Fiesta Bowl allegations just another Arizona public policy failure
By Evan Weiner
April 3, 2011
http://www.examiner.com/business-of-sports-in-national/fiesta-bowl-allegations-just-another-arizona-public-policy-failure
(New York, N. Y.) -- If you want to see where everything that could possibly go wrong in government spending for sports facilities, you need to look no further that the Phoenix, Arizona area. In a bid to make the Valley of the Sun one of the most prominent sports areas in the country, local politicians have spent more than a billion dollars of public funding to build two arenas, one Major League Baseball park, numerous baseball spring training facilities and a football stadium.
The Valley of the Sun was a sleepy sports setting until the late 1980s. As people moved to the Phoenix area, someone got the idea that Phoenix should have more "big time" sporting options than the National Basketball Association Suns. No, the area needed to become "major league" and getting a National Football League franchise, a Major League Baseball team and a National Hockey League squad would do the trick. The Suns, major college baseball and the mid-level Fiesta Bowl were not enough.
It hasn't financially worked out all that well for Phoenix, Scottsdale, Mesa, Tempe and Glendale. The sacking of Fiesta Bowl chief executive John Junker along with two other top officials could open a Pandora’s box of problems for Glendale, the Fiesta Bowl and the (college football's) Bowl Championship Series for Arizona politicians who allegedly accepted gifts from Junker.
Arizona elected officials have to abide by state laws, which included an “entertainment ban” that prohibits, state employees and elected officials from accepting tickets or "admission to any sporting or cultural event" for free.
The Junker situation could ensnare Arizona elected officials for ethics violations and could be an opening for Congress to investigate the Bowl Championship Series (and maybe tax exemptions that members of the National Collegiate Athletic Association enjoy).
Oddly enough the gadflies at The Goldwater Institute have sat on their hands and have been mum about the Fiesta Bowl revelations, which is so unlike them. The Goldwater Institute doesn't want Glendale to sell bonds to help complete the sale of the NHL's Phoenix Coyotes to a Chicago businessman nor do they seem to care that things didn't work out attendance wise for the Los Angeles Dodgers and the Chicago White Sox during the 2011 Cactus League Spring Training part of the baseball season at the new Glendale baseball park.
Overall, spring training baseball attendance was off in the Valley of the Sun.
How did Arizona politicians get into the sports business and when did they go wrong? It started about a quarter of a century ago when Phoenix started to experience a population growth. Urban planners and historians should study the entire history of the “big time sports industry” of the Phoenix area because no city or region has been dumber than Phoenix area politicians.
Had the Phoenix city council been smart, which they were not, they would have approved a multi-purpose arena back in the late 1980s that would have accommodated the NBA's Phoenix Suns and an NHL team. Instead lawmakers approved a $90 million expenditure that was designed to appease Suns owner Jerry Colangelo. The arena was built in such a way that the building was only good for basketball and not hockey or Arena Football or indoor soccer and that severely limited the potential revenues that could be generated in the place. Making sure they further satisfied Colangelo, the terms of the lease between the city and the NBA team required that the franchise pay the bulk of lease payments in years 36-40 of the 40-year lease agreement. The real rent is supposed to kick in around 2028 but given the lifespan of facilities (the Miami Arena was viable for about 11 years, the Charlotte Coliseum for about 13), it is doubtful that the team will even be playing in the arena in 2028 or 2029.
The arena opened in 1992.
In 2003, the city kicked in another $17 million to modernize the place when a second Valley of the Sun indoor athletic facility opened in Glendale, which is west of downtown Phoenix.
After taking care of Colangelo, Phoenix planners decided that a new downtown could be built with the arena and a baseball park as anchors so Phoenix politicians went about the task of getting a referendum in front of the public asking for support to build a ballpark for a Major League baseball team.
Over in Tempe, Phoenix/Arizona Cardinals owner Bill Bidwill, who came to the Valley of the Sun with his St. Louis Cardinals football team in 1988, wasn't too happy with his stadium in Tempe. Bidwill started to shop around looking for an Arizona community that wanted his team and was willing to build a stadium that the public would fund and put most of the stadium revenues in Bidwill's pocket. It took 12 years for Bidwill to find the right partner — Glendale — as votes in 2000 said yes to putting up $300 million of the estimated $465 million dollars needed to build a stadium. The money would come from a rise in the hotel/motel tax and car rentals (that is a mechanism designed to placate the locals, out of towners will pay, you won't, however most of the money on the car rental side comes from locals who rent cars more than visitors), Bidwill would recoup the $165 million through stadium naming rights and through a loophole in the 1986 Federal Tax Act which limits the money a municipality can take from stadium generator revenues to eight cents on a dollar.
Mesa said no to Bidwill in 1999.
Colangelo spearheaded the baseball stadium drive. He wanted a Major League Baseball team and went back to Phoenix-area politicians to make his pitch. They listened again.
In 1994, the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors (despite huge budget deficits and cutbacks in the funding of services) said yes to Colangelo and gave the go ahead for a quarter-cent increase in the county sales tax to pay for a part of the stadium's cost. There was a string attached, the approval had to come by March 31, 1995 which meant Major League Baseball had to either relocate a team to Phoenix (unlikely as there was nowhere to play in Phoenix) or expand. MLB awarded Phoenix and St. Petersburg teams beginning in 1998 when the Phoenix stadium would be completed.
The Maricopa sales tax hike was a problem.
Maricopa County residents were not allowed to vote on the issue of funding a baseball stadium with general sales tax revenue. In August 1997, Maricopa County Supervisor Mary Rose Wilcox was shot by Larry Naman after leaving a county board meeting. The shooter testified in court that Wilcox's support for the tax justified the attack. In May 1998, Naman was found guilty of attempted first-degree murder.
Colangelo had his stadium whether Maricopa County residents liked it or not. Colangelo's stadium was supposed to have cost $279 million but the ballpark actually price tag was over $350 million and Colangelo's group had to make up the difference. Colangelo's group paid $130 million for the expansion team, there was the cost overruns and a high payroll and throw in the fact that Major League Baseball didn't give Arizona and Tampa Bay full revenue sharing between 1998 and 2002, and that nearly caused the team to declare bankruptcy by 2004.
While Colangelo was looking for a baseball team, he also wanted a National Hockey League team to take up dates in the city's new arena. In 1994, Colangelo told this reporter that Phoenix was a perfect spot for the NHL. The NHL needed to fill the Mountain Time zone for TV purposes and Phoenix and Denver were in the mix for NHL franchises.
Colangelo, who was not a hockey guy, was spot on. Denver investors bought the Quebec Nordiques in 1995 and moved the team to the Colorado city and Richard Burke put together a group that included Steven Gluckstern and bought the Winnipeg Jets. Burke and Gluckstern moved the team to Colangelo's building in 1996 and that is when trouble started.
The building approved by Phoenix politicians in 1988 had more than 3,000 view-obstructed seats or about 25 percent of the house. No NHL team can survive in a flawed arena even if the building was just four years old. Burke bought out Gluckstern in 1998 after Gluckstern teamed up with Howard Milstein to buy the New York islanders in a real estate deal (The Islanders real estate deal is still festering with present owner Charles Wang apparently shelving an arena-village concept and Hempstead Supervisor Kate Murray not approving the project for reasons only known to Supervisor Murray).
In 1999, Burke was hoping to move the team to Scottsdale. Bidwill had struck out in his bid to win voter approval for a $1.8 billion football stadium-village on May 18 of that year but Burke had won a preliminary vote on that date for a new arena with the help of Steve Ellman.
Burke got his arena project approved by Scottsdale voters in November 1999 but the arena was never built. Ellman bought the Coyotes in 2001 after the Scottsdale deal fell through. Ellman worked out an arena-land developing deal with Glendale officials in 2001 and moved his Coyotes to a new arena in 2003. Glendale paid $180 million for the building, Ellman did some developing but the real estate deal turned bad. Eventually Ellman's partner Jerry Moyes took control of the team and hemorrhaged money and the NHL now owns the team. Moyes and the league battled after Moyes got Canadian investor Jim Balsillie to buy the team. The NHL stopped the sale and the confrontation ended up in court when a Phoenix judge said the NHL had the right to control individual franchises in terms of sale and market. The franchise remained in Glendale and Balsillie's plan to move the franchise to Hamilton, Ontario fell through.
Glendale could be kicking in as much as $25 million to keep the team going in 2010-11
Glendale worked with a group called Ice Edge Holdings to keep the team in the arena and create a tax district around the building to help stabilize the Coyotes bleak financial picture. That fell through but another suitor came to the rescue, Chicago businessman Matthew Hulsizer.
Last fall, Colangelo was back in business in the Valley of the Sun in Glendale. Colangelo wanted to build the USA Basketball headquarters in Glendale and why not? Glendale had an open checkbook for Bidwill, Burke, Reinsdorf's White Sox, the McCourt's Dodgers. But Colangelo is miffed that financing for his headquarters has not come about. But Colangelo left the door open for Glendale (in government sports financing you never close a door) to get someone with money to build a headquarters.
Funny, the Goldwater Institute is not commenting on Colangelo. It must be that Goldwater's trustees don't like the Canadian sport of hockey while American sports like baseball, football and basketball (even if it was invented by a Canadian, Dr. James Naismith) are fleecing Glendale.
Meanwhile Glendale had another problem in 2010. The Arizona Stadium and Tourism Authority (AZSTA) is broke. That is the group that has raised funds for the Cardinals Glendale stadium and various Major League Spring Training ballparks that ring the Valley of the Sun. Hotel/motel and car rental taxes (which is 3.25 percent) from tourists that fund the authority are flat.
Arizona public officials decided in the 1990s to become a sports destination. Spring Training would be a big money maker for Arizona as baseball fans would flock to see their favorite teams in March of every year. The authority took in $34 million last year and has $37 million in expenses, $16 million of which goes to the Cardinals football stadium. Surprise (Kansas City and Texas), Scottsdale (San Francisco) and Tempe (Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim) will be getting less money to pay the bills at three spring training facilities. Youth sports will take a million dollar or so hit.
All of this is a product of Proposition 302 that was approved by Maricopa County residents 10 years ago.
The Maricopa County Stadium District and the Arizona Stadium and Tourism Authority are responsible for stadiums around Phoenix. The stadium district was formed in 1991 to make sure Phoenix area-based spring training teams were not lured by Las Vegas.
How expensive is spring training?
The Los Angeles Dodgers now share a new $110 million stadium in Glendale with the Chicago White Sox, who moved from Tucson. Glendale is providing $54 million in financing for the stadium.
Scottsdale and the stadium authorities put together a $23 million package to refurbish Scottsdale Stadium to make the San Francisco Giants ownership happy. About $13.3 million is from the AZSTA funds, $6.67 million from the Maricopa Stadium District, and $3.1 million from the city.
Arizona officials contend that the 2010 spring training slate had an economic impact of $348 million yet there is a deficit.
All of the maneuvering has left an impression. The baseball landscape has changed with all 15 Major League Baseball teams that train in Arizona located around Phoenix. Tucson has lost three teams (the White Sox, Colorado Rockies and the Diamondbacks). The arena in Phoenix has to fight Glendale for non-basketball events. Glendale, not Phoenix or Tempe has the Super Bowl and while Phoenix gets a piece of the event buck, it is Glendale that gets sports spending money from those crown jewel events. The downtown envisioned with the arena and stadium as the pillars of a new downtown Phoenix has not materialized.
The question of whether it was worth spending billions in a state that is broke is never addressed by politicians. Arizona is selling off state buildings to plug a financial gap that in part was caused by poor sports decisions on every level.
They could have said no to Colangelo. They could have said no to Bidwill. They could have said no to the NHL. They could have said no to Major League Baseball. Don't blame the owners for asking for money, they could have asked for whatever they wanted.
There was an awful lot of economic miscalculation when it came to sports planning in Arizona and the battle is far from over. Mesa would like to hold onto the Chicago Cubs, the franchise that allegedly is the economic engine of the Cactus League, and the Milwaukee Brewers ownership could be looking to exit Maryvale. The Sports business is pretty simple have the politicians get involved and make financial guarantees. It has been a good formula for sports owners and players but not so good for taxpayers who have a financial stake in the sports industry whether they watch games or not.
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 's xplana.com, kobo's literati or amazonkindle. He can be reached at evanjweiner@yahoo.com
Showing posts with label Phoenix Coyotes. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Phoenix Coyotes. Show all posts
Sunday, April 3, 2011
Thursday, April 8, 2010
Minnesota and Glendale Lawmakers Inch Closer to New Sports Deals
Minnesota and Glendale Lawmakers Inch Closer to New Sports Deals
By Evan Weiner
April 8, 2010
http://www.examiner.com/examiner/x-3926-Business-of-Sports-Examiner~y2010m4d8-Minnesota-and-Glendale-lawmakers-inch-closer-to-new-sports-deals#
(New York, N. Y.) -- Local governments and sports teams have a partnership; there is no getting around that. In cash-strapped states like Arizona and Minnesota, elected officials are trying to figure out the best way to go in keeping local franchises put. Glendale, Arizona has a relatively new, publicly financed, arena that houses a bankrupt National Hockey League franchise, the Phoenix Coyotes.
Now Glendale is weighing two proposals from Coyotes suitors who would purchase the team and keep the franchise in Glendale.
In the St. Paul, Minnesota statehouses, it appears that lawmakers are warming up to some sort of deal to build the National Football League's Minnesota Vikings a new facility so that Vikings owner Zygi Wilf can utilize revenue streams that an unavailable from the Minneapolis-based Metrodome, to help fund the team.
Government support for athletic facilities stretches out over six decades with Oakland officials back in 1944 thinking of using public money to build a stadium. The real breakthrough in government support of professional sports franchises came in 1950 when Milwaukee elected officials decided to build a new stadium with public funding that they hoped would attract a Major League Baseball team and keep the Green Bay Packers playing a portion of the team's NFL schedule in town. The gambit paid off as Milwaukee officials enticed Boston Braves owner Lou Perini to move his Braves in March 1953 just a few weeks prior to the season. The stadium was enough of a lure to keep the Green Bay Packers.
Perini made a ton of money in Milwaukee and it got Brooklyn Dodgers owner Walter O’Malley to worry that Brooklyn would not be able to compete with Milwaukee financially. O’Malley would eventually take an offer from Los Angeles and move his team from Brooklyn even though O’Malley’s Dodgers led the National League in revenue in 1957, the final year O’Malley had a team in Brooklyn.
Perini's move started sports free agency long before an arbitrator gave Dave McNally and Andy Messersmith free agency in baseball in 1975. Owners decided to play city against city in an effort to get the best stadium or arena deal available, and the 1986 Tax Act poured gasoline on smoldering flames as the new law restricted the amount of revenue generated inside an athletic facility that went off to pay the public debt on a municipally funded stadium to just eight cents on every dollar.
