Gov. Christie should seek a disgruntled NBA owner instead of lobbying David Stern for Nets replacement
WEDNESDAY, 26 JANUARY 2011 12:59
http://www.newjerseynewsroom.com/professional/gov-christie-should-seek-a-disgruntled-nba-owner-instead-of-lobbying-david-stern-for-nets-replacement
BY EVAN WEINER
NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM
THE BUSINESS AND POLITICS OF SPORTS
There is an odd dynamic that plays out in sports. Elected officials genuflect before the commissioners of Major League Baseball, the National Football League, the National Basketball Association, the National Hockey League and Major League Soccer along with NASCAR officials begging them for a franchise or in NASCAR's case an annual event. Conversely, a sports commissioner lobbies before elected officials for stadiums/arenas and on the federal level before Washington lawmakers to make sure various antitrust laws and in Major League Baseball's case, a full antitrust exemption, stay in place.
Big time college sports executives also show up in Washington to make sure big time college sports keep tax exemptions in place.
So it should not be surprising that New Jersey Governor Chris Christie has begun a lobbying effort, not quite begging yet, in an attempt to get NBA Commissioner David Stern to think about replacing the soon-to-depart Newark-based New Jersey Nets with another team.
New Jersey's chances of landing a team on the surface seem to be non-existent however Christie has an ace in the hole that other prospective cities don't have. A major regional cable sports network that has limited winter programming, SNY, who could pay much more money in TV rights than say Louisville, Kansas City, Las Vegas, Seattle and Vancouver. In David Stern's three-legged stool world for a successful franchise, a large, local cable TV is an absolute must as is local government support (Christie is in favor of a Nets replacement) and corporate support. That last plank in Stern's platform is the major problem in New Jersey and has been a thorn in the side of past and present day Nets (and New Jersey Devils) ownerships.
Christie will have to wait though. The Brooklyn building has been on hold for years although there seems to be momentum to get the arena finally done. The NBA may not be operating in the fall of 2011 because the owners and players need a new collective bargaining agreement and Stern, as lead negotiator, figures to take a very hard line as he and the 30 NBA owners want changes in how players are compensated.
The NBA has some franchises that are on shaky financial footing. The league now owns the New Orleans Hornets, a franchise in desperate fiscal shape. The old Hornets ownership had attendance clauses built into the team lease with the state at the New Orleans Arena. There was a benchmark that needed to be reached by the end of January or the team ownership could pay $10 million and relocate. The league celebrated that the benchmark was hit but that doesn't mean the team will last in New Orleans beyond 2014. Indiana's owner Herb Simon is financially struggling and Charlotte has not been performing well financially since the NBA returned to the city in 2004.
The Maloof brothers are in a financial mess in Sacramento and claim they need a new arena. With California's financial woes and a proposal by Governor Jerry Brown to de-fund local redevelopment agencies on July 1, getting an arena built in Sacramento with public funding may be difficult. The Maloofs have failed in their quest for a new building on a number of occasions. (The Brown proposal could kill NFL stadium development in San Diego and a baseball park in San Jose for the Oakland A's.).
Newark has an NBA ready building for some owner and probably a lucrative cable TV deal. But Newark isn't the only NBA suitor. Louisville, Kentucky is once again seeking a team despite losing out on the Charlotte Hornets and the Vancouver Grizzlies about a decade ago. Vancouver may be back in the NBA wannabe category. The Vancouver saga in the NBA's mid-1990s expansion plans is worth noting in that the NBA decided to take Arthur Griffith's money ($100 million) in what seemed to be a cash grab.
Griffiths built a new arena with his own money and bought the franchise when the Canadian looney was worth 62 or 63 cents compared to the U.S. greenback. The two countries' dollar is around par right now. Griffiths sold the franchise to American businessman Michael Heisley in 2000. Heisley moved his franchise to Memphis in 2001. The Grizzlies franchise remains a cash-challenged NBA organization. A few years ago, Stern said he felt the NBA could not go back to Vancouver.
Stern can be a bullheaded bully. In 2005, the one-time New Jersey resident Stern trashed New Jersey politicians saying "you blew it" when another set of Nets owners could not get an arena built in Newark. Eventually Devils owner Jeffrey Vanderbeek worked out a deal with Newark officials and got an arena built with some of his money thrown into a publicly funded facility.
Christie seems to be willing to play ball with Stern. What Christie should be seeking out is an unhappy owner looking for greener pastures and go after that owner instead of Stern. Although the NBA blocked the planned sale and move of the Minnesota Timberwolves to New Orleans in 1994, a strong headed owner might tell Stern and his fellow owners to go stuff it and move anyway as Donald Sterling did in 1984 when he moved his San Diego Clippers to Los Angeles without league permission.
Moving an existing franchise to Newark may not be a large problem as the NBA, unlike Major League Baseball, is subjected to antitrust laws. It would take moving heaven and earth to put a third Major League Baseball team in the New York City area whether it is in Northern New Jersey or Brooklyn because Major League Baseball is exempt from certain portions of the Sherman Antitrust Act. The Steinbrenner Yankees or the Wilpon Mets or both could say no to the idea and that would be it.
Major League Baseball is struggling to find a solution to the San Francisco Bay Area problem. The San Francisco Giants franchise has the territorial rights to San Jose and Santa Clara County, California even though those areas are much further away from the Giants home base in China Basin than Oakland, the city which houses the A's. Oakland A's owner Lew Wolff wants to move his team to San Jose but cannot because the Giants ownership group has the rights to the territory. Major League Baseball is looking for a solution. The solution will come when Wolff pays millions of dollars for "invading" Giants territory or if he wins an antitrust case against the Giants and Major League Baseball.
Wolff does not seem willing to sue Major League Baseball. Sterling told the NBA to try and stop me. The NBA didn't. But Christie may have to wait before he can really go after a disgruntled owner. There is the threat of the NBA lockout on July 1 and that takes precedent over everything else.
But Christie has thrown his hat in the ring and is running. The campaign has started to replace the New Jersey Nets in Newark as soon as possible.
Evan Weiner, the winner of the United States Sports Academy's 2010 Ronald Reagan Media Award, is an author, radio-TV commentator and speaker on "The Politics of Sports Business." His book, "The Business and Politics of Sports, Second Edition is available at www.bickley.com, Barnes and Noble or amazonkindle. He can be reached at evanjweiner@yahoo.com
Showing posts with label new jersey nets. Show all posts
Showing posts with label new jersey nets. Show all posts
Wednesday, January 26, 2011
Wednesday, January 12, 2011
New Jersey might have shot at New Orleans Hornets when N.J. Nets move
WEDNESDAY, 12 JANUARY 2011 11:55
http://www.newjerseynewsroom.com/professional/new-jersey-might-have-shot-at-new-orleans-hornets-when-nj-nets-move
BY EVAN WEINER
NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM
THE BUSINESS AND POLITICS OF SPORTS
There was a rather interesting sports business interview on WWL Radio in New Orleans last week that occupied some of my time during the drive from New Orleans to Daphne, Alabama. Doug Thornton, who is SMG's senior vice president and de facto head of the New Orleans Superdome and New Orleans Arena, was talking about the $85 million publicly funded expansion of luxury seating at the Superdome (which is designed to put more money into New Orleans Saints owner Tom Benson's pockets despite NFL owners claiming they need to reduce expenses and players salaries because they need to cut salaries and expenses — the NFL seems to be awash in money) and the future of the New Orleans Hornets and the NBA's need to find a new financial model so that New Orleans and other small markets can survive.
It is a conversation that you will never hear on the sports radio talk shows in New York or Philadelphia or read about in area newspapers. It is an issue that never gets discussed on cable TV sports talk shows. The NBA's big market teams are in decent financial shape; the New York Knicks have to be rolling in dough with sellout crowds, not paying New York city property tax and owning a cable TV regional sports network. Mikhail Prokhorov must think the New Jersey Nets will be a goldmine once the franchise moves to Brooklyn and it would be fascinating to take a look at Comcast's real books when assessing the Philadelphia 76ers finances given that the country's largest cable TV multi systems operator owns the team, the arena and the regional cable TV network in Philadelphia.
The National Basketball Association now owns the small market New Orleans Hornets.
There are reports that the Maloof brothers are thinking about moving their Sacramento Kings franchise after failing to secure a new arena in the California capital and having financial problems with their core businesses. Indiana's ownership claims mounting losses despite playing in an Indianapolis arena and paying virtually no rent. There are similar stories in Charlotte, Memphis and other NBA outposts. Louisiana is pumping money into the Hornets operation. The state is used to handing out paychecks to major league sports owners.
The Saints Benson received in the neighborhood of $185 million in state handouts between 2002 and 2010 as a thank you for not moving the team. Benson has a new deal with the state that lessens the amount of direct handouts (from about $23 million to as much as $6 million annually) but includes other perks like giving him an office building (the Benson Tower which is across from the Superdome) for a small amount of money (the building has been renovated) and a guarantee of a number of leases for office space for state agencies.
Benson is not getting quite the same state bailout under the new deal but Louisiana is paying him in other ways to keep him happy through 2025. Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal, one of these let's cut everything to the bone including laying off municipal employees and not raise any taxes to pay for services, boasted that the new deal saved the state hundreds of millions of dollars. What Jindal should have said is simple, we are moving money around and we are still paying. NBA Commissioner David Stern knows the Saints deal and since he and 29 NBA owners run the Hornets, he probably will try to get Jindal to give him a "deal" that will "save" Louisiana millions of dollars before attempting to sell the team to an owner who will decide whether to stay in the Crescent City or take the business elsewhere.
The NBA has run out of North American cities to move franchises. The Las Vegas arena that was supposed to open in 2010 was nothing more than a mirage in the desert, San Diego has no arena, and Pittsburgh has no interest in an NBA franchise. Seattle has no arena, Louisville has an arena but it would be just a small market and most small markets in the NBA with the exception of San Antonio are in bad financial shape.
Newark is "hosting" the New Jersey Nets until a Brooklyn arena is open. Newark might be the best open market the NBA will have but that will not happen for a few years.
The New Orleans situation is dire. The former owner George Shinn reached a deal with Louisiana that included an attendance clause and if certain benchmarks are not hit by the end of the month, the Hornets former ownership and presumably the NBA can tell Louisiana that they plan to move the franchise to another city. The team has a clause in the lease that allows the franchise to pay $10 million to Louisiana at the end of March and leave if the attendance does not average 14,735 per game. The team needs an average of 14,915 people per game by January 24 to insure that the Hornets franchise will be in the city in 2011-12. But the Hornets-Louisiana lease is done in 2014 and presumably Prokhorov's Nets will be in Brooklyn by that time leaving Newark open as a relocation possibility.
The New Orleans business community is buying up tickets to make sure the Hornets attendance meets the benchmark but according to Thornton even if this year's version of the Hornets does exceed the benchmark there is a serious question as to the financial viability of the team going ahead in a small market without help from the NBA. That help would be a new collective bargaining agreement, which would reduce salaries and significant revenue sharing from the big market owners (the Knicks-Dolan family) to the lesser revenue generating markets like New Orleans.
New Orleans is a small market with limited cable TV revenues and that is a major problem for the franchise. Shinn could not get Knicks TV money or Los Angeles Lakers TV money.
