Boston Celtics Chuck Cooper, who was taken out of college.
Black college coach John McLendon, who was at North Carolina College, was instrumental in getting Lloyd signed.
"The Washington Capitols were the first team to have historically black schools products on the team. They preceded Boston by one week." said John Mc Lendon (who was the first African-American coach of a pro team as he was hired by the American Basketball League's George Steinbrenner-owned Cleveland Pipers in 1961 and fired by Steinbrenner even though Cleveland won the Eastern Division because McLendon refused to tell a player Steinbrenner had traded him to that evening's opponent — McLendon then got as far away from Steinbrenner as possible and went to Malaysia as a basketball instructor). "There were two guys ahead of Cooper, Harold Hunter and Earl Lloyd.
"I took them to a tryout in Washington, D.C. They had 20 something guys in there and they put them in threes and no combination could be the three guys. The owner, (Mike) Uline, and the general manager called me upstairs, and said, ‘hey coach get those guys dressed and bring them up here.' I have a copy of the contract they signed."
Lloyd made the Capitols, Hunter didn't. McLendon said the first two black athletes who actually signed NBA contracts were Hunter (who played for McLendon at North Carolina College) and Lloyd with Washington and the Celtics signed Cooper after drafting him in the second round of the 1950 Draft a week later.
"I took them, I was there," said McLendon. "I asked the Basketball Hall of Fame just to note five pioneers in the game. They had it up for six months and then took it down because it caused too much controversy, people were arguing about who is the first one, who was the first under contract, the first one on the floor, the first one drafted. The first two in the NBA under a tryout were Harold Hunter and Earl Lloyd.
Lloyd and the rest of the players in the NBA were not playing for the money.
"We wasn't making more money with the Globetrotters." said Haynes. "In fact in those years, league teams weren't making much money either. They (NBA players of the 1940s and 1950s) were like we were, we had to keep in touch with different businesses in our hometown or in the area of our hometowns while the season was still going on. Hopefully, in keeping in touch with them, we were able to gain employment during the summer to be able to afford ourselves until the next season started. So the NBA players were in the same position as we were in keeping up to the money part."
The Globetrotters would eventually lose games to the Lakers but still got their share of talented players after their monopoly on black players was broken by the Lloyd signing. The Globbies did get quite a few players including Wilt Chamberlain who left Kansas to play with Saperstein's team in 1958-59 for a $50,000 salary, which was out of the NBA's range. Chamberlain was ineligible to play in 1958-59 in the NBA because he had not put in four years at college. Had Chamberlain been 18 years old in 2010, he would be ineligible for the NBA because he was not one year out of high school.
If there should be any player collusion, talented high school graduates should be filing lawsuits against the NBA for discrimination for not allowing them to apply for a job because of age. An 18-year-old can fight a war yet not play on an NBA team because Commissioner David Stern and his owners have decided that either colleges or overseas leagues should develop a player who can command millions sitting on the bench with an entry level contract. The National Basketball Players Association and NBA owners have agreed to banning 18-year-olds in the NBA and the harmed players can do nothing about it under US labor laws.
Wade and LeBron will get max contracts and the other guys, Bosh and Johnson won't be checking in with people in their hometowns for summer employment like Haynes and other NBA players once did.
Even if they collude.
Evan Weiner is an author, radio-TV commentator and lecturer on "The Politics of Sports Business" and is available for speaking engagements at evanjweiner@yahoo.com
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
Saturday, October 24, 2009
NHL Loonie for Hockey in Quebec City or Winnipeg?
http://www.mcnsports.com/en/node/7560
NHL Loonie for Hockey in Quebec City or Winnipeg?
By Evan Weiner
October 19, 2009
5:00 PM (ADT)
(Saint John, New Brunswick) – Saint John, New Brunswick is not anyone’s idea of the first stop of any major league sports tour, but walking through the downtown area of Saint John gives you a quick idea why it is possible that Canada is once again high on the list of possible destinations for financially failing NHL teams. A Saint John’s visitor does see an alarmingly high number of empty storefronts while walking through the downtown but a visitor armed with American dollars and ready to buy items gives you a quick answer as to why the National Hockey League is at least entertaining thoughts of putting franchises in either Winnipeg or Quebec City again.
The Canadian dollar is nearly on par with the American dollar for the first time in two years. That is not necessarily good news for Canadian companies hoping for American investors because the US dollar is worth on the other side of the 49th parallel has evaporated nor is it good news for businesses along with US-Canadian border as Canadians shop in American stores as American prices for items are cheaper. Eventually that can hurt Canadians as fewer US dollars flow into the country. Canadians have a major balancing act always. But the fact is that the loonie is getting stronger while the greenback has weakened.
All of this is good news for the six existing NHL franchises along with the National Basketball Association’s Toronto Raptors and the Toronto Blue Jays of Major League Baseball. Every time the Canadian dollar goes up against the American dollar, the franchises have more disposable income. The inverse holds true while the loonie backs off. The strengthening loonie is also helpful to Major League Soccer’s Toronto team and probably is good for the National Football League’s Seattle Seahawks, Detroit Lions and the Buffalo Bills as those border three teams draw from the British Columbia and Ontario parts of their markets. It also helps Mike Ilitch’s Detroit Tigers baseball team and his NHL Red Wings.
The road back to Winnipeg or Quebec City in the NHL, Vancouver in the NBA and Montreal in Major League Baseball will be long and there is no guarantee that the loonie will maintain it’s present value. The NHL left Winnipeg and Quebec City when the loonie was heading to a low of 62 cents back in the late 1990s.
The situation in Quebec City has not changed much since Marcel Aubut sold his Quebec Nordiques to Charlie Lyons and Ascent back in 1995. Aubut was looking for a publicly backed new Quebec City arena and was told no by both Quebec City and the province of Quebec. Lyons moved the team to Denver. Recently Quebec City’ Mayor Regis Labeaume talked with NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman about his plans to build a new, taxpayers funded arena. Labeaume figures it will cost $400 million (Cn) to construct the building with $175 million coming from Canada, $175 million from the province and $50 million from Quebec City coffers.
There is no doubt that Quebec City has passionate fans but the financially the NHL of 2009-10 differs from the final days of the Nordiques franchise. Ticket prices have skyrocketed along with player’s salaries. There also might be some English-speaking Canadian players who might refuse to play in the French-speaking city as well although only player, Eric Lindros back in 1991, flat out turned his back in the city. Quebec City had a long history of having fine non-French players who wanted to play there including the Statsny Brothers and Joe Sakic.
The founder of the Kontinental Hockey League and the CEO of Russia’s Gazprom, Alexander Medvedev, suggested last spring that he thought Quebec City would be a great hockey market.
But the market still lacks an arena and there is no suggestion that either the city or the province is ready to spend hundreds of millions of loonies on a building and then give 85 or 90 percent of the revenues generated in the building to the owner of a hockey team. Arena costs have risen from the $70 million dollar (US) range in the late 1980s to the more than a billion dollars (US) for places like the new Yankee Stadium in New York, the new Dallas Cowboys stadium in Arlington, Texas and the new New Jersey football stadium in the Meadowlands. It was far cheaper to build in 1995.
If the province or city doesn’t come up with loonies, then a prospective owner will have to put up cash in the building process and will have to pass along building costs to the fans or customers and it would have to be customers because ticket prices for regular seats and for the higher end items like luxury boxes and club seats will be astronomical.
Quebec City hockey proponents need to only look south of the border to New York where Major League Baseball’s New York Yankees and New York Mets had trouble filling up the high end tickets and where the National Football League’s New York Giants and New York Jets are having problems getting people to reach into their pockets to pony up thousands of dollars for personal seat licenses for the right to own a seat and then buying a ticket for that seat.
No matter how rabid an area’s fan base might be, the harsh realty is that fans don’t have the wherewithal to spend a small fortune to attend a game. National Basketball Association Commissioner David Stern claims that the NBA might sell more tickets in 2009-10 but that owners’ revenues will be down because they are discounting tickets.
Stern though is also positioning the owners in the upcoming collective bargaining talks with the players. The present owners-players agreement ends in 2011.
Quebec City remains a small market with limited corporate and TV money although that could change depending on the definition of the marketplace. If Quebec becomes a provincial team, perhaps a local cable TV entity will offer New York or Toronto like prices for rights fees. A $250 million contract over 10 years would certainly make a Quebec City franchise more viable. The roughly six million people in the Province of Quebec (along with nearby New Brunswick) is certainly large enough to handle an NHL team if the franchise can position itself as the province’s team but there is another factor here that will present a significant obstacle, Quebec already has a provincial team -- the Montreal Canadiens.
Will the Molsons, the Canadiens owners, want to see another team in Quebec City? Thirty years ago, the NHL rejected overtures from World Hockey Association members Quebec City, Edmonton, Winnipeg and Hartford to join the league. Hockey fans in the three Canadian cities threatened a boycott and would not purchase Molson beer if Quebec City, Edmonton and Winnipeg were denied NHL entry.
Eventually the four WHA teams entered the league for the 1979-80 season after some NHL owners relented and took WHA owners money to enter the league. But throughout the years there have been suggestions that the NHL never shed any tears when Quebec City, Winnipeg and Hartford departed although Bettman did work feverishly with Edmonton officials and businesses to prevent the franchise from moving to Houston in 1998.
Bettman, who gets bad reviews from what appears to be very provincially minded Canadian sportswriters for various reasons that don’t always seem to stem from his policies, has been in the forefront of preserving Canadian franchises in Edmonton and Ottawa. Bettman’s lobbying efforts did get Alberta officials to throw some money into Edmonton and Calgary’s coffers from the province’s hockey lottery and Bettman worked the Ottawa business community along with Ontario leaders to make sure the Senators remained in the Canadian capital after the team’s financial problems in the 1990s surfaced and through the team’s bankruptcy in 2003.
The NHL does have a Canadian commitment despite the writings of Canadian scribes although those writers seemed to suffer from memory loss during this year’s Phoenix Coyotes saga when Jim Balsillie attempted to buy the team and move the franchise to Hamilton, Ontario. Bettman showed the same tenacity in the Phoenix situation as he did in Edmonton and Pittsburgh and in Buffalo after the both the Sabres ownership declared bankruptcy in 2003 and in New Jersey in 1995 to keep the franchises in their home cities.
The Winnipeg situation has changed somewhat since Barry Shenkerow sold his Winnipeg Jets to Richard Burke and Steven Gluckstern in 1996. The team moved to Phoenix that fall. Shenkerow was looking for a municipally funded arena with all the gadgets that were state of the art in 1995 including luxury boxes and club seats. He never got the building but there is a new structure in Winnipeg today that probably would be considered state of the art. The problem with Winnipeg in 1995 remains the same today; there is a limited population, which means a limited cable TV market and limited corporate support. In other words despite a high interest from a local fan base, there are too few people to make it worthwhile. A potential owner would have to get virtually every penny spent in the new arena and have a cable TV operator willing to spent New York or Toronto money for TV that would include the entire province of Manitoba along with western Ontario and Saskatchewan and possibly make the games available in northern Minnesota and North Dakota to make it worthwhile.