Major League Baseball expanded to Denver, Miami, Phoenix and St. Petersburg and moved the Montreal Expos to Washington. Virtually every team in Major League Baseball got a new or renovated facility with the exception of Oakland.
Oakland A's owner Lew Wolff is looking to move his team with San Jose the object of his affection after flirting with Fremont, California near San Jose.
The National Football League got a publicly financed stadium in Jacksonville and expanded into that city while Jerry Richardson built a privately funded facility in Charlotte using personal seat licenses to fund the stadium.
Richardson's stadium created another monster. People had to buy a seat license and then buy a ticket to use the seat.
Wilf is one of the last of the NFL owners who has not taken advantage of government money to build a "factory" for his business. Wilf may have state legislators and Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty over a barrel in his quest for a new facility. The state has spent hundreds of millions of dollars in the past few years for a new baseball stadium for the Twins and a new facility for the University of Minnesota Golden Gophers using various taxes to fund the venues. Wilf's Metrodome deal with the state is up after the 2011 season and there is a possibility that Wilf could use the possible construction of a new stadium east of Los Angeles as leverage in his battle to get a new Vikings stadium somewhere in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area.
Wilf is not the only NFL owner looking for public funding. The York family, the owners of the San Francisco 49ers, is hoping that Santa Clara, California voters will look favorably at them and give them a new stadium in a June vote. Should that fail, look for both Oakland and San Francisco to start wooing the Yorks again and might ask Al Davis to join the Yorks and put his Oakland Raiders in a new stadium. The Buffalo Bills/New York State lease in Orchard Park is up after the 2012 season.
Wilf, the Yorks, Al Davis and possibly Wayne Weaver in Jacksonville have limited options though. Weaver’s Jaguars franchise is struggling to sell seats at Jacksonville’s stadium and there is no stadium available in LA equipped to handle the NFL's needs at this point. Ralph Wilson has sold a number of Bills home games to Toronto through the 2012 season. Toronto does not have a "suitable" NFL facility but there is a lot of money on Bay Street and the NFL knows that.
Meanwhile there seems to be action in Glendale regarding the sale of the Coyotes. Glendale has memoranda of understanding with two groups vying to but the bankrupt franchise, Ice Edge Holdings and the group led by Chicago White Sox and Bulls owner Jerry Reinsdorf. Although the National Hockey League has the final say on the future owner of the Coyotes, Glendale apparently feels uncomfortable that the city can go ahead with an agreement. Whatever the final deal is, Glendale will have to make major concessions to keep the team skating in the arena. Glendale plans to hold a public hearing on the matter on April 13.
Many cities, counties and state governments have used a variety of mechanisms to attract and keep sports teams including payment in lieu of taxes instead of full property tax payment or tax incremental funding or creating special tax districts around a facility whereby an owner keeps all of the taxes that would normally flow into municipal coffers. Cities, counties and states have assumed the responsibility of paying off the entire cost of a stadium and in one case, New Orleans Saints owner Tom Benson was given a cash payment in exchanging for keeping his Saints in the New Orleans Superdome. In July, Benson will get a $23 million check from Louisiana as a thank you for sticking around as part of a $186 million bailout between 2002 and 2010. Benson and the state crafted a new deal that substantially reduces Louisiana's annual payment but Benson gets to own an office building near the Superdome that will house state government offices and create an entertainment zone around the Superdome in exchange. Benson will get Louisiana money but not a straight handout starting in 2011.
New arenas do not mean success however. Memphis and Charlotte are prime examples of financial failures in the NBA despite new surroundings and the Phoenix Coyotes have a poor financial legacy.
But sports leagues are monopolies and city, county and state officials like being branded “Big League.” It takes a long time for a city to replace a team in most circumstances with Cleveland being a lone exception. The NFL got a municipally funded stadium agreement with Cleveland Mayor Michael White not long after Browns owner announced that he was taking his team to Baltimore for the 1996 season in the fall of 1995. Cleveland threatened to sue the NFL and by February 1996 a plan was worked out and the NFL "expanded" into Cleveland in 1999. Cities that lose teams seemingly are punished and eventually work their way back in but that is a long and expensive process which is why Glendale officials and lawmakers in Minnesota are looking to resolve their situations and keep the teams. It is cheaper to keep them now than going after replacement teams in the future.
Evan Weiner is an author, lecturer and radio-TV journalist on the "Politics of Sports Business."
By Evan Weiner
April 8, 2010
http://www.examiner.com/examiner/x-3926-Business-of-Sports-Examiner~y2010m4d8-Minnesota-and-Glendale-lawmakers-inch-closer-to-new-sports-deals#
(New York, N. Y.) -- Local governments and sports teams have a partnership; there is no getting around that. In cash-strapped states like Arizona and Minnesota, elected officials are trying to figure out the best way to go in keeping local franchises put. Glendale, Arizona has a relatively new, publicly financed, arena that houses a bankrupt National Hockey League franchise, the Phoenix Coyotes.
Now Glendale is weighing two proposals from Coyotes suitors who would purchase the team and keep the franchise in Glendale.
In the St. Paul, Minnesota statehouses, it appears that lawmakers are warming up to some sort of deal to build the National Football League's Minnesota Vikings a new facility so that Vikings owner Zygi Wilf can utilize revenue streams that an unavailable from the Minneapolis-based Metrodome, to help fund the team.
Government support for athletic facilities stretches out over six decades with Oakland officials back in 1944 thinking of using public money to build a stadium. The real breakthrough in government support of professional sports franchises came in 1950 when Milwaukee elected officials decided to build a new stadium with public funding that they hoped would attract a Major League Baseball team and keep the Green Bay Packers playing a portion of the team's NFL schedule in town. The gambit paid off as Milwaukee officials enticed Boston Braves owner Lou Perini to move his Braves in March 1953 just a few weeks prior to the season. The stadium was enough of a lure to keep the Green Bay Packers.
Perini made a ton of money in Milwaukee and it got Brooklyn Dodgers owner Walter O’Malley to worry that Brooklyn would not be able to compete with Milwaukee financially. O’Malley would eventually take an offer from Los Angeles and move his team from Brooklyn even though O’Malley’s Dodgers led the National League in revenue in 1957, the final year O’Malley had a team in Brooklyn.
Perini's move started sports free agency long before an arbitrator gave Dave McNally and Andy Messersmith free agency in baseball in 1975. Owners decided to play city against city in an effort to get the best stadium or arena deal available, and the 1986 Tax Act poured gasoline on smoldering flames as the new law restricted the amount of revenue generated inside an athletic facility that went off to pay the public debt on a municipally funded stadium to just eight cents on every dollar.
Major League Baseball expanded to Denver, Miami, Phoenix and St. Petersburg and moved the Montreal Expos to Washington. Virtually every team in Major League Baseball got a new or renovated facility with the exception of Oakland.
Oakland A's owner Lew Wolff is looking to move his team with San Jose the object of his affection after flirting with Fremont, California near San Jose.
The National Football League got a publicly financed stadium in Jacksonville and expanded into that city while Jerry Richardson built a privately funded facility in Charlotte using personal seat licenses to fund the stadium.
Richardson's stadium created another monster. People had to buy a seat license and then buy a ticket to use the seat.
Wilf is one of the last of the NFL owners who has not taken advantage of government money to build a "factory" for his business. Wilf may have state legislators and Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty over a barrel in his quest for a new facility. The state has spent hundreds of millions of dollars in the past few years for a new baseball stadium for the Twins and a new facility for the University of Minnesota Golden Gophers using various taxes to fund the venues. Wilf's Metrodome deal with the state is up after the 2011 season and there is a possibility that Wilf could use the possible construction of a new stadium east of Los Angeles as leverage in his battle to get a new Vikings stadium somewhere in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area.
Wilf is not the only NFL owner looking for public funding. The York family, the owners of the San Francisco 49ers, is hoping that Santa Clara, California voters will look favorably at them and give them a new stadium in a June vote. Should that fail, look for both Oakland and San Francisco to start wooing the Yorks again and might ask Al Davis to join the Yorks and put his Oakland Raiders in a new stadium. The Buffalo Bills/New York State lease in Orchard Park is up after the 2012 season.
Wilf, the Yorks, Al Davis and possibly Wayne Weaver in Jacksonville have limited options though. Weaver’s Jaguars franchise is struggling to sell seats at Jacksonville’s stadium and there is no stadium available in LA equipped to handle the NFL's needs at this point. Ralph Wilson has sold a number of Bills home games to Toronto through the 2012 season. Toronto does not have a "suitable" NFL facility but there is a lot of money on Bay Street and the NFL knows that.
Meanwhile there seems to be action in Glendale regarding the sale of the Coyotes. Glendale has memoranda of understanding with two groups vying to but the bankrupt franchise, Ice Edge Holdings and the group led by Chicago White Sox and Bulls owner Jerry Reinsdorf. Although the National Hockey League has the final say on the future owner of the Coyotes, Glendale apparently feels uncomfortable that the city can go ahead with an agreement. Whatever the final deal is, Glendale will have to make major concessions to keep the team skating in the arena. Glendale plans to hold a public hearing on the matter on April 13.
Many cities, counties and state governments have used a variety of mechanisms to attract and keep sports teams including payment in lieu of taxes instead of full property tax payment or tax incremental funding or creating special tax districts around a facility whereby an owner keeps all of the taxes that would normally flow into municipal coffers. Cities, counties and states have assumed the responsibility of paying off the entire cost of a stadium and in one case, New Orleans Saints owner Tom Benson was given a cash payment in exchanging for keeping his Saints in the New Orleans Superdome. In July, Benson will get a $23 million check from Louisiana as a thank you for sticking around as part of a $186 million bailout between 2002 and 2010. Benson and the state crafted a new deal that substantially reduces Louisiana's annual payment but Benson gets to own an office building near the Superdome that will house state government offices and create an entertainment zone around the Superdome in exchange. Benson will get Louisiana money but not a straight handout starting in 2011.
New arenas do not mean success however. Memphis and Charlotte are prime examples of financial failures in the NBA despite new surroundings and the Phoenix Coyotes have a poor financial legacy.
But sports leagues are monopolies and city, county and state officials like being branded “Big League.” It takes a long time for a city to replace a team in most circumstances with Cleveland being a lone exception. The NFL got a municipally funded stadium agreement with Cleveland Mayor Michael White not long after Browns owner announced that he was taking his team to Baltimore for the 1996 season in the fall of 1995. Cleveland threatened to sue the NFL and by February 1996 a plan was worked out and the NFL "expanded" into Cleveland in 1999. Cities that lose teams seemingly are punished and eventually work their way back in but that is a long and expensive process which is why Glendale officials and lawmakers in Minnesota are looking to resolve their situations and keep the teams. It is cheaper to keep them now than going after replacement teams in the future.
Evan Weiner is an author, lecturer and radio-TV journalist on the "Politics of Sports Business."
Saturday, December 12, 2009
Bad week for Toronto hockey writers
http://www.examiner.com/examiner/x-3926-Business-of-Sports-Examiner~y2009m12d12-Bad-week-for-Toronto-hockey-writers#
Bad week for Toronto hockey writers
By Evan Weiner
December 12, 2009
(New York, N. Y.) -- It has not been a good couple days for the Toronto sports media, rather the Toronto hockey fan sportswriters. National Hockey League Commissioner Gary Bettman met with Quebec Premier Jean Charest and the Quebec premier is under the impression that Bettman would like to see a franchise in Quebec City.
Then came the story that Bettman would prefer expanding the league rather than relocating teams and on top of that there seems to be a group ready to buy the financially troubled Phoenix Coyotes willing to keep the team in Glendale, Arizona.
The stars are not aligning for the Toronto hockey scribes who were waving their red and white pom poms last summer and basically begging a United States bankruptcy judge to let Jim Balsillie pick up the Coyotes franchise and move the team to Hamilton, Ontario.
That didn’t happen as Judge Redfield Baum decided to let the NHL handle the sale of the Coyotes franchise. Balsillie, one of the BlackBerry founders, appealed to Canadian nationalism in his bid to buy the Coyotes and the Toronto hockey writers acted as if they were a Balsillie flack instead of journalists who researched sports league’s constitutions or previous denials of sports teams ownership transfers or relocation such as Major League baseball saying twice no to Edwin Gaylord in the 1980s in his attempt to but the Texas Rangers because he owned a “superstation” in Dallas and Gaylord’s Dallas TV station would air Rangers games nationally and devalue other baseball TV contracts.
That opened the door for George W. Bush to eventually join a group that would buy the Rangers in 1989. A little research would have helped Toronto hockey writers understand how leagues operate.
Now the Toronto writers are facing a dilemma. What if Quebec City really has the wherewithal to finance a new arena? In 1995, Quebec Nordiques owner Marcel Aubut and Bettman tried to persuade Quebec politicians to come up with public financing for a new arena to replace Le Colisee and failed. Aubut sold the team to Charlie Lyons and Ascent and the franchise ended up in Denver, Colorado.
The Toronto writers have been tearing apart Bettman for years about a perceived perception that Bettman has anti-Canadian stance and never include in their critiques of the “New York lawyer” or the “diminutive” commissioner helped prevent the Edmonton Oilers owner Peter Pocklington from selling his team to Houston sports owner Les Alexander who planned to take the team to Texas in 1998. Bettman also helped broker a deal to keep the Ottawa Senators in the Canadian capital, although technically the Senators home arena is in Kanata, which is west of Ottawa.
Bettman also fought to keep franchises in Pittsburgh, Nashville and Glendale, Arizona (Phoenix). He pushed for Edmonton and Calgary to get a share of the Alberta hockey lottery.
Under Bettman’s watch, Quebec City, Winnipeg and Hartford (three former World Hockey Association teams) have relocated. Quebec City to Denver in 1995, Winnipeg to Phoenix (now Glendale) in 1996 and Hartford to Raleigh, North Carolina in 1997. All three cities simply did not have state of the art 1990s hockey arenas. Connecticut Governor John Rowland, who ended up in prison, seemed smitten with New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft snooping around Hartford looking for a stadium for his National Football League team and didn’t really play ball with Hartford Whalers owner Peter Karmanos.
Rowland not only lost a hockey team but probably Compuware jobs as Karmanos wanted to establish a Connecticut outpost for his computer company.
Rowland lost the Whalers and Kraft never really had any intention of moving his Patriots from the Boston metropolitan area and simply used Rowland as leverage to get a new stadium in Foxboro next to his old stadium. Kraft is further developing that property in Foxboro. He may be using United States government stimulus funding for his project.
The Toronto media, at least one of the hockey fans, er writers, Randy Sportak is urging the NHL to go into Toronto or Hamilton and while Quebec City or Winnipeg would be great additions to the league, Toronto deserves a second team. Sportak is also suggesting that the league move the New York Islanders or the Nashville Predators to southern Ontario.