The NBA owners and players are trying to negotiate a new collective bargaining agreement. NBA Commissioner and more than likely chief negotiator David Stern has left open the possibility of contracting teams. If the owners and players do not come up with a collective bargaining agreement by July 1, the owners will more than likely lockout the players, which means that all NBA business will stop.
The free agent market will close, which is why there is pressure on Carmelo Anthony to get a new contract now instead of going into an uncertain free agency period where he might find different rules and lose millions of dollars.
The NBA has been given a free ride by the sports media who seem to love to bang on Gary Bettman and NHL financial problems in Phoenix, Atlanta, Columbus, Nashville and other cities. Stern has not received the criticism that has been directed at Bettman even though like Bettman he has been forced to take over a franchise, New Orleans (Bettman ended up with Phoenix and presided over bankruptcies in Ottawa, Buffalo and Pittsburgh). Major League Baseball took over the Montreal Expos in 2002. Stern has a good number of problem franchises, which is why he will play hardball in talks with the players although he has not taken care of the revenue sharing issue that has been floating around for years at owners meetings.
If New Orleans can no longer support a franchise and Sacramento fails, where do those franchises go? There is a suggestion that the Maloofs will look at Anaheim and San Jose but the problem in those cities is the NHL. The Amaheim Ducks ownership and the San Jose Sharks ownership get the lion share of the revenues out of the arenas in those cities and the ownership groups probably would not welcome an equal partner in the buildings unless they become part of an NBA ownership group.
Louisville is college basketball country. Does the area have the financial wherewithal to support what really is elitist entertainment for the people who like to watch games in an arena? Neither Seattle nor Las Vegas have an NBA state of the art building, Kansas City doesn't seem to be a viable option even though the city has a new arena. Vancouver had an NBA team and might be more viable financially with the Canadian dollar on par with the US greenback but no one is pushing for an NBA return in western Canada, at least not yet.
If the Hornets franchise is sold and the new ownership is forced to stay in New Orleans until 2014 under the terms of Shinn's lease but wants out when the agreement ends, would New Jersey be a viable option if Prokhorov's Nets are finally in Brooklyn? That's a good question. David Stern's three legged stool theory of being financially successful requires a city to provide government support (an arena, tax breaks, etc.), a strong cable TV money deal and corporate support.
Newark and New Jersey Devils owner Jeffrey Vanderbeek built an arena. So there is government support and Vanderbeek is now housing the Nets. The New York area has three regional cable TV networks. An owner could come into New Jersey and get a large cable TV deal with SNY. Why SNY? Because the Comcast-Time Warner-New York Mets owned entity does not have an NBA or NHL presence in the late fall-winter-early spring. The Dolan's MSG Network has the Knicks, Rangers, Devils, Islanders and college basketball. The YES Network has Prokhorov's Nets.
The third leg of the stool is the problem. Corporate support. Neither the Nets nor the Devils have been able to get a high level of support (if attendance figures are a true barometer) of corporate backing over the decades that the franchises have been in the Garden State. Would New Jersey business leaders embrace a new NBA team in Newark in 2014 if that scenario plays out?
Would the Dolans and Prokhorov want a third team in the New York area? The NBA could block any attempt by a prospective New Jersey team owner to put a franchise in Newark in 2014 even though there is the Los Angeles Clippers precedent. Donald Sterling moved his team in 1984 without league permission. Eventually Sterling and the NBA resolved their differences. The NBA blocked the sale of the Minnesota Timberwolves to boxing promoter Bob Arum and his group in 1994. Arum wanted to move the franchise to New Orleans.
The NBA owners and players have to get a new collective bargaining agreement and after the dust settles, there will be assessments. If the owners cannot get rollbacks in salaries, some owners may throw in the towel and sell off money losing franchises. Newark might be in line for a failed franchise under the right set of circumstances.
Evan Weiner, the winner of the United States Sports Academy's 2010 Ronald Reagan Media Award, is an author, radio-TV commentator and speaker on "The Politics of Sports Business." His book, "The Business and Politics of Sports, Second Edition is available at www.bickley.com, Barnes and Noble or amazonkindle. He can be reached at evanjweiner@yahoo.com
WEDNESDAY, 12 JANUARY 2011 11:55
http://www.newjerseynewsroom.com/professional/new-jersey-might-have-shot-at-new-orleans-hornets-when-nj-nets-move
BY EVAN WEINER
NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM
THE BUSINESS AND POLITICS OF SPORTS
There was a rather interesting sports business interview on WWL Radio in New Orleans last week that occupied some of my time during the drive from New Orleans to Daphne, Alabama. Doug Thornton, who is SMG's senior vice president and de facto head of the New Orleans Superdome and New Orleans Arena, was talking about the $85 million publicly funded expansion of luxury seating at the Superdome (which is designed to put more money into New Orleans Saints owner Tom Benson's pockets despite NFL owners claiming they need to reduce expenses and players salaries because they need to cut salaries and expenses — the NFL seems to be awash in money) and the future of the New Orleans Hornets and the NBA's need to find a new financial model so that New Orleans and other small markets can survive.
It is a conversation that you will never hear on the sports radio talk shows in New York or Philadelphia or read about in area newspapers. It is an issue that never gets discussed on cable TV sports talk shows. The NBA's big market teams are in decent financial shape; the New York Knicks have to be rolling in dough with sellout crowds, not paying New York city property tax and owning a cable TV regional sports network. Mikhail Prokhorov must think the New Jersey Nets will be a goldmine once the franchise moves to Brooklyn and it would be fascinating to take a look at Comcast's real books when assessing the Philadelphia 76ers finances given that the country's largest cable TV multi systems operator owns the team, the arena and the regional cable TV network in Philadelphia.
The National Basketball Association now owns the small market New Orleans Hornets.
There are reports that the Maloof brothers are thinking about moving their Sacramento Kings franchise after failing to secure a new arena in the California capital and having financial problems with their core businesses. Indiana's ownership claims mounting losses despite playing in an Indianapolis arena and paying virtually no rent. There are similar stories in Charlotte, Memphis and other NBA outposts. Louisiana is pumping money into the Hornets operation. The state is used to handing out paychecks to major league sports owners.
The Saints Benson received in the neighborhood of $185 million in state handouts between 2002 and 2010 as a thank you for not moving the team. Benson has a new deal with the state that lessens the amount of direct handouts (from about $23 million to as much as $6 million annually) but includes other perks like giving him an office building (the Benson Tower which is across from the Superdome) for a small amount of money (the building has been renovated) and a guarantee of a number of leases for office space for state agencies.
Benson is not getting quite the same state bailout under the new deal but Louisiana is paying him in other ways to keep him happy through 2025. Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal, one of these let's cut everything to the bone including laying off municipal employees and not raise any taxes to pay for services, boasted that the new deal saved the state hundreds of millions of dollars. What Jindal should have said is simple, we are moving money around and we are still paying. NBA Commissioner David Stern knows the Saints deal and since he and 29 NBA owners run the Hornets, he probably will try to get Jindal to give him a "deal" that will "save" Louisiana millions of dollars before attempting to sell the team to an owner who will decide whether to stay in the Crescent City or take the business elsewhere.
The NBA has run out of North American cities to move franchises. The Las Vegas arena that was supposed to open in 2010 was nothing more than a mirage in the desert, San Diego has no arena, and Pittsburgh has no interest in an NBA franchise. Seattle has no arena, Louisville has an arena but it would be just a small market and most small markets in the NBA with the exception of San Antonio are in bad financial shape.
Newark is "hosting" the New Jersey Nets until a Brooklyn arena is open. Newark might be the best open market the NBA will have but that will not happen for a few years.
The New Orleans situation is dire. The former owner George Shinn reached a deal with Louisiana that included an attendance clause and if certain benchmarks are not hit by the end of the month, the Hornets former ownership and presumably the NBA can tell Louisiana that they plan to move the franchise to another city. The team has a clause in the lease that allows the franchise to pay $10 million to Louisiana at the end of March and leave if the attendance does not average 14,735 per game. The team needs an average of 14,915 people per game by January 24 to insure that the Hornets franchise will be in the city in 2011-12. But the Hornets-Louisiana lease is done in 2014 and presumably Prokhorov's Nets will be in Brooklyn by that time leaving Newark open as a relocation possibility.
The New Orleans business community is buying up tickets to make sure the Hornets attendance meets the benchmark but according to Thornton even if this year's version of the Hornets does exceed the benchmark there is a serious question as to the financial viability of the team going ahead in a small market without help from the NBA. That help would be a new collective bargaining agreement, which would reduce salaries and significant revenue sharing from the big market owners (the Knicks-Dolan family) to the lesser revenue generating markets like New Orleans.
New Orleans is a small market with limited cable TV revenues and that is a major problem for the franchise. Shinn could not get Knicks TV money or Los Angeles Lakers TV money.
The NBA owners and players are trying to negotiate a new collective bargaining agreement. NBA Commissioner and more than likely chief negotiator David Stern has left open the possibility of contracting teams. If the owners and players do not come up with a collective bargaining agreement by July 1, the owners will more than likely lockout the players, which means that all NBA business will stop.
The free agent market will close, which is why there is pressure on Carmelo Anthony to get a new contract now instead of going into an uncertain free agency period where he might find different rules and lose millions of dollars.
The NBA has been given a free ride by the sports media who seem to love to bang on Gary Bettman and NHL financial problems in Phoenix, Atlanta, Columbus, Nashville and other cities. Stern has not received the criticism that has been directed at Bettman even though like Bettman he has been forced to take over a franchise, New Orleans (Bettman ended up with Phoenix and presided over bankruptcies in Ottawa, Buffalo and Pittsburgh). Major League Baseball took over the Montreal Expos in 2002. Stern has a good number of problem franchises, which is why he will play hardball in talks with the players although he has not taken care of the revenue sharing issue that has been floating around for years at owners meetings.
If New Orleans can no longer support a franchise and Sacramento fails, where do those franchises go? There is a suggestion that the Maloofs will look at Anaheim and San Jose but the problem in those cities is the NHL. The Amaheim Ducks ownership and the San Jose Sharks ownership get the lion share of the revenues out of the arenas in those cities and the ownership groups probably would not welcome an equal partner in the buildings unless they become part of an NBA ownership group.
Louisville is college basketball country. Does the area have the financial wherewithal to support what really is elitist entertainment for the people who like to watch games in an arena? Neither Seattle nor Las Vegas have an NBA state of the art building, Kansas City doesn't seem to be a viable option even though the city has a new arena. Vancouver had an NBA team and might be more viable financially with the Canadian dollar on par with the US greenback but no one is pushing for an NBA return in western Canada, at least not yet.
If the Hornets franchise is sold and the new ownership is forced to stay in New Orleans until 2014 under the terms of Shinn's lease but wants out when the agreement ends, would New Jersey be a viable option if Prokhorov's Nets are finally in Brooklyn? That's a good question. David Stern's three legged stool theory of being financially successful requires a city to provide government support (an arena, tax breaks, etc.), a strong cable TV money deal and corporate support.
Newark and New Jersey Devils owner Jeffrey Vanderbeek built an arena. So there is government support and Vanderbeek is now housing the Nets. The New York area has three regional cable TV networks. An owner could come into New Jersey and get a large cable TV deal with SNY. Why SNY? Because the Comcast-Time Warner-New York Mets owned entity does not have an NBA or NHL presence in the late fall-winter-early spring. The Dolan's MSG Network has the Knicks, Rangers, Devils, Islanders and college basketball. The YES Network has Prokhorov's Nets.