In both cases, Quebec City and Winnipeg, the local market may be hockey fertile but is it financially fertile? That is why the teams left in the first place. Aubut decried the 1995 Collective Bargaining Agreement and predicted his Quebec Nordiques would not survive because he could not compete financially with the terms of that agreement. Despite the 2004-05 NHL lockout and the implementation of a salary cap, the business of the NHL remains very expensive.
Two years ago when the Canadian dollar overtook the US dollar in value, NBA Commissioner David Stern lamented that there was no interest parties in British Columbia who wanted any information on the finances of an NBA team. Vancouver was an NBA failure between 1995-2001 because the owner of the Vancouver Canucks Arthur Griffiths got into financial trouble by spending his own money to build an arena and then bought an NBA franchise for about $140 million Canadian. Eventually Griffiths sold the NBA Grizzlies to Michael Heisley who was so desperate to own an NBA team that he accepted Griffiths lease in the building which gave him virtually no luxury suite, club seat or concessions money. Heisley move his team to Memphis where it has struggled financially since day one in the new city.
There seems to be no interest in returning a team to Vancouver but if the loonie remains hot, there might be someone who might want to kick the tires in Vancouver.
There is no information suggesting that Major League Baseball wants to return to Montreal or that Montreal city officials want MLB back. Montreal Expos owner Jeffrey Loria was unable to build a stadium in the city in the early 1990s and ended up owning the Florida Marlins in a swap of franchises that saw MLB take over the Expos and Marlins owner John Henry end up with the Boston Red Sox. The deal was 10-strike for Henry’s portfolio, some much so that wife is now buying up property near the Garden in Boston as the family continues to gobble up properties near Fenway Park and now the Garden and Loria is getting a ballpark at the old Orange Bowl site in Miami. Montreal had changed throughout the years since MLB expanded there in 1968 but the end of the Loria years, no English-speaking Montreal radio station even bothered to bid for the team’s play-by-play rights.
The best area in good or bad economic times for an NHL team is probably the Kitchener-Waterloo area, which is just outside Toronto’s territorial rights. Hamilton lacks a suitable arena. If any Major League sport returns to Canada, it will be the NHL with the NFL keeping a close on Toronto.
The NFL-Toronto situation is difficult because of the presence of the Canadian Football League in the city. The Toronto Argonauts used to be a big deal in the city which had just one big league sport franchise---the Maple Leafs—but that was before 1977 when the American League put a baseball team in the city. Toronto is big league in every sense of the way and the CFL isn’t but the CFL is uniquely Canadian and in 1974, Parliament wanted to protect the league by imposing laws making it very difficult for any American football entity to operate in the country.
Buffalo Bills owner Ralph Wilson is selling one home game a year to Toronto sports operators through 2012. Wilson, who is 90 years old, has a deal with New York to keep his Bills playing in Orchard Park through the 2012 season. Wilson has been regionalizing the team in the past few years in order to broaden his fan/customer/corporate base and part of his market is the Niagara Frontier of Ontario. Toronto would probably be a strong NFL franchise even though 12-man football is played in Ontario high schools and there are no football factories in Canadian colleges. Still, Toronto offers a football owner something that no other non-NFL city can – Bay Street – the financial capital of Canada. Toronto has corporate dollars that Buffalo (and Jacksonville) does not have. Toronto and Los Angeles are the best football markets available in North America and neither has a team.
Because of politics, the best solution for the NFL might be a split of the Buffalo-Toronto franchise like the Green Bay-Milwaukee situation that existed until 1994 when the Packers played home games in both Wisconsin cities.
The hot loonie has attracted Bettman’s interest but whether it is a passing fancy or the real McCoy will be answered by financial markets and politics because at the end of the day, it is not about the game that is played, rather the factors that fans never think about like currency rates, availability of credit and political sensibilities.
eweiner@mcn.tv
NHL Loonie for Hockey in Quebec City or Winnipeg?
By Evan Weiner
October 19, 2009
5:00 PM (ADT)
(Saint John, New Brunswick) – Saint John, New Brunswick is not anyone’s idea of the first stop of any major league sports tour, but walking through the downtown area of Saint John gives you a quick idea why it is possible that Canada is once again high on the list of possible destinations for financially failing NHL teams. A Saint John’s visitor does see an alarmingly high number of empty storefronts while walking through the downtown but a visitor armed with American dollars and ready to buy items gives you a quick answer as to why the National Hockey League is at least entertaining thoughts of putting franchises in either Winnipeg or Quebec City again.
The Canadian dollar is nearly on par with the American dollar for the first time in two years. That is not necessarily good news for Canadian companies hoping for American investors because the US dollar is worth on the other side of the 49th parallel has evaporated nor is it good news for businesses along with US-Canadian border as Canadians shop in American stores as American prices for items are cheaper. Eventually that can hurt Canadians as fewer US dollars flow into the country. Canadians have a major balancing act always. But the fact is that the loonie is getting stronger while the greenback has weakened.
All of this is good news for the six existing NHL franchises along with the National Basketball Association’s Toronto Raptors and the Toronto Blue Jays of Major League Baseball. Every time the Canadian dollar goes up against the American dollar, the franchises have more disposable income. The inverse holds true while the loonie backs off. The strengthening loonie is also helpful to Major League Soccer’s Toronto team and probably is good for the National Football League’s Seattle Seahawks, Detroit Lions and the Buffalo Bills as those border three teams draw from the British Columbia and Ontario parts of their markets. It also helps Mike Ilitch’s Detroit Tigers baseball team and his NHL Red Wings.
The road back to Winnipeg or Quebec City in the NHL, Vancouver in the NBA and Montreal in Major League Baseball will be long and there is no guarantee that the loonie will maintain it’s present value. The NHL left Winnipeg and Quebec City when the loonie was heading to a low of 62 cents back in the late 1990s.
The situation in Quebec City has not changed much since Marcel Aubut sold his Quebec Nordiques to Charlie Lyons and Ascent back in 1995. Aubut was looking for a publicly backed new Quebec City arena and was told no by both Quebec City and the province of Quebec. Lyons moved the team to Denver. Recently Quebec City’ Mayor Regis Labeaume talked with NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman about his plans to build a new, taxpayers funded arena. Labeaume figures it will cost $400 million (Cn) to construct the building with $175 million coming from Canada, $175 million from the province and $50 million from Quebec City coffers.
There is no doubt that Quebec City has passionate fans but the financially the NHL of 2009-10 differs from the final days of the Nordiques franchise. Ticket prices have skyrocketed along with player’s salaries. There also might be some English-speaking Canadian players who might refuse to play in the French-speaking city as well although only player, Eric Lindros back in 1991, flat out turned his back in the city. Quebec City had a long history of having fine non-French players who wanted to play there including the Statsny Brothers and Joe Sakic.
The founder of the Kontinental Hockey League and the CEO of Russia’s Gazprom, Alexander Medvedev, suggested last spring that he thought Quebec City would be a great hockey market.
But the market still lacks an arena and there is no suggestion that either the city or the province is ready to spend hundreds of millions of loonies on a building and then give 85 or 90 percent of the revenues generated in the building to the owner of a hockey team. Arena costs have risen from the $70 million dollar (US) range in the late 1980s to the more than a billion dollars (US) for places like the new Yankee Stadium in New York, the new Dallas Cowboys stadium in Arlington, Texas and the new New Jersey football stadium in the Meadowlands. It was far cheaper to build in 1995.
If the province or city doesn’t come up with loonies, then a prospective owner will have to put up cash in the building process and will have to pass along building costs to the fans or customers and it would have to be customers because ticket prices for regular seats and for the higher end items like luxury boxes and club seats will be astronomical.
Quebec City hockey proponents need to only look south of the border to New York where Major League Baseball’s New York Yankees and New York Mets had trouble filling up the high end tickets and where the National Football League’s New York Giants and New York Jets are having problems getting people to reach into their pockets to pony up thousands of dollars for personal seat licenses for the right to own a seat and then buying a ticket for that seat.
No matter how rabid an area’s fan base might be, the harsh realty is that fans don’t have the wherewithal to spend a small fortune to attend a game. National Basketball Association Commissioner David Stern claims that the NBA might sell more tickets in 2009-10 but that owners’ revenues will be down because they are discounting tickets.
Stern though is also positioning the owners in the upcoming collective bargaining talks with the players. The present owners-players agreement ends in 2011.
Quebec City remains a small market with limited corporate and TV money although that could change depending on the definition of the marketplace. If Quebec becomes a provincial team, perhaps a local cable TV entity will offer New York or Toronto like prices for rights fees. A $250 million contract over 10 years would certainly make a Quebec City franchise more viable. The roughly six million people in the Province of Quebec (along with nearby New Brunswick) is certainly large enough to handle an NHL team if the franchise can position itself as the province’s team but there is another factor here that will present a significant obstacle, Quebec already has a provincial team -- the Montreal Canadiens.
Will the Molsons, the Canadiens owners, want to see another team in Quebec City? Thirty years ago, the NHL rejected overtures from World Hockey Association members Quebec City, Edmonton, Winnipeg and Hartford to join the league. Hockey fans in the three Canadian cities threatened a boycott and would not purchase Molson beer if Quebec City, Edmonton and Winnipeg were denied NHL entry.
Eventually the four WHA teams entered the league for the 1979-80 season after some NHL owners relented and took WHA owners money to enter the league. But throughout the years there have been suggestions that the NHL never shed any tears when Quebec City, Winnipeg and Hartford departed although Bettman did work feverishly with Edmonton officials and businesses to prevent the franchise from moving to Houston in 1998.
Bettman, who gets bad reviews from what appears to be very provincially minded Canadian sportswriters for various reasons that don’t always seem to stem from his policies, has been in the forefront of preserving Canadian franchises in Edmonton and Ottawa. Bettman’s lobbying efforts did get Alberta officials to throw some money into Edmonton and Calgary’s coffers from the province’s hockey lottery and Bettman worked the Ottawa business community along with Ontario leaders to make sure the Senators remained in the Canadian capital after the team’s financial problems in the 1990s surfaced and through the team’s bankruptcy in 2003.
The NHL does have a Canadian commitment despite the writings of Canadian scribes although those writers seemed to suffer from memory loss during this year’s Phoenix Coyotes saga when Jim Balsillie attempted to buy the team and move the franchise to Hamilton, Ontario. Bettman showed the same tenacity in the Phoenix situation as he did in Edmonton and Pittsburgh and in Buffalo after the both the Sabres ownership declared bankruptcy in 2003 and in New Jersey in 1995 to keep the franchises in their home cities.