Lazy journalism on Sportak’s part if he thinks the Islanders will move. Sportak probably has no idea how lucrative the Islanders cable TV deal with Cablevision’s Charles Dolan really is. The deal runs until 2031 and it behooves Dolan, the owner of Madison Square Garden, the National Basketball Association’s Knicks and the NHL’s Rangers and the MSG Network, to keep paying. You see Dolan needs the Islanders to stay in Uniondale or move to the proposed Brooklyn arena or the proposed building that could end up on Shea Stadium’s former site or in the junkyards at Willets Point adjacent to the US National Tennis Center to keep his cable TV franchises on Long island.
Here is how it works. Dolan can go before any town, village or city board on the island in both Nassau and Suffolk County when his cable TV systems franchise licensing agreement is up and say I have two things other cable operators don’t have. The Islanders and News 12. Dolan uses the same strategy in New Jersey with the Devils and News 12. Dolan is a major benefactor of New Jersey Devils hockey.
That is how sports operators. Islanders owner Charles Wang is hoping that he can develop the area around the Nassau Coliseum in Uniondale. If he cannot, you can be sure that New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who found funds for new baseball stadiums for the Yankees and Mets, will be chatting up Brooklyn and Queens with Wang.
No matter how lucrative the Toronto market might be, and this is no slight about Toronto, T. O. is not the Big Apple even if hockey is king in Toronto.
There is no suggestion at present that Nashville is ready to give up on the Predators.
If there is expansion, Quebec City and Winnipeg are on top of the charts for the NHL. In fact, the founder of the Russian-based Kontinental Hockey League Alexander Medvedev, the Deputy Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Russian Gazprom energy company, thinks that Quebec City is long overdue for an NHL team. An expansion of the league would mean a good deal of money for NHL owners. Even if the league sells the franchises for $150 million each, which is probably a low figure, two franchises would mean the NHL owners would split the $300 million 30 ways and give each owner $10 million.
It has not been a good week for the Toronto sports media. Quebec City wants an NHL team and Gary Bettman is listening, the NHL favors expansion over relocation, New Jersey Nets owner Bruce Ratner wants a hockey team in his proposed Brooklyn building, presumably the Islanders, and Ice Edge wants the Coyotes and has a plan to use Saskatoon, Saskatchewan as a second home for five games which should cause the Toronto writers to break out the pom poms again. But Saskatoon is not Southern Ontario nor is Quebec City and that is a problem for the Toronto scribes.
evanjweiner@yahoo.com
Bad week for Toronto hockey writers
By Evan Weiner
December 12, 2009
(New York, N. Y.) -- It has not been a good couple days for the Toronto sports media, rather the Toronto hockey fan sportswriters. National Hockey League Commissioner Gary Bettman met with Quebec Premier Jean Charest and the Quebec premier is under the impression that Bettman would like to see a franchise in Quebec City.
Then came the story that Bettman would prefer expanding the league rather than relocating teams and on top of that there seems to be a group ready to buy the financially troubled Phoenix Coyotes willing to keep the team in Glendale, Arizona.
The stars are not aligning for the Toronto hockey scribes who were waving their red and white pom poms last summer and basically begging a United States bankruptcy judge to let Jim Balsillie pick up the Coyotes franchise and move the team to Hamilton, Ontario.
That didn’t happen as Judge Redfield Baum decided to let the NHL handle the sale of the Coyotes franchise. Balsillie, one of the BlackBerry founders, appealed to Canadian nationalism in his bid to buy the Coyotes and the Toronto hockey writers acted as if they were a Balsillie flack instead of journalists who researched sports league’s constitutions or previous denials of sports teams ownership transfers or relocation such as Major League baseball saying twice no to Edwin Gaylord in the 1980s in his attempt to but the Texas Rangers because he owned a “superstation” in Dallas and Gaylord’s Dallas TV station would air Rangers games nationally and devalue other baseball TV contracts.
That opened the door for George W. Bush to eventually join a group that would buy the Rangers in 1989. A little research would have helped Toronto hockey writers understand how leagues operate.
Now the Toronto writers are facing a dilemma. What if Quebec City really has the wherewithal to finance a new arena? In 1995, Quebec Nordiques owner Marcel Aubut and Bettman tried to persuade Quebec politicians to come up with public financing for a new arena to replace Le Colisee and failed. Aubut sold the team to Charlie Lyons and Ascent and the franchise ended up in Denver, Colorado.
The Toronto writers have been tearing apart Bettman for years about a perceived perception that Bettman has anti-Canadian stance and never include in their critiques of the “New York lawyer” or the “diminutive” commissioner helped prevent the Edmonton Oilers owner Peter Pocklington from selling his team to Houston sports owner Les Alexander who planned to take the team to Texas in 1998. Bettman also helped broker a deal to keep the Ottawa Senators in the Canadian capital, although technically the Senators home arena is in Kanata, which is west of Ottawa.
Bettman also fought to keep franchises in Pittsburgh, Nashville and Glendale, Arizona (Phoenix). He pushed for Edmonton and Calgary to get a share of the Alberta hockey lottery.
Under Bettman’s watch, Quebec City, Winnipeg and Hartford (three former World Hockey Association teams) have relocated. Quebec City to Denver in 1995, Winnipeg to Phoenix (now Glendale) in 1996 and Hartford to Raleigh, North Carolina in 1997. All three cities simply did not have state of the art 1990s hockey arenas. Connecticut Governor John Rowland, who ended up in prison, seemed smitten with New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft snooping around Hartford looking for a stadium for his National Football League team and didn’t really play ball with Hartford Whalers owner Peter Karmanos.
Rowland not only lost a hockey team but probably Compuware jobs as Karmanos wanted to establish a Connecticut outpost for his computer company.
Rowland lost the Whalers and Kraft never really had any intention of moving his Patriots from the Boston metropolitan area and simply used Rowland as leverage to get a new stadium in Foxboro next to his old stadium. Kraft is further developing that property in Foxboro. He may be using United States government stimulus funding for his project.
The Toronto media, at least one of the hockey fans, er writers, Randy Sportak is urging the NHL to go into Toronto or Hamilton and while Quebec City or Winnipeg would be great additions to the league, Toronto deserves a second team. Sportak is also suggesting that the league move the New York Islanders or the Nashville Predators to southern Ontario.
Lazy journalism on Sportak’s part if he thinks the Islanders will move. Sportak probably has no idea how lucrative the Islanders cable TV deal with Cablevision’s Charles Dolan really is. The deal runs until 2031 and it behooves Dolan, the owner of Madison Square Garden, the National Basketball Association’s Knicks and the NHL’s Rangers and the MSG Network, to keep paying. You see Dolan needs the Islanders to stay in Uniondale or move to the proposed Brooklyn arena or the proposed building that could end up on Shea Stadium’s former site or in the junkyards at Willets Point adjacent to the US National Tennis Center to keep his cable TV franchises on Long island.
Here is how it works. Dolan can go before any town, village or city board on the island in both Nassau and Suffolk County when his cable TV systems franchise licensing agreement is up and say I have two things other cable operators don’t have. The Islanders and News 12. Dolan uses the same strategy in New Jersey with the Devils and News 12. Dolan is a major benefactor of New Jersey Devils hockey.
That is how sports operators. Islanders owner Charles Wang is hoping that he can develop the area around the Nassau Coliseum in Uniondale. If he cannot, you can be sure that New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who found funds for new baseball stadiums for the Yankees and Mets, will be chatting up Brooklyn and Queens with Wang.
No matter how lucrative the Toronto market might be, and this is no slight about Toronto, T. O. is not the Big Apple even if hockey is king in Toronto.
There is no suggestion at present that Nashville is ready to give up on the Predators.
If there is expansion, Quebec City and Winnipeg are on top of the charts for the NHL. In fact, the founder of the Russian-based Kontinental Hockey League Alexander Medvedev, the Deputy Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Russian Gazprom energy company, thinks that Quebec City is long overdue for an NHL team. An expansion of the league would mean a good deal of money for NHL owners. Even if the league sells the franchises for $150 million each, which is probably a low figure, two franchises would mean the NHL owners would split the $300 million 30 ways and give each owner $10 million.
It has not been a good week for the Toronto sports media. Quebec City wants an NHL team and Gary Bettman is listening, the NHL favors expansion over relocation, New Jersey Nets owner Bruce Ratner wants a hockey team in his proposed Brooklyn building, presumably the Islanders, and Ice Edge wants the Coyotes and has a plan to use Saskatoon, Saskatchewan as a second home for five games which should cause the Toronto writers to break out the pom poms again. But Saskatoon is not Southern Ontario nor is Quebec City and that is a problem for the Toronto scribes.
evanjweiner@yahoo.com
Thursday, August 20, 2009
Jim Balsillie and Groucho Marx
http://www.mcnsports.com/en/node/7498
Jim Balsillie and Groucho Marx
By Evan Weiner
August 20, 2009
11:30 AM EDT
(New York, N. Y.) -- The gloves have come off and now the battle between the man who wants a National Hockey League team in Hamilton, Ontario, Jim Balsillie, and the very league he is trying to enter has become rather personal. The NHL has accused Balsillie of concocting a "self-serving scheme" by "co-opting" Phoenix Coyotes owner Jerry Moyes to put the business into bankruptcy and somehow insider’s information about the Jerry Reinsdorf bid to buy the business and the Reinsdorf's group negotiations to get a better deal from the city of Glendale to use the municipally built arena for the hockey team was leaked to the conservative, government watchdog group, the Goldwater Institute.
If Balsillie wants to come across as saying the Glendale/Phoenix, Arizona is not a financially solvent hockey market that is fine. But if Balsillie is hiding behind the Goldwater Institute to unmask subsidies that Reinsdorf wants and Glendale is willing to give him to keep the arena occupied then there is something very disingenuous about the strategy. Balsillie’s company Research in Motion was heavily subsidized by the Canadian government in developing BlackBerry technology and Balsillie himself has demanded and received hundreds of millions of Canadian dollars to bring the Hamilton arena up to NHL standards should he get the franchise and move it to the Ontario city.
Balsillie wants to put a team in a city, Hamilton, that has one of the highest rates of unemployment in Canada according to Statistic Canada. The unemployment rate in Ontario in July according to Statistics Canada was 9.3 percent; Hamilton’s unemployment rate is 8.2 percent. Ontario has been crushed by the downsizing of General Motors and Chrysler.
The Goldwater Institute filed a lawsuit to become a party to the bankruptcy proceedings which are continuing. The bankruptcy judge has refused the conservative group's request to join the courtroom battle. Oddly enough the Goldwater Institute was not that critical of the construction of the Glendale football stadium that is home to the Arizona Cardinals in a February 2008 article published by the New York Times.
Balsillie and his lawyer Richard Rodier have fired back and in court papers have said that the NHL has accepted convicted criminals in their ranks to counter the NHL's contention that Balsillie was rejected from being an NHL because of the perception that Balsillie did not "good character and integrity."
Balsillie's lawyer in the court filing went after Reinsdorf because he sued the National Basketball Association in 1990 when the league decided that having Reinsdorf's Chicago Bulls games on United States superstation WGN as Bulls star Michael Jordan was hitting his peak on court was cannibalizing American national cable and broadcast TV rights -- Reinsdorf's team and the Atlanta Hawks games on superstation WTBS were a problem for the NBA in those days -- and New York Rangers owner James Dolan who was upset that the league, not his team, was controlling team websites.
Rodier also went after Bruce McNall, who owned the Los Angeles Kings and ultimately plead guilty to defrauding banks of $236 million, Ottawa Senators owner Eugene Melnyk for violations of Canada's Security Act and one time Nashville co-owner William "Boots" Del Biaggio III who last February pleaded guilty to security fraud in trying to get $100 million in loans by falsifying documents.
Rodier somehow missed John Spano, George Steinbrenner, Harold Ballard, William Cox, Dennis Kozlowski, Eddie DeBartolo, Paul Greenwood and Stephen Walsh in naming a few more sports owners miscreants.
If the co-CEO of Research in Motion, Balsillie, wants to make friends in the National Hockey League and sports, he is sure going about his business the wrong way. Whether people want to admit this or not about sports, whether it is the National Hockey League, Major League Baseball, the National Football League, the National Basketball Association, the International Olympic Committee, the English Premier League or other sports organizations, it is a private club. Owners can say yes to someone or reject them without just cause.
Balsillie has become the anti-Groucho Marx. Julius Henry Marx, better known as Groucho once quipped "I refuse to join any club that would have me as a member." Groucho could not get into any Los Angeles area country clubs because of anti-Semitism in the 1930s. Balsillie cannot get into the NHL private club because of the way he has conducted himself in the past when trying to buy NHL properties in Pittsburgh and in Nashville.
It was the Nashville experience that soured the NHL as Balsillie purchased the franchise from Craig Leipold in June 2007 and immediately began selling tickets to Hamilton Predators games in 2008-09. Balsillie soon lost his chance to buy the Nashville team.
Here is a free history lesson for Balsillie that perhaps Rodier can use. Owners reject potential owners for various reasons or just reject them. In Major League Baseball history, there are plenty of examples of that and in fact, Major League Baseball enjoys an anti-trust exemption from a lawsuit filed by the owners of the Federal League's Baltimore Terrapins. Terrapins ownership was left out of the agreement when the American and National Leagues reached a deal to pay off the Federal League to go away in 1915.
The Terrapins owners sued and eventually the Supreme Court of the United States heard the case and ruled against the Baltimore club and added baseball was a sport not an interstate business in 1922. In the 1980s, Major League Baseball twice rejected a bid by Edward L. Gaylord to buy the Texas Rangers from Eddie Chiles.
The reason?
Gaylord owned a TV station in Dallas that was a "superstation" that was picked up by 400 or so cable systems in the United States southwest. Major League Baseball saw Gaylord's purchase of the Rangers as a threat to national television contracts. Ironically the Chicago White Sox’s Reinsdorf was one of the owners who said no Gaylord. Texas was eventually sold to a group that included the son of the sitting President of the United States, George Bush. The son was George W. Bush. Gaylord would eventually own a piece of the Rangers beginning in 1995.
Major League Baseball also turned down repeated attempts by Frank Morsani to put a team in Tampa, Florida. Eventually Morsani and Major League Baseball reached a settlement after Morsani filed suit against the baseball that shut him out.
The National Football League said no to John Bassett and his Memphis team along with the owners of the Birmingham franchise in the World Football League asked to be included in the NFL after the two year old WFL folded in 1975. A court agreed with the NFL.
The National Basketball Association said no to Bob Arum in 1994 after his group bought the financially troubled Minnesota Timberwolves and planned to move the franchise to New Orleans. In the end, the NBA found a local buyer and Arum walked away.
It is a private club; the owners can pick and choose their partners. Balsillie is not one of them and his actions have offended club members. But Balsillie is continuing his fight and the referee in this case, Judge Redfield T. Baum is letting the fight go on although Judge Baum has ruled that the NHL is a private club and one of the biggest creditors in the bankruptcy proceedings, the computer magnate Michael Dell has endorsed Reinsdorf’s bid.