The third leg of the stool is the problem. Corporate support. Neither the Nets nor the Devils have been able to get a high level of support (if attendance figures are a true barometer) of corporate backing over the decades that the franchises have been in the Garden State. Would New Jersey business leaders embrace a new NBA team in Newark in 2014 if that scenario plays out?
Would the Dolans and Prokhorov want a third team in the New York area? The NBA could block any attempt by a prospective New Jersey team owner to put a franchise in Newark in 2014 even though there is the Los Angeles Clippers precedent. Donald Sterling moved his team in 1984 without league permission. Eventually Sterling and the NBA resolved their differences. The NBA blocked the sale of the Minnesota Timberwolves to boxing promoter Bob Arum and his group in 1994. Arum wanted to move the franchise to New Orleans.
The NBA owners and players have to get a new collective bargaining agreement and after the dust settles, there will be assessments. If the owners cannot get rollbacks in salaries, some owners may throw in the towel and sell off money losing franchises. Newark might be in line for a failed franchise under the right set of circumstances.
Evan Weiner, the winner of the United States Sports Academy's 2010 Ronald Reagan Media Award, is an author, radio-TV commentator and speaker on "The Politics of Sports Business." His book, "The Business and Politics of Sports, Second Edition is available at www.bickley.com, Barnes and Noble or amazonkindle. He can be reached at evanjweiner@yahoo.com
Tuesday, December 28, 2010
NBA contraction: LeBron James says he didn’t mean to get rid of N.J. Nets
Tuesday, 28 December 2010 11:59 .BY EVAN WEINER
NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM
THE BUSINESS AND POLITICS OF SPORTS
There is nothing like a feud in sports and apparently LeBron James has picked a senseless fight with the National Basketball Players Association, the New Jersey Nets and Minnesota Timberwolves. It would have made far more sense for LeBron from Miami to call one of the sports talk radio shows in Miami than tell NBA beat reporters that in the 1980s, people like watching NBA games because stars played together because there were less teams. LeBron from Miami could have told one of the carnival barkers on WQAM or WINZ "let's Kevin Love off Minnesota or Brook Lopez and Devin Harris off New Jersey put them on a team to a team that could be really good." It would have made good talk radio but in the business of the NBA, LeBron from Miami could not have said anything dumber from a business standpoint.
"Not saying let's take New Jersey and let's take Minnesota out of the league," James said last Thursday. "But hey, you guys are not stupid, I'm not stupid, it would be great for the league."
Great for the league?
Maybe on the court but LeBron from Miami also wants to put at least 30 players out of work, which will not make his fellow player association members too happy, along with head coaches, assistant coaches, scouts, athletic trainers, equipment managers, front office staff and per diem employees who work for the team on game day or at the arena on game day along with reporters because they won't have a team to cover.
But on Monday, LeBron from Miami backtracked. "I'm with the players, and the players know that," James said. "I've been with the players. It's not about getting guys out of the league or knocking teams out. I didn't mean to upset nobody. I didn't tell Avery Johnson to leave, either. I didn't say let's abandon the Nets, and not let them move to Brooklyn or let's tear down the Target Center in Minnesota. I never said that."
LeBron from Miami didn't even know what "contract" meant.
The damage was done however, Nets coach Avery Johnson said, "We're going to Brooklyn. We're not going to contract."
But for LeBron from Miami and the beat reporters who don't know much about NBA or sports business and for book publishers who claim there is no market for basketball history books complete with accounts from those who played the game in the 1940s and 1950s, here is how the NBA worked back in the 1950s when the league last contracted a team. Actually, the NBA didn't contract a team as the owners of the Baltimore Bullets didn't wait for Commissioner Maurice Podoloff to contract them and gave up on November 27, 1954. That was the last time an NBA team went out of business although many have moved and there were a number of American Basketball Association franchises that met the same fate as Baltimore. The NBA took the four surviving ABA teams in a "merger" in 1976.
For even more New Jersey sports, visit the NJNR Press Box
The NBA, like the National Football League of that era was a step above semi-pro level.
In the late 1950s, television became an integral part of sports. The National Football League became engrained in the American culture on December 28, 1958 when Johnny Unitas lead the Baltimore Colts downfield in overtime to beat the New York Giants. That game changed pro football and led to the formation of the American Football League. NBA owners also took notice of the game and the power of TV according to Bailey Howell who was a rookie with Detroit in 1959
"It was a period of transition because shortly after that they started adding teams," said Howell of the NBA in 1959. "They added Chicago and teams were moving out of the small markets to the big market areas, Minneapolis moved to LA, Philadelphia moved to San Francisco and Syracuse moved down to Philadelphia so they were targeting the bigger markets and hopefully the TV revenue that would result from it."
As NBA owners moved to the bigger markets, they encountered another problem. Too many home games, so the solution was simple. Instead of having the Harlem Globetrotters play the Washington Generals or any other team as the preliminary game before an NBA contest, they would schedule an NBA doubleheader in a proven market like New York and so they owners hold less home games or farm out home games to cities that could handle a game.
"All the cities had doubleheaders but the Knicks had more, of course," recalled Howell. "The league was struggling so and in Detroit they (owner Fred Zollner) didn't think they could have 40 home games and draw good crowds, so we would play about 30-32 games at home and the rest were doubleheaders or we would take a home game down to Toledo or go back to Fort Wayne. We played somewhere different every night; we never played two or three nights in the same place. The Celtics played doubleheaders in New York in the first game of a doubleheader and in Providence. The league was struggling; it was really struggling in those years."
The NBA played, it seems, whenever there was a court and two baskets. The 1953-54 Baltimore Bullets franchise was scheduled in the least likely basketball outposts in the United States at that time. Baltimore played games in Buffalo, Indianapolis, Miami Beach, Miami, Birmingham, Alabama and Troy, Ohio. George Mikan's 53-54 Minneapolis Lakers played in Moorhead, Minnesota, Chicago, Kansas City, Missouri, Grand Forks, North Dakota, Spencer, Iowa, Huron, South Dakota, Toledo, Ohio, Grand Rapids, Michigan, Hibbing, Minnesota and New Haven, Connecticut. The Milwaukee Hawks in 1953-54 went to Omaha, Nebraska, Collingsworth, Michigan, and Iowa City, Iowa. Rochester played a game in Cleveland that year. Syracuse had a contest in Cleveland. Eddie Gottlieb's Philadelphia Warriors played the New York Knicks in White Plains at a building that decades later would serve as the home of an NBA summer rookie league, the Westchester County Center, as well as playing in Hershey. Boston had games in New London, Connecticut, Providence, Rhode Island and Waterville, Maine. Throughout the 1950s, the NBA would be barnstorming during the regular season in addition to the pre-season. The Lakers after Mikan retired performed in Houston and Dallas.
In 1959-60, the lame duck Minneapolis Lakers played the Philadelphia Warriors on January 31, 1960 in San Francisco and on February 1, 1960 in Los Angeles. It was the first time the Warriors and Lakers would play one another in the two California cities. Within two and a half years, the Los Angeles Lakers and the San Francisco Warriors would play one another regularly in NBA action. Minneapolis also played a game in Seattle.
The NBA would approve the relocation of the Minneapolis Lakers to Los Angeles in 1960 and add the Chicago territory in 1961 to give the league a presence in the country's top three markets. The league was also in Detroit and auto manufacturers were spending money on sports sponsorships. The NBA, it seemed by 1961, to position itself into a good spot for United States network TV and with President John F. Kennedy's signature on the Sports Broadcasting Act of 1961, the league could bundle its teams together and sell rights to its games without running afoul of United States Anti-trust laws.
Oddly enough, David Sarnoff's NBC TV dumped the NBA after the 1961-62 season. The league would find a home on ABC in 1963 which was a languishing network. ABC would carry NBA games until the 1972-73 season. Today, television, specifically cable TV provides a revenue stream that is essential to the survival of the league. The Christmas Day games, which Los Angeles Lakers coach Phil Jackson and LeBron from Miami complained about, are the start off point for league marketing for the season, which is a bit strange in that the season is approaching the two-month mark at that point.
LeBron's comments were ill advised but that's not the first time he has run into that problem this year. The NBA does have financial problems and there is a reason that there are 30 franchises today and some of that had to do with potential owners wanting to get into the league (Vancouver's Arthur Griffiths spent $100 million for a Vancouver franchise when the league wasn't even thinking about Vancouver back in the mid-1990s and that franchise was sold to Michael Heisley in 2000. Heisley took the franchise to Memphis and has lost money. NBA owners wanted Griffiths' $100 million and gave him a franchise), sudden availability of arenas (Charlotte, Miami, Minneapolis and Orlando). Replacing a transferred team with an expansion team (Charlotte) and numerous exemptions that are available to teams in the salary cap. That is just the tip of the iceberg.
NBA Commissioner David Stern took over a league in 1984, which was financially reeling. NBA Commissioner Larry O'Brien and players association Executive Director Larry Fleisher came up with the 1983 Collective Bargaining Agreement that put a salary cap in place is considered to be the turning point in the league's history by the owners and by the players. The 23-team league survived and both sides formed a working alliance, which would allow the league to grow. It also helped that two entities were about ready to join the league, Michael Jordan and Nike. The salary cap was the brainchild of a new lawyer that came on the scene named Gary Bettman. Bettman would become one of the three key people that would run the NBA in the mid-1980s and beyond. David Stern would be the boss, Russell Granik the number two guy followed by Bettman. Without the 83 agreement, there might not have been a Cleveland Cavaliers, which is something that LeBron from Miami should know.
The Collective Bargaining was Commissioner Larry O'Brien's last major work for the NBA and it is one of the reasons that the NBA of the 1980s became popular and it didn't hurt the Boston and Los Angeles had stars as did Philadelphia but LeBron from Miami should know this too. There were bad teams in the 1980s, franchises moved and not all the stars played together — Charles Barkley, Patrick Ewing and Chris Mullin never had the "Big 3" around them like this year's Miami Heat.
The NBA is not a perfect world.
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, xplana.com or amazonkindle. He can be reached at evanjweiner@yahoo.com
Tuesday, 28 December 2010 11:59 .BY EVAN WEINER
NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM
THE BUSINESS AND POLITICS OF SPORTS
There is nothing like a feud in sports and apparently LeBron James has picked a senseless fight with the National Basketball Players Association, the New Jersey Nets and Minnesota Timberwolves. It would have made far more sense for LeBron from Miami to call one of the sports talk radio shows in Miami than tell NBA beat reporters that in the 1980s, people like watching NBA games because stars played together because there were less teams. LeBron from Miami could have told one of the carnival barkers on WQAM or WINZ "let's Kevin Love off Minnesota or Brook Lopez and Devin Harris off New Jersey put them on a team to a team that could be really good." It would have made good talk radio but in the business of the NBA, LeBron from Miami could not have said anything dumber from a business standpoint.
"Not saying let's take New Jersey and let's take Minnesota out of the league," James said last Thursday. "But hey, you guys are not stupid, I'm not stupid, it would be great for the league."
Great for the league?