The Winnipeg situation has changed somewhat since Barry Shenkerow sold his Winnipeg Jets to Richard Burke and Steven Gluckstern in 1996. The team moved to Phoenix that fall. Shenkerow was looking for a municipally funded arena with all the gadgets that were state of the art in 1995 including luxury boxes and club seats. He never got the building but there is a new structure in Winnipeg today that probably would be considered state of the art. The problem with Winnipeg in 1995 remains the same today; there is a limited population, which means a limited cable TV market and limited corporate support. In other words despite a high interest from a local fan base, there are too few people to make it worthwhile. A potential owner would have to get virtually every penny spent in the new arena and have a cable TV operator willing to spent New York or Toronto money for TV that would include the entire province of Manitoba along with western Ontario and Saskatchewan and possibly make the games available in northern Minnesota and North Dakota to make it worthwhile.
In both cases, Quebec City and Winnipeg, the local market may be hockey fertile but is it financially fertile? That is why the teams left in the first place. Aubut decried the 1995 Collective Bargaining Agreement and predicted his Quebec Nordiques would not survive because he could not compete financially with the terms of that agreement. Despite the 2004-05 NHL lockout and the implementation of a salary cap, the business of the NHL remains very expensive.
Two years ago when the Canadian dollar overtook the US dollar in value, NBA Commissioner David Stern lamented that there was no interest parties in British Columbia who wanted any information on the finances of an NBA team. Vancouver was an NBA failure between 1995-2001 because the owner of the Vancouver Canucks Arthur Griffiths got into financial trouble by spending his own money to build an arena and then bought an NBA franchise for about $140 million Canadian. Eventually Griffiths sold the NBA Grizzlies to Michael Heisley who was so desperate to own an NBA team that he accepted Griffiths lease in the building which gave him virtually no luxury suite, club seat or concessions money. Heisley move his team to Memphis where it has struggled financially since day one in the new city.
There seems to be no interest in returning a team to Vancouver but if the loonie remains hot, there might be someone who might want to kick the tires in Vancouver.
There is no information suggesting that Major League Baseball wants to return to Montreal or that Montreal city officials want MLB back. Montreal Expos owner Jeffrey Loria was unable to build a stadium in the city in the early 1990s and ended up owning the Florida Marlins in a swap of franchises that saw MLB take over the Expos and Marlins owner John Henry end up with the Boston Red Sox. The deal was 10-strike for Henry’s portfolio, some much so that wife is now buying up property near the Garden in Boston as the family continues to gobble up properties near Fenway Park and now the Garden and Loria is getting a ballpark at the old Orange Bowl site in Miami. Montreal had changed throughout the years since MLB expanded there in 1968 but the end of the Loria years, no English-speaking Montreal radio station even bothered to bid for the team’s play-by-play rights.
The best area in good or bad economic times for an NHL team is probably the Kitchener-Waterloo area, which is just outside Toronto’s territorial rights. Hamilton lacks a suitable arena. If any Major League sport returns to Canada, it will be the NHL with the NFL keeping a close on Toronto.
The NFL-Toronto situation is difficult because of the presence of the Canadian Football League in the city. The Toronto Argonauts used to be a big deal in the city which had just one big league sport franchise---the Maple Leafs—but that was before 1977 when the American League put a baseball team in the city. Toronto is big league in every sense of the way and the CFL isn’t but the CFL is uniquely Canadian and in 1974, Parliament wanted to protect the league by imposing laws making it very difficult for any American football entity to operate in the country.
Buffalo Bills owner Ralph Wilson is selling one home game a year to Toronto sports operators through 2012. Wilson, who is 90 years old, has a deal with New York to keep his Bills playing in Orchard Park through the 2012 season. Wilson has been regionalizing the team in the past few years in order to broaden his fan/customer/corporate base and part of his market is the Niagara Frontier of Ontario. Toronto would probably be a strong NFL franchise even though 12-man football is played in Ontario high schools and there are no football factories in Canadian colleges. Still, Toronto offers a football owner something that no other non-NFL city can – Bay Street – the financial capital of Canada. Toronto has corporate dollars that Buffalo (and Jacksonville) does not have. Toronto and Los Angeles are the best football markets available in North America and neither has a team.
Because of politics, the best solution for the NFL might be a split of the Buffalo-Toronto franchise like the Green Bay-Milwaukee situation that existed until 1994 when the Packers played home games in both Wisconsin cities.
The hot loonie has attracted Bettman’s interest but whether it is a passing fancy or the real McCoy will be answered by financial markets and politics because at the end of the day, it is not about the game that is played, rather the factors that fans never think about like currency rates, availability of credit and political sensibilities.
eweiner@mcn.tv
Wednesday, September 30, 2009
NHL, MLB, NFL, NBA Win, Hamilton and Balsillie Lose
http://www.mcnsports.com/en/node/7547
NHL, MLB, NFL, NBA Win, Hamilton and Balsillie Lose
By Evan Weiner
September 30, 2009
10:30 PM EDT
(New York, N. Y.) -- So Jim Balsillie has dropped out of the bidding for the bankrupt Phoenix Coyotes National Hockey League franchise after a bankruptcy judge in Phoenix, Arizona decided that sports leagues are a private entity and that sports owners have a right to pick owners and territories. The judge, Redfield T. Baum, turned down Balsillie's bid and an offer by the NHL to buy the financially ailing franchise that sits in Glendale, Arizona not in downtown Phoenix because of a terrible decision by the sitting city council in the late 1980s when they buckled to Phoenix Suns CEO Jerry Coangelo's want for the perfect basketball arena with perfect seating for HIS customers and not approve an all purpose use for the building.
The saga of the Phoenix Coyotes should be studied by urban planners and sports business management professors, experts and students as soon as possible because of the action of the elected officials of Phoenix who made a badly flawed decision which resulted in an arena that could only sell 75 percent of the available seating because of obstructed views. Coangelo wanted a hockey team in the building but not own it. He wanted money off of the team as he got the lion’s share of the revenues of any activity in the building because of the lease he demanded and got from the Phoenix officials. Coangelo knew an NHL franchise could not succeed in that building and various Coyotes owners reached the same conclusion very quickly.
The Coyotes franchise became a piece of real estate with a subsequent owner coming up with a plan to try and build an arena in Scottsdale less than five years after Richard Burke and Steven Gluckstern purchased the Winnipeg Jets and moved the franchise to the Valley of the Sun in 1996. Gluckstern quickly cashed in and bought the New York Islanders in what was a real estate grab that did not work out for him in Nassau County, N. Y.
Burke sold the Coyotes to real estate developer Steve Ellman in 2001.
Eventually, after no arena materialized in Scottsdale, Ellman found a willing partner in Glendale and built the arena as part of a real estate development deal.
In 2006, Ellman sold the majority stake of the Coyotes to one of his real estate partners Jerry Moyes in a deal that gave Moyes the hockey team and allowed Ellman to take over the development of the real estate parcel in Glendale. Within two years, Moyes threw his hands up and walked away leaving the NHL apparently to pay off the bills. In May 2009, Moyes decided bankruptcy was a good option and found a willing individual to buy the franchise in Balsillie in a bankruptcy proceeding. The NHL apparently was trying to sell the team to Chicago White Sox and Bulls owner Jerry Reinsdorf as Moyes walked into Judge Baum's court.
Reinsdorf's Major League White Sox franchise was already doing business in Glendale as Reinsdorf moved his spring training headquarters from Tucson, Arizona to Glendale in the winter/spring of 2009.
Balsillie had twice before gone after an NHL team. He had an agreement to buy the Pittsburgh Penguins in 2006 and dropped out after to agree to some NHL stipulations. In June 2007 he made his biggest mistake in his dealing with NHL owners and NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman. Not too long after he signed an agreement to buy the Nashville Predators from Craig Leipold, he announced that he planned to relocate the team to Hamilton, Ontario in 2008-09. Soon after his plans became public, the deal was called off.
Balsillie is obvious a smart guy given his success with Research in Motion and BlackBerry but he actions in the Nashville matter and subsequent behavior in the Phoenix dealings were silly. Prospective sports owners have to understand that becoming a major league sports owner is not a right but a privilege. You have to prove that you a worthy to join their private club, Balsillie might be raking in the cash with BlackBerry but that does not mean that he will be allowed in the brotherhood of owners.
There must have been a huge sigh of relief from the law offices of Major League Baseball, the National Football League, and the National Basketball Association when they found out that Judge Baum in his decision wrote.
"In the final analysis, the court cannot find or conclude that the interests of the NHL can be adequately protected if the Coyotes are moved to Hamilton without first having a final decision regarding the claimed rights of the NHL."
Judge Baum understood from day one that the NHL is a private entity that has its own rules not too much different than a golf course which can allow or reject prospective members. Oakland Raiders owner Al Davis was able to move his team to Los Angeles after the National Football League blocked his planned relocation in 1981 by a 22-0 vote with five abstentions by joining with the Los Angeles Coliseum Commission's lawsuit which charged that the NFL violated antitrust laws by not allowing the move. Davis and the Coliseum Commission won the case, Davis moved the team to LA and the NFL was forced to tighten up its relocation rules. The NFL has not stopped any moves since the Davis case as Robert Irsay took his Baltimore Colts to Indianapolis in 1984, Bill Bidwill took an offer from Tempe, Arizona in 1988, Davis moved back to Oakland in 1995, Georgia Frontiere moved her Rams from Anaheim to St. Louis in 1995, Art Modell accepted an offer from Maryland and pulled his Cleveland Browns out of the Ohio city in 1995 with the team landing in Baltimore in 1996. Bud Adams finally made good on his threat to move the Houston Oilers in 1996 and took them to Nashville in 1998 with a stop over in Memphis in 1997.
The National Basketball Association blocked the sale of the Minnesota Timberwolves to a group led by boxing promoter Bob Arum in 1994. Arum and his partners wanted to put the team in New Orleans. The NBA led by Commissioner David Stern wanted to keep the team in Minneapolis and found a local owner who bought the team. But Stern did not block Donald Sterling's relocation of the San Diego Clippers to LA in 1985 even though he was against the move. Under Stern's watch, the Kansas City Kings franchise moved to Sacramento, George Shinn left Charlotte for New Orleans; Michael Heisley moved his Vancouver Grizzlies to Memphis and Clayton Bennett has a basketball team in Oklahoma City after leaving Seattle. All of those moves got the approval from NBA owners.
Major League Baseball has an antitrust exemption. They could act without worry but the owners and the Commissioner's office got sloppy and were sued in 1992 by Frank Morsani and his Tampa Bay Baseball Group. Morsani and his investors accused Major League Baseball of reneging on its promise to grant the group an expansion team for the Tampa Bay area. In 2003, Morsani and Major League Baseball reached a settlement in the case.
There are many people who are pointing the finger at Gary Bettman for the Phoenix situation and for what people see as a flawed plan to expand hockey into the southern and southwestern part of the United States. Never let facts get in the way of a good story. Bettman was still in the NBA when the 21 NHL owners in 1990 decided that they needed to expand their league footprint.