Balsillie has won no friends in this fight except maybe the Goldwater Institute and Balsillie has been lucky that he has a bunch of lapdogs in the Toronto sports media who are on his side no matter what. But the fight will go on and now it is getting down and dirty.
eweiner@mcn.tv
Jim Balsillie and Groucho Marx
By Evan Weiner
August 20, 2009
11:30 AM EDT
(New York, N. Y.) -- The gloves have come off and now the battle between the man who wants a National Hockey League team in Hamilton, Ontario, Jim Balsillie, and the very league he is trying to enter has become rather personal. The NHL has accused Balsillie of concocting a "self-serving scheme" by "co-opting" Phoenix Coyotes owner Jerry Moyes to put the business into bankruptcy and somehow insider’s information about the Jerry Reinsdorf bid to buy the business and the Reinsdorf's group negotiations to get a better deal from the city of Glendale to use the municipally built arena for the hockey team was leaked to the conservative, government watchdog group, the Goldwater Institute.
If Balsillie wants to come across as saying the Glendale/Phoenix, Arizona is not a financially solvent hockey market that is fine. But if Balsillie is hiding behind the Goldwater Institute to unmask subsidies that Reinsdorf wants and Glendale is willing to give him to keep the arena occupied then there is something very disingenuous about the strategy. Balsillie’s company Research in Motion was heavily subsidized by the Canadian government in developing BlackBerry technology and Balsillie himself has demanded and received hundreds of millions of Canadian dollars to bring the Hamilton arena up to NHL standards should he get the franchise and move it to the Ontario city.
Balsillie wants to put a team in a city, Hamilton, that has one of the highest rates of unemployment in Canada according to Statistic Canada. The unemployment rate in Ontario in July according to Statistics Canada was 9.3 percent; Hamilton’s unemployment rate is 8.2 percent. Ontario has been crushed by the downsizing of General Motors and Chrysler.
The Goldwater Institute filed a lawsuit to become a party to the bankruptcy proceedings which are continuing. The bankruptcy judge has refused the conservative group's request to join the courtroom battle. Oddly enough the Goldwater Institute was not that critical of the construction of the Glendale football stadium that is home to the Arizona Cardinals in a February 2008 article published by the New York Times.
Balsillie and his lawyer Richard Rodier have fired back and in court papers have said that the NHL has accepted convicted criminals in their ranks to counter the NHL's contention that Balsillie was rejected from being an NHL because of the perception that Balsillie did not "good character and integrity."
Balsillie's lawyer in the court filing went after Reinsdorf because he sued the National Basketball Association in 1990 when the league decided that having Reinsdorf's Chicago Bulls games on United States superstation WGN as Bulls star Michael Jordan was hitting his peak on court was cannibalizing American national cable and broadcast TV rights -- Reinsdorf's team and the Atlanta Hawks games on superstation WTBS were a problem for the NBA in those days -- and New York Rangers owner James Dolan who was upset that the league, not his team, was controlling team websites.
Rodier also went after Bruce McNall, who owned the Los Angeles Kings and ultimately plead guilty to defrauding banks of $236 million, Ottawa Senators owner Eugene Melnyk for violations of Canada's Security Act and one time Nashville co-owner William "Boots" Del Biaggio III who last February pleaded guilty to security fraud in trying to get $100 million in loans by falsifying documents.
Rodier somehow missed John Spano, George Steinbrenner, Harold Ballard, William Cox, Dennis Kozlowski, Eddie DeBartolo, Paul Greenwood and Stephen Walsh in naming a few more sports owners miscreants.
If the co-CEO of Research in Motion, Balsillie, wants to make friends in the National Hockey League and sports, he is sure going about his business the wrong way. Whether people want to admit this or not about sports, whether it is the National Hockey League, Major League Baseball, the National Football League, the National Basketball Association, the International Olympic Committee, the English Premier League or other sports organizations, it is a private club. Owners can say yes to someone or reject them without just cause.
Balsillie has become the anti-Groucho Marx. Julius Henry Marx, better known as Groucho once quipped "I refuse to join any club that would have me as a member." Groucho could not get into any Los Angeles area country clubs because of anti-Semitism in the 1930s. Balsillie cannot get into the NHL private club because of the way he has conducted himself in the past when trying to buy NHL properties in Pittsburgh and in Nashville.
It was the Nashville experience that soured the NHL as Balsillie purchased the franchise from Craig Leipold in June 2007 and immediately began selling tickets to Hamilton Predators games in 2008-09. Balsillie soon lost his chance to buy the Nashville team.
Here is a free history lesson for Balsillie that perhaps Rodier can use. Owners reject potential owners for various reasons or just reject them. In Major League Baseball history, there are plenty of examples of that and in fact, Major League Baseball enjoys an anti-trust exemption from a lawsuit filed by the owners of the Federal League's Baltimore Terrapins. Terrapins ownership was left out of the agreement when the American and National Leagues reached a deal to pay off the Federal League to go away in 1915.
The Terrapins owners sued and eventually the Supreme Court of the United States heard the case and ruled against the Baltimore club and added baseball was a sport not an interstate business in 1922. In the 1980s, Major League Baseball twice rejected a bid by Edward L. Gaylord to buy the Texas Rangers from Eddie Chiles.
The reason?
Gaylord owned a TV station in Dallas that was a "superstation" that was picked up by 400 or so cable systems in the United States southwest. Major League Baseball saw Gaylord's purchase of the Rangers as a threat to national television contracts. Ironically the Chicago White Sox’s Reinsdorf was one of the owners who said no Gaylord. Texas was eventually sold to a group that included the son of the sitting President of the United States, George Bush. The son was George W. Bush. Gaylord would eventually own a piece of the Rangers beginning in 1995.
Major League Baseball also turned down repeated attempts by Frank Morsani to put a team in Tampa, Florida. Eventually Morsani and Major League Baseball reached a settlement after Morsani filed suit against the baseball that shut him out.
The National Football League said no to John Bassett and his Memphis team along with the owners of the Birmingham franchise in the World Football League asked to be included in the NFL after the two year old WFL folded in 1975. A court agreed with the NFL.
The National Basketball Association said no to Bob Arum in 1994 after his group bought the financially troubled Minnesota Timberwolves and planned to move the franchise to New Orleans. In the end, the NBA found a local buyer and Arum walked away.
It is a private club; the owners can pick and choose their partners. Balsillie is not one of them and his actions have offended club members. But Balsillie is continuing his fight and the referee in this case, Judge Redfield T. Baum is letting the fight go on although Judge Baum has ruled that the NHL is a private club and one of the biggest creditors in the bankruptcy proceedings, the computer magnate Michael Dell has endorsed Reinsdorf’s bid.
Balsillie has won no friends in this fight except maybe the Goldwater Institute and Balsillie has been lucky that he has a bunch of lapdogs in the Toronto sports media who are on his side no matter what. But the fight will go on and now it is getting down and dirty.
eweiner@mcn.tv
Monday, June 8, 2009
Hockey's Desert Showdown
http://www.mcnsports.com/en/node/7402
Hockey’s Desert Showdown
By Evan Weiner
June 8, 2009
10:00 PM EDT
(New York, N. Y.) -- The Detroit Red Wings could win the Stanley Cup on Tuesday night, the Los Angeles Lakers could take a 3-0 lead in the NBA Finals, Major League Baseball will offer a full schedule of games but the real sports action on Tuesday will take place in a bankruptcy court in Phoenix, Arizona. Jim Balsillie's law team will be arguing why the Ontario billionaire should be able to buy the financially distressed Phoenix Coyotes franchise from Jerry Moyes and move the team to Hamilton, Ontario for the 2009-10 season.
The National Hockey League is fighting Basillie's planned takeover of the debt-ridden franchise and the league claims that four parties are interesting in purchasing the team. But the ramifications of Basillie's planned purchase will be echoing in the United States and Canada not only in hockey but also in Major League Baseball, the National Hockey League and the National Basketball Association for a long time to come.
There is a phrase in the NHL's constitution that could set off a legal battle of unprecedented scope that has not been seen since the owners of baseball's Federal League's Baltimore Terrapins sued baseball's National League and American League and others because the team was not offered a buyout like other Federal League teams after the 1915 season. The Terrapins owners took the case all the way to the United States Supreme Court claiming that the buyout of other Federal League teams and not them was a violation of the Sherman Antitrust Act. In 1922, the United States Supreme Court ruled that baseball was not an interstate commerce and baseball was exempt from antitrust laws of the United States.
Major League Baseball has lived with certain business protections that the other sports have wanted but have been unable to get from the United States Congress.
Because of the antitrust exemption, baseball owners have been able to choose who they want in the ownership group, what areas should have Major League Baseball and what areas should be denied. One of those who had been denied was Frank Morsani who sought a Major League Baseball team in Tampa, Florida beginning in the early 1980s. Morsani ended up buying 42 percent of the Minnesota Twins in 1984 with the intention of relocating the team to a new stadium in Tampa. Morsani never got the team, which stayed in Minneapolis but was promised an expansion team when one became available. Morsani also tried to buy the Texas Rangers and when Major League Baseball did move ahead on expansion in 1990, Morsani was told on December 19th that his group was eliminated from consideration.
Morsani decided to sue Major League Baseball in November 1992 and settled with MLB in September 1993. Major League Baseball did expand to Tampa shortly after the settlement but Morsani was not part of the group awarded an expansion team in 2005.
Major League Baseball has been taken to the mat by the United States Congress numerous times in terms of adding teams in 1962, 1969 and 1993. Major League Baseball has added teams because various lawmakers including Missouri Senator Stuart Symington, Florida's Connie Mack III, Colorado's Tim Wirth have threatened to strip the industry of the exemption unless there were move teams.
Major League Baseball blocked bids by Toronto investors to move the San Francisco Giants to Ontario in 1976 and the Oakland A's to Denver in 1979. Both actions went unchallenged by the United States Congress.
Major League Baseball settled a suit brought on by Seattle, King County and state of Washington in 1970 by awarding Seattle an expansion team in 1976 to start play in 1977 to make up for the city's loss of the Seattle Pilots to Milwaukee in March 1970. Bud Selig and his group purchased the assets of the Pilots after the Pilots owners filed for bankruptcy protection.
Oddly enough, Major League Baseball Commissioner Bud Selig is watching the Phoenix proceedings very carefully. Major League Baseball, the National Football League and the National Basketball Association have a dog in this fight. The leagues try and control matters like territorial rights and have established territories for franchises.
The National Basketball Association blocked the sale of the Minnesota TimberWolves to Louisiana investors in 1994 who planned to move the franchise to New Orleans.
The NHL blocked the move of the St. Louis Blues to Saskatoon, Saskatchewan in 1983 after Ralston Purina sold the team to Canadian buyers.
The leagues were able to use their bylaws to regulate their industries. Basillie's lawyers don't believe that the NHL's bylaw --- No franchise shall be granted for a home territory within the home territory of a member, without the written consent of such member --- is legal and is in fact a violation of both American and Canadian trade laws.
The bylaw apparently gives the Toronto Maple Leafs and the Buffalo Sabres ownership groups the right to block any attempt by anyone to put a franchise in Hamilton, Ontario because the city is within the territory of both franchises.
The bankruptcy case that will be heard in Phoenix comes one day after the 43rd anniversary of the announcement of a merger agreement between the National Football League and the American Football League. During the lead up to the agreement, NFL and AFL officials didn’t know what to do with the New York Jets and Oakland Raiders franchises as both teams had "invaded" NFL territories in New York City and San Francisco. One scenario had the Jets moving to Los Angeles, the Los Angeles Rams moving to San Diego, the San Diego Chargers would then end up in New Orleans and the Raiders going to either Portland, Oregon or Seattle. In the end, the Jets ownership paid a $10 million indemnification to the New York Giants and the Raiders forked up $8 million to the San Francisco 49ers.
New York Islanders owner paid off the New York Rangers NHL franchise when Boe's team joined the NHL in 1972. The cost was $4 million. Boe also had to $4.8 million to the Knicks for invading New York’s territory after the National Basketball Association in June 1976 “expanded” by four teams, taking in four American Basketball Association teams including Boe’s Nets. In 1982, John McMullen had to pay off the Rangers, Islanders and Philadelphia Flyers when he bought the Colorado Rockies and moved the team from Denver to East Rutherford, New Jersey. Four years earlier, the NHL said no to a move from Denver to New Jersey.
There is a history of leagues taking care of business although there have been lawsuits. The NFL refused to take in two World Football League teams after the WFL’s demise in 1975. Memphis owner John Bassett sued the NFL on antitrust grounds because the league would not add his team or the Birmingham Vulcans. The court sided with the NFL.
The 10,000-pound gorilla in Bankruptcy Judge Redfield Baum’s courtroom is the NHL’s constitution and that clause. The Phoenix area judge has to deal with bankruptcy laws but then there are the league’s rules. It is a 10,000-pound gorilla according to the judge and for the owners it is how they conduct business. It is their business, they have made the rules and they enforce them unless they broke the law. Balsillie thinks they have, his potential lodge brothers say no and that may be a bigger problem than whether Glendale, Arizona has an NHL team.
eweiner@mcn.tv
Hockey’s Desert Showdown
By Evan Weiner
June 8, 2009
10:00 PM EDT
(New York, N. Y.) -- The Detroit Red Wings could win the Stanley Cup on Tuesday night, the Los Angeles Lakers could take a 3-0 lead in the NBA Finals, Major League Baseball will offer a full schedule of games but the real sports action on Tuesday will take place in a bankruptcy court in Phoenix, Arizona. Jim Balsillie's law team will be arguing why the Ontario billionaire should be able to buy the financially distressed Phoenix Coyotes franchise from Jerry Moyes and move the team to Hamilton, Ontario for the 2009-10 season.
The National Hockey League is fighting Basillie's planned takeover of the debt-ridden franchise and the league claims that four parties are interesting in purchasing the team. But the ramifications of Basillie's planned purchase will be echoing in the United States and Canada not only in hockey but also in Major League Baseball, the National Hockey League and the National Basketball Association for a long time to come.
There is a phrase in the NHL's constitution that could set off a legal battle of unprecedented scope that has not been seen since the owners of baseball's Federal League's Baltimore Terrapins sued baseball's National League and American League and others because the team was not offered a buyout like other Federal League teams after the 1915 season. The Terrapins owners took the case all the way to the United States Supreme Court claiming that the buyout of other Federal League teams and not them was a violation of the Sherman Antitrust Act. In 1922, the United States Supreme Court ruled that baseball was not an interstate commerce and baseball was exempt from antitrust laws of the United States.
Major League Baseball has lived with certain business protections that the other sports have wanted but have been unable to get from the United States Congress.