Maybe on the court but LeBron from Miami also wants to put at least 30 players out of work, which will not make his fellow player association members too happy, along with head coaches, assistant coaches, scouts, athletic trainers, equipment managers, front office staff and per diem employees who work for the team on game day or at the arena on game day along with reporters because they won't have a team to cover.
But on Monday, LeBron from Miami backtracked. "I'm with the players, and the players know that," James said. "I've been with the players. It's not about getting guys out of the league or knocking teams out. I didn't mean to upset nobody. I didn't tell Avery Johnson to leave, either. I didn't say let's abandon the Nets, and not let them move to Brooklyn or let's tear down the Target Center in Minnesota. I never said that."
LeBron from Miami didn't even know what "contract" meant.
The damage was done however, Nets coach Avery Johnson said, "We're going to Brooklyn. We're not going to contract."
But for LeBron from Miami and the beat reporters who don't know much about NBA or sports business and for book publishers who claim there is no market for basketball history books complete with accounts from those who played the game in the 1940s and 1950s, here is how the NBA worked back in the 1950s when the league last contracted a team. Actually, the NBA didn't contract a team as the owners of the Baltimore Bullets didn't wait for Commissioner Maurice Podoloff to contract them and gave up on November 27, 1954. That was the last time an NBA team went out of business although many have moved and there were a number of American Basketball Association franchises that met the same fate as Baltimore. The NBA took the four surviving ABA teams in a "merger" in 1976.
For even more New Jersey sports, visit the NJNR Press Box
The NBA, like the National Football League of that era was a step above semi-pro level.
In the late 1950s, television became an integral part of sports. The National Football League became engrained in the American culture on December 28, 1958 when Johnny Unitas lead the Baltimore Colts downfield in overtime to beat the New York Giants. That game changed pro football and led to the formation of the American Football League. NBA owners also took notice of the game and the power of TV according to Bailey Howell who was a rookie with Detroit in 1959
"It was a period of transition because shortly after that they started adding teams," said Howell of the NBA in 1959. "They added Chicago and teams were moving out of the small markets to the big market areas, Minneapolis moved to LA, Philadelphia moved to San Francisco and Syracuse moved down to Philadelphia so they were targeting the bigger markets and hopefully the TV revenue that would result from it."
As NBA owners moved to the bigger markets, they encountered another problem. Too many home games, so the solution was simple. Instead of having the Harlem Globetrotters play the Washington Generals or any other team as the preliminary game before an NBA contest, they would schedule an NBA doubleheader in a proven market like New York and so they owners hold less home games or farm out home games to cities that could handle a game.
"All the cities had doubleheaders but the Knicks had more, of course," recalled Howell. "The league was struggling so and in Detroit they (owner Fred Zollner) didn't think they could have 40 home games and draw good crowds, so we would play about 30-32 games at home and the rest were doubleheaders or we would take a home game down to Toledo or go back to Fort Wayne. We played somewhere different every night; we never played two or three nights in the same place. The Celtics played doubleheaders in New York in the first game of a doubleheader and in Providence. The league was struggling; it was really struggling in those years."
The NBA played, it seems, whenever there was a court and two baskets. The 1953-54 Baltimore Bullets franchise was scheduled in the least likely basketball outposts in the United States at that time. Baltimore played games in Buffalo, Indianapolis, Miami Beach, Miami, Birmingham, Alabama and Troy, Ohio. George Mikan's 53-54 Minneapolis Lakers played in Moorhead, Minnesota, Chicago, Kansas City, Missouri, Grand Forks, North Dakota, Spencer, Iowa, Huron, South Dakota, Toledo, Ohio, Grand Rapids, Michigan, Hibbing, Minnesota and New Haven, Connecticut. The Milwaukee Hawks in 1953-54 went to Omaha, Nebraska, Collingsworth, Michigan, and Iowa City, Iowa. Rochester played a game in Cleveland that year. Syracuse had a contest in Cleveland. Eddie Gottlieb's Philadelphia Warriors played the New York Knicks in White Plains at a building that decades later would serve as the home of an NBA summer rookie league, the Westchester County Center, as well as playing in Hershey. Boston had games in New London, Connecticut, Providence, Rhode Island and Waterville, Maine. Throughout the 1950s, the NBA would be barnstorming during the regular season in addition to the pre-season. The Lakers after Mikan retired performed in Houston and Dallas.
In 1959-60, the lame duck Minneapolis Lakers played the Philadelphia Warriors on January 31, 1960 in San Francisco and on February 1, 1960 in Los Angeles. It was the first time the Warriors and Lakers would play one another in the two California cities. Within two and a half years, the Los Angeles Lakers and the San Francisco Warriors would play one another regularly in NBA action. Minneapolis also played a game in Seattle.
The NBA would approve the relocation of the Minneapolis Lakers to Los Angeles in 1960 and add the Chicago territory in 1961 to give the league a presence in the country's top three markets. The league was also in Detroit and auto manufacturers were spending money on sports sponsorships. The NBA, it seemed by 1961, to position itself into a good spot for United States network TV and with President John F. Kennedy's signature on the Sports Broadcasting Act of 1961, the league could bundle its teams together and sell rights to its games without running afoul of United States Anti-trust laws.
Oddly enough, David Sarnoff's NBC TV dumped the NBA after the 1961-62 season. The league would find a home on ABC in 1963 which was a languishing network. ABC would carry NBA games until the 1972-73 season. Today, television, specifically cable TV provides a revenue stream that is essential to the survival of the league. The Christmas Day games, which Los Angeles Lakers coach Phil Jackson and LeBron from Miami complained about, are the start off point for league marketing for the season, which is a bit strange in that the season is approaching the two-month mark at that point.
LeBron's comments were ill advised but that's not the first time he has run into that problem this year. The NBA does have financial problems and there is a reason that there are 30 franchises today and some of that had to do with potential owners wanting to get into the league (Vancouver's Arthur Griffiths spent $100 million for a Vancouver franchise when the league wasn't even thinking about Vancouver back in the mid-1990s and that franchise was sold to Michael Heisley in 2000. Heisley took the franchise to Memphis and has lost money. NBA owners wanted Griffiths' $100 million and gave him a franchise), sudden availability of arenas (Charlotte, Miami, Minneapolis and Orlando). Replacing a transferred team with an expansion team (Charlotte) and numerous exemptions that are available to teams in the salary cap. That is just the tip of the iceberg.
NBA Commissioner David Stern took over a league in 1984, which was financially reeling. NBA Commissioner Larry O'Brien and players association Executive Director Larry Fleisher came up with the 1983 Collective Bargaining Agreement that put a salary cap in place is considered to be the turning point in the league's history by the owners and by the players. The 23-team league survived and both sides formed a working alliance, which would allow the league to grow. It also helped that two entities were about ready to join the league, Michael Jordan and Nike. The salary cap was the brainchild of a new lawyer that came on the scene named Gary Bettman. Bettman would become one of the three key people that would run the NBA in the mid-1980s and beyond. David Stern would be the boss, Russell Granik the number two guy followed by Bettman. Without the 83 agreement, there might not have been a Cleveland Cavaliers, which is something that LeBron from Miami should know.
The Collective Bargaining was Commissioner Larry O'Brien's last major work for the NBA and it is one of the reasons that the NBA of the 1980s became popular and it didn't hurt the Boston and Los Angeles had stars as did Philadelphia but LeBron from Miami should know this too. There were bad teams in the 1980s, franchises moved and not all the stars played together — Charles Barkley, Patrick Ewing and Chris Mullin never had the "Big 3" around them like this year's Miami Heat.
The NBA is not a perfect world.
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, xplana.com or amazonkindle. He can be reached at evanjweiner@yahoo.com
Thursday, June 17, 2010
Nets Basketball: First Newark, then Brooklyn ... and then the world
Nets Basketball: First Newark, then Brooklyn ... and then the world
WEDNESDAY, 16 JUNE 2010 22:31
http://www.newjerseynewsroom.com/professional/nets-basketball-first-newark-then-brooklyn-and-then-the-world
BY EVAN WEINER
NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM
So how do you push your way onto the world stage and become a global sports brand name like Manchester United, Michael Jordan and Tiger Woods? That is the question that Irina Pavlova will be attempting to answer in the upcoming months as she leads the campaign to make the New Jersey, soon-to-be Brooklyn Nets a player on the world stage.
The former majority leader of the United States House of Representatives Tip O'Neill joked that all politics is local and sports owners believed that all sports is local but that is no longer the case. Manchester United is better known as ManU and is a huge worldwide brand. ManU and other football (soccer) teams that have global name recognition but no National Basketball Association franchise is on that level.
New Nets owner Russia's Mikhail Prokhorov may be able to elevate the New Jersey, soon-to-be Brooklyn, Nets to that lofty perch but there is much work to be done locally whether it is in Newark or Brooklyn. Prokhorov's Nets franchise is scheduled to make a stop in Newark for two years before heading through either the Lincoln or Holland Tunnel and over either the Brooklyn or Manhattan Bridge or through the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel to the new Brooklyn arena.
So how do you make the Nets not only Moscow's team but Beijing's team?
"That's only the first step," said Pavlova, who is the President of Prokhorov's Onexim Sports and Entertainment, talking about her owner's purchase of the Nets. "We also have one of the two (NBA) Chinese players (Yi Jianlian) on our team that we are very excited about. I think really is no limit to how global the New Jersey Nets brand can become. I think Mikhail Prokhorov brings a new dimension to this team."
According to Nets President Rod Thorn, the Nets will be in China for pre-season games and will play two regular season games in London, England, which means the Nets franchise is about ready to enter the global stage. But again there is a matter of taking care of business at home.
"I think it is going to be a fluid process, it is not just three things we need to do get there," said Pavlova. "We have the move (from the Meadowlands to Newark), we have a very exciting summer ahead of us and I think we will look at it as more if you look at Michael Jordan or you look at Tiger Woods, there are both an international brand. I think our strategy is going to evolve around building the New Jersey Nets into something like that where the name transcends borders and cultures and countries."
The Nets franchise is moving. The Meadowlands is in the rear view mirror and there is a temporary stop in New Jersey before the migration across the Upper New York Bay to Brooklyn. Getting from point A (the Meadowlands) to Point C (Brooklyn) is not as easy as getting on Route 3 and hopping through the Lincoln Tunnel and turning to south to get to the Manhattan Bridge and then to the new Atlantic Yards building. How do you go from Point A to Point C?
"U-haul," laughed Pavlova. "Obviously it is a complicated process but it has been in the works for a while and we have a lot of support from a lot of our constituents. It is not easy but it is going to get done."
The Nets organization may have to go through three fan bases in the New York City area by the time the team is ready to become a player on the global stage. There is the fan base that was left behind at the Meadowlands, there will be an interim stop in Newark and then Brooklyn. NBA teams, along with those in all other sports, rely on a lot of corporate support. Will the corporate base that bought luxury boxes and club seats at the Meadowlands move to Newark and then will that money move to Brooklyn or will new corporate money be poured into the Nets and can the team induce the New Jersey corporate dollars to cross two tunnels or bridges to get to Brooklyn?
"We definitely hope our fans will follow us and that we gain new ones. We welcome everyone," she said.