Bettman was not the NHL Commissioner when the league split the Minnesota North Star franchise and moved a piece of the team to Daly City, California and the Cow Palace then to San Jose in 1991. Bettman was not there when the league added Tampa Bay and Ottawa in 1992-93 or when Wayne Huizenga's Miami-based Florida Panthers and the Disney-owned Mighty Ducks of Anaheim joined the league or when Norman Green decided to move his Minnesota North Stars to Dallas. All three moves were orchestrated for 1993-94 and even though Bettman joined the league on February 1, 1993, he inherited the business moves.
Bettman's so-called southern strategy wasn't so southern when the league expanded in 1997. Nashville joined in 1998, Atlanta in 1999 but two northern cities, Columbus and St. Paul, Minnesota started play in 2000. The Hartford Whalers owner Peter Karmanos apparently was enticed by Raleigh, North Carolina's plan to build an arena for an NHL expansion team and decided to relocate his team to the Research Triangle area but Karmanos had some good reasons to move. Connecticut Governor John Rowland seemed uninterested in building a new Hartford arena and put turned his attention to building a Hartford football stadium for New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft. Karmanos got a number of perks for his hockey team and his Compuware business with the move.
Bettman and the NHL owners did not stop the sale of the Quebec Nordiques by owner Marcel Aubut to Ascent Entertainment and Charlie Lyons in 1995 after Aubut could not get a new arena in Quebec City.
A sports commissioner can make suggestions to owners but at the end of the day, a commissioner works for the owners, a notion that certain sportswriters, fans and apparently some "experts" who teach sports business classes cannot grasp. Just ask former Major League Baseball Commissioner about autonomy. A Commissioner has some rope but not much. A Commissioner is a lobbyist, in Bettman's case, a negotiator when a collective bargaining agreement with the players is done, and gets TV and marketing deals done. Someone in the NHL decided that Phoenix was an important market and was worth keeping.
The NHL is the only buyer left standing with Balsillie gone. Judge Baum wants the NHL to be kinder to Moyes and Wayne Gretzky in making them whole. The Phoenix area has been hard hit by the recession and the real estate bust but demographers think there could be as many as eight million people in the Valley of the Sun metropolitan area by 2050. Phoenix and the surrounding area was one of the fastest growing United States markets in the 1990s and into the 21st century. But that is in the future. Phoenix has a lot of western Canadian snowbirds along with American Midwesterners who winter in the Valley. Those people are potential customers, the Phoenix business community needs to step up as well to keep the team there. The Coyotes franchise also needs an owner who understands that hockey has to be sold not only on the NHL level but on the youth level.
The Dallas Stars franchise resides in a major Sun Belt market with months of very hot weather yet the Metroplex has embraced youth hockey and Texas has more professional hockey teams than any other state in America.
Balsillie will probably be back but he needs to be rehabilitated if he wants an NHL franchise. He needs to understand that the NHL has rules and regulations and until he gets into the club, he needs to abide by the owners and the Commissioner's wishes.
As far as Hamilton, the city officials of the 1980s were not much smarter than those in Phoenix who knuckled under and gave into Coangelo's demands. The city's arena was built without a thought of the future and lacks sufficient luxury boxes and club seats. The Hamilton building is not up to NHL standards and it will cost taxpayers in an economically depressed city hundreds of millions of dollars to get the building up to snuff. Then there is the question of how much money that a potential Hamilton owner has to pay Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment for invading the Toronto territory and how much money that owner has to give Buffalo Sabres owner Tom Galisano for encroaching the Sabres northern territory not to mention worrying about the United States Senate and New York Senators Charles Schumer and Kristen Gillibrand. The two New York lawmakers were not happy with the thought of a Hamilton team because it might take business away from Buffalo.
For those who think the game is the most important part of sports, think again. Or read Judge Baum's decision.
eweiner@mcn.tv
NHL, MLB, NFL, NBA Win, Hamilton and Balsillie Lose
By Evan Weiner
September 30, 2009
10:30 PM EDT
(New York, N. Y.) -- So Jim Balsillie has dropped out of the bidding for the bankrupt Phoenix Coyotes National Hockey League franchise after a bankruptcy judge in Phoenix, Arizona decided that sports leagues are a private entity and that sports owners have a right to pick owners and territories. The judge, Redfield T. Baum, turned down Balsillie's bid and an offer by the NHL to buy the financially ailing franchise that sits in Glendale, Arizona not in downtown Phoenix because of a terrible decision by the sitting city council in the late 1980s when they buckled to Phoenix Suns CEO Jerry Coangelo's want for the perfect basketball arena with perfect seating for HIS customers and not approve an all purpose use for the building.
The saga of the Phoenix Coyotes should be studied by urban planners and sports business management professors, experts and students as soon as possible because of the action of the elected officials of Phoenix who made a badly flawed decision which resulted in an arena that could only sell 75 percent of the available seating because of obstructed views. Coangelo wanted a hockey team in the building but not own it. He wanted money off of the team as he got the lion’s share of the revenues of any activity in the building because of the lease he demanded and got from the Phoenix officials. Coangelo knew an NHL franchise could not succeed in that building and various Coyotes owners reached the same conclusion very quickly.
The Coyotes franchise became a piece of real estate with a subsequent owner coming up with a plan to try and build an arena in Scottsdale less than five years after Richard Burke and Steven Gluckstern purchased the Winnipeg Jets and moved the franchise to the Valley of the Sun in 1996. Gluckstern quickly cashed in and bought the New York Islanders in what was a real estate grab that did not work out for him in Nassau County, N. Y.
Burke sold the Coyotes to real estate developer Steve Ellman in 2001.
Eventually, after no arena materialized in Scottsdale, Ellman found a willing partner in Glendale and built the arena as part of a real estate development deal.
In 2006, Ellman sold the majority stake of the Coyotes to one of his real estate partners Jerry Moyes in a deal that gave Moyes the hockey team and allowed Ellman to take over the development of the real estate parcel in Glendale. Within two years, Moyes threw his hands up and walked away leaving the NHL apparently to pay off the bills. In May 2009, Moyes decided bankruptcy was a good option and found a willing individual to buy the franchise in Balsillie in a bankruptcy proceeding. The NHL apparently was trying to sell the team to Chicago White Sox and Bulls owner Jerry Reinsdorf as Moyes walked into Judge Baum's court.
Reinsdorf's Major League White Sox franchise was already doing business in Glendale as Reinsdorf moved his spring training headquarters from Tucson, Arizona to Glendale in the winter/spring of 2009.
Balsillie had twice before gone after an NHL team. He had an agreement to buy the Pittsburgh Penguins in 2006 and dropped out after to agree to some NHL stipulations. In June 2007 he made his biggest mistake in his dealing with NHL owners and NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman. Not too long after he signed an agreement to buy the Nashville Predators from Craig Leipold, he announced that he planned to relocate the team to Hamilton, Ontario in 2008-09. Soon after his plans became public, the deal was called off.
Balsillie is obvious a smart guy given his success with Research in Motion and BlackBerry but he actions in the Nashville matter and subsequent behavior in the Phoenix dealings were silly. Prospective sports owners have to understand that becoming a major league sports owner is not a right but a privilege. You have to prove that you a worthy to join their private club, Balsillie might be raking in the cash with BlackBerry but that does not mean that he will be allowed in the brotherhood of owners.
There must have been a huge sigh of relief from the law offices of Major League Baseball, the National Football League, and the National Basketball Association when they found out that Judge Baum in his decision wrote.
"In the final analysis, the court cannot find or conclude that the interests of the NHL can be adequately protected if the Coyotes are moved to Hamilton without first having a final decision regarding the claimed rights of the NHL."
Judge Baum understood from day one that the NHL is a private entity that has its own rules not too much different than a golf course which can allow or reject prospective members. Oakland Raiders owner Al Davis was able to move his team to Los Angeles after the National Football League blocked his planned relocation in 1981 by a 22-0 vote with five abstentions by joining with the Los Angeles Coliseum Commission's lawsuit which charged that the NFL violated antitrust laws by not allowing the move. Davis and the Coliseum Commission won the case, Davis moved the team to LA and the NFL was forced to tighten up its relocation rules. The NFL has not stopped any moves since the Davis case as Robert Irsay took his Baltimore Colts to Indianapolis in 1984, Bill Bidwill took an offer from Tempe, Arizona in 1988, Davis moved back to Oakland in 1995, Georgia Frontiere moved her Rams from Anaheim to St. Louis in 1995, Art Modell accepted an offer from Maryland and pulled his Cleveland Browns out of the Ohio city in 1995 with the team landing in Baltimore in 1996. Bud Adams finally made good on his threat to move the Houston Oilers in 1996 and took them to Nashville in 1998 with a stop over in Memphis in 1997.
The National Basketball Association blocked the sale of the Minnesota Timberwolves to a group led by boxing promoter Bob Arum in 1994. Arum and his partners wanted to put the team in New Orleans. The NBA led by Commissioner David Stern wanted to keep the team in Minneapolis and found a local owner who bought the team. But Stern did not block Donald Sterling's relocation of the San Diego Clippers to LA in 1985 even though he was against the move. Under Stern's watch, the Kansas City Kings franchise moved to Sacramento, George Shinn left Charlotte for New Orleans; Michael Heisley moved his Vancouver Grizzlies to Memphis and Clayton Bennett has a basketball team in Oklahoma City after leaving Seattle. All of those moves got the approval from NBA owners.
Major League Baseball has an antitrust exemption. They could act without worry but the owners and the Commissioner's office got sloppy and were sued in 1992 by Frank Morsani and his Tampa Bay Baseball Group. Morsani and his investors accused Major League Baseball of reneging on its promise to grant the group an expansion team for the Tampa Bay area. In 2003, Morsani and Major League Baseball reached a settlement in the case.
There are many people who are pointing the finger at Gary Bettman for the Phoenix situation and for what people see as a flawed plan to expand hockey into the southern and southwestern part of the United States. Never let facts get in the way of a good story. Bettman was still in the NBA when the 21 NHL owners in 1990 decided that they needed to expand their league footprint.
Bettman was not the NHL Commissioner when the league split the Minnesota North Star franchise and moved a piece of the team to Daly City, California and the Cow Palace then to San Jose in 1991. Bettman was not there when the league added Tampa Bay and Ottawa in 1992-93 or when Wayne Huizenga's Miami-based Florida Panthers and the Disney-owned Mighty Ducks of Anaheim joined the league or when Norman Green decided to move his Minnesota North Stars to Dallas. All three moves were orchestrated for 1993-94 and even though Bettman joined the league on February 1, 1993, he inherited the business moves.
Bettman's so-called southern strategy wasn't so southern when the league expanded in 1997. Nashville joined in 1998, Atlanta in 1999 but two northern cities, Columbus and St. Paul, Minnesota started play in 2000. The Hartford Whalers owner Peter Karmanos apparently was enticed by Raleigh, North Carolina's plan to build an arena for an NHL expansion team and decided to relocate his team to the Research Triangle area but Karmanos had some good reasons to move. Connecticut Governor John Rowland seemed uninterested in building a new Hartford arena and put turned his attention to building a Hartford football stadium for New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft. Karmanos got a number of perks for his hockey team and his Compuware business with the move.
