Is Detroit Still a Major League Sports Town?

http://www.mcnsports.com/en/node/7577


Is Detroit Still a Major League Sports Town?





By Evan Weiner



November 20, 2009



10:00 PM EST





Has Detroit ceased being a middle market franchise? There are three not so subtle clues that Detroit has slid into a small market city that has cropped up in just the last week. Mike Ilitch’s Detroit Tigers baseball franchise has a lot of money tied up in players and the rumors are that Ilitch is about ready to shave millions from his payroll and is looking to trade Curtis Granderson, a 28-year-old All-Star outfield, who has three years remaining on a five-year agreement with Ilitch that pays him more than six million dollars annually.



Granderson remains a member of the Detroit Tigers, but the 2009-10 hot stove league is far from over.



Granderson plays in a market that is going through more than just a bad recession. Detroit and the surrounding area lost been devastated by the retrenchment of the auto industry with both General Motors and Chrysler hanging on because of government bailouts from the United States and Canada. The only good news Ilitch has seen is that the American dollar has weakened while the Canadian dollar has flirted with par with the US greenback, which is a good development in the Detroit market as a good chunk of the metropolitan area is shared with Windsor and nearby Ontario cities. The bad part is that the automobile industry was a major part of the Windsor/Ontario economy as well.



Whether Granderson or Edwin Jackson is entirely up to Tigers management. But there is a question of just how much money that corporate Detroit can sink into two of Ilitch’s teams, the Tigers and the NHL Red Wings, William Ford’s Detroit Lions and the Auburn Hills-based Detroit Pistons.



The answer seems to be, not as much as the old days. In some aspects, it seems as if the Detroit Lions franchise has gone back 75 years. This Sunday’s home game against the Cleveland Browns will be blacked out in the Detroit metro region, an area that includes Toledo, Ohio, Lansing, Michigan and the Saginaw-Flint, Michigan market. Granted both the Lions and Browns are terrible football teams, both have won just one game and lost eight, but there would seem to be enough Cleveland Browns backers to make the relatively short trip up to Detroit.



This is the fourth time in six games that a Lions home contest has been blacked out in 2009. Detroit did sell out earlier this year against Pittsburgh and a lot of Steelers fans made the trip to Detroit but Ford’s team has had a lot of trouble selling 40,000 or more tickets per game. In 2008, as Detroit’s football team continued to lose and the auto companies were on the verge of failing, five of the Lions last six home games were not shown in the Detroit and secondary Detroit markets.



Of course, it cannot be said that a winning team in Detroit would do that much better considering the deteriorating economic conditions in Detroit and the surrounding area.



Detroit will be facing an old Thanksgiving Day rival this year on turkey day, the Green Bay Packers. More than likely, Detroit will fill up the stadium with help from Packers backers.



The Detroit Lions franchise was born in the Great Depression that started with the stock market crash in 1929 after the Portsmouth (Ohio) Spartans franchise was on the financial ropes in 1933. The owner of Detroit’s WJR radio, Gene Richards bought the Spartans and move the team to Detroit where the newly minted Lions franchise was looking to get people into Briggs Stadium.



Richards scheduled a Thanksgiving Day game in 1934 with the hopes that Thanksgiving Day parade goers in Detroit would wander over to the stadium and watch. There was significance to that game that is mostly lost today. The Chicago Bears-Detroit Lions contest was the first NFL game ever to be heard coast-to-coast and border-to-border in the United States. Detroit has hosted 69 Thanksgiving Day contests from 1934-38 and 1945-today. In 1939, United States President Franklin Roosevelt changed Thanksgiving and moved the holiday up a week to November 23 in an effort to spark Christmas sales and help the still struggling economy.



Political parties never change stripes and a silly battle ensued between Democrats and Republicans (this in the days prior to ersatz arguments on talk radio and cable TV news) and by 1940 there were states that “celebrated” the Democrats’ Thanksgiving a week earlier than the Republicans Thanksgiving. Pittsburgh and Philadelphia played each other in 1939 and 1940.



They were in the same state.



The municipally funded Pontiac Silverdome opened in 1975 with the Lions football team as the main tenant. The new facility cost $55.7 million. William Clay Ford’s Lions played football there from 1975-2001. The dome also played host to Detroit Pistons games from 1978-88. After Ford moved his Lions back to downtown Detroit, the then 27-year old football facility has virtually useless. The Jehovah’s Witnesses left the facility in 2004 after using it for years for an annual convention.



Between 2003 and 2006, the Pontiac Silverdome parking lot was the home for a Drive-In movie theater.



Two leagues that never got off the ground took a look at the facility. The World Hockey Association and the United States Football League. The reincarnation of the WHA was an ill-fated idea but there were plans to put a rink in the building in 2003 and the reincarnated USFL was looking to purchase the building and playing games there in 2010 along with hosting concerts,



The new USFL never got financial backing. On November 16, a Toronto-based company bought the old stadium for $583,000 at auction with the hope of placing a Major League Soccer team in the building.



The “new” USFL appears to be in the hands of another promoter with the hope of starting up in 2011 but that league will not be buying the old dome.



At least the building is still standing which is more than can be said for old stadiums in Seattle and Pittsburgh which were blown up after new facilities for major league sports teams were build with taxpayers money. Seattle (King County) and Pittsburgh (Allegheny County) taxpayers are still paying off the debt on the long departed Seattle Kingdome and Pittsburgh’s Three Rivers Stadium.