The Brooklyn arena will be the fifth major venue in the New York area although it will be the newest one in 2012. There are plans to renovate the Charles Dolan-family owned Madison Square Garden in Manhattan, there are the two New Jersey buildings at the Meadowlands and Newark and the Nassau Coliseum out in Uniondale on the Island.
Chris Botta on his Islanders Point Blank website reported that the New York Mets ownership group, the Wilpon family (who are New York City real estate people), have brought in another real estate company – Jones, Lang and LaSalle – to kick the tires and explore the possibility of building an arena in Queens in the junkyards across the way from the Mets' new stadium.
Dolan's Newsday newspaper dismissed Botta's story but that property has been eyed by developers and once was mentioned by Donald Trump back in 1984 as a possible home for a new football stadium for his United States New Jersey Generals. Can six arenas in such a small area co-exist?
"To be honest with you, I am not following everything to same extent you mention, so I am not familiar with the Islanders situation," said Pavlova. "We broke ground in March (in Brooklyn), we are going ahead with it. So far everything is going smoothly and we are hope it will continue to go that way. We are planning to open in two years. So the season of 2012-23, we plan to be there."
How far into the building process is the Brooklyn arena?
"They're digging," said Pavlova.
The Nets basketball franchise has been around since 1967, first as the New Jersey Americans, Teaneck-based American Basketball Association squad then as the New York Nets between 1968 and 1977 in various buildings on Long Island and then back to New Jersey in 1977.
The team moved into the Meadowlands in 1981. Despite having Dr. J and winning two ABA titles in 1974 and 1976 and joining the NBA in 1976, the team has never captured the attention of the tri-state area like the Manhattan-based New York Knicks. Getting equal attention in New York has been a tough go for decades, so will it be easier to get global attention?
"I can't tell you exactly how it is going to go," said Pavlova. "Obviously we will have a marketing team that will work on that. It is not an overnight process but that's in the plan."
A Russian owner, a pre-season in China and regular season games in London could change the Nets perceived perception. People have a perceived perception of the Nets which is probably not deserved. New Jersey has had some NBA success but the Meadowlands and New Jersey have never been fairly compared to the Garden by the New York media even though Sumner Redstone once threatened to move his New York Rangers franchise to New Jersey and his Knicks to the Nets old Nassau Coliseum venue if he didn't get a break in property taxes and the electric bill at the Garden in the early 1980s. Redstone got both. Redstone had no problems with New Jersey for his hockey team but the New York media has never bought New Jersey or Long Island for that matter as the big time even though the National Football League Giants and Jets played across the street from the Meadowlands Arena and the Jets trained next to the Nassau Coliseum.
Again, it is all about perceived perception.
Rod Thorn, an NBA lifer who played in the league when teams were still moving from city to city back in the 1960s, would like to elevate the Nets franchise onto the global stage.
"I think that certainly is a lofty goal," said Thorn. "Something that we will obviously aspire to. We have a leg up by having an owner like Mikhail who is known all over the world and has owned sports teams before. That is something to really look forward to. I think our going to China has more to do with us having Yi right now than it does anything else and then we are also going to London in March to play regular season games. So, it is exciting, there are a lot of experiences that we are going to have here in the next couple of years and everybody is looking forward to it.
"Basketball is an international sport, teams play all over the world. So there is a base for basketball virtually anywhere. Pre-season for China. Two games in London."
Thorn started in the NBA in 1963 when the league barely had a TV contract, the NBA was not seen on national TV in the United States in 1961-62, and Chicago had just moved to Baltimore. Thorn was drafted by the Baltimore Bullets in 1963. Thorn also played for the St. Louis Hawks, a franchise that moved to Atlanta in 1968. The NBA of Thorn's youth only shares the initials NBA with today's league which is an international business.
"Not really," was Thorn's response when asked if he thought the NBA would grow into a global presence. "But during my time over there (with the NBA office between 1986-2000), the league really became more involved in international play with the McDonald's Open first (in 1987) and by participating in the Olympics and World Championships, so it happened while I was there, I didn't even think about things like that."
Now Thorn is running a team with an owner who plans to make the Nets brand a global presence along side of Manchester United and icons like Michael Jordan, Tiger Woods and Lebron James. It is all about getting the product in front of people whether it is in Moscow, Beijing or London. Prokhorov is planning to push the Nets onto the global stage which is so un-Nets-like.
Evan Weiner is an author, radio-TV commentator and lecturer on "The Politics of Sports Business" and can be reached at evanjweiner@yahoo.com
LAST UPDATED ( WEDNESDAY, 16 JUNE 2010 22:31 )
WEDNESDAY, 16 JUNE 2010 22:31
http://www.newjerseynewsroom.com/professional/nets-basketball-first-newark-then-brooklyn-and-then-the-world
BY EVAN WEINER
NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM
So how do you push your way onto the world stage and become a global sports brand name like Manchester United, Michael Jordan and Tiger Woods? That is the question that Irina Pavlova will be attempting to answer in the upcoming months as she leads the campaign to make the New Jersey, soon-to-be Brooklyn Nets a player on the world stage.
The former majority leader of the United States House of Representatives Tip O'Neill joked that all politics is local and sports owners believed that all sports is local but that is no longer the case. Manchester United is better known as ManU and is a huge worldwide brand. ManU and other football (soccer) teams that have global name recognition but no National Basketball Association franchise is on that level.
New Nets owner Russia's Mikhail Prokhorov may be able to elevate the New Jersey, soon-to-be Brooklyn, Nets to that lofty perch but there is much work to be done locally whether it is in Newark or Brooklyn. Prokhorov's Nets franchise is scheduled to make a stop in Newark for two years before heading through either the Lincoln or Holland Tunnel and over either the Brooklyn or Manhattan Bridge or through the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel to the new Brooklyn arena.
So how do you make the Nets not only Moscow's team but Beijing's team?
"That's only the first step," said Pavlova, who is the President of Prokhorov's Onexim Sports and Entertainment, talking about her owner's purchase of the Nets. "We also have one of the two (NBA) Chinese players (Yi Jianlian) on our team that we are very excited about. I think really is no limit to how global the New Jersey Nets brand can become. I think Mikhail Prokhorov brings a new dimension to this team."
According to Nets President Rod Thorn, the Nets will be in China for pre-season games and will play two regular season games in London, England, which means the Nets franchise is about ready to enter the global stage. But again there is a matter of taking care of business at home.
"I think it is going to be a fluid process, it is not just three things we need to do get there," said Pavlova. "We have the move (from the Meadowlands to Newark), we have a very exciting summer ahead of us and I think we will look at it as more if you look at Michael Jordan or you look at Tiger Woods, there are both an international brand. I think our strategy is going to evolve around building the New Jersey Nets into something like that where the name transcends borders and cultures and countries."
The Nets franchise is moving. The Meadowlands is in the rear view mirror and there is a temporary stop in New Jersey before the migration across the Upper New York Bay to Brooklyn. Getting from point A (the Meadowlands) to Point C (Brooklyn) is not as easy as getting on Route 3 and hopping through the Lincoln Tunnel and turning to south to get to the Manhattan Bridge and then to the new Atlantic Yards building. How do you go from Point A to Point C?
"U-haul," laughed Pavlova. "Obviously it is a complicated process but it has been in the works for a while and we have a lot of support from a lot of our constituents. It is not easy but it is going to get done."
The Nets organization may have to go through three fan bases in the New York City area by the time the team is ready to become a player on the global stage. There is the fan base that was left behind at the Meadowlands, there will be an interim stop in Newark and then Brooklyn. NBA teams, along with those in all other sports, rely on a lot of corporate support. Will the corporate base that bought luxury boxes and club seats at the Meadowlands move to Newark and then will that money move to Brooklyn or will new corporate money be poured into the Nets and can the team induce the New Jersey corporate dollars to cross two tunnels or bridges to get to Brooklyn?
"We definitely hope our fans will follow us and that we gain new ones. We welcome everyone," she said.
The Brooklyn arena will be the fifth major venue in the New York area although it will be the newest one in 2012. There are plans to renovate the Charles Dolan-family owned Madison Square Garden in Manhattan, there are the two New Jersey buildings at the Meadowlands and Newark and the Nassau Coliseum out in Uniondale on the Island.
Chris Botta on his Islanders Point Blank website reported that the New York Mets ownership group, the Wilpon family (who are New York City real estate people), have brought in another real estate company – Jones, Lang and LaSalle – to kick the tires and explore the possibility of building an arena in Queens in the junkyards across the way from the Mets' new stadium.
Dolan's Newsday newspaper dismissed Botta's story but that property has been eyed by developers and once was mentioned by Donald Trump back in 1984 as a possible home for a new football stadium for his United States New Jersey Generals. Can six arenas in such a small area co-exist?
"To be honest with you, I am not following everything to same extent you mention, so I am not familiar with the Islanders situation," said Pavlova. "We broke ground in March (in Brooklyn), we are going ahead with it. So far everything is going smoothly and we are hope it will continue to go that way. We are planning to open in two years. So the season of 2012-23, we plan to be there."
How far into the building process is the Brooklyn arena?
"They're digging," said Pavlova.
The Nets basketball franchise has been around since 1967, first as the New Jersey Americans, Teaneck-based American Basketball Association squad then as the New York Nets between 1968 and 1977 in various buildings on Long Island and then back to New Jersey in 1977.
The team moved into the Meadowlands in 1981. Despite having Dr. J and winning two ABA titles in 1974 and 1976 and joining the NBA in 1976, the team has never captured the attention of the tri-state area like the Manhattan-based New York Knicks. Getting equal attention in New York has been a tough go for decades, so will it be easier to get global attention?
"I can't tell you exactly how it is going to go," said Pavlova. "Obviously we will have a marketing team that will work on that. It is not an overnight process but that's in the plan."
A Russian owner, a pre-season in China and regular season games in London could change the Nets perceived perception. People have a perceived perception of the Nets which is probably not deserved. New Jersey has had some NBA success but the Meadowlands and New Jersey have never been fairly compared to the Garden by the New York media even though Sumner Redstone once threatened to move his New York Rangers franchise to New Jersey and his Knicks to the Nets old Nassau Coliseum venue if he didn't get a break in property taxes and the electric bill at the Garden in the early 1980s. Redstone got both. Redstone had no problems with New Jersey for his hockey team but the New York media has never bought New Jersey or Long Island for that matter as the big time even though the National Football League Giants and Jets played across the street from the Meadowlands Arena and the Jets trained next to the Nassau Coliseum.
Again, it is all about perceived perception.
Rod Thorn, an NBA lifer who played in the league when teams were still moving from city to city back in the 1960s, would like to elevate the Nets franchise onto the global stage.
"I think that certainly is a lofty goal," said Thorn. "Something that we will obviously aspire to. We have a leg up by having an owner like Mikhail who is known all over the world and has owned sports teams before. That is something to really look forward to. I think our going to China has more to do with us having Yi right now than it does anything else and then we are also going to London in March to play regular season games. So, it is exciting, there are a lot of experiences that we are going to have here in the next couple of years and everybody is looking forward to it.
"Basketball is an international sport, teams play all over the world. So there is a base for basketball virtually anywhere. Pre-season for China. Two games in London."
Thorn started in the NBA in 1963 when the league barely had a TV contract, the NBA was not seen on national TV in the United States in 1961-62, and Chicago had just moved to Baltimore. Thorn was drafted by the Baltimore Bullets in 1963. Thorn also played for the St. Louis Hawks, a franchise that moved to Atlanta in 1968. The NBA of Thorn's youth only shares the initials NBA with today's league which is an international business.