Because of the antitrust exemption, baseball owners have been able to choose who they want in the ownership group, what areas should have Major League Baseball and what areas should be denied. One of those who had been denied was Frank Morsani who sought a Major League Baseball team in Tampa, Florida beginning in the early 1980s. Morsani ended up buying 42 percent of the Minnesota Twins in 1984 with the intention of relocating the team to a new stadium in Tampa. Morsani never got the team, which stayed in Minneapolis but was promised an expansion team when one became available. Morsani also tried to buy the Texas Rangers and when Major League Baseball did move ahead on expansion in 1990, Morsani was told on December 19th that his group was eliminated from consideration.
Morsani decided to sue Major League Baseball in November 1992 and settled with MLB in September 1993. Major League Baseball did expand to Tampa shortly after the settlement but Morsani was not part of the group awarded an expansion team in 2005.
Major League Baseball has been taken to the mat by the United States Congress numerous times in terms of adding teams in 1962, 1969 and 1993. Major League Baseball has added teams because various lawmakers including Missouri Senator Stuart Symington, Florida's Connie Mack III, Colorado's Tim Wirth have threatened to strip the industry of the exemption unless there were move teams.
Major League Baseball blocked bids by Toronto investors to move the San Francisco Giants to Ontario in 1976 and the Oakland A's to Denver in 1979. Both actions went unchallenged by the United States Congress.
Major League Baseball settled a suit brought on by Seattle, King County and state of Washington in 1970 by awarding Seattle an expansion team in 1976 to start play in 1977 to make up for the city's loss of the Seattle Pilots to Milwaukee in March 1970. Bud Selig and his group purchased the assets of the Pilots after the Pilots owners filed for bankruptcy protection.
Oddly enough, Major League Baseball Commissioner Bud Selig is watching the Phoenix proceedings very carefully. Major League Baseball, the National Football League and the National Basketball Association have a dog in this fight. The leagues try and control matters like territorial rights and have established territories for franchises.
The National Basketball Association blocked the sale of the Minnesota TimberWolves to Louisiana investors in 1994 who planned to move the franchise to New Orleans.
The NHL blocked the move of the St. Louis Blues to Saskatoon, Saskatchewan in 1983 after Ralston Purina sold the team to Canadian buyers.
The leagues were able to use their bylaws to regulate their industries. Basillie's lawyers don't believe that the NHL's bylaw --- No franchise shall be granted for a home territory within the home territory of a member, without the written consent of such member --- is legal and is in fact a violation of both American and Canadian trade laws.
The bylaw apparently gives the Toronto Maple Leafs and the Buffalo Sabres ownership groups the right to block any attempt by anyone to put a franchise in Hamilton, Ontario because the city is within the territory of both franchises.
The bankruptcy case that will be heard in Phoenix comes one day after the 43rd anniversary of the announcement of a merger agreement between the National Football League and the American Football League. During the lead up to the agreement, NFL and AFL officials didn’t know what to do with the New York Jets and Oakland Raiders franchises as both teams had "invaded" NFL territories in New York City and San Francisco. One scenario had the Jets moving to Los Angeles, the Los Angeles Rams moving to San Diego, the San Diego Chargers would then end up in New Orleans and the Raiders going to either Portland, Oregon or Seattle. In the end, the Jets ownership paid a $10 million indemnification to the New York Giants and the Raiders forked up $8 million to the San Francisco 49ers.
New York Islanders owner paid off the New York Rangers NHL franchise when Boe's team joined the NHL in 1972. The cost was $4 million. Boe also had to $4.8 million to the Knicks for invading New York’s territory after the National Basketball Association in June 1976 “expanded” by four teams, taking in four American Basketball Association teams including Boe’s Nets. In 1982, John McMullen had to pay off the Rangers, Islanders and Philadelphia Flyers when he bought the Colorado Rockies and moved the team from Denver to East Rutherford, New Jersey. Four years earlier, the NHL said no to a move from Denver to New Jersey.
There is a history of leagues taking care of business although there have been lawsuits. The NFL refused to take in two World Football League teams after the WFL’s demise in 1975. Memphis owner John Bassett sued the NFL on antitrust grounds because the league would not add his team or the Birmingham Vulcans. The court sided with the NFL.
The 10,000-pound gorilla in Bankruptcy Judge Redfield Baum’s courtroom is the NHL’s constitution and that clause. The Phoenix area judge has to deal with bankruptcy laws but then there are the league’s rules. It is a 10,000-pound gorilla according to the judge and for the owners it is how they conduct business. It is their business, they have made the rules and they enforce them unless they broke the law. Balsillie thinks they have, his potential lodge brothers say no and that may be a bigger problem than whether Glendale, Arizona has an NHL team.
eweiner@mcn.tv
Sunday, May 31, 2009
Why Jim Balsillie should scare local politicians across the United States as well as newspaper executives
http://www.mcnsports.com/en/node/7297
Why Jim Balsillie should scare local politicians across the United States as well as newspaper executives
(New York, N. Y.) -- The guy who was generously helped by Canadian taxpayers in becoming a billionaire named Jim Balsillie should be scaring all of those local and state politicians who pushed for publicly funded sports facilities along with newspaper executives who are ignoring a developing story that could have political implications across the United States.
Balsillie is pursing a scorched earth policy in trying to purchase the National Hockey League's Glendale, Arizona-based Phoenix Coyotes. The hockey team's owner Jerry Moyes declared bankruptcy and Basille has decided to overpay for a fiscally distressed business and now the whole dispute is paying out in a bankruptcy court. While newspapers executives met in Chicago on Thursday discreetly in a session that might have violated American antitrust laws to discuss a plan to save themselves by charging for newspaper content on the web, their papers are missing the opportunity to report on what is the sports industry's biggest story since the 2004-05 National Hockey League lockout. The newspaper and media industry under reported that story, no wonder why newspapers are suffering.
Here is the story the media is missing. If Jerry Moyes is successful in unloading his team and break a multi-decade lease with Glendale, taxpayers are left holding the bills to pay off a building that will become a white elephant. If Moyes is successful, what would stop Charlotte Bobcats owner Bob Johnson, who has announced his intentions to sell the five year old franchise playing in a municipally funded new arena from doing the same thing? Johnson could theoretically sell the team to Chinese interests who could move the team to Beijing in a bankruptcy proceeding and until the question of whether a league has the right to approve territories is resolved, there is nothing taxpayers, municipalities or leagues can do but watch.
Balsillie, whose Research in Motion company came up with BlackBerry, has gotten Hamilton, Ontario elected officials to pony up more than one hundred million dollars, Canadian, to renovate the city's arena should he be successful in getting the Coyotes franchise and is able to move the team to the city. Hamilton elected officials will soon find out that the actual bill when the debt is factored in will not be the figure that they think it is. Balsillie, the white knight of Canada, has the Canadian sports media waving red and white pom poms and cheering make it seven, as in a seventh Canadian National Hockey league franchise. There has been no due diligence about Balsillie and how he made his money in the back of Canadian taxpayers.
That would ruin the narrative of the white knight rescuing Canadian hockey from the evil American Sun Belt cities. It would also require some work on the part of writers who cover hockey in the Toronto area although this New York-based writer knows the Research in Motion subsidy story.
A newspaper editor curiosity should take hold and someone should have been assigned to see just how Balsillie made his money but the thought of Hamilton getting an NHL team is enough.
The newspaper executives who met in Chicago are missing an opportunity to talk to the two New York senators about their support for the NHL by laws which give the league's owners the right to assign territories and how the courts and possibly Congress may have to get involved in the business of sports to protect taxpayers who have put up billions upon billions of dollars for major and minor league sports facilities around the country.
The Charlotte Bobcats story is simple right now. Johnson is looking for a buying and has not threatened bankruptcy. Charlotte has had a mixed history of success in the NBA. The original Charlotte Hornets franchise was a major success. George Shinn's Hornets began in 1988 and at one time sold old the Charlotte Arena for 358 consecutive home games or almost nine seasons but off court activities including the death of a player and sordid details of Shinn's personal life turned people away from the arena and eventually Shinn asked for a new, publicly-funded, arena complete with numerous luxury boxes and club seats to replace the Charlotte Arena which opened in 1988. Charlotte voters said no to a new arena by a 2 to 1 margin in 2001.
Shinn moved to New Orleans in 2002 but city leaders and NBA Commissioner David Stern didn't believe the results of the referendum were totally reflective of the feelings of Charlotte residents. After Shinn left, the city's mayor Pat McCrory set out to build an arena with taxpayer’s dollars without going to the voters to ask them if they wanted a new arena. McCrory and Stern worked out a deal and the city promised it would build an arena if the NBA would return. Johnson bid for the franchise and won spending about $300 million for the right to run the franchise.
The return of the NBA to Charlotte has not been as warmly received as the original Hornets franchise was back in 1988.
Charlotte is not the only financially distressed NBA franchise. Memphis has been struggling since Michael Heisley moved his Vancouver Grizzlies to the city in 2001. Despite playing in a new, taxpayers funded, arena, Heisley has not been fiscally successful. There are other NBA franchises looking for new arenas in Sacramento and Milwaukee. If Balsillie is successful in his bid to take over the Coyotes, what would stop other owners from going Chapter 11 if there is someone willing to take a debt ridden team off there hands in a bankruptcy proceeding.
Could New York Islanders owner Charles Wang, who admitted that he regrets buying the money losing franchise, do the same thing if he doesn’t get his Lighthouse Project approved? The Moyes/Balsillie tactics could echo from community to community that put out public money for sports facilities both on the major and minor league level.
Glendale, Arizona, on behalf of taxpayers, should unleash a super lawsuit against Moyes for breaking his lease and when that happens, taxpayers will learn whether a lease agreement signed between a franchise holder and the municipality is worth the paper it is written on. Moyes broke the lease. Balsillie's legal team is promising an antitrust lawsuit against the NHL if the league says no to his bid. The NHL, NBA and National Football League do not have antitrust protection, Major League Baseball does and that is keeping the Oakland A's owner Lewis Wolff from moving his team to San Jose and it is why the New York City market has not has three teams since 1957. National League baseball owners in 1957 scoffed at the idea of Cincinnati and Pittsburgh from relocating to New York for the 1958 season.
It is a shame newspaper executives continue to miss stories and maybe they should start examine why they have become so inept and why people have turned away from the industry. Senior citizens are the last generation who are still wedded to newspapers for information. Newspaper execs have lived in a bubble forever and are in denial. Perhaps if they followed the Balsille/Coyotes/NHL saga and explained the implications to taxpayers who are paying extra fees for hotel and motel rooms, for car rentals, for restaurants, for alcohol, for cigarettes, for sewer and water and general sales taxes for these facilities, they would get more readers.
Balsillie's scorched earth policy should scare the living daylights out of elected officials who pushed for stadium/arena building as an economic engine and for newspaper executives whose papers are missing a huge story. Instead, the newspapers are asleep at the wheel saying woe is me. New York's two senators are not fighting for the Phoenix Coyotes but they want to keep Balsillie out of Hamilton because it might hurt the Buffalo Sabres franchise. Strangely quiet on the issue is Arizona's two Senators, John McCain and John Kyl. Perhaps Arizona's newspapers ought to make a call and ask what the two senators are thinking. But that might be wishful thinking asking newspapers to do more than some crime stories, some fluff entertainment stories and some mayhem stories.
eweiner@mcn.tv
Why Jim Balsillie should scare local politicians across the United States as well as newspaper executives
(New York, N. Y.) -- The guy who was generously helped by Canadian taxpayers in becoming a billionaire named Jim Balsillie should be scaring all of those local and state politicians who pushed for publicly funded sports facilities along with newspaper executives who are ignoring a developing story that could have political implications across the United States.
Balsillie is pursing a scorched earth policy in trying to purchase the National Hockey League's Glendale, Arizona-based Phoenix Coyotes. The hockey team's owner Jerry Moyes declared bankruptcy and Basille has decided to overpay for a fiscally distressed business and now the whole dispute is paying out in a bankruptcy court. While newspapers executives met in Chicago on Thursday discreetly in a session that might have violated American antitrust laws to discuss a plan to save themselves by charging for newspaper content on the web, their papers are missing the opportunity to report on what is the sports industry's biggest story since the 2004-05 National Hockey League lockout. The newspaper and media industry under reported that story, no wonder why newspapers are suffering.
Here is the story the media is missing. If Jerry Moyes is successful in unloading his team and break a multi-decade lease with Glendale, taxpayers are left holding the bills to pay off a building that will become a white elephant. If Moyes is successful, what would stop Charlotte Bobcats owner Bob Johnson, who has announced his intentions to sell the five year old franchise playing in a municipally funded new arena from doing the same thing? Johnson could theoretically sell the team to Chinese interests who could move the team to Beijing in a bankruptcy proceeding and until the question of whether a league has the right to approve territories is resolved, there is nothing taxpayers, municipalities or leagues can do but watch.
Balsillie, whose Research in Motion company came up with BlackBerry, has gotten Hamilton, Ontario elected officials to pony up more than one hundred million dollars, Canadian, to renovate the city's arena should he be successful in getting the Coyotes franchise and is able to move the team to the city. Hamilton elected officials will soon find out that the actual bill when the debt is factored in will not be the figure that they think it is. Balsillie, the white knight of Canada, has the Canadian sports media waving red and white pom poms and cheering make it seven, as in a seventh Canadian National Hockey league franchise. There has been no due diligence about Balsillie and how he made his money in the back of Canadian taxpayers.
That would ruin the narrative of the white knight rescuing Canadian hockey from the evil American Sun Belt cities. It would also require some work on the part of writers who cover hockey in the Toronto area although this New York-based writer knows the Research in Motion subsidy story.
A newspaper editor curiosity should take hold and someone should have been assigned to see just how Balsillie made his money but the thought of Hamilton getting an NHL team is enough.
The newspaper executives who met in Chicago are missing an opportunity to talk to the two New York senators about their support for the NHL by laws which give the league's owners the right to assign territories and how the courts and possibly Congress may have to get involved in the business of sports to protect taxpayers who have put up billions upon billions of dollars for major and minor league sports facilities around the country.
The Charlotte Bobcats story is simple right now. Johnson is looking for a buying and has not threatened bankruptcy. Charlotte has had a mixed history of success in the NBA. The original Charlotte Hornets franchise was a major success. George Shinn's Hornets began in 1988 and at one time sold old the Charlotte Arena for 358 consecutive home games or almost nine seasons but off court activities including the death of a player and sordid details of Shinn's personal life turned people away from the arena and eventually Shinn asked for a new, publicly-funded, arena complete with numerous luxury boxes and club seats to replace the Charlotte Arena which opened in 1988. Charlotte voters said no to a new arena by a 2 to 1 margin in 2001.
Shinn moved to New Orleans in 2002 but city leaders and NBA Commissioner David Stern didn't believe the results of the referendum were totally reflective of the feelings of Charlotte residents. After Shinn left, the city's mayor Pat McCrory set out to build an arena with taxpayer’s dollars without going to the voters to ask them if they wanted a new arena. McCrory and Stern worked out a deal and the city promised it would build an arena if the NBA would return. Johnson bid for the franchise and won spending about $300 million for the right to run the franchise.