Some may suggest the cheap purchase price for the Silverdome is the result of a crashing Detroit real estate market and the weak economy. While that is a major factor, the real reason the price went so cheap is that once a stadium gets to a certain age, it becomes useless and has virtually no value because it lacks what sports owners want today, luxury boxes, club seats, wide alleyways for concessions, in-facility restaurants and shops.



What was state-of-the-art in 1975 is a dump in today’s sports marketplace.



Detroit was once a major market thanks to the auto companies a half century ago. Today, the city and the surrounding area are hurting economically and the population is shrinking. That has taken a toll on Detroit sports properties and raises the question, can Detroit remain a major sports town that can support big time pro and college sports or will Detroit become a city like Louisville, Kentucky, which was once major league town in a different century?





eweiner@mcn.tv

Sports economy, is it tanking?

http://www.examiner.com/x-3926-Business-of-Sports-Examiner~y2009m3d12-Sports-economy-is-it-tanking

Evan WeinerBusiness of Sports Examiner


Sports economy, is it tanking?

March 12, 9:42 PM
Has the sports economic bubble burst? The answer would seem to be yes, although Major League Baseball's Spring Training ticket sales are up and both Major League Baseball and the Major League Baseball Players Association seem to be making money on the World Baseball Classic as World Baseball Classic, Inc. will be distributing more than $15 million in proceeds from the 2009 World Baseball Classic to the participating federations and the International Baseball Federation according to a March 4 news release. The participating teams will split $14 million, which is nearly double the $7.8 million that was awarded after the inaugural event in 2006. In addition, the IBAF, the worldwide governing body for the sport of baseball, will receive over $1 million to invest in game development globally.

The 15 million dollar haul is pretty sizeable considering that the global economy is tanking despite a Wall Street rally over the past few days.

Last Monday, Major League Baseball announced that Spring Training attendance was up by two percent over last year's pace for overall Spring Training attendance through Sunday's exhibition games. "A total of 871,502 fans have gone through Cactus and Grapefruit League turnstiles in 154 games, an average of 5,659 per exhibition. That compares with an average of 5,548 through the same number of games in 2008," according to the news release.
So far, Major League Baseball based on the WBC and Spring Training attendance looks to be recession proof. But looks might be deceiving. It is far too early to tell if regular season attendance will drop, if luxury boxes will be sold or be empty over the course of an 81 game home schedule and if teams like the Yankees or Pirates can replace a sponsor like General Motors and get comparable dollars when someone jumps in, if someone jumps in, to take General Motors place. The real test comes once the regular season starts. April will not only be a litmus test for Major League Baseball, but Minor League Baseball, the National Basketball Association and the National Hockey League as well. NBA and NHL playoff bound teams are looking for their patrons to buy playoff tickets at a higher price than the regular season.
The NBA and NHL sold all of its sponsorship and inked all of its marketing partners for the 2008-09 before the crisis hit last September. NBA revenues in 2008-09 are up two percent from 2007-08 levels but there is trouble ahead. Major League Baseball is either selling new sponsorship or renewing expiring marketing agreements during the economic meltdown, the NBA and NHL are just selling playoff tickets now, the National Football League is beginning to sell tickets for 2009. The economic conditions are not favorable. Bill Davidson, the owner of the Detroit Pistons, will be lowering season ticket prices in 2009-10. Detroit may be the hardest hit sports market in either the US or Canada. The continuing troubles of the Big 3 automakers combined with a falling Canadian dollar will have an affect on The Pistons along with the Detroit Red Wings, Detroit Tigers and the Detroit Lions.
In Charlotte, a city dominated by the banking industry, Bobcats owner Bob Johnson will slash season ticket prices by an average of 17 percent in 2009-10.
Also this week, the NBA was hit with major economic jolt. The Simon Brothers told the Indianapolis Capital Improvement Board that they no longer could afford to assume the losses of their Pacers franchise and operate the team's home arena. The Simons are seeking relief and could sell or move the franchise with some city layer of government doesn't step in. The problem with that threat is simple. There are very few places that can take on a team. Kansas City is one place but that was a risky market even before the economic downturn. Kansas City's market is too small for the NFL's Chiefs, MLB's Royals and NASCAR, adding another team would just drain the other sports entities in the Kansas City market. Las Vegas is a dead market right now.
In good economic times, the Simons claimed they lost money on the team and they were one of eight ownership groups who asked for additional revenue sharing two years ago.
The NBA has offered 15 teams "bailout" money to help them get through tough economic teams. The NBA and the National Basketball Players Association still have two years left on their Collective Bargaining Agreement and a lot can happen between now and 2011. The economy could pick up or conditions could deteriorate.

All seems to be quiet in the NHL compared to the NBA. New York Islanders owner Charles Wang wants to see his "Lighthouse Project" given the go ahead by various Long Island governments. The Phoenix Coyotes franchise has major financial problems and the falling Canadian dollar is not helping the six Canadian teams. The NHL is in better shape than the Russian Kontinental Hockey League which was fueled by oil money. The KHL season is drawing to an end and it will be interesting to see how many of the 24 teams that started last September will be back in 2009-10 and if the KHL can hold onto big name players, particularly Jaromir Jagr.
In all of this economic chaos, there is some glimmer of hope for the sports economy and growth. The fledgling United Football League on Wednesday held a news conference to discuss plans for the 2009 season, the first one for the league. Paul Pelosi, who along with other investors, has sunk $30 million said the establishment of the UFL was "a tremendous opportunity, recession is time of opportunity."
Pelosi, the husband of United States House of Representatives Majority Leader Nancy Pelosi, thinks his league will thrive in time. Pelosi will know by December 1, long after the NBA, NHL and Major League Baseball have found out just how much the economy has dragged them down.

evanjweiner@yahoo.com