Rebuilding the Boxing Franchise From the Local Level Up
http://www.examiner.com/examiner/x-3926-Business-of-Sports-Examiner~y2010m2d17-Rebuilding-the-Boxing-Franchise-from-the-local-level-up
By Evan Weiner
February17, 2010
(New York, N. Y.) -- About 10 years ago, my agent called me and asked if I wanted to do a television program for the History Channel. The show was going to be produced by Susan Michaels, the sister of the then-ABC sports announcer Al Michaels and was going to have among the other guests, Al Michaels, the noted sports commentator (and fellow client) Frank Deford and would be hosted by the “Scud Stud” Arthur Kent and the premise was that this program would cover the entire history of sports from say 773 B. C. when the first Olympic Games took place until say 1999 in two two-hour blocs minus commercial time as part of the “Histories Mysteries” franchise.
The TV show’s mission was an impossible task and today the show is probably floating around in pieces in some YouTube type setting.
The show was utterly forgettable except for one observation by the esteemed writer Frank Deford. The segment was about popularity of sports in the United States and how as Deford pointed out that in 1950, America’s most popular sports were baseball, boxing and horse racing and within a space of 15 years television had changed sports popularity with football taking the lead, baseball hanging in there but other sports sapped baseball’s popularity. Boxing was a well watched TV franchise in the 1950s but in the 1960s, the lure of big money was the hook behind taking championship boxing off commercial television and subsequent live showings of big time bouts on closed circuit in movie theaters, most championship boxing matches disappeared from prime time nor weekend TV.
It didn’t help boxing that Muhammad Ali refused induction into the United States Army based on his religious beliefs and his opposition to the Vietnam War in 1967.
Horse racing and boxing, except for Ali’s 1970s battles with Joe Frazier, George Foreman and Ken Norton, became afterthoughts. Boxing has never recovered from Ali’s retirement in 1981 although people had interest in Mike Tyson but the curiosity was not necessarily because of his ability in the ring.
At one time, boxing’s heavyweight champion was respected and held in high acclaim, that is no longer true. George Foreman is probably the most visible of the people who have been champion but that is because he reinvented himself into a highly successful, almost cuddly TV pitchman, which is 180 degrees different from his original incarnation. Muhammad Ali frightened people in the 1960s but over the decades has become an icon. There are no Foremans, Alis, Joe Fraziers, Rocky Marcianos or even the celluloid Rocky Balboa out there to capture the imagination in the United States right now, but there are some people in Delaware who would like to rebuild the sport.
Gloria Hammelef is the promoter at Dover Downs in Delaware and on February 26, she is putting together a card that she hopes will be the first that will energize the sport at least in an area between New York City and Norfolk, Virginia with Philadelphia, Baltimore and Washington, D. C. within the market.
There are no familiar names on the card except for local Delaware fighters like Michael “No Joke” Stewart who will take on Brandon Baue in the main event, an eight round welterweight bout, but Hammelef is building a promotion that she hopes will get stronger and will eventually feature major bout but for now, at least for the February and June events, it is getting a foundation build and getting people interested in boxing.
“International boxing is doing okay,” said Hammeldef. “Boxing has lost a lot of luster but in this area, the interest is strong in terms of competition and there are a lot of gems, for a lot of these people, it is a family business and we are dedicated to do the best we can to give these young boxers a showcase they may not have, there is a lot of (boxing) talent in New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, D.C. down to Tidewater (Virginia). Initially (the February 26th and June 4th cards), we want to showcase the talent and by September, have a title fight but we will maintain the undercut with the young talent.”
Dover Downs could become a major player in rebuilding the boxing brand. Dover Downs already has horse racing, two NASCAR events, casino gambling, sports betting and will have table games by summer and boxing could a nice fit with the other activities.
“Right now, there are several things we are looking to accomplish because we are a business and with the advent of table games we are looking for entertainment and events to attract the right demographic which are males 35 (years of age) plus. We are going to make every effort to revive boxing. There is an enormous amount of value in boxing and there is a lot of talent coming up. That kind of dedication needs to be rewarded to make the sport thrive,” said Hammelef.
Boxing has been a sport that has been dismissed by many in the sporting industry and yet in the 1990s, the sport generated a pile of cash from pay-per-view events and remains a mainstay in the casinos in Las Vegas and Atlantic City. Dover Downs has nearly sold out for the February 26th card which a number of local fighters which might be an indicator that boxing still has traction and again capture the imagination of boxing fans.
Boxing probably will never be mentioned in the same breathe as baseball in popularity as was the case in 1950 but that does not mean the sport cannot carve out a niche presence or better but it has to start from the ground up. Boxing used to have slogans like the people’s champion or the fan favorite or crowd pleasing or even tomato can.
Boxing needs a people’s champion; the ever-popular fan favorite or even the lovable tomato can like Chuck Wepner, the inspiration for film’s Rocky Balboa. The sport also needs to be nurtured in a crowded entertainment field.