Bettman and the NHL owners did not stop the sale of the Quebec Nordiques by owner Marcel Aubut to Ascent Entertainment and Charlie Lyons in 1995 after Aubut could not get a new arena in Quebec City.
A sports commissioner can make suggestions to owners but at the end of the day, a commissioner works for the owners, a notion that certain sportswriters, fans and apparently some "experts" who teach sports business classes cannot grasp. Just ask former Major League Baseball Commissioner about autonomy. A Commissioner has some rope but not much. A Commissioner is a lobbyist, in Bettman's case, a negotiator when a collective bargaining agreement with the players is done, and gets TV and marketing deals done. Someone in the NHL decided that Phoenix was an important market and was worth keeping.
The NHL is the only buyer left standing with Balsillie gone. Judge Baum wants the NHL to be kinder to Moyes and Wayne Gretzky in making them whole. The Phoenix area has been hard hit by the recession and the real estate bust but demographers think there could be as many as eight million people in the Valley of the Sun metropolitan area by 2050. Phoenix and the surrounding area was one of the fastest growing United States markets in the 1990s and into the 21st century. But that is in the future. Phoenix has a lot of western Canadian snowbirds along with American Midwesterners who winter in the Valley. Those people are potential customers, the Phoenix business community needs to step up as well to keep the team there. The Coyotes franchise also needs an owner who understands that hockey has to be sold not only on the NHL level but on the youth level.
The Dallas Stars franchise resides in a major Sun Belt market with months of very hot weather yet the Metroplex has embraced youth hockey and Texas has more professional hockey teams than any other state in America.
Balsillie will probably be back but he needs to be rehabilitated if he wants an NHL franchise. He needs to understand that the NHL has rules and regulations and until he gets into the club, he needs to abide by the owners and the Commissioner's wishes.
As far as Hamilton, the city officials of the 1980s were not much smarter than those in Phoenix who knuckled under and gave into Coangelo's demands. The city's arena was built without a thought of the future and lacks sufficient luxury boxes and club seats. The Hamilton building is not up to NHL standards and it will cost taxpayers in an economically depressed city hundreds of millions of dollars to get the building up to snuff. Then there is the question of how much money that a potential Hamilton owner has to pay Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment for invading the Toronto territory and how much money that owner has to give Buffalo Sabres owner Tom Galisano for encroaching the Sabres northern territory not to mention worrying about the United States Senate and New York Senators Charles Schumer and Kristen Gillibrand. The two New York lawmakers were not happy with the thought of a Hamilton team because it might take business away from Buffalo.
For those who think the game is the most important part of sports, think again. Or read Judge Baum's decision.
eweiner@mcn.tv
Thursday, September 24, 2009
Will US Homeland Security Net Prokhorov?
http://www.mcnsports.com/en/node/7542
Will US Homeland Security Net Prokhorov?
By Evan Weiner
September 24, 2009
12:00 PM EDT
(New York, N. Y.) -- Mikail Prokhorov has decided that buying the New Jersey Nets and putting up money to help fund Bruce Ratner's arena in Brooklyn is too good a deal to pass over. He wants in and is ready to show that he what it takes to compete in American sports. Prokhorov is said to be Russia's wealthiest man and likes to invest some of his money in athletic endeavors. But before Prokhorov's New Jersey soon to be Brooklyn Nets play on a court set up in Red Square with Vladimir Putin and Dmirtri Medvedev acting like Spike Lee and Jack Nicholson there is one little matter that has to be settled and it is not getting National Basketball Association Commissioner David Stern's approval to join the NBA fraternity of owners nor is it getting Ratner's 29 partners, the other NBA owners, to sign off on the deal.
Prokhorov's transaction will have to be reviewed by the United States Department of Homeland Security. Money transfers from Russian banks to America need to be reviewed.
If Prokhorov is an upstanding businessman without any blemishes on his record, there should be no problems getting the initial approval which would come from Washington. But if there are any questions about Prokhorov, there could be a delay in getting the agency's approval and that is the most significant hurdle facing the planned Prokhorov purchase of the Nets franchise.
Right now there is a Middle Eastern group of investors who allegedly are looking to sink hundreds of millions of dollars into an American sports entity. The story goes that the said entity has been waiting for the Department of Homeland security to approval the transaction and that someone has been dragging their heels since last winter. This sports entity has a United States bank of record waiting for the money and approval but so far, no money has been transferred.
If all is well with the Prokhorov application, the money transfer should take no more than a week to approve. Money from China pours into America daily, money from the Middle East comes into the United States; foreigners own chunks of real estate in Manhattan and in Miami and, of course, non American money enters the various stock exchanges on a minute-to-minute basis. America will welcome Prokhorov's money but his bid for the Nets will have to pass Department of Homeland Security eyes.
Prokhorov's deal with Ratner is simple enough. Prokhorov is putting up $200 million to buy into the franchise and then investing in Ratner's Brooklyn real estate complex which includes the construction of a multi purpose arena for the Nets (Ratner has always wanted a hockey team in the building as well from day one although that has not been publicized) along with commercial and residential properties. It is more of a real estate deal than a sports transaction. Prokhorov is the first Russian to express an interest in an NBA team but not the first foreigner this year to offer to put money in an NBA franchise. Chinese investors are looking to buy a piece of the Cleveland Cavaliers.
Another Russian, Alexander Medvedev, openly spoke about buying a National Hockey League franchise last May with the hope of moving an unnamed team to Quebec City.
Ratner is no stranger to doing business internationally. He has a deal with the British bank Barclays (a banking business that has no American branches) to put up $400 million over 20 years for the naming rights to his proposed arena and has smaller deals with other businesses for various in arena naming rights. But he was still significantly short of the cash needed to build a venue that might cost $750 million to a billion dollars. That is where Prokhorov's rubles will come in handy.
For Prokhorov, this could be a major real estate deal as he could end up controlling 45 percent of the arena and 20 percent of the real estate development of 22 acres of Brooklyn real estate. Brooklyn has a large Russian population in Brooklyn in Brighton Beach which is on the subway line that would serve the Ratner-Prokhorov arena.
Ratner has finally gotten a go ahead to build the arena from the New York State Economic Development Corporation and with Prokhorov's money could have the final piece of the puzzle to break ground on the building. Ratner has been attempting to develop the Brooklyn real estate he owns for four years. Ratner is hoping to get his team or maybe Prokhorov's team into Brooklyn sometime in the next three years.
Prokhorov won't be the first Russian billionaire to own a sports franchise outside of Russia. In 2003, Roman Abramovich purchased controlling interest in Chelsea of the English Premier League, rather the Barclay Premier League as the same Barclay bank that is hoping the Brooklyn building will materialize is the naming rights holder for what might be the best known sports league in the world. Abramovich is not the only "foreigner" who has a controlling interest of a Premiership team. Americans Stan Kroenke (Arsenal), the Glazier family (Manchester United), Thomas O. Hicks and George Gillett (Liverpool), Randy Lerner (Aston Villa),Andrew Appleby (Derby), Ellis Short (Sunderland) are well represented. In 2008, Manchester City was purchased by Abu Dhabi’s Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed al Nahyan. Portsmouth is now run by a group of Middle Eastern and Asian businessmen fronted by Dr. Sulaiman Al-Farim. West Ham may be for sale after Iceland's Björgólfur Gudmundsson saw a lot of his fortune disappear in the global meltdown. Fulham is owned by Mohamed Al-Fayed who also has Harrods store in London.
Los Angeles Kings owner Phil Anschutz and his AEG company own the major London arena. The company has built a North American style arena in Berlin, Germany and owns sports franchises in Europe. If Americans can invest in sports in Europe and Asia, why can’t non-Americans sink money into American sports? Other than America’s myopia and the thought other someone other than an American owning “their team” there should not be a problem unless Homeland Security finds one.
There is no suggestion that there will be a run of foreigners who will take over 40 to 45 to 50 percent of American teams in Major League Baseball, the National Football League, the National Basketball Association, the National Hockey League or Major League Soccer as what has happened in the English Premiership. American sports leagues have accepted foreign money throughout history. The National Hockey League's main offices are in New York but the league started in Canada and there has always been "foreigner" ownership depending on a person's viewpoint either by Americans or Canadians. Japanese ownership launched the Tampa Bay Lightning.
The NBA has "foreigner" ownership in Toronto with Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment running the Raptors. Jack Kent Cooke, a Canadian, had the Los Angeles Kings and Lakers of the NBA in the 1960s and 1970s, sold those teams and bought the Washington Redskins of the National Football League. A Canadian, Pat Bowlen, owns the NFL's Denver Broncos. A Belgium company, Interbrew, ran Major League Baseball's Toronto Blue Jays from 1995-2000.
Major League Baseball would not allow Ninento's president Hiroshi Yamaguchi of Japan to buy the Seattle Mariners in 1992 at first. But relented after pressure and accusations of racism from Seattle and Washington elected officials along with the Seattle business community and accepted Yamaguchi's money as long as he had under a 50 percent share of the club and did not run the team. American sports leagues also received a lot of funding for loans from France's Société Générale bank which has gone under the radar in the day to day reporting of sports news in the United States.
National Basketball Association Commissioner David Stern seems ready to embrace his potential Russian partner and there will be the due diligence of checking out Prokhorov by league security and then Prokhorov's bid to buy into the New Jersey Nets will be given to NBA owners for approval. That is the normal selection process for American investors but Prokhorov is a Russia so the first and probably the most important test for him as a potential owner will come from United States Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano and her staff. If they approve Prokhorov's money transfer plans, then there should be no problem for Stern and his owners to approve the Russian's bid to buy into an NBA team. Stern will be a major step closer to his goal of globalizing the NBA. The Nets could be playing CKSA Moscow in a pre-season game in Red Square with the band in the background playing Midnight in Moscow.
eweiner@mcn.tv
Will US Homeland Security Net Prokhorov?
By Evan Weiner
September 24, 2009
12:00 PM EDT
(New York, N. Y.) -- Mikail Prokhorov has decided that buying the New Jersey Nets and putting up money to help fund Bruce Ratner's arena in Brooklyn is too good a deal to pass over. He wants in and is ready to show that he what it takes to compete in American sports. Prokhorov is said to be Russia's wealthiest man and likes to invest some of his money in athletic endeavors. But before Prokhorov's New Jersey soon to be Brooklyn Nets play on a court set up in Red Square with Vladimir Putin and Dmirtri Medvedev acting like Spike Lee and Jack Nicholson there is one little matter that has to be settled and it is not getting National Basketball Association Commissioner David Stern's approval to join the NBA fraternity of owners nor is it getting Ratner's 29 partners, the other NBA owners, to sign off on the deal.
Prokhorov's transaction will have to be reviewed by the United States Department of Homeland Security. Money transfers from Russian banks to America need to be reviewed.