"Not really," was Thorn's response when asked if he thought the NBA would grow into a global presence. "But during my time over there (with the NBA office between 1986-2000), the league really became more involved in international play with the McDonald's Open first (in 1987) and by participating in the Olympics and World Championships, so it happened while I was there, I didn't even think about things like that."
Now Thorn is running a team with an owner who plans to make the Nets brand a global presence along side of Manchester United and icons like Michael Jordan, Tiger Woods and Lebron James. It is all about getting the product in front of people whether it is in Moscow, Beijing or London. Prokhorov is planning to push the Nets onto the global stage which is so un-Nets-like.
Evan Weiner is an author, radio-TV commentator and lecturer on "The Politics of Sports Business" and can be reached at evanjweiner@yahoo.com
LAST UPDATED ( WEDNESDAY, 16 JUNE 2010 22:31 )
Thursday, April 15, 2010
Could New Jersey end up with another NBA team after the Nets leave?
Could New Jersey end up with another NBA team after the Nets leave?
Thursday, 15 April 2010 12:39
BY EVAN WEINER
NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM
An era in New Jersey sports history ended earlier this week when the New Jersey Nets National Basketball Association franchise played the team's final game in the East Rutherford building that once was named after New Jersey Governor Brendan Byrne. For the next two seasons the Nets will call Newark home and then it is onto Brooklyn — maybe.
Assuming all goes well with the arena that grows in Brooklyn, New Jersey will lose the Nets again. The original Nets franchise played in the American Basketball Association at the Teaneck Armory in the 1967-68 season and ended up on Long Island because the Armory was unavailable for a playoff game in March 1968. The team known as the New Jersey Americans never played a playoff game on the Island because the floor at the Commack Arena was unsuitable for a game and the team forfeited the game to Kentucky.
Basketball is a business; it may be called a sport but it is a business first and foremost.
Roy Boe ended up owning the old Americans, a team that transformed into the New York Nets, and was granted a National Hockey League expansion franchise in Uniondale. Boe never had the money to properly run the Nets and the expansion Islanders and things got worse for him after the National Basketball Association "expanded" and took in four American Basketball Association teams in 1976. Boe had to pay $3.2 million for the "privilege" of joining the NBA and on top of that gave the New York Knicks $4.8 million because the Nets "invaded" Knicks territory and Boe could not get access to NBA national television money (from CBS) for three years.
The business of basketball forced Boe to sell his best player and perhaps the sport's best player Julius Erving to Philadelphia for $3 million. The team left Uniondale after 1977 and Boe had to sell his franchise in 1978. Boe's financial problems nearly wiped out the Islanders as well.
New Jersey was the perfect place to start over for Boe and the Nets. A new arena was coming online and this building had some nifty new gadgets, luxury boxes and it sat a lot of people. People were used to going to the Meadowlands for New York Giants games and horse racing.
The new building was the lure for Boe just like the new building in Brooklyn was the target of Nets owner Bruce Ratner's affections although Ratner probably looked at the Nets' moving to Brooklyn as strictly part of a real estate deal.
The Nets' 35-year New Jersey run will end in 2012, if an arena grows in Brooklyn. But that does not necessarily mean that New Jersey cannot get another NBA team even though one-time New Jersey resident and NBA Commissioner David Stern about five years ago trashed New Jersey politicians saying "you blew it" when Nets owners could not get an arena built in Newark.
There is an arena in Newark now but more importantly there is also a regional sports cable TV network available that has limited winter programming that might want to spend big, big money to acquire some winter programming like a third team in the New York City area, namely Newark.
The NBA is not going to expand in the near future and the league could lockout the workforce, the players, in 2011. There are a good number of teams, including Bruce Ratner's Nets that allegedly are posting multimillion dollar losses that might be available for relocation following the 2011 labor negotiations if the owners cannot reduce spending.
Memphis could be one of those franchises.
With the absence of a new arena plan in Seattle, Newark just might be the best location for an owner looking to start anew. The city has a relatively new arena, there is the regional cable network, SNY, that has a lot of college basketball in the winter months but no local team as the Knicks are tied up with the Madison Square Garden Network and the Nets have a deal with the YES Network. There is also a corporate base that already attends NBA games in New Jersey that is unlikely to cross a tunnel and a bridge or a tunnel to get to Brooklyn. That corporate base will get used to going to Newark for NBA games and frankly, Devils owner Jeffrey Vanderbeek probably would work out a deal whereby an NBA team could do well financially in Newark as it is in Vanderbeek's best interests to fill as many dates as possible in his building.
Moving an existing franchise to Newark may not be a large problem as the NBA, unlike Major League Baseball, is subjected to antitrust laws. It would take moving heaven and earth to put a third Major League Baseball team in the New York City area whether it is in Northern New Jersey or Brooklyn because Major League Baseball is exempt from certain portions of the Sherman Antitrust Act. The Steinbrenner Yankees or the Wilpon Mets or both could say no to the idea and that would be it.
Major League Baseball is struggling to find a solution to the San Francisco Bay Area problem. The San Francisco Giants franchise has the territorial rights to San Jose and Santa Clara County, California even though those areas are much further away from the Giants home base in China Basin than Oakland, the city which houses the A's. Oakland A's owner Lew Wolff wants to move his team to San Jose but cannot because the Giants ownership group has the rights to the territory. Major League Baseball is looking for a solution. The solution will come when Wolff pays millions of dollars for "invading" Giants territory or if he wins an antitrust case against the Giants and Major League Baseball.
Wolff does not seem willing to sue Major League Baseball.
That is not the case in the NBA or at least seems not to be the case. San Diego Clippers owner Donald Sterling moved his team to Los Angeles in 1984 without permission from NBA owners. The NBA did block the move of the Minnesota Timberwolves to New Orleans in 1994. It was the last time a franchise shift was denied. Since then Vancouver moved to Memphis, Charlotte's George Shinn took his team to New Orleans and Seattle ended up in Oklahoma City.
This might all be moot if the anti-Brooklyn arena project people somehow stop the Brooklyn project. The arena was originally scheduled to open in 2009 and now the target date is sometime in 2012. Could the metropolitan area support three NBA teams? There is cable TV money available; the Brooklyn corporate money will be coming from New York City not New Jersey. The question becomes whether there are enough "customers" who are willing to spend big money for luxury boxes, corporate seats, in-arena restaurants and concessions. Owners want customers, not fans as fans tend not to be willing to spend a lot of money for tickets. Customers buying luxury boxes and club seats can write off 50 percent of the value of the ticket as a business expense. Fans don't count; they can watch the games at home on TV.
The NBA will have some changes after the next collective bargaining agreement is signed. Some smaller market team owners might decide to get out and sell their teams. That is what happened in Major League Baseball following the 1994-95 strike. Montreal was done and in the NHL, Quebec and Winnipeg lost teams after the 1994-95 lockout.
The NBA might advertise itself as a sport but it is really a business and in 2012 after the Nets are in Brooklyn, New Jersey might be a viable option for another financially failing NBA team.
Evan Weiner is a radio-TV commentator, an author, columnist and a lecturer on "The Politics of Sports Business" and can be reached at evanjweiner@yahoo.com
Thursday, 15 April 2010 12:39
BY EVAN WEINER
NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM
An era in New Jersey sports history ended earlier this week when the New Jersey Nets National Basketball Association franchise played the team's final game in the East Rutherford building that once was named after New Jersey Governor Brendan Byrne. For the next two seasons the Nets will call Newark home and then it is onto Brooklyn — maybe.
Assuming all goes well with the arena that grows in Brooklyn, New Jersey will lose the Nets again. The original Nets franchise played in the American Basketball Association at the Teaneck Armory in the 1967-68 season and ended up on Long Island because the Armory was unavailable for a playoff game in March 1968. The team known as the New Jersey Americans never played a playoff game on the Island because the floor at the Commack Arena was unsuitable for a game and the team forfeited the game to Kentucky.
Basketball is a business; it may be called a sport but it is a business first and foremost.
Roy Boe ended up owning the old Americans, a team that transformed into the New York Nets, and was granted a National Hockey League expansion franchise in Uniondale. Boe never had the money to properly run the Nets and the expansion Islanders and things got worse for him after the National Basketball Association "expanded" and took in four American Basketball Association teams in 1976. Boe had to pay $3.2 million for the "privilege" of joining the NBA and on top of that gave the New York Knicks $4.8 million because the Nets "invaded" Knicks territory and Boe could not get access to NBA national television money (from CBS) for three years.
The business of basketball forced Boe to sell his best player and perhaps the sport's best player Julius Erving to Philadelphia for $3 million. The team left Uniondale after 1977 and Boe had to sell his franchise in 1978. Boe's financial problems nearly wiped out the Islanders as well.
New Jersey was the perfect place to start over for Boe and the Nets. A new arena was coming online and this building had some nifty new gadgets, luxury boxes and it sat a lot of people. People were used to going to the Meadowlands for New York Giants games and horse racing.
The new building was the lure for Boe just like the new building in Brooklyn was the target of Nets owner Bruce Ratner's affections although Ratner probably looked at the Nets' moving to Brooklyn as strictly part of a real estate deal.
The Nets' 35-year New Jersey run will end in 2012, if an arena grows in Brooklyn. But that does not necessarily mean that New Jersey cannot get another NBA team even though one-time New Jersey resident and NBA Commissioner David Stern about five years ago trashed New Jersey politicians saying "you blew it" when Nets owners could not get an arena built in Newark.
There is an arena in Newark now but more importantly there is also a regional sports cable TV network available that has limited winter programming that might want to spend big, big money to acquire some winter programming like a third team in the New York City area, namely Newark.
The NBA is not going to expand in the near future and the league could lockout the workforce, the players, in 2011. There are a good number of teams, including Bruce Ratner's Nets that allegedly are posting multimillion dollar losses that might be available for relocation following the 2011 labor negotiations if the owners cannot reduce spending.
Memphis could be one of those franchises.
With the absence of a new arena plan in Seattle, Newark just might be the best location for an owner looking to start anew. The city has a relatively new arena, there is the regional cable network, SNY, that has a lot of college basketball in the winter months but no local team as the Knicks are tied up with the Madison Square Garden Network and the Nets have a deal with the YES Network. There is also a corporate base that already attends NBA games in New Jersey that is unlikely to cross a tunnel and a bridge or a tunnel to get to Brooklyn. That corporate base will get used to going to Newark for NBA games and frankly, Devils owner Jeffrey Vanderbeek probably would work out a deal whereby an NBA team could do well financially in Newark as it is in Vanderbeek's best interests to fill as many dates as possible in his building.
Moving an existing franchise to Newark may not be a large problem as the NBA, unlike Major League Baseball, is subjected to antitrust laws. It would take moving heaven and earth to put a third Major League Baseball team in the New York City area whether it is in Northern New Jersey or Brooklyn because Major League Baseball is exempt from certain portions of the Sherman Antitrust Act. The Steinbrenner Yankees or the Wilpon Mets or both could say no to the idea and that would be it.