The return of the NBA to Charlotte has not been as warmly received as the original Hornets franchise was back in 1988.
Charlotte is not the only financially distressed NBA franchise. Memphis has been struggling since Michael Heisley moved his Vancouver Grizzlies to the city in 2001. Despite playing in a new, taxpayers funded, arena, Heisley has not been fiscally successful. There are other NBA franchises looking for new arenas in Sacramento and Milwaukee. If Balsillie is successful in his bid to take over the Coyotes, what would stop other owners from going Chapter 11 if there is someone willing to take a debt ridden team off there hands in a bankruptcy proceeding.
Could New York Islanders owner Charles Wang, who admitted that he regrets buying the money losing franchise, do the same thing if he doesn’t get his Lighthouse Project approved? The Moyes/Balsillie tactics could echo from community to community that put out public money for sports facilities both on the major and minor league level.
Glendale, Arizona, on behalf of taxpayers, should unleash a super lawsuit against Moyes for breaking his lease and when that happens, taxpayers will learn whether a lease agreement signed between a franchise holder and the municipality is worth the paper it is written on. Moyes broke the lease. Balsillie's legal team is promising an antitrust lawsuit against the NHL if the league says no to his bid. The NHL, NBA and National Football League do not have antitrust protection, Major League Baseball does and that is keeping the Oakland A's owner Lewis Wolff from moving his team to San Jose and it is why the New York City market has not has three teams since 1957. National League baseball owners in 1957 scoffed at the idea of Cincinnati and Pittsburgh from relocating to New York for the 1958 season.
It is a shame newspaper executives continue to miss stories and maybe they should start examine why they have become so inept and why people have turned away from the industry. Senior citizens are the last generation who are still wedded to newspapers for information. Newspaper execs have lived in a bubble forever and are in denial. Perhaps if they followed the Balsille/Coyotes/NHL saga and explained the implications to taxpayers who are paying extra fees for hotel and motel rooms, for car rentals, for restaurants, for alcohol, for cigarettes, for sewer and water and general sales taxes for these facilities, they would get more readers.
Balsillie's scorched earth policy should scare the living daylights out of elected officials who pushed for stadium/arena building as an economic engine and for newspaper executives whose papers are missing a huge story. Instead, the newspapers are asleep at the wheel saying woe is me. New York's two senators are not fighting for the Phoenix Coyotes but they want to keep Balsillie out of Hamilton because it might hurt the Buffalo Sabres franchise. Strangely quiet on the issue is Arizona's two Senators, John McCain and John Kyl. Perhaps Arizona's newspapers ought to make a call and ask what the two senators are thinking. But that might be wishful thinking asking newspapers to do more than some crime stories, some fluff entertainment stories and some mayhem stories.
eweiner@mcn.tv
Saturday, May 23, 2009
The Phoenix Coyotes Bankruptcy and the Curious Toronto Globe and Mail Editorial About Gary Bettman
http://www.mcnsports.com/en/node/7196
By Evan Weiner
May 23, 2009
4:30 PM EDT
(New York, N. Y.) -- To those editorial or opinion writers at the Toronto Globe and Mail, the War of 1812 ended nearly two centuries ago and you know what, Canada won. But if you are among those who still read newspaper editorials, as if newspaper opinion pieces have any relevancy anymore and frankly the sad truth is they don't, the Globe and Mail guys apparently think National Hockey League Commissioner is lobbying bombs into Manitoba instead of just protecting his league as Jim Basillie is attempting a hostile takeover of the bankrupt Phoenix Coyotes and moving the franchise to Hamilton, Ontario.
The whole sordid mess is being played out before a bankruptcy judge in Phoenix, Arizona and there could very well be other fronts in what has become a full scale sports league skirmish that Basillie and Phoenix Coyotes owner Jerry Moyes are conducting against the National Hockey League and probably against the National Basketball Association and the National Football League. Basillie has also drawn the wrath of two United States Senators and the town of Glendale, Arizona is about ready to unleash a lawsuit protecting the city from losing the Coyotes with decades left on the lease between the NHL team and the municipality in the building that was paid by taxpayers. More on that later, first things first, it is time to examine newspapers and how journalists in Canada have become cheerleaders for Basillie.
The Globe and Mail editorialists have accused the NHL and Bettman of a "slap" in the face of Canadians and Basillie by attempting to block the sale of the Phoenix hockey franchise to Basillie. It is the latest in a long line of criticisms of Bettman by the Canadian media who have been ticked off for years that a "New York lawyer" has been in charge of the league. In some instances, the "New York lawyer" could be viewed as a code for something else. Perhaps Canadian hockey writers and Jesse Jackson can compare notes about people who live in New York City and the city's suburban areas. For the record, this writer is a life long New Yorker, born in Manhattan, lived in Queens, Ramapo (Jackson and the Canadian writers would have a blast there) and Westchester. There has always been an underlying tone in prose from Canada about the "New York lawyer."
At last look, Bettman wasn't leading a group ready to invade Manitoba nor was he part of the Fenian Raids of Canada between 1866 and 1871 nor did he call Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper a swine or a worm or an upstart (you have to watch Duck Soup with the Marx Brothers to understand that line, but Rufus T. Firefly did smack Trentino across the face after being called an upstart). The New York lawyer also made sure that Edmonton maintained an NHL franchise in the late 1990s but the Globe and Mail has equated Bettman to rogue status while forgetting that Balsillie owes all of his riches to Canadian taxpayers who funded BlackBerry research and that Basillie has become so used to living on taxpayers handouts that he asked Hamilton city officials for money to renovate the city's arena and got it.
Perhaps it is that editorial thinking that has landed newspapers in dire straits fiscally although it is more likely that newspaper publishers ignored the evolving technology and never thought a recession would sink the industry. While Basillie and Hamilton politicians were exchanging wedding vows to provide high cost entertainment, Canadian Auto Workers were coming to terms with the General Motors and Chrysler bankruptcies. The auto workers make up a chunk of Ontario's workforce. Some of them hockey fans who if they lose their jobs can follow the Hamilton or the Southern Ontario team on cable TV, radio or websites which provide quicker access to information than say the stately old Globe and Mail. Some of those out of work former auto maker employees may see some of their future taxes go to pay off repairs for an arena they may never step into for Basillie's hockey team. The same Basillie who has become a billionaire with their financial help. Basillie played by the rules with BlackBerry, but Canadian journalists should be pointing out facts instead of being infatuated with the technology genius.
Canadian newspapers have been acting like teenagers in love with the Basillie moving the Phoenix franchise to Southern Ontario trek. American sports pages are ignoring what will be the biggest sports story of the year, and probably sports biggest case since Cleveland Mayor Mike White and the Cleveland city council threatened to sue the National Football League in 1996 following Cleveland Browns owner Art Modell's relocation of his football team to Baltimore with three years left on the Browns-Cleveland lease at the city's stadium.
White and NFL Commissioner Paul Tagliabue worked out a deal whereby Cleveland would drop a lawsuit and would build a new football facility. Cleveland was promised a new team and the city retained the team's name, the Browns, the team logo and colors and the team record book. Cleveland got an expansion franchise in 1999.
The inclusion of New York's two United States Senators in this battle of sports is rather interesting because New York and Ontario are sizeable trading partners but the relocation of the Phoenix team to Hamilton, which is not far from Buffalo might impact Buffalo Sabres tickets, advertising revenues and could seriously harm the franchise in what is a very weakened economic area, western New York State. Buffalo cannot make it without Canadians attending games; the NFL's Buffalo Bills have regionalized the franchise by holding training camp in Rochester and scheduling games in Toronto. The National Hockey League, the National Basketball Association and the National Football League do not enjoy the same antitrust exemption that Major League Baseball was given by the United States Supreme Court in 1922. Could Senators Charles Schumer and Kristen Gillibrand introduce legislation, which certainly would be welcomed by Bettman, NBA Commissioner David Stern and NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell along with their owners that would strengthen league's by-laws to make sure leagues are in control of where they place franchises and who owns teams?
Oddly enough, the Globe and Mail has not come out against Canadian protectionism of the Canadian Football League. In the 1970s, the World Football League, which lasted one and half seasons, wanted to put a team in Toronto for the 1974 season and Canadian lawmakers threatened to make sure any American football league would never play in Canada. Parliament never pursued the protectionism after John Bassett moved the Toronto franchise to Memphis.
Bettman and his legal team have NHL owners saying no to Basillie's buyout, they have drawn Congressional interest, they have MLB, the NBA and NFL on their side and the city of Glendale will unleash a major lawsuit to make sure taxpayers, the people ultimately responsible for paying the debt on the city owned facility protected. Glendale claims it is owed a $700 million fee if the hockey team is moved as the lease between the league and the team has 26 years remaining. This should be a troubling notion to all of the cities and municipalities across the United States who have spent billions upon billions of dollars for new sports facilities. If Moyes can declare bankruptcy and just sell off the assets and get out of paying the lease, who will be next? Taxpayers need protection as well and a Glendale suit should be avidly watched by every municipality which forked over money either in building a facility, or in granting programs like payment in lieu of taxes or tax incremental funding.
Of course the Globe and Mail, the paper that accused Bettman of slapping Canadians and Basillie in the face, has sportswriters like Allan Maki covering the business end of hockey. Mr. Maki sounds like Rush Limbaugh in hoping Bettman fails in court and that will be the end of his term. Of course a hockey writer doesn’t understand the nuisances of owners meetings and that Bettman is just doing what the owners want him to do. Mr. Maki needs to study sports league and history or maybe ask Fay Vincent what happens when owners fall out of love with their commissioner. Fay Vincent was fired by the Lords of Baseball although technically Vincent resigned after owners voted 18-9 that they had no confidence in him in 1992. One of those owners who said no, Chicago White Sox and Chicago Bulls owner Jerry Reinsdorf, the man who wants to buy the Phoenix Coyotes.
Mr. Maki needs to understand that until Los Angeles Kings owner Phil Anschutz and others are done with Bettman, he will stay on the job. Of course Maki is a writer for the Globe and Mail, a haughty position within the newspaper community and perhaps he is preaching to his fellow Canadian hockey writers in calling for Bettman's ouster. At least Mr. Maki didn't call him the "New York lawyer."
By the way, Mr. Maki did not mention that the NHL is a more than $2 billion a year business. He mentioned the United States cable TV contract with Versus. Mr. Maki, like many of his fellow writers in Canada, fails to understand that ESPN did not want NHL games and Versus stepped in with some money. Perhaps someone who understands the cable TV business would be better served as a critic but the Globe and Mail has a hockey writer.
The Toronto Sun also wants Bettman to go. Another newspaper editorial about his lack of getting a major TV deal in the United States. Across Canada, Bettman is seen as an enemy of the people, at least in the eyes of the media.
Of course the Globe and Mail editorial page, the Maki column and the Toronto Sun no confidence vote mean nothing except to create some chatter on radio talk shows and cable TV in Canada. The only person who counts is Phoenix Bankruptcy Judge Redfield Baum and this all goes back to bankruptcy, Jerry Moyes filed Chapter 11 and wants to cut his losses. Moyes owns the Coyotes franchise but does he really run the team is the first piece of this puzzle. The NHL apparently was paying the bills starting in November 2008, not Moyes. The second part of the puzzle is simple. Does the NHL have the right to govern itself? There are many instances in sports where the leagues have said no to prospective owners. In 1983, Ralston Purina had enough of owning the St. Louis Blues National Hockey League franchise and sold it to Saskatoon interests led by Bill Hunter. The NHL refused to let the sale of the relocation of the franchise go ahead and found another owner to take over in St. Louis. In 1994, the NBA blocked the move of the Minnesota franchise to New Orleans and found a local owner. In Major League Baseball during the 1970s, owners blocked the relocation of the San Francisco Giants to Toronto and the Oakland A's to Denver. In the 1980s, the Lords of Baseball twice refused to allow Texas Rangers owner Eddie Chiles to sell his team to Edwin Gaylord because of the fear that Gaylord would launch a cable TV superstation in Dallas. Chiles eventually sold his team to a group fronted by the son of the United States President at the time in 1989, George W. Bush. The rest is history.
Hockey is a sensitive subject for Canadians. It is a way of life. Hockey's biggest names, Gordie Howe, Bobby Orr, Bobby Hull never played NHL games with Toronto or Montreal back in the day and there is something still wrong some 37 years later that Bobby Hull was not allowed to play for Team Canada against the Soviet Union in the biggest global hockey series in the sports history because he signed with a World Hockey Association team, Winnipeg, and left the NHL's Chicago Blackhawks. Business is business after all.
The bankruptcy case, the Glendale lawsuit, the United States Senate intervention, the threat of subsequent lawsuits may keep going and going with the real winners being the lawyers with billable hours. The real loser here is journalism, the globally respected Globe and Mail being reduced to a puerile state with lines that seemingly came out of a 1933 Marx Brothers movie, Duck Soup. Perhaps both the Canadian and American media really need to have a broad introspective look and see where they lost their way in virtually everything they cover, but they again about 110 years ago, William Randolph Hearst invented a war, the Spanish American War where people died. Fortunately in this case, no one is in peril, Glendale may lose a hockey team or may not, life will go on no matter even for the editorial writers at the Toronto Globe and Mail and Sun Media and the Toronto Sun and a good number or Canadian journalists who are wearing their Team Canada shirts because they want Basillie to bring home a hockey team. It is just business, nothing personal.
eweiner@mcn.tv
By Evan Weiner
May 23, 2009
4:30 PM EDT
(New York, N. Y.) -- To those editorial or opinion writers at the Toronto Globe and Mail, the War of 1812 ended nearly two centuries ago and you know what, Canada won. But if you are among those who still read newspaper editorials, as if newspaper opinion pieces have any relevancy anymore and frankly the sad truth is they don't, the Globe and Mail guys apparently think National Hockey League Commissioner is lobbying bombs into Manitoba instead of just protecting his league as Jim Basillie is attempting a hostile takeover of the bankrupt Phoenix Coyotes and moving the franchise to Hamilton, Ontario.
The whole sordid mess is being played out before a bankruptcy judge in Phoenix, Arizona and there could very well be other fronts in what has become a full scale sports league skirmish that Basillie and Phoenix Coyotes owner Jerry Moyes are conducting against the National Hockey League and probably against the National Basketball Association and the National Football League. Basillie has also drawn the wrath of two United States Senators and the town of Glendale, Arizona is about ready to unleash a lawsuit protecting the city from losing the Coyotes with decades left on the lease between the NHL team and the municipality in the building that was paid by taxpayers. More on that later, first things first, it is time to examine newspapers and how journalists in Canada have become cheerleaders for Basillie.