If Prokhorov is an upstanding businessman without any blemishes on his record, there should be no problems getting the initial approval which would come from Washington. But if there are any questions about Prokhorov, there could be a delay in getting the agency's approval and that is the most significant hurdle facing the planned Prokhorov purchase of the Nets franchise.
Right now there is a Middle Eastern group of investors who allegedly are looking to sink hundreds of millions of dollars into an American sports entity. The story goes that the said entity has been waiting for the Department of Homeland security to approval the transaction and that someone has been dragging their heels since last winter. This sports entity has a United States bank of record waiting for the money and approval but so far, no money has been transferred.
If all is well with the Prokhorov application, the money transfer should take no more than a week to approve. Money from China pours into America daily, money from the Middle East comes into the United States; foreigners own chunks of real estate in Manhattan and in Miami and, of course, non American money enters the various stock exchanges on a minute-to-minute basis. America will welcome Prokhorov's money but his bid for the Nets will have to pass Department of Homeland Security eyes.
Prokhorov's deal with Ratner is simple enough. Prokhorov is putting up $200 million to buy into the franchise and then investing in Ratner's Brooklyn real estate complex which includes the construction of a multi purpose arena for the Nets (Ratner has always wanted a hockey team in the building as well from day one although that has not been publicized) along with commercial and residential properties. It is more of a real estate deal than a sports transaction. Prokhorov is the first Russian to express an interest in an NBA team but not the first foreigner this year to offer to put money in an NBA franchise. Chinese investors are looking to buy a piece of the Cleveland Cavaliers.
Another Russian, Alexander Medvedev, openly spoke about buying a National Hockey League franchise last May with the hope of moving an unnamed team to Quebec City.
Ratner is no stranger to doing business internationally. He has a deal with the British bank Barclays (a banking business that has no American branches) to put up $400 million over 20 years for the naming rights to his proposed arena and has smaller deals with other businesses for various in arena naming rights. But he was still significantly short of the cash needed to build a venue that might cost $750 million to a billion dollars. That is where Prokhorov's rubles will come in handy.
For Prokhorov, this could be a major real estate deal as he could end up controlling 45 percent of the arena and 20 percent of the real estate development of 22 acres of Brooklyn real estate. Brooklyn has a large Russian population in Brooklyn in Brighton Beach which is on the subway line that would serve the Ratner-Prokhorov arena.
Ratner has finally gotten a go ahead to build the arena from the New York State Economic Development Corporation and with Prokhorov's money could have the final piece of the puzzle to break ground on the building. Ratner has been attempting to develop the Brooklyn real estate he owns for four years. Ratner is hoping to get his team or maybe Prokhorov's team into Brooklyn sometime in the next three years.
Prokhorov won't be the first Russian billionaire to own a sports franchise outside of Russia. In 2003, Roman Abramovich purchased controlling interest in Chelsea of the English Premier League, rather the Barclay Premier League as the same Barclay bank that is hoping the Brooklyn building will materialize is the naming rights holder for what might be the best known sports league in the world. Abramovich is not the only "foreigner" who has a controlling interest of a Premiership team. Americans Stan Kroenke (Arsenal), the Glazier family (Manchester United), Thomas O. Hicks and George Gillett (Liverpool), Randy Lerner (Aston Villa),Andrew Appleby (Derby), Ellis Short (Sunderland) are well represented. In 2008, Manchester City was purchased by Abu Dhabi’s Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed al Nahyan. Portsmouth is now run by a group of Middle Eastern and Asian businessmen fronted by Dr. Sulaiman Al-Farim. West Ham may be for sale after Iceland's Björgólfur Gudmundsson saw a lot of his fortune disappear in the global meltdown. Fulham is owned by Mohamed Al-Fayed who also has Harrods store in London.
Los Angeles Kings owner Phil Anschutz and his AEG company own the major London arena. The company has built a North American style arena in Berlin, Germany and owns sports franchises in Europe. If Americans can invest in sports in Europe and Asia, why can’t non-Americans sink money into American sports? Other than America’s myopia and the thought other someone other than an American owning “their team” there should not be a problem unless Homeland Security finds one.
There is no suggestion that there will be a run of foreigners who will take over 40 to 45 to 50 percent of American teams in Major League Baseball, the National Football League, the National Basketball Association, the National Hockey League or Major League Soccer as what has happened in the English Premiership. American sports leagues have accepted foreign money throughout history. The National Hockey League's main offices are in New York but the league started in Canada and there has always been "foreigner" ownership depending on a person's viewpoint either by Americans or Canadians. Japanese ownership launched the Tampa Bay Lightning.
The NBA has "foreigner" ownership in Toronto with Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment running the Raptors. Jack Kent Cooke, a Canadian, had the Los Angeles Kings and Lakers of the NBA in the 1960s and 1970s, sold those teams and bought the Washington Redskins of the National Football League. A Canadian, Pat Bowlen, owns the NFL's Denver Broncos. A Belgium company, Interbrew, ran Major League Baseball's Toronto Blue Jays from 1995-2000.
Major League Baseball would not allow Ninento's president Hiroshi Yamaguchi of Japan to buy the Seattle Mariners in 1992 at first. But relented after pressure and accusations of racism from Seattle and Washington elected officials along with the Seattle business community and accepted Yamaguchi's money as long as he had under a 50 percent share of the club and did not run the team. American sports leagues also received a lot of funding for loans from France's Société Générale bank which has gone under the radar in the day to day reporting of sports news in the United States.
National Basketball Association Commissioner David Stern seems ready to embrace his potential Russian partner and there will be the due diligence of checking out Prokhorov by league security and then Prokhorov's bid to buy into the New Jersey Nets will be given to NBA owners for approval. That is the normal selection process for American investors but Prokhorov is a Russia so the first and probably the most important test for him as a potential owner will come from United States Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano and her staff. If they approve Prokhorov's money transfer plans, then there should be no problem for Stern and his owners to approve the Russian's bid to buy into an NBA team. Stern will be a major step closer to his goal of globalizing the NBA. The Nets could be playing CKSA Moscow in a pre-season game in Red Square with the band in the background playing Midnight in Moscow.
eweiner@mcn.tv
Sunday, September 20, 2009
Will Stern Allow Chinese or Russian Owners in the NBA?
http://www.mcnsports.com/en/node/7539
Will Stern Allow Chinese or Russian Owners in the NBA?
By Evan Weiner
September 19, 2009
8:00 PM EDT
(New York, N. Y.) – In January 1992 at a little media conference prior to the annual Baseball Assistance Team fundraiser in a Times Square hotel, Major League Baseball Commissioner Fay Vincent was trying to explain why his 26 member ownership group had a policy that barred non-American citizens from owning a Major League Baseball with the exception of the two Canadian teams, the Montreal Expos and the Toronto Blue Jays. Vincent and his owners had a major problem on their hands, Jeff Smuylan, the man who invented 24-hour a day sports talk radio in the United States, was having financial problems and had a deal in principle to sell his majority share of the Seattle Mariners to Hiroshi Yamauchi, the president of the Nintendo Company Ltd.
The problem with Yamauchi’s bid was simple. He was offering $75 million for 60 percent of the Mariners franchise. That was the good news for Vincent’s owners but the bad news was that Yamauchi lived in Japan and that was a major problem as xenophobic owners wanted nothing to do with a foreigner running a Major League Baseball team.
After all, it was un-American for a Japanese citizen to fund a franchise in America’s National Pastime.
Yamauchi thought it made good business sense for him to invest in a Major League Baseball team in Seattle. His son-in-law Minoru Arakawa ran Nintendo’s American division in Seattle. Arakawa, his wife Yoko and grandchildren lived in Seattle. Yamauchi’s company employed 1,400 people in Seattle and Yamauchi pledged to keep the franchise in the city.
That didn’t seem to please Vincent or the owners and on a cold January night in New York Vincent seem to be looking for excuses that would keep the Mariners franchise out of foreign hands. None of his answers seemed logical.
Eventually after Major League Baseball was put through the ringer as Seattle and Washington state officials along with Washington Senator Slate Gorton started questioning baseball’s anti-foreigner ownership policy, a compromised was reached. Yamauchi was allowed to buy a significant stake in the franchise but could not be a majority owner.
On July 1, 1992, Yamauchi closed the deal and he and his American partners have run the Mariners franchise since then. Yamauchi’s Seattle representatives has been a good group for the other owners; the Yamauchi’s people knew what buttons to push to get a new Seattle taxpayers funded stadium from the Washington legislature in 1995 after voters said no to a new stadium in 1994.
Major League Baseball has not had a legitimate foreign offer for any American team since 1992. The Belgium-based Interbrew brewery owned the Toronto Blue Jays for five years between 1995 and 2000 after the brewers purchased the Blue Jays owner Labatts (beer). The National Football League has not faced that issue either. The National Basketball Association could be getting a foreign owner if a Reuters report on September 16 is correct.
Russia’s richest man, Mikhail Prokhorov, according to the Reuters article is interested in buying a significant stake in Bruce Ratner’s New Jersey Nets franchise. Ratner has been attempting to move the East Rutherford-based team to the Atlantic Railyards in Brooklyn for four years and just got New York State approval for a scaled-down arena. Ratner’s problem is that he has been losing money on the team since he purchased the franchise in August 2004.
It seems inconceivable that NBA Commissioner David Stern would mimic Fay Vincent circa 1992 and rattle off reasons why he and his owners would block foreign investors in NBA teams. Stern has been pushing a strategy that has globalized the NBA and basketball with his biggest success to date in making China an NBA hotbed and before that Hong Kong.
In May 2009, Cleveland Cavaliers owner Dan Gilbert completed a deal to sell up to 15 percent of the team to a group of Chinese businessmen including JianHua Huang, who has brokered sponsorships with a number of North American sports teams.
Phil Anschutz’s AEG (Anschutz has a piece of the Los Angeles Lakers) and NBA China are developing arenas throughout China in an effort to not only push the NBA in China but other sports and entertainment at well.
So it will seem that Stern would welcome Prokhorov who has a financial stake in the Russian Super League and the Euroleague’s CSKA Moscow’s basketball team if he passes all of the NBA’s checks.
Ownership groups can be good or bad from the United States or Canada; it is never easy to figure out who will be successful and who will fail. The NHL, which also has global aspirations, has had one non-North American owner.
National Hockey League President Gil Stein and his 22 owners had no problem with the prospect of Japanese money providing the majority funding for the expansion Tampa Bay Lightning franchise in 1992 (along with New York Yankees owner George M. Steinbrenner III). Kokusai Green’s owner Takashi Okubo. The experience was terrible as Okubo was an absentee owner and the team’s finances were a mess. Kokusai Green sold the franchise in 1998. That was the last foreign owner in the NHL. Charles Wang, who purchased the New York Islanders in 2000, was born in Shanghai, China but moved to New York at the age of 8.