Major League Baseball is struggling to find a solution to the San Francisco Bay Area problem. The San Francisco Giants franchise has the territorial rights to San Jose and Santa Clara County, California even though those areas are much further away from the Giants home base in China Basin than Oakland, the city which houses the A's. Oakland A's owner Lew Wolff wants to move his team to San Jose but cannot because the Giants ownership group has the rights to the territory. Major League Baseball is looking for a solution. The solution will come when Wolff pays millions of dollars for "invading" Giants territory or if he wins an antitrust case against the Giants and Major League Baseball.
Wolff does not seem willing to sue Major League Baseball.
That is not the case in the NBA or at least seems not to be the case. San Diego Clippers owner Donald Sterling moved his team to Los Angeles in 1984 without permission from NBA owners. The NBA did block the move of the Minnesota Timberwolves to New Orleans in 1994. It was the last time a franchise shift was denied. Since then Vancouver moved to Memphis, Charlotte's George Shinn took his team to New Orleans and Seattle ended up in Oklahoma City.
This might all be moot if the anti-Brooklyn arena project people somehow stop the Brooklyn project. The arena was originally scheduled to open in 2009 and now the target date is sometime in 2012. Could the metropolitan area support three NBA teams? There is cable TV money available; the Brooklyn corporate money will be coming from New York City not New Jersey. The question becomes whether there are enough "customers" who are willing to spend big money for luxury boxes, corporate seats, in-arena restaurants and concessions. Owners want customers, not fans as fans tend not to be willing to spend a lot of money for tickets. Customers buying luxury boxes and club seats can write off 50 percent of the value of the ticket as a business expense. Fans don't count; they can watch the games at home on TV.
The NBA will have some changes after the next collective bargaining agreement is signed. Some smaller market team owners might decide to get out and sell their teams. That is what happened in Major League Baseball following the 1994-95 strike. Montreal was done and in the NHL, Quebec and Winnipeg lost teams after the 1994-95 lockout.
The NBA might advertise itself as a sport but it is really a business and in 2012 after the Nets are in Brooklyn, New Jersey might be a viable option for another financially failing NBA team.
Evan Weiner is a radio-TV commentator, an author, columnist and a lecturer on "The Politics of Sports Business" and can be reached at evanjweiner@yahoo.com
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
Sunday, September 20, 2009
Will Stern Allow Chinese or Russian Owners in the NBA?
http://www.mcnsports.com/en/node/7539
Will Stern Allow Chinese or Russian Owners in the NBA?
By Evan Weiner
September 19, 2009
8:00 PM EDT
(New York, N. Y.) – In January 1992 at a little media conference prior to the annual Baseball Assistance Team fundraiser in a Times Square hotel, Major League Baseball Commissioner Fay Vincent was trying to explain why his 26 member ownership group had a policy that barred non-American citizens from owning a Major League Baseball with the exception of the two Canadian teams, the Montreal Expos and the Toronto Blue Jays. Vincent and his owners had a major problem on their hands, Jeff Smuylan, the man who invented 24-hour a day sports talk radio in the United States, was having financial problems and had a deal in principle to sell his majority share of the Seattle Mariners to Hiroshi Yamauchi, the president of the Nintendo Company Ltd.
The problem with Yamauchi’s bid was simple. He was offering $75 million for 60 percent of the Mariners franchise. That was the good news for Vincent’s owners but the bad news was that Yamauchi lived in Japan and that was a major problem as xenophobic owners wanted nothing to do with a foreigner running a Major League Baseball team.
After all, it was un-American for a Japanese citizen to fund a franchise in America’s National Pastime.
Yamauchi thought it made good business sense for him to invest in a Major League Baseball team in Seattle. His son-in-law Minoru Arakawa ran Nintendo’s American division in Seattle. Arakawa, his wife Yoko and grandchildren lived in Seattle. Yamauchi’s company employed 1,400 people in Seattle and Yamauchi pledged to keep the franchise in the city.
That didn’t seem to please Vincent or the owners and on a cold January night in New York Vincent seem to be looking for excuses that would keep the Mariners franchise out of foreign hands. None of his answers seemed logical.
Eventually after Major League Baseball was put through the ringer as Seattle and Washington state officials along with Washington Senator Slate Gorton started questioning baseball’s anti-foreigner ownership policy, a compromised was reached. Yamauchi was allowed to buy a significant stake in the franchise but could not be a majority owner.
On July 1, 1992, Yamauchi closed the deal and he and his American partners have run the Mariners franchise since then. Yamauchi’s Seattle representatives has been a good group for the other owners; the Yamauchi’s people knew what buttons to push to get a new Seattle taxpayers funded stadium from the Washington legislature in 1995 after voters said no to a new stadium in 1994.
Major League Baseball has not had a legitimate foreign offer for any American team since 1992. The Belgium-based Interbrew brewery owned the Toronto Blue Jays for five years between 1995 and 2000 after the brewers purchased the Blue Jays owner Labatts (beer). The National Football League has not faced that issue either. The National Basketball Association could be getting a foreign owner if a Reuters report on September 16 is correct.
Russia’s richest man, Mikhail Prokhorov, according to the Reuters article is interested in buying a significant stake in Bruce Ratner’s New Jersey Nets franchise. Ratner has been attempting to move the East Rutherford-based team to the Atlantic Railyards in Brooklyn for four years and just got New York State approval for a scaled-down arena. Ratner’s problem is that he has been losing money on the team since he purchased the franchise in August 2004.
It seems inconceivable that NBA Commissioner David Stern would mimic Fay Vincent circa 1992 and rattle off reasons why he and his owners would block foreign investors in NBA teams. Stern has been pushing a strategy that has globalized the NBA and basketball with his biggest success to date in making China an NBA hotbed and before that Hong Kong.
In May 2009, Cleveland Cavaliers owner Dan Gilbert completed a deal to sell up to 15 percent of the team to a group of Chinese businessmen including JianHua Huang, who has brokered sponsorships with a number of North American sports teams.
Phil Anschutz’s AEG (Anschutz has a piece of the Los Angeles Lakers) and NBA China are developing arenas throughout China in an effort to not only push the NBA in China but other sports and entertainment at well.
So it will seem that Stern would welcome Prokhorov who has a financial stake in the Russian Super League and the Euroleague’s CSKA Moscow’s basketball team if he passes all of the NBA’s checks.
Ownership groups can be good or bad from the United States or Canada; it is never easy to figure out who will be successful and who will fail. The NHL, which also has global aspirations, has had one non-North American owner.
National Hockey League President Gil Stein and his 22 owners had no problem with the prospect of Japanese money providing the majority funding for the expansion Tampa Bay Lightning franchise in 1992 (along with New York Yankees owner George M. Steinbrenner III). Kokusai Green’s owner Takashi Okubo. The experience was terrible as Okubo was an absentee owner and the team’s finances were a mess. Kokusai Green sold the franchise in 1998. That was the last foreign owner in the NHL. Charles Wang, who purchased the New York Islanders in 2000, was born in Shanghai, China but moved to New York at the age of 8.
Even though Major League Baseball has a sign still up saying Americans only despite increasing globalization and the National Football League has not faced the prospect of having a foreigner buy a team, North American owners have been purchasing European properties in English soccer. MLB’s Texas Rangers (and NHL Dallas Stars) owner teamed up with former NHL Montreal Canadiens owner George Gillett to purchase the English Premier League’s Liverpool F. C.
In 2006, NFL Cleveland Browns owner Randy Lerner bought Aston Villa. The year before, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers Glazier family purchased Manchester United.
Former Detroit Pistons executive and Minor League Baseball owner Andrew Appleby purchased the Derby County Football Club of the Premiership in 2008. Another American owner, Stan Kroenke (NBA’s Denver Nuggets, NHL Colorado Avalanche, MLS Colorado Rapids, National Lacrosse League’s Colorado Mammoth, NFL’s St. Louis Rams and the Altitude Sports and Entertainment regional cable TV network in the Rocky Mountain states) is the largest share holder of the North London-based Arsenal FC.
Major League sports teams are not cheap and there are not a lot of Americans who could afford purchasing a team. If Prokhorov is indeed interested in the New Jersey Nets, NBA Commissioner David Stern would be foolish to turn a deaf ear to him. The founder of the Kontinental Hockey League, the Russian billionaire Alexander Medvedev claimed last May that he wanted to buy an NHL team and move it to Quebec City.
If Jim Balsille thinks the NHL has given him a difficult time in attempting to buy the Phoenix Coyotes and moving the franchise to Hamilton, Ontario, Balsille’s case against the NHL would be child’s play compared to an attempt by Medvedev to buy an NHL franchise. Medvedev started a new Russian league that went after NHL players and signed a few including Alexander Radulov who left his Nashville team while under contract to play for Salavat Yulaev Ufa in 2008-09.
It is only a matter of time before some North American franchises are purchased by non-Americans and non-Canadians. Americans are snapping up English Premiership League teams why wouldn’t major money people from Europe or Asia not jump at the opportunity at a North American team? Fay Vincent is no longer guarding the gate like he did on that cold January night in the middle of Times Square in January 1992. The xenophobic policy of Major League Baseball of 1992 made no sense. It makes even less sense in 2009.
eweiner@mcn.tv
Will Stern Allow Chinese or Russian Owners in the NBA?
By Evan Weiner
September 19, 2009
8:00 PM EDT
(New York, N. Y.) – In January 1992 at a little media conference prior to the annual Baseball Assistance Team fundraiser in a Times Square hotel, Major League Baseball Commissioner Fay Vincent was trying to explain why his 26 member ownership group had a policy that barred non-American citizens from owning a Major League Baseball with the exception of the two Canadian teams, the Montreal Expos and the Toronto Blue Jays. Vincent and his owners had a major problem on their hands, Jeff Smuylan, the man who invented 24-hour a day sports talk radio in the United States, was having financial problems and had a deal in principle to sell his majority share of the Seattle Mariners to Hiroshi Yamauchi, the president of the Nintendo Company Ltd.
The problem with Yamauchi’s bid was simple. He was offering $75 million for 60 percent of the Mariners franchise. That was the good news for Vincent’s owners but the bad news was that Yamauchi lived in Japan and that was a major problem as xenophobic owners wanted nothing to do with a foreigner running a Major League Baseball team.
After all, it was un-American for a Japanese citizen to fund a franchise in America’s National Pastime.
Yamauchi thought it made good business sense for him to invest in a Major League Baseball team in Seattle. His son-in-law Minoru Arakawa ran Nintendo’s American division in Seattle. Arakawa, his wife Yoko and grandchildren lived in Seattle. Yamauchi’s company employed 1,400 people in Seattle and Yamauchi pledged to keep the franchise in the city.
That didn’t seem to please Vincent or the owners and on a cold January night in New York Vincent seem to be looking for excuses that would keep the Mariners franchise out of foreign hands. None of his answers seemed logical.
Eventually after Major League Baseball was put through the ringer as Seattle and Washington state officials along with Washington Senator Slate Gorton started questioning baseball’s anti-foreigner ownership policy, a compromised was reached. Yamauchi was allowed to buy a significant stake in the franchise but could not be a majority owner.
On July 1, 1992, Yamauchi closed the deal and he and his American partners have run the Mariners franchise since then. Yamauchi’s Seattle representatives has been a good group for the other owners; the Yamauchi’s people knew what buttons to push to get a new Seattle taxpayers funded stadium from the Washington legislature in 1995 after voters said no to a new stadium in 1994.