The Globe and Mail editorialists have accused the NHL and Bettman of a "slap" in the face of Canadians and Basillie by attempting to block the sale of the Phoenix hockey franchise to Basillie. It is the latest in a long line of criticisms of Bettman by the Canadian media who have been ticked off for years that a "New York lawyer" has been in charge of the league. In some instances, the "New York lawyer" could be viewed as a code for something else. Perhaps Canadian hockey writers and Jesse Jackson can compare notes about people who live in New York City and the city's suburban areas. For the record, this writer is a life long New Yorker, born in Manhattan, lived in Queens, Ramapo (Jackson and the Canadian writers would have a blast there) and Westchester. There has always been an underlying tone in prose from Canada about the "New York lawyer."
At last look, Bettman wasn't leading a group ready to invade Manitoba nor was he part of the Fenian Raids of Canada between 1866 and 1871 nor did he call Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper a swine or a worm or an upstart (you have to watch Duck Soup with the Marx Brothers to understand that line, but Rufus T. Firefly did smack Trentino across the face after being called an upstart). The New York lawyer also made sure that Edmonton maintained an NHL franchise in the late 1990s but the Globe and Mail has equated Bettman to rogue status while forgetting that Balsillie owes all of his riches to Canadian taxpayers who funded BlackBerry research and that Basillie has become so used to living on taxpayers handouts that he asked Hamilton city officials for money to renovate the city's arena and got it.
Perhaps it is that editorial thinking that has landed newspapers in dire straits fiscally although it is more likely that newspaper publishers ignored the evolving technology and never thought a recession would sink the industry. While Basillie and Hamilton politicians were exchanging wedding vows to provide high cost entertainment, Canadian Auto Workers were coming to terms with the General Motors and Chrysler bankruptcies. The auto workers make up a chunk of Ontario's workforce. Some of them hockey fans who if they lose their jobs can follow the Hamilton or the Southern Ontario team on cable TV, radio or websites which provide quicker access to information than say the stately old Globe and Mail. Some of those out of work former auto maker employees may see some of their future taxes go to pay off repairs for an arena they may never step into for Basillie's hockey team. The same Basillie who has become a billionaire with their financial help. Basillie played by the rules with BlackBerry, but Canadian journalists should be pointing out facts instead of being infatuated with the technology genius.
Canadian newspapers have been acting like teenagers in love with the Basillie moving the Phoenix franchise to Southern Ontario trek. American sports pages are ignoring what will be the biggest sports story of the year, and probably sports biggest case since Cleveland Mayor Mike White and the Cleveland city council threatened to sue the National Football League in 1996 following Cleveland Browns owner Art Modell's relocation of his football team to Baltimore with three years left on the Browns-Cleveland lease at the city's stadium.
White and NFL Commissioner Paul Tagliabue worked out a deal whereby Cleveland would drop a lawsuit and would build a new football facility. Cleveland was promised a new team and the city retained the team's name, the Browns, the team logo and colors and the team record book. Cleveland got an expansion franchise in 1999.
The inclusion of New York's two United States Senators in this battle of sports is rather interesting because New York and Ontario are sizeable trading partners but the relocation of the Phoenix team to Hamilton, which is not far from Buffalo might impact Buffalo Sabres tickets, advertising revenues and could seriously harm the franchise in what is a very weakened economic area, western New York State. Buffalo cannot make it without Canadians attending games; the NFL's Buffalo Bills have regionalized the franchise by holding training camp in Rochester and scheduling games in Toronto. The National Hockey League, the National Basketball Association and the National Football League do not enjoy the same antitrust exemption that Major League Baseball was given by the United States Supreme Court in 1922. Could Senators Charles Schumer and Kristen Gillibrand introduce legislation, which certainly would be welcomed by Bettman, NBA Commissioner David Stern and NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell along with their owners that would strengthen league's by-laws to make sure leagues are in control of where they place franchises and who owns teams?
Oddly enough, the Globe and Mail has not come out against Canadian protectionism of the Canadian Football League. In the 1970s, the World Football League, which lasted one and half seasons, wanted to put a team in Toronto for the 1974 season and Canadian lawmakers threatened to make sure any American football league would never play in Canada. Parliament never pursued the protectionism after John Bassett moved the Toronto franchise to Memphis.
Bettman and his legal team have NHL owners saying no to Basillie's buyout, they have drawn Congressional interest, they have MLB, the NBA and NFL on their side and the city of Glendale will unleash a major lawsuit to make sure taxpayers, the people ultimately responsible for paying the debt on the city owned facility protected. Glendale claims it is owed a $700 million fee if the hockey team is moved as the lease between the league and the team has 26 years remaining. This should be a troubling notion to all of the cities and municipalities across the United States who have spent billions upon billions of dollars for new sports facilities. If Moyes can declare bankruptcy and just sell off the assets and get out of paying the lease, who will be next? Taxpayers need protection as well and a Glendale suit should be avidly watched by every municipality which forked over money either in building a facility, or in granting programs like payment in lieu of taxes or tax incremental funding.
Of course the Globe and Mail, the paper that accused Bettman of slapping Canadians and Basillie in the face, has sportswriters like Allan Maki covering the business end of hockey. Mr. Maki sounds like Rush Limbaugh in hoping Bettman fails in court and that will be the end of his term. Of course a hockey writer doesn’t understand the nuisances of owners meetings and that Bettman is just doing what the owners want him to do. Mr. Maki needs to study sports league and history or maybe ask Fay Vincent what happens when owners fall out of love with their commissioner. Fay Vincent was fired by the Lords of Baseball although technically Vincent resigned after owners voted 18-9 that they had no confidence in him in 1992. One of those owners who said no, Chicago White Sox and Chicago Bulls owner Jerry Reinsdorf, the man who wants to buy the Phoenix Coyotes.
Mr. Maki needs to understand that until Los Angeles Kings owner Phil Anschutz and others are done with Bettman, he will stay on the job. Of course Maki is a writer for the Globe and Mail, a haughty position within the newspaper community and perhaps he is preaching to his fellow Canadian hockey writers in calling for Bettman's ouster. At least Mr. Maki didn't call him the "New York lawyer."
By the way, Mr. Maki did not mention that the NHL is a more than $2 billion a year business. He mentioned the United States cable TV contract with Versus. Mr. Maki, like many of his fellow writers in Canada, fails to understand that ESPN did not want NHL games and Versus stepped in with some money. Perhaps someone who understands the cable TV business would be better served as a critic but the Globe and Mail has a hockey writer.
The Toronto Sun also wants Bettman to go. Another newspaper editorial about his lack of getting a major TV deal in the United States. Across Canada, Bettman is seen as an enemy of the people, at least in the eyes of the media.
Of course the Globe and Mail editorial page, the Maki column and the Toronto Sun no confidence vote mean nothing except to create some chatter on radio talk shows and cable TV in Canada. The only person who counts is Phoenix Bankruptcy Judge Redfield Baum and this all goes back to bankruptcy, Jerry Moyes filed Chapter 11 and wants to cut his losses. Moyes owns the Coyotes franchise but does he really run the team is the first piece of this puzzle. The NHL apparently was paying the bills starting in November 2008, not Moyes. The second part of the puzzle is simple. Does the NHL have the right to govern itself? There are many instances in sports where the leagues have said no to prospective owners. In 1983, Ralston Purina had enough of owning the St. Louis Blues National Hockey League franchise and sold it to Saskatoon interests led by Bill Hunter. The NHL refused to let the sale of the relocation of the franchise go ahead and found another owner to take over in St. Louis. In 1994, the NBA blocked the move of the Minnesota franchise to New Orleans and found a local owner. In Major League Baseball during the 1970s, owners blocked the relocation of the San Francisco Giants to Toronto and the Oakland A's to Denver. In the 1980s, the Lords of Baseball twice refused to allow Texas Rangers owner Eddie Chiles to sell his team to Edwin Gaylord because of the fear that Gaylord would launch a cable TV superstation in Dallas. Chiles eventually sold his team to a group fronted by the son of the United States President at the time in 1989, George W. Bush. The rest is history.
Hockey is a sensitive subject for Canadians. It is a way of life. Hockey's biggest names, Gordie Howe, Bobby Orr, Bobby Hull never played NHL games with Toronto or Montreal back in the day and there is something still wrong some 37 years later that Bobby Hull was not allowed to play for Team Canada against the Soviet Union in the biggest global hockey series in the sports history because he signed with a World Hockey Association team, Winnipeg, and left the NHL's Chicago Blackhawks. Business is business after all.
The bankruptcy case, the Glendale lawsuit, the United States Senate intervention, the threat of subsequent lawsuits may keep going and going with the real winners being the lawyers with billable hours. The real loser here is journalism, the globally respected Globe and Mail being reduced to a puerile state with lines that seemingly came out of a 1933 Marx Brothers movie, Duck Soup. Perhaps both the Canadian and American media really need to have a broad introspective look and see where they lost their way in virtually everything they cover, but they again about 110 years ago, William Randolph Hearst invented a war, the Spanish American War where people died. Fortunately in this case, no one is in peril, Glendale may lose a hockey team or may not, life will go on no matter even for the editorial writers at the Toronto Globe and Mail and Sun Media and the Toronto Sun and a good number or Canadian journalists who are wearing their Team Canada shirts because they want Basillie to bring home a hockey team. It is just business, nothing personal.
eweiner@mcn.tv
Wednesday, May 13, 2009
Why Does Basillie Need More Canadian Government Financial Assistance?
http://www.mcnsports.com/en/node/6996 Why Does Basillie Need More Canadian Government Financial Assistance?
By Evan Weiner
May 13, 2009
9:45 PM EDT
(New York, N. Y.) – I am not a big fan of the Toronto sports media scene, whether I read about Toronto sports, I see local sportswriters break out their blue and white pom poms and write like fans who can put together a sentence. Now that Jim Basillie has put in a bid to buy the Glendale, Arizona-based Phoenix Coyotes, those same writers have put on their red and white Team Canada jerseys and have adopted an us against them, Southern Ontario versus the desert mentality with the hope that their knight in shining armor, Basillie moves the franchise to nearby Hamilton.
(A point of fact, a good many Canadian hockey writers seem to wave pom poms for their local teams, whether it is in Ottawa or Edmonton or other Canadian cities. But then again, as the New York Times columnist George Vescey pointed out to me many years ago, sportswriters are apologists. Sportswriters also have rooting interests.)
It would be refreshing to see the Toronto sports media take off the red and white uniforms and ask a very serious question about their savior of Canadian hockey, Basillie, It would be a very complex question that would require a bit of research, not much though, but here it goes. How much money did the Canadian government throw Basillie and Research in Motion’s way in the mid and late 1990s to help develop BlackBerry and how much of that government aid for research help make Basillie super rich. The second part of the question is why does Basillie need Hamilton and Ontario public money to refurbish the Hamilton arena to meet NHL standards, after all he became very rich because of the Canadian government’s help in funding the research for BlackBerry. Shouldn’t Basillie reach into his own pocket and give back to Canada if his goal is to own a Canadian based hockey team or is Basillie just another corporate welfare recipient?
That might be a tough question that is sure to get Basillie’s public relations people very upset but it is a fair question. Reporters should ask difficult questions not throw softballs to major league hitters in all areas not just hockey. Public relations people should not be setting agendas nor should reporters be afraid to ask a complex series of questions.
Basillie on the surface really isn’t any different than any other potential owner. If he can get a municipality to put up money, then why should he not accept funding?
Instead of that question being asked, there is the NHL owes Hamilton a franchise because one time New Jersey Devils owner John McMullen in the mid 1980s, dissatisfied with East Rutherford, New Jersey and paying off the New York Rangers, New York Islanders and Philadelphia Flyers for invading the three teams territory and playing off Colorado Rockies owner Peter Gilbert after buying the financially ailing Denver-based team, kicked the tires and looked at Hamilton as a potential place to put his hockey team or how the NHL passed over Hamilton in the early 1990s and gave an expansion team to Ottawa instead of how Hamilton was fleeced back in 1925 when a New York bootlegger Bill Dyer purchased the Hamilton Tigers and moved the team to New York. The New York Americans franchise came before the New York Rangers and played in Madison Square Garden. The Garden owners liked how the hockey team was received in New York and decided to own their own team, the Rangers, and a year later Dyer’s franchise played second fiddle to the Rangers. The franchise was suspended in 1942 because of World War II and never reactivated.
Hamilton built an arena that was up to 1970s standards that was opened in 1985. The Copps Coliseum wasn’t designed with the future in mind and lacks a sufficient number of luxury boxes. The arena would need about $180 million in renovations to bring it up to 21st century state of the art NHL standards. Basillie isn’t willing to put up that kind of money and that should run Canadians the wrong way although Basillie has proven he has learned his lessons over the years and knows how to make demands. Basillie reportedly wants $150 million from Hamilton and Ontario coffers.
Basillie has never been much for public relations. Ontario has been hard hot by the recession with 11,000 lost jobs in March and 171,000 jobs between October and the end of March. Ontario will be hard hit by the possible liquidation of Chrysler and the pending June 1 General Motors bankruptcy. It is not a good climate to be asking for a government handout even if it is for an NHL franchise.
Hockey may be a way of life in Canada but in the overall economic scheme, hockey is does not provide an economic stimulus and while Hamilton is thought to be a potential goldmine for an owner, non-hockey fans should not be helping Basille’s bottom line. Canadians have given Basillie enough; they helped in part in the development of BlackBerry. Balsillie should build his own place; he has the money in part because the Canadian government has been so good to him.
Why Balsillie needs another handout is a question that Basillie needs to answer and hopefully someone in the Toronto media area will not act like a hockey fan dying for a seventh Canadian franchise and ask Basillie about the need to live off the public dole for a Hamilton hockey team.
eweiner@mcn.tv
By Evan Weiner
May 13, 2009
9:45 PM EDT
(New York, N. Y.) – I am not a big fan of the Toronto sports media scene, whether I read about Toronto sports, I see local sportswriters break out their blue and white pom poms and write like fans who can put together a sentence. Now that Jim Basillie has put in a bid to buy the Glendale, Arizona-based Phoenix Coyotes, those same writers have put on their red and white Team Canada jerseys and have adopted an us against them, Southern Ontario versus the desert mentality with the hope that their knight in shining armor, Basillie moves the franchise to nearby Hamilton.
(A point of fact, a good many Canadian hockey writers seem to wave pom poms for their local teams, whether it is in Ottawa or Edmonton or other Canadian cities. But then again, as the New York Times columnist George Vescey pointed out to me many years ago, sportswriters are apologists. Sportswriters also have rooting interests.)
It would be refreshing to see the Toronto sports media take off the red and white uniforms and ask a very serious question about their savior of Canadian hockey, Basillie, It would be a very complex question that would require a bit of research, not much though, but here it goes. How much money did the Canadian government throw Basillie and Research in Motion’s way in the mid and late 1990s to help develop BlackBerry and how much of that government aid for research help make Basillie super rich. The second part of the question is why does Basillie need Hamilton and Ontario public money to refurbish the Hamilton arena to meet NHL standards, after all he became very rich because of the Canadian government’s help in funding the research for BlackBerry. Shouldn’t Basillie reach into his own pocket and give back to Canada if his goal is to own a Canadian based hockey team or is Basillie just another corporate welfare recipient?