Even though Major League Baseball has a sign still up saying Americans only despite increasing globalization and the National Football League has not faced the prospect of having a foreigner buy a team, North American owners have been purchasing European properties in English soccer. MLB’s Texas Rangers (and NHL Dallas Stars) owner teamed up with former NHL Montreal Canadiens owner George Gillett to purchase the English Premier League’s Liverpool F. C.
In 2006, NFL Cleveland Browns owner Randy Lerner bought Aston Villa. The year before, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers Glazier family purchased Manchester United.
Former Detroit Pistons executive and Minor League Baseball owner Andrew Appleby purchased the Derby County Football Club of the Premiership in 2008. Another American owner, Stan Kroenke (NBA’s Denver Nuggets, NHL Colorado Avalanche, MLS Colorado Rapids, National Lacrosse League’s Colorado Mammoth, NFL’s St. Louis Rams and the Altitude Sports and Entertainment regional cable TV network in the Rocky Mountain states) is the largest share holder of the North London-based Arsenal FC.
Major League sports teams are not cheap and there are not a lot of Americans who could afford purchasing a team. If Prokhorov is indeed interested in the New Jersey Nets, NBA Commissioner David Stern would be foolish to turn a deaf ear to him. The founder of the Kontinental Hockey League, the Russian billionaire Alexander Medvedev claimed last May that he wanted to buy an NHL team and move it to Quebec City.
If Jim Balsille thinks the NHL has given him a difficult time in attempting to buy the Phoenix Coyotes and moving the franchise to Hamilton, Ontario, Balsille’s case against the NHL would be child’s play compared to an attempt by Medvedev to buy an NHL franchise. Medvedev started a new Russian league that went after NHL players and signed a few including Alexander Radulov who left his Nashville team while under contract to play for Salavat Yulaev Ufa in 2008-09.
It is only a matter of time before some North American franchises are purchased by non-Americans and non-Canadians. Americans are snapping up English Premiership League teams why wouldn’t major money people from Europe or Asia not jump at the opportunity at a North American team? Fay Vincent is no longer guarding the gate like he did on that cold January night in the middle of Times Square in January 1992. The xenophobic policy of Major League Baseball of 1992 made no sense. It makes even less sense in 2009.
eweiner@mcn.tv
Will Stern Allow Chinese or Russian Owners in the NBA?
By Evan Weiner
September 19, 2009
8:00 PM EDT
(New York, N. Y.) – In January 1992 at a little media conference prior to the annual Baseball Assistance Team fundraiser in a Times Square hotel, Major League Baseball Commissioner Fay Vincent was trying to explain why his 26 member ownership group had a policy that barred non-American citizens from owning a Major League Baseball with the exception of the two Canadian teams, the Montreal Expos and the Toronto Blue Jays. Vincent and his owners had a major problem on their hands, Jeff Smuylan, the man who invented 24-hour a day sports talk radio in the United States, was having financial problems and had a deal in principle to sell his majority share of the Seattle Mariners to Hiroshi Yamauchi, the president of the Nintendo Company Ltd.
The problem with Yamauchi’s bid was simple. He was offering $75 million for 60 percent of the Mariners franchise. That was the good news for Vincent’s owners but the bad news was that Yamauchi lived in Japan and that was a major problem as xenophobic owners wanted nothing to do with a foreigner running a Major League Baseball team.
After all, it was un-American for a Japanese citizen to fund a franchise in America’s National Pastime.
Yamauchi thought it made good business sense for him to invest in a Major League Baseball team in Seattle. His son-in-law Minoru Arakawa ran Nintendo’s American division in Seattle. Arakawa, his wife Yoko and grandchildren lived in Seattle. Yamauchi’s company employed 1,400 people in Seattle and Yamauchi pledged to keep the franchise in the city.
That didn’t seem to please Vincent or the owners and on a cold January night in New York Vincent seem to be looking for excuses that would keep the Mariners franchise out of foreign hands. None of his answers seemed logical.
Eventually after Major League Baseball was put through the ringer as Seattle and Washington state officials along with Washington Senator Slate Gorton started questioning baseball’s anti-foreigner ownership policy, a compromised was reached. Yamauchi was allowed to buy a significant stake in the franchise but could not be a majority owner.
On July 1, 1992, Yamauchi closed the deal and he and his American partners have run the Mariners franchise since then. Yamauchi’s Seattle representatives has been a good group for the other owners; the Yamauchi’s people knew what buttons to push to get a new Seattle taxpayers funded stadium from the Washington legislature in 1995 after voters said no to a new stadium in 1994.
Major League Baseball has not had a legitimate foreign offer for any American team since 1992. The Belgium-based Interbrew brewery owned the Toronto Blue Jays for five years between 1995 and 2000 after the brewers purchased the Blue Jays owner Labatts (beer). The National Football League has not faced that issue either. The National Basketball Association could be getting a foreign owner if a Reuters report on September 16 is correct.
Russia’s richest man, Mikhail Prokhorov, according to the Reuters article is interested in buying a significant stake in Bruce Ratner’s New Jersey Nets franchise. Ratner has been attempting to move the East Rutherford-based team to the Atlantic Railyards in Brooklyn for four years and just got New York State approval for a scaled-down arena. Ratner’s problem is that he has been losing money on the team since he purchased the franchise in August 2004.
It seems inconceivable that NBA Commissioner David Stern would mimic Fay Vincent circa 1992 and rattle off reasons why he and his owners would block foreign investors in NBA teams. Stern has been pushing a strategy that has globalized the NBA and basketball with his biggest success to date in making China an NBA hotbed and before that Hong Kong.
In May 2009, Cleveland Cavaliers owner Dan Gilbert completed a deal to sell up to 15 percent of the team to a group of Chinese businessmen including JianHua Huang, who has brokered sponsorships with a number of North American sports teams.
Phil Anschutz’s AEG (Anschutz has a piece of the Los Angeles Lakers) and NBA China are developing arenas throughout China in an effort to not only push the NBA in China but other sports and entertainment at well.
So it will seem that Stern would welcome Prokhorov who has a financial stake in the Russian Super League and the Euroleague’s CSKA Moscow’s basketball team if he passes all of the NBA’s checks.
Ownership groups can be good or bad from the United States or Canada; it is never easy to figure out who will be successful and who will fail. The NHL, which also has global aspirations, has had one non-North American owner.
National Hockey League President Gil Stein and his 22 owners had no problem with the prospect of Japanese money providing the majority funding for the expansion Tampa Bay Lightning franchise in 1992 (along with New York Yankees owner George M. Steinbrenner III). Kokusai Green’s owner Takashi Okubo. The experience was terrible as Okubo was an absentee owner and the team’s finances were a mess. Kokusai Green sold the franchise in 1998. That was the last foreign owner in the NHL. Charles Wang, who purchased the New York Islanders in 2000, was born in Shanghai, China but moved to New York at the age of 8.
Even though Major League Baseball has a sign still up saying Americans only despite increasing globalization and the National Football League has not faced the prospect of having a foreigner buy a team, North American owners have been purchasing European properties in English soccer. MLB’s Texas Rangers (and NHL Dallas Stars) owner teamed up with former NHL Montreal Canadiens owner George Gillett to purchase the English Premier League’s Liverpool F. C.
In 2006, NFL Cleveland Browns owner Randy Lerner bought Aston Villa. The year before, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers Glazier family purchased Manchester United.
Former Detroit Pistons executive and Minor League Baseball owner Andrew Appleby purchased the Derby County Football Club of the Premiership in 2008. Another American owner, Stan Kroenke (NBA’s Denver Nuggets, NHL Colorado Avalanche, MLS Colorado Rapids, National Lacrosse League’s Colorado Mammoth, NFL’s St. Louis Rams and the Altitude Sports and Entertainment regional cable TV network in the Rocky Mountain states) is the largest share holder of the North London-based Arsenal FC.
Major League sports teams are not cheap and there are not a lot of Americans who could afford purchasing a team. If Prokhorov is indeed interested in the New Jersey Nets, NBA Commissioner David Stern would be foolish to turn a deaf ear to him. The founder of the Kontinental Hockey League, the Russian billionaire Alexander Medvedev claimed last May that he wanted to buy an NHL team and move it to Quebec City.
If Jim Balsille thinks the NHL has given him a difficult time in attempting to buy the Phoenix Coyotes and moving the franchise to Hamilton, Ontario, Balsille’s case against the NHL would be child’s play compared to an attempt by Medvedev to buy an NHL franchise. Medvedev started a new Russian league that went after NHL players and signed a few including Alexander Radulov who left his Nashville team while under contract to play for Salavat Yulaev Ufa in 2008-09.
It is only a matter of time before some North American franchises are purchased by non-Americans and non-Canadians. Americans are snapping up English Premiership League teams why wouldn’t major money people from Europe or Asia not jump at the opportunity at a North American team? Fay Vincent is no longer guarding the gate like he did on that cold January night in the middle of Times Square in January 1992. The xenophobic policy of Major League Baseball of 1992 made no sense. It makes even less sense in 2009.
eweiner@mcn.tv
Sunday, September 13, 2009
The European and North American Sports Cultural Divide
http://www.mcnsports.com/en/node/7531
The European and North American Sports Cultural Divide
By Evan Weiner
September 13, 2009
10:00 PM EDT
(Copenhagen, Denmark) -- On September 1st, the wife and I were walking down Strøget, the main shopping area in Copenhagen when she spotted a fellow in a red shirt with the letters AIG emblazoned on the front. She wondered why anyone would want to wear the insignia of a disgraced financial company that is being bailed out by America taxpayers on a shirt until she realized that the shirt was actually part of the Manchester United football kit.
In Europe, no one thinks twice about seeing a corporate logo on a sports uniform. It is part of the game unlike the practice in North America where advertising on Major League Baseball or National Football League or National Basketball Association or National Hockey League shirt is akin to drawing a moustache on the Mona Lisa.
The European football kit is not much different than a rugby shirt. The team's major sponsor has a big logo which captures the eye while a much smaller team logo resides in the upper left hand side of the shirt. The shirt or kit manufacturer has a small logo on the upper right side of the shirt. The logo is clearly visible on TV screens, from the stands or in newspaper/magazine pictures.
That is the reason the sponsorship is so attractive.
AIG's logo has been plastered on Manchester United's shirts since 2006 as part of a four-year, $100 million (US) deal. AIG is not the only taxpayer bailout English Premier League team marketing partner. The U. K. has nationalized the Northern Rock bank. Northern Rock's logo appears on Newcastle United's shirt. Northern Rock also is a major sponsor of Newcastle's rugby team.
Financial institutes have been sports marketing partners for a long, long time and it seems that people in the United States have no problem with stadium naming rights except possibly Citibank's marketing deal with Fred Wilpon's New York Mets. In the United States, journalists and editors who should know better and avoid corporate names in articles, columns, radio updates and talk shows along with TV talking heads embrace the corporate names. The fourth estate has accepted corporate marketing partnership and so have sports fans.