Major League Baseball has not had a legitimate foreign offer for any American team since 1992. The Belgium-based Interbrew brewery owned the Toronto Blue Jays for five years between 1995 and 2000 after the brewers purchased the Blue Jays owner Labatts (beer). The National Football League has not faced that issue either. The National Basketball Association could be getting a foreign owner if a Reuters report on September 16 is correct.
Russia’s richest man, Mikhail Prokhorov, according to the Reuters article is interested in buying a significant stake in Bruce Ratner’s New Jersey Nets franchise. Ratner has been attempting to move the East Rutherford-based team to the Atlantic Railyards in Brooklyn for four years and just got New York State approval for a scaled-down arena. Ratner’s problem is that he has been losing money on the team since he purchased the franchise in August 2004.
It seems inconceivable that NBA Commissioner David Stern would mimic Fay Vincent circa 1992 and rattle off reasons why he and his owners would block foreign investors in NBA teams. Stern has been pushing a strategy that has globalized the NBA and basketball with his biggest success to date in making China an NBA hotbed and before that Hong Kong.
In May 2009, Cleveland Cavaliers owner Dan Gilbert completed a deal to sell up to 15 percent of the team to a group of Chinese businessmen including JianHua Huang, who has brokered sponsorships with a number of North American sports teams.
Phil Anschutz’s AEG (Anschutz has a piece of the Los Angeles Lakers) and NBA China are developing arenas throughout China in an effort to not only push the NBA in China but other sports and entertainment at well.
So it will seem that Stern would welcome Prokhorov who has a financial stake in the Russian Super League and the Euroleague’s CSKA Moscow’s basketball team if he passes all of the NBA’s checks.
Ownership groups can be good or bad from the United States or Canada; it is never easy to figure out who will be successful and who will fail. The NHL, which also has global aspirations, has had one non-North American owner.
National Hockey League President Gil Stein and his 22 owners had no problem with the prospect of Japanese money providing the majority funding for the expansion Tampa Bay Lightning franchise in 1992 (along with New York Yankees owner George M. Steinbrenner III). Kokusai Green’s owner Takashi Okubo. The experience was terrible as Okubo was an absentee owner and the team’s finances were a mess. Kokusai Green sold the franchise in 1998. That was the last foreign owner in the NHL. Charles Wang, who purchased the New York Islanders in 2000, was born in Shanghai, China but moved to New York at the age of 8.
Even though Major League Baseball has a sign still up saying Americans only despite increasing globalization and the National Football League has not faced the prospect of having a foreigner buy a team, North American owners have been purchasing European properties in English soccer. MLB’s Texas Rangers (and NHL Dallas Stars) owner teamed up with former NHL Montreal Canadiens owner George Gillett to purchase the English Premier League’s Liverpool F. C.
In 2006, NFL Cleveland Browns owner Randy Lerner bought Aston Villa. The year before, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers Glazier family purchased Manchester United.
Former Detroit Pistons executive and Minor League Baseball owner Andrew Appleby purchased the Derby County Football Club of the Premiership in 2008. Another American owner, Stan Kroenke (NBA’s Denver Nuggets, NHL Colorado Avalanche, MLS Colorado Rapids, National Lacrosse League’s Colorado Mammoth, NFL’s St. Louis Rams and the Altitude Sports and Entertainment regional cable TV network in the Rocky Mountain states) is the largest share holder of the North London-based Arsenal FC.
Major League sports teams are not cheap and there are not a lot of Americans who could afford purchasing a team. If Prokhorov is indeed interested in the New Jersey Nets, NBA Commissioner David Stern would be foolish to turn a deaf ear to him. The founder of the Kontinental Hockey League, the Russian billionaire Alexander Medvedev claimed last May that he wanted to buy an NHL team and move it to Quebec City.
If Jim Balsille thinks the NHL has given him a difficult time in attempting to buy the Phoenix Coyotes and moving the franchise to Hamilton, Ontario, Balsille’s case against the NHL would be child’s play compared to an attempt by Medvedev to buy an NHL franchise. Medvedev started a new Russian league that went after NHL players and signed a few including Alexander Radulov who left his Nashville team while under contract to play for Salavat Yulaev Ufa in 2008-09.
It is only a matter of time before some North American franchises are purchased by non-Americans and non-Canadians. Americans are snapping up English Premiership League teams why wouldn’t major money people from Europe or Asia not jump at the opportunity at a North American team? Fay Vincent is no longer guarding the gate like he did on that cold January night in the middle of Times Square in January 1992. The xenophobic policy of Major League Baseball of 1992 made no sense. It makes even less sense in 2009.
eweiner@mcn.tv
Tuesday, February 17, 2009
http://www.examiner.com/x-3926-Business-of-Sports-Examiner~y2009m2d17-All-Sports-Business-Eyes-Turn-to-Florida-Arizona-and-Detroit
All sports business eyes turn to Florida, Arizona and Detroit
Add a Comment
February 17, 12:21 PM
by Evan Weiner, Business of Sports Examiner
Today is the day President Barack Obama signs the stimulus bill into law with the hope that pouring billions of dollars into numerous projects nationally will create jobs and get Americans spending again.
In sports, owners have not yet felt the effects of the economic downturn because tickets for National Football League, National Basketball Association and National Hockey League contests were sold prior to the September-October meltdown and the leagues were locked into long term over-the-air and cable/satellite TV contracts along with marketing partnerships which were signed months before the economic crisis started.
But the calendar has caught up to sports, particularly Major League Baseball. Tickets need to be sold, marketing deals need to be signed and commercials need to be in place to pay for bills. Within the next two weeks, Major League Baseball teams will find out just how difficult the economy is as games will be played in two of the states hit hardest by home foreclosures, Florida and Arizona. If attendance is below normal in the Grapefruit and Cactus leagues, that might be a sign that some franchises may be in for some difficult times, including the Arizona Diamondbacks, the Florida Marlins and the Tampa Bay Rays.
The franchise that seems to be in for the toughest season economically is the Detroit Tigers. No reorganization plans that General Motors and Chrysler submit to the White House and Congress today so they can accept government loans will help the Tigers in the near term.
The Big 3 automakers have laid off tens of thousands of workers, both blue- and white-collar workers, and the home foreclosure rate in the Detroit area is skyrocketing. A good portion of the Detroit consumer base comes from Windsor, Ontario, and other parts of Canada. The fall of the Canadian dollar has made going to baseball, hockey, football and basketball games along with college sports in the Detroit and Auburn Hills area much more expensive as Canadians are paying $1.26 Canadian per every U.S. dollar to cross the river and head into Michigan.
Even if U.S. and Canadian government loans help the Michigan-Ontario auto industry, the business will be forever changed in Michigan/Ontario and that will impact the Tigers as well as the NBA Pistons and the NHL Red Wings beginning this spring - and the NFL’s Lions and college sports next fall.
The stimulus package is designed to pump money into states, cities, towns, villages and municipalities for infrastructure development and repairs. Things like energy projects, road reconstruction which would create jobs. There also could be stadium/arena construction although that would seem to be on the low priority end behind building and repairing bridges and retrofitting buildings to make them more energy efficient. In New York, New Jersey Nets owner Bruce Ratner, a political operative under New York City Mayors John V. Lindsay and Ed Koch in the 1970s, is turning to former New York Senator Al D'Amato's lobbying firm to help him get stimulus money in an attempt to get the stalled Atlantic Yards-Brooklyn Arena project moving.
Getting federal money for stadiums and arenas is nothing new. In the 1930s, the President Franklin Roosevelt's depression-era recovery plan included stadium and arena building under the umbrella of the Work Projects Administration (WPA), the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) and the Public Works Administration (PWA) agencies. Among those projects included the Aud and the War Memorial Stadium in Buffalo, Nippert Stadium in Cincinnati and other venues used in major league, minor league and college sports.
President Obama's signature on the stimulus bill could help sports owners in a variety of ways but it may take a while before the economy shows signs of recovering. In Florida, Arizona and Michigan, sports owners can only help that the economy comes back a lot sooner than hoped.
Contact the author at this address.
Add a Comment
February 17, 12:21 PM
by Evan Weiner, Business of Sports Examiner
Today is the day President Barack Obama signs the stimulus bill into law with the hope that pouring billions of dollars into numerous projects nationally will create jobs and get Americans spending again.
In sports, owners have not yet felt the effects of the economic downturn because tickets for National Football League, National Basketball Association and National Hockey League contests were sold prior to the September-October meltdown and the leagues were locked into long term over-the-air and cable/satellite TV contracts along with marketing partnerships which were signed months before the economic crisis started.
But the calendar has caught up to sports, particularly Major League Baseball. Tickets need to be sold, marketing deals need to be signed and commercials need to be in place to pay for bills. Within the next two weeks, Major League Baseball teams will find out just how difficult the economy is as games will be played in two of the states hit hardest by home foreclosures, Florida and Arizona. If attendance is below normal in the Grapefruit and Cactus leagues, that might be a sign that some franchises may be in for some difficult times, including the Arizona Diamondbacks, the Florida Marlins and the Tampa Bay Rays.
The franchise that seems to be in for the toughest season economically is the Detroit Tigers. No reorganization plans that General Motors and Chrysler submit to the White House and Congress today so they can accept government loans will help the Tigers in the near term.
The Big 3 automakers have laid off tens of thousands of workers, both blue- and white-collar workers, and the home foreclosure rate in the Detroit area is skyrocketing. A good portion of the Detroit consumer base comes from Windsor, Ontario, and other parts of Canada. The fall of the Canadian dollar has made going to baseball, hockey, football and basketball games along with college sports in the Detroit and Auburn Hills area much more expensive as Canadians are paying $1.26 Canadian per every U.S. dollar to cross the river and head into Michigan.
Even if U.S. and Canadian government loans help the Michigan-Ontario auto industry, the business will be forever changed in Michigan/Ontario and that will impact the Tigers as well as the NBA Pistons and the NHL Red Wings beginning this spring - and the NFL’s Lions and college sports next fall.
The stimulus package is designed to pump money into states, cities, towns, villages and municipalities for infrastructure development and repairs. Things like energy projects, road reconstruction which would create jobs. There also could be stadium/arena construction although that would seem to be on the low priority end behind building and repairing bridges and retrofitting buildings to make them more energy efficient. In New York, New Jersey Nets owner Bruce Ratner, a political operative under New York City Mayors John V. Lindsay and Ed Koch in the 1970s, is turning to former New York Senator Al D'Amato's lobbying firm to help him get stimulus money in an attempt to get the stalled Atlantic Yards-Brooklyn Arena project moving.
Getting federal money for stadiums and arenas is nothing new. In the 1930s, the President Franklin Roosevelt's depression-era recovery plan included stadium and arena building under the umbrella of the Work Projects Administration (WPA), the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) and the Public Works Administration (PWA) agencies. Among those projects included the Aud and the War Memorial Stadium in Buffalo, Nippert Stadium in Cincinnati and other venues used in major league, minor league and college sports.
President Obama's signature on the stimulus bill could help sports owners in a variety of ways but it may take a while before the economy shows signs of recovering. In Florida, Arizona and Michigan, sports owners can only help that the economy comes back a lot sooner than hoped.
Contact the author at this address.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)