That might be a tough question that is sure to get Basillie’s public relations people very upset but it is a fair question. Reporters should ask difficult questions not throw softballs to major league hitters in all areas not just hockey. Public relations people should not be setting agendas nor should reporters be afraid to ask a complex series of questions.
Basillie on the surface really isn’t any different than any other potential owner. If he can get a municipality to put up money, then why should he not accept funding?
Instead of that question being asked, there is the NHL owes Hamilton a franchise because one time New Jersey Devils owner John McMullen in the mid 1980s, dissatisfied with East Rutherford, New Jersey and paying off the New York Rangers, New York Islanders and Philadelphia Flyers for invading the three teams territory and playing off Colorado Rockies owner Peter Gilbert after buying the financially ailing Denver-based team, kicked the tires and looked at Hamilton as a potential place to put his hockey team or how the NHL passed over Hamilton in the early 1990s and gave an expansion team to Ottawa instead of how Hamilton was fleeced back in 1925 when a New York bootlegger Bill Dyer purchased the Hamilton Tigers and moved the team to New York. The New York Americans franchise came before the New York Rangers and played in Madison Square Garden. The Garden owners liked how the hockey team was received in New York and decided to own their own team, the Rangers, and a year later Dyer’s franchise played second fiddle to the Rangers. The franchise was suspended in 1942 because of World War II and never reactivated.
Hamilton built an arena that was up to 1970s standards that was opened in 1985. The Copps Coliseum wasn’t designed with the future in mind and lacks a sufficient number of luxury boxes. The arena would need about $180 million in renovations to bring it up to 21st century state of the art NHL standards. Basillie isn’t willing to put up that kind of money and that should run Canadians the wrong way although Basillie has proven he has learned his lessons over the years and knows how to make demands. Basillie reportedly wants $150 million from Hamilton and Ontario coffers.
Basillie has never been much for public relations. Ontario has been hard hot by the recession with 11,000 lost jobs in March and 171,000 jobs between October and the end of March. Ontario will be hard hit by the possible liquidation of Chrysler and the pending June 1 General Motors bankruptcy. It is not a good climate to be asking for a government handout even if it is for an NHL franchise.
Hockey may be a way of life in Canada but in the overall economic scheme, hockey is does not provide an economic stimulus and while Hamilton is thought to be a potential goldmine for an owner, non-hockey fans should not be helping Basille’s bottom line. Canadians have given Basillie enough; they helped in part in the development of BlackBerry. Balsillie should build his own place; he has the money in part because the Canadian government has been so good to him.
Why Balsillie needs another handout is a question that Basillie needs to answer and hopefully someone in the Toronto media area will not act like a hockey fan dying for a seventh Canadian franchise and ask Basillie about the need to live off the public dole for a Hamilton hockey team.
eweiner@mcn.tv
Thursday, May 7, 2009
Hockey’s Real Playoffs is Taking Place in Phoenix
http://www.mcnsports.com/en/node/6876Hockey’s Real Playoffs is Taking Place in Phoenix
May 7, 2009
10:45 PM EDT
(New York, N. Y.) -- If it a safe bet that Jerry Moyes will never own another major league sports team whether it is in baseball, football, basketball, soccer and especially the National Hockey League. It is also a safe bet that Jim Basillie will never be welcomed into the sports lodge either. In case you haven't been following the plight of the Phoenix Coyotes, Moyes and Basillie have set the table for what would be a landmark battle that could alter how the NHL, NBA, NFL, Major League Baseball and Major League Soccer choose owners and cities for their franchises.
The NHL has been bankrolling the cash strapped Moyes-owned Phoenix Coyotes throughout the 2008-09 season and apparently all hell broke loose on Tuesday when the NHL was attempting to broker a deal to sell Moyes' Coyotes to Chicago White Sox and Chicago Bulls owner Jerry Reinsdorf for considerably less money than Basillie is ready to give Moyes for the franchise, Moyes decided to declare bankruptcy.
Balsillie would move the team to the Toronto area, most likely Hamilton. The NHL doesn't want to give up on Phoenix which might be a good franchise eventually after the recession is done and the number of foreclosures in the area levels off.
Moyes and Basillie are not only crossing NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman and 29 NHL owners but Major League Baseball and the National Basketball Association. You see Reinsdorf is a major force in Major League Baseball and pulled strings to get the 1992 Democratic Presidential Convention into his newly built arena in Chicago. Reinsdorf's partner in the Chicago building was Chicago Blackhawks owner Bill Wirtz.
To illustrate just how powerful Reinsdorf is, he is not only partners with Rocky Wirtz, the Blackhawks new owner but also with Sam Zell, the Tribune Company owner who owns the Chicago Cubs in the market's regional cable TV network. Zell was one of Reinsdorf's White Sox minority owners before buying the Tribune Company in April 2007.
Reinsdorf's White Sox hold spring training in Glendale, Arizona, the city that happens to have built the arena that Moyes' team calls home. Moyes negotiated a terrible deal to play there but Reinsdorf and Glendale apparently were ready to renegotiate that deal. The NHL has been actively seeking a new owner over the past year for the franchise.
Reinsdorf is powerful. It is thought that Reinsdorf was the major force during the 1994-94 baseball strike and that Reinsdorf installed Bud Selig as acting baseball commissioner after Fay Vincent was dumped as the commissioner.
The leagues are powerful and as NFL Commissioner Pete Rozelle testified in the 1986 United States Football League and National Football League antitrust trial in federal court in New York City that leagues are natural monopolies and as such leagues have the right to choose who they want as an owner and who they don't want.
Basillie is someone who they don't want. He backed out of buying the Pittsburgh Penguins in 2006 when that franchise was in financial trouble and tried to buy the Nashville Predators and immediately started selling season tickets for the Hamilton Predators for the 2008-2009 Hamilton (Ontario) Predators. Balsillie's Hamilton season ticket sale campaign was a stupid tactic possibly the dumbest thing a potential owner of a franchise has done to impress the ownership lodge. Basillie may be a technical genius in helping to develop BlackBerry but he certainly doesn't have the people skills that will endear him to sports barons. Being smart in the backroom doesn't impressed sports owners very much. Balsillie has not made a favorable impression on Gary Bettman or his owners.
There is no way that Basillie will ever get into the lodge if he tries to bully his way into owning an NHL team. There is an orderly process in wooing sports owners when a team becomes available. Basillie has an unfavorable track record. Being part of a court process will not endear himself to the sports ownership community.
Moyes has now drawn the wrath of NHL owners by declaring bankruptcy on Tuesday and having Basillie move right in with a $212.5 million offer. It is now in a bankruptcy court. The question now becomes will a bankruptcy court trump NHL ownership requirement rules? That becomes a problem and a major problem if the NHL can prove that they removed Moyes as the Coyotes owner before Moyes declared bankruptcy.
Major League Baseball owners have in the past blocked potential owners from buying teams like the San Francisco Giants, the Texas Rangers and the Minnesota Twins and moving the team to St. Petersburg, Florida. Charles Finley was not allow to sell his Oakland A's to Marvin Davis who would have relocated the team to Denver in the late 1970s. The San Francisco Giants franchise is still in San Francisco even though the club was sold to Toronto interests in the mid 1970s. Major League Baseball blocked that potential move as well. Baseball also blocked a proposed sale of the San Diego Padres in the winter of 1973 which would have put the franchise in Washington, D. C.
The NBA denied boxing promoter Bob Arum and his partners the chance to buy the Minnesota TimberWolves in the summer of 1994 because Arum wanted to move the team to New Orleans. Eventually NBA Commissioner David Stern found a local buyer and the team stayed in Minneapolis.
The NHL can argue that the league knows better than a bankruptcy how to run the business of hockey and the league has the right to allow who they want in their fraternity.
The NFL tried to stop Oakland Raiders owner Al Davis from moving his franchise to Los Angeles in the early 1980s and could not because the league's relocation rules were too vague and Davis moved the team. The NBA could not stop Donald Sterling from leaving San Diego and moving his Clippers franchise to Los Angeles in the mid 1980s. The NBA sues Sterling, Sterling did move his team and they settled. Davis and Sterling were owners in the leagues.
The business of sports is going to be unveiled in a trail in Phoenix. Balsillie could prevail in bankruptcy court but that doesn't mean the NHL will accept the verdict and that could open up another legal front which will definitely bring in Reinsdorf's fellow MLB and NBA owners, Bettman's fellow commissioners like the NBA's Stern, MLB's Bud Selig, the NFL's Roger Goodell and the MLS' Don Garber. Balsillie might not care that he could open up the entire sports league operations process but that is what he faces and even though all of the owners probably use BlackBerry, these captains of industry can make Balsillie's life miserable as a sports owner.
This battle is not about the viability of the Phoenix market or placing a second team in the Toronto area which Balsillie plans to do if he gets the franchise, this battle will be about NHL bylaws and whether the NHL has the right to choose who should own a franchise in the league.
evanjweiner@yahoo.com
May 7, 2009
10:45 PM EDT
(New York, N. Y.) -- If it a safe bet that Jerry Moyes will never own another major league sports team whether it is in baseball, football, basketball, soccer and especially the National Hockey League. It is also a safe bet that Jim Basillie will never be welcomed into the sports lodge either. In case you haven't been following the plight of the Phoenix Coyotes, Moyes and Basillie have set the table for what would be a landmark battle that could alter how the NHL, NBA, NFL, Major League Baseball and Major League Soccer choose owners and cities for their franchises.
The NHL has been bankrolling the cash strapped Moyes-owned Phoenix Coyotes throughout the 2008-09 season and apparently all hell broke loose on Tuesday when the NHL was attempting to broker a deal to sell Moyes' Coyotes to Chicago White Sox and Chicago Bulls owner Jerry Reinsdorf for considerably less money than Basillie is ready to give Moyes for the franchise, Moyes decided to declare bankruptcy.
Balsillie would move the team to the Toronto area, most likely Hamilton. The NHL doesn't want to give up on Phoenix which might be a good franchise eventually after the recession is done and the number of foreclosures in the area levels off.
Moyes and Basillie are not only crossing NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman and 29 NHL owners but Major League Baseball and the National Basketball Association. You see Reinsdorf is a major force in Major League Baseball and pulled strings to get the 1992 Democratic Presidential Convention into his newly built arena in Chicago. Reinsdorf's partner in the Chicago building was Chicago Blackhawks owner Bill Wirtz.
To illustrate just how powerful Reinsdorf is, he is not only partners with Rocky Wirtz, the Blackhawks new owner but also with Sam Zell, the Tribune Company owner who owns the Chicago Cubs in the market's regional cable TV network. Zell was one of Reinsdorf's White Sox minority owners before buying the Tribune Company in April 2007.
Reinsdorf's White Sox hold spring training in Glendale, Arizona, the city that happens to have built the arena that Moyes' team calls home. Moyes negotiated a terrible deal to play there but Reinsdorf and Glendale apparently were ready to renegotiate that deal. The NHL has been actively seeking a new owner over the past year for the franchise.
Reinsdorf is powerful. It is thought that Reinsdorf was the major force during the 1994-94 baseball strike and that Reinsdorf installed Bud Selig as acting baseball commissioner after Fay Vincent was dumped as the commissioner.
The leagues are powerful and as NFL Commissioner Pete Rozelle testified in the 1986 United States Football League and National Football League antitrust trial in federal court in New York City that leagues are natural monopolies and as such leagues have the right to choose who they want as an owner and who they don't want.
Basillie is someone who they don't want. He backed out of buying the Pittsburgh Penguins in 2006 when that franchise was in financial trouble and tried to buy the Nashville Predators and immediately started selling season tickets for the Hamilton Predators for the 2008-2009 Hamilton (Ontario) Predators. Balsillie's Hamilton season ticket sale campaign was a stupid tactic possibly the dumbest thing a potential owner of a franchise has done to impress the ownership lodge. Basillie may be a technical genius in helping to develop BlackBerry but he certainly doesn't have the people skills that will endear him to sports barons. Being smart in the backroom doesn't impressed sports owners very much. Balsillie has not made a favorable impression on Gary Bettman or his owners.
There is no way that Basillie will ever get into the lodge if he tries to bully his way into owning an NHL team. There is an orderly process in wooing sports owners when a team becomes available. Basillie has an unfavorable track record. Being part of a court process will not endear himself to the sports ownership community.
Moyes has now drawn the wrath of NHL owners by declaring bankruptcy on Tuesday and having Basillie move right in with a $212.5 million offer. It is now in a bankruptcy court. The question now becomes will a bankruptcy court trump NHL ownership requirement rules? That becomes a problem and a major problem if the NHL can prove that they removed Moyes as the Coyotes owner before Moyes declared bankruptcy.
Major League Baseball owners have in the past blocked potential owners from buying teams like the San Francisco Giants, the Texas Rangers and the Minnesota Twins and moving the team to St. Petersburg, Florida. Charles Finley was not allow to sell his Oakland A's to Marvin Davis who would have relocated the team to Denver in the late 1970s. The San Francisco Giants franchise is still in San Francisco even though the club was sold to Toronto interests in the mid 1970s. Major League Baseball blocked that potential move as well. Baseball also blocked a proposed sale of the San Diego Padres in the winter of 1973 which would have put the franchise in Washington, D. C.
The NBA denied boxing promoter Bob Arum and his partners the chance to buy the Minnesota TimberWolves in the summer of 1994 because Arum wanted to move the team to New Orleans. Eventually NBA Commissioner David Stern found a local buyer and the team stayed in Minneapolis.
The NHL can argue that the league knows better than a bankruptcy how to run the business of hockey and the league has the right to allow who they want in their fraternity.
The NFL tried to stop Oakland Raiders owner Al Davis from moving his franchise to Los Angeles in the early 1980s and could not because the league's relocation rules were too vague and Davis moved the team. The NBA could not stop Donald Sterling from leaving San Diego and moving his Clippers franchise to Los Angeles in the mid 1980s. The NBA sues Sterling, Sterling did move his team and they settled. Davis and Sterling were owners in the leagues.
The business of sports is going to be unveiled in a trail in Phoenix. Balsillie could prevail in bankruptcy court but that doesn't mean the NHL will accept the verdict and that could open up another legal front which will definitely bring in Reinsdorf's fellow MLB and NBA owners, Bettman's fellow commissioners like the NBA's Stern, MLB's Bud Selig, the NFL's Roger Goodell and the MLS' Don Garber. Balsillie might not care that he could open up the entire sports league operations process but that is what he faces and even though all of the owners probably use BlackBerry, these captains of industry can make Balsillie's life miserable as a sports owner.
This battle is not about the viability of the Phoenix market or placing a second team in the Toronto area which Balsillie plans to do if he gets the franchise, this battle will be about NHL bylaws and whether the NHL has the right to choose who should own a franchise in the league.
evanjweiner@yahoo.com
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