Naming rights, presumably, for a stadium do not interfere with a game nor does the NBA's marketing deals with a car company to sponsor league trophies for the Most Valuable Player Award, Defensive Player of the Year, Sixth Man Award and Most Improved Player.
The English Premier League is sponsored by Barclay's bank.
But there is a great sports cultural divide between Europe and North America. In Europe, sports teams whether it is in football, cycling, rugby or cricket have advertising on their shirts, in North America there is still a thought that advertising on baseball uniforms, football, hockey and basketball shirts is something of a violation that might even supersede the separation of church and state although it is rather unclear just what is so sacred about a jersey in those sports even though there is subtle advertising on those shirts as the companies that make the shirts have clearly visible logos on the clothing.
In North America, it is accepted practice for race drivers to have their uniforms plastered with sponsor logos and Major League Soccer follows European tradition and places advertising logos on soccer shirts.
Does a sponsor’s logo ruin a game? The answer is no.
In Europe, the inclusion of a sponsor logo is no big deal. But to some like Ralph Nader, a sponsor's logo on a sports shirt is absolutely wrong and breaks the covenant between the fans sports owners. There are others who feel the same way.
On May 4, 2004, Nader sent a letter to Major League Baseball Commissioner Bud Selig condemning Selig and Major League Baseball owners for putting advertising logos on New York Yankees and Tampa Bay Devil Rays uniforms for the opening series of the 2004 MLB season in Tokyo, Japan.
Nader didn't hide his feelings in his salvo to Selig.
"The great lengths of selfishness with which you are willing to go to desecrate baseball and alienate fans of the game should no longer surprise us. Still, your placement of advertisements on the New York Yankees and Tampa Bay Devil Rays uniforms for Major League Baseball's opener on March 30 in Tokyo ambushed fans across the country and left them shaking their heads at this obscene embarrassment," Nader wrote in his opening paragraph.
"We urge that you immediately put this issue to rest once and for all and eliminate any current or future possibility that Major League Baseball will accept advertisements on uniforms.
"You are suffocating Baseball's fan base. It's not enough for fans who want to enjoy a game to be forced to watch this pitch sponsored by that company or that home run sponsored by this corporation. In addition, they go to a stadium paid for by the fans and taxpayers, yet almost every available space is filled with ads and named after some multinational corporation with no ties to the community.
"Over the last several years, fans have been made to watch 'virtual advertising' infiltrate television broadcasts, and T.V. commentators using the broadcast booth to hawk cell phones during the playoffs and World Series. This over-commercialization is sapping the fun out of being a fan of Major League Baseball.
"Now, you have sunk to a greedy new low. Bending Baseball to the demands of advertisers and accepting more than $10 million (according to Advertising Age) for a corporation to plaster ads on the uniforms for the two-game series in Tokyo. It's supposedly a one-time deal, but conventional wisdom says otherwise -- that permanent advertising on uniforms isn't a question of 'if,' but 'when.'
"MLB executive vice president for business Tim Brosnan, told reporters in Japan 'Are there any definitive plans to put logos on uniforms? No. I don't see that happening. But on the other side of the coin, never say never.'
"'We're mindful of the fans, but I don't think [advertising on uniforms] is unreasonable,' Brosnan later told the New York Post. 'We're always looking for new ways to advance our business.'
"That must sound reassuring to fans. The public tolerates a certain amount of commercialism, but why do you insist on trying the patience of loyal baseball fans across the country? We already have NASCAR, with drivers doubling as walking commercial billboards. Is that really what you want for the national pastime?
"Commissioner Selig, no one is trying to get in the way of your ability to make money, but you need to look beyond the immediate bottom line to make Major League Baseball sustainable. As primary caretaker, this means your job is to respect cities and fans, ensure the integrity of the game, and eliminate self-interested and destructive tendencies. Advertising on uniforms runs counter to each of these critical principles.
"If you allow such an explicit interference of baseball with another greedy vehicle for corporate marketing -- using player uniforms as product placement surfaces -- apathy is not what you should expect from fans and sportswriters. There will be considerable resentment, and fans will drift away. A matter of taste can sour more quickly than you think."
Major League Baseball has not added logos to the front of team shirts yet. Nor as the NFL, NBA or the NHL. But the way North American sports is structured today, there is no reason to keep logos off of shirts except for tradition. The National Hockey League a few years back wiped off the names of the companies that supply equipment to players unless the league received a stipend from the companies. Putting a logo on a Major League Baseball, National Football League, National Hockey League, and National Basketball Association uniform would not compromise any games. Logos on shirts in Europe or Asia are commonplace. There is nothing scared about sports uniforms.
eweiner@mcn.tv
The European and North American Sports Cultural Divide
By Evan Weiner
September 13, 2009
10:00 PM EDT
(Copenhagen, Denmark) -- On September 1st, the wife and I were walking down Strøget, the main shopping area in Copenhagen when she spotted a fellow in a red shirt with the letters AIG emblazoned on the front. She wondered why anyone would want to wear the insignia of a disgraced financial company that is being bailed out by America taxpayers on a shirt until she realized that the shirt was actually part of the Manchester United football kit.
In Europe, no one thinks twice about seeing a corporate logo on a sports uniform. It is part of the game unlike the practice in North America where advertising on Major League Baseball or National Football League or National Basketball Association or National Hockey League shirt is akin to drawing a moustache on the Mona Lisa.
The European football kit is not much different than a rugby shirt. The team's major sponsor has a big logo which captures the eye while a much smaller team logo resides in the upper left hand side of the shirt. The shirt or kit manufacturer has a small logo on the upper right side of the shirt. The logo is clearly visible on TV screens, from the stands or in newspaper/magazine pictures.
That is the reason the sponsorship is so attractive.
AIG's logo has been plastered on Manchester United's shirts since 2006 as part of a four-year, $100 million (US) deal. AIG is not the only taxpayer bailout English Premier League team marketing partner. The U. K. has nationalized the Northern Rock bank. Northern Rock's logo appears on Newcastle United's shirt. Northern Rock also is a major sponsor of Newcastle's rugby team.
Financial institutes have been sports marketing partners for a long, long time and it seems that people in the United States have no problem with stadium naming rights except possibly Citibank's marketing deal with Fred Wilpon's New York Mets. In the United States, journalists and editors who should know better and avoid corporate names in articles, columns, radio updates and talk shows along with TV talking heads embrace the corporate names. The fourth estate has accepted corporate marketing partnership and so have sports fans.
Naming rights, presumably, for a stadium do not interfere with a game nor does the NBA's marketing deals with a car company to sponsor league trophies for the Most Valuable Player Award, Defensive Player of the Year, Sixth Man Award and Most Improved Player.
The English Premier League is sponsored by Barclay's bank.
But there is a great sports cultural divide between Europe and North America. In Europe, sports teams whether it is in football, cycling, rugby or cricket have advertising on their shirts, in North America there is still a thought that advertising on baseball uniforms, football, hockey and basketball shirts is something of a violation that might even supersede the separation of church and state although it is rather unclear just what is so sacred about a jersey in those sports even though there is subtle advertising on those shirts as the companies that make the shirts have clearly visible logos on the clothing.
In North America, it is accepted practice for race drivers to have their uniforms plastered with sponsor logos and Major League Soccer follows European tradition and places advertising logos on soccer shirts.
Does a sponsor’s logo ruin a game? The answer is no.
In Europe, the inclusion of a sponsor logo is no big deal. But to some like Ralph Nader, a sponsor's logo on a sports shirt is absolutely wrong and breaks the covenant between the fans sports owners. There are others who feel the same way.
On May 4, 2004, Nader sent a letter to Major League Baseball Commissioner Bud Selig condemning Selig and Major League Baseball owners for putting advertising logos on New York Yankees and Tampa Bay Devil Rays uniforms for the opening series of the 2004 MLB season in Tokyo, Japan.
Nader didn't hide his feelings in his salvo to Selig.
"The great lengths of selfishness with which you are willing to go to desecrate baseball and alienate fans of the game should no longer surprise us. Still, your placement of advertisements on the New York Yankees and Tampa Bay Devil Rays uniforms for Major League Baseball's opener on March 30 in Tokyo ambushed fans across the country and left them shaking their heads at this obscene embarrassment," Nader wrote in his opening paragraph.
"We urge that you immediately put this issue to rest once and for all and eliminate any current or future possibility that Major League Baseball will accept advertisements on uniforms.
"You are suffocating Baseball's fan base. It's not enough for fans who want to enjoy a game to be forced to watch this pitch sponsored by that company or that home run sponsored by this corporation. In addition, they go to a stadium paid for by the fans and taxpayers, yet almost every available space is filled with ads and named after some multinational corporation with no ties to the community.
"Over the last several years, fans have been made to watch 'virtual advertising' infiltrate television broadcasts, and T.V. commentators using the broadcast booth to hawk cell phones during the playoffs and World Series. This over-commercialization is sapping the fun out of being a fan of Major League Baseball.
"Now, you have sunk to a greedy new low. Bending Baseball to the demands of advertisers and accepting more than $10 million (according to Advertising Age) for a corporation to plaster ads on the uniforms for the two-game series in Tokyo. It's supposedly a one-time deal, but conventional wisdom says otherwise -- that permanent advertising on uniforms isn't a question of 'if,' but 'when.'
"MLB executive vice president for business Tim Brosnan, told reporters in Japan 'Are there any definitive plans to put logos on uniforms? No. I don't see that happening. But on the other side of the coin, never say never.'
"'We're mindful of the fans, but I don't think [advertising on uniforms] is unreasonable,' Brosnan later told the New York Post. 'We're always looking for new ways to advance our business.'
"That must sound reassuring to fans. The public tolerates a certain amount of commercialism, but why do you insist on trying the patience of loyal baseball fans across the country? We already have NASCAR, with drivers doubling as walking commercial billboards. Is that really what you want for the national pastime?
"Commissioner Selig, no one is trying to get in the way of your ability to make money, but you need to look beyond the immediate bottom line to make Major League Baseball sustainable. As primary caretaker, this means your job is to respect cities and fans, ensure the integrity of the game, and eliminate self-interested and destructive tendencies. Advertising on uniforms runs counter to each of these critical principles.
"If you allow such an explicit interference of baseball with another greedy vehicle for corporate marketing -- using player uniforms as product placement surfaces -- apathy is not what you should expect from fans and sportswriters. There will be considerable resentment, and fans will drift away. A matter of taste can sour more quickly than you think."
Major League Baseball has not added logos to the front of team shirts yet. Nor as the NFL, NBA or the NHL. But the way North American sports is structured today, there is no reason to keep logos off of shirts except for tradition. The National Hockey League a few years back wiped off the names of the companies that supply equipment to players unless the league received a stipend from the companies. Putting a logo on a Major League Baseball, National Football League, National Hockey League, and National Basketball Association uniform would not compromise any games. Logos on shirts in Europe or Asia are commonplace. There is nothing scared about sports uniforms.
eweiner@mcn.tv
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