Boxers were once celebrities for boxing and their personalities. Rocky Graziano has a whole other career after his boxing days because of his epic fights with Tony Zale and was immortalized in the 1956 movie, Somebody Up There Likes Me which starred Paul Newman as Graziano. Robert DeNiro starred in the 1980 movie Raging Bull which was the story of the middleweight boxer Jake Lamotta. There are many boxing movies but the producers don’t make many movies anymore about boxers with the exception of Ron Howard’s 2005 Cinderella Man about James J. Braddock who might have been the original Rocky Balboa and won the heavyweight title over Max Baer in 1935.
That is what boxing is missing and that is what Gloria Hammelef would like to bring back starting in Dover, Delaware.
evanjweiner@yahoo.com
Wednesday, February 17, 2010
Saturday, February 13, 2010
The Games Must Go On Despite a Death
The Games Must Go On Despite a Death
http://www.examiner.com/examiner/x-3926-Business-of-Sports-Examiner~y2010m2d13-The-Games-must-go-on-despite-a-death
By Evan Weiner
February 13, 2010
(New York, N. Y. ) -- And so the Games must go on, and the luge event will go on at the Vancouver Winter Olympics even though one of the Olympics’ own, Georgia luge competitor Nodar Kumaritashvili lost his life in a practice run on the luge track. The Games must go on and Olympics (the Vancouver organizers) officials and the International Luge Federation have already washed their hands of the accident blaming Kumaritashvili not the track for the 21-year-old Georgians death.
You see according to the organizers, poor Kumaritashvili just messed up coming out of Curve 15 and going into Curve 16 on the track. The unfortunate luge participant ended up flying over a wall and then crashing into a steel beam which killed him.
The Games must go on and there was a gala opening ceremony which costs tens of millions of loonies that took place just hours after Kumaritashvili’s death.
The Games must go on. The International Olympics Committee President Jacques Rogge made his decree and that he be part of his legacy. Someone needs to already say no more to Rogge and his associates but no one has stepped up yet.
The Games must go on.
Canada’s Prime Minister Stephen Harper was at the Vancouver Opening Ceremony and should be ordering some Canadian agency to look into what exactly happened and whether the luge track is safe. Harper, who twice shut down the Canadian Parliament in 2009 for political advantage, could easily tell the International Olympic Committee, the Games need to stop, at least the luge event, until a thorough investigation takes place in the events surrounding the death of the Georgia athlete.
Eventually there will be a legitimate investigation when the lawsuits start to fly and there will be lawsuits and there will be other athletes who will under oath testify about the track. There will also be engineers and others who will eventually have to talk about the design and safety of the course.
The Harper government, the British Columbia government and Vancouver’s government should be more active in the investigation and shut down the track. They should not be enablers for Rogge and his international gang. The Games can go on without the luge event even though there would be an outcry that luge participants have trained their entire lives for the event and it would be unfair for them to miss out at their chance for Olympic gold.
The death of the Georgia athlete will be the legacy of the Vancouver Games, Olympic officials always talk of legacy and a willing media will play the game and be Olympic stenographers. How can the media play a different role? Back in the late 1990s, New York’s four major newspapers kicked in money to support a New York City Olympic bid. NBC News in the United States is a willing partner of the International Olympic Committee as the parent division, General Electric led by CEO Jeffrey Immelt, signed a $2.2 billion (US) with the IOC for the United States video rights to the Vancouver Games and the 2012 London Summer Games back in 2003.
Richard Sandomir in Saturday’s edition of the New York Times wrote a laudatory column explaining how NBC had to work the death into the Olympic narrative. Imagine that a television news division having the flexibility to cover a news event at fantasyland or the corporate bazaar known as the Olympics.
The Games must go on mantra came after the 1972 Munich Massacre when Israeli athletes were killed in a terrorist attack in the Olympic Village. The International Olympic Committee President Avery Brundage decided after a day of mourning, the Games must go on and they did. The International Olympic Committee has never looked back.
Brundage in 1971 said the 1936 Hitler Summer Games in Berlin were the finest in modern history.
The International Olympic Committee has a long history of running roughshod over politicians who do more than genuflect when they get a whiff of the possibility of the five ring circus that is coming to town. The financial wreckage of the Olympics remains on display in Sydney from the 2000 Summer Games and in Athens where Greece remains on the hook for billions of euros worth of debt from the 2004 Games. Greece is in deep financial trouble now and while it is inaccurate to blame the 2004 Games for all of the country’s financial woes, the 2004 Summer Games debt is on the books and has added to Greece’s fiscal problems. Vancouver will be a money loser. NBC could lose $200 million on the Games, the local Olympic organizers will be leaning on the government, i. e. taxpayers, to bail them out to pay off the debt which is all the more reason for Harper to get involved in a thorough investigation of the accident at the track and see if there are flaws in the design that led to the death of Kurmaritashvili.
It is time that someone stands up to the IOC but apparently Harper won’t be that person. The Canadian Parliament goes back to work after the Vancouver closing ceremonies. There are much more pressing problems than the death of an Olympic athlete for MPs in Ottawa, yet there needs to be an investigation since millions of Canadians whether they like it or not are stakeholders in the Canadian-IOC partnerships that might cost them billions of loonies to pay off the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics debt.
evanjweiner@yahoo.com
http://www.examiner.com/examiner/x-3926-Business-of-Sports-Examiner~y2010m2d13-The-Games-must-go-on-despite-a-death
By Evan Weiner
February 13, 2010
(New York, N. Y. ) -- And so the Games must go on, and the luge event will go on at the Vancouver Winter Olympics even though one of the Olympics’ own, Georgia luge competitor Nodar Kumaritashvili lost his life in a practice run on the luge track. The Games must go on and Olympics (the Vancouver organizers) officials and the International Luge Federation have already washed their hands of the accident blaming Kumaritashvili not the track for the 21-year-old Georgians death.
You see according to the organizers, poor Kumaritashvili just messed up coming out of Curve 15 and going into Curve 16 on the track. The unfortunate luge participant ended up flying over a wall and then crashing into a steel beam which killed him.
The Games must go on and there was a gala opening ceremony which costs tens of millions of loonies that took place just hours after Kumaritashvili’s death.
The Games must go on. The International Olympics Committee President Jacques Rogge made his decree and that he be part of his legacy. Someone needs to already say no more to Rogge and his associates but no one has stepped up yet.
The Games must go on.
Canada’s Prime Minister Stephen Harper was at the Vancouver Opening Ceremony and should be ordering some Canadian agency to look into what exactly happened and whether the luge track is safe. Harper, who twice shut down the Canadian Parliament in 2009 for political advantage, could easily tell the International Olympic Committee, the Games need to stop, at least the luge event, until a thorough investigation takes place in the events surrounding the death of the Georgia athlete.
Eventually there will be a legitimate investigation when the lawsuits start to fly and there will be lawsuits and there will be other athletes who will under oath testify about the track. There will also be engineers and others who will eventually have to talk about the design and safety of the course.
The Harper government, the British Columbia government and Vancouver’s government should be more active in the investigation and shut down the track. They should not be enablers for Rogge and his international gang. The Games can go on without the luge event even though there would be an outcry that luge participants have trained their entire lives for the event and it would be unfair for them to miss out at their chance for Olympic gold.
The death of the Georgia athlete will be the legacy of the Vancouver Games, Olympic officials always talk of legacy and a willing media will play the game and be Olympic stenographers. How can the media play a different role? Back in the late 1990s, New York’s four major newspapers kicked in money to support a New York City Olympic bid. NBC News in the United States is a willing partner of the International Olympic Committee as the parent division, General Electric led by CEO Jeffrey Immelt, signed a $2.2 billion (US) with the IOC for the United States video rights to the Vancouver Games and the 2012 London Summer Games back in 2003.
Richard Sandomir in Saturday’s edition of the New York Times wrote a laudatory column explaining how NBC had to work the death into the Olympic narrative. Imagine that a television news division having the flexibility to cover a news event at fantasyland or the corporate bazaar known as the Olympics.
The Games must go on mantra came after the 1972 Munich Massacre when Israeli athletes were killed in a terrorist attack in the Olympic Village. The International Olympic Committee President Avery Brundage decided after a day of mourning, the Games must go on and they did. The International Olympic Committee has never looked back.
Brundage in 1971 said the 1936 Hitler Summer Games in Berlin were the finest in modern history.
The International Olympic Committee has a long history of running roughshod over politicians who do more than genuflect when they get a whiff of the possibility of the five ring circus that is coming to town. The financial wreckage of the Olympics remains on display in Sydney from the 2000 Summer Games and in Athens where Greece remains on the hook for billions of euros worth of debt from the 2004 Games. Greece is in deep financial trouble now and while it is inaccurate to blame the 2004 Games for all of the country’s financial woes, the 2004 Summer Games debt is on the books and has added to Greece’s fiscal problems. Vancouver will be a money loser. NBC could lose $200 million on the Games, the local Olympic organizers will be leaning on the government, i. e. taxpayers, to bail them out to pay off the debt which is all the more reason for Harper to get involved in a thorough investigation of the accident at the track and see if there are flaws in the design that led to the death of Kurmaritashvili.
It is time that someone stands up to the IOC but apparently Harper won’t be that person. The Canadian Parliament goes back to work after the Vancouver closing ceremonies. There are much more pressing problems than the death of an Olympic athlete for MPs in Ottawa, yet there needs to be an investigation since millions of Canadians whether they like it or not are stakeholders in the Canadian-IOC partnerships that might cost them billions of loonies to pay off the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics debt.
evanjweiner@yahoo.com
Friday, February 12, 2010
Vikings Stadium Plan? Obama vs. Pawlenty
http://dailycaller.com/2010/02/12/vikings-stadium-plan-obama-vs-pawlenty/
Vikings Stadium Plan? Obama vs. Pawlenty
By Evan Weiner - The Daily Caller 02/12/10 at 9:36 am
Zygi Wilf’s National Football League’s Minnesota Vikings franchise didn’t win the big game this year, in fact Wilf’s team did not qualify for the big game in South Florida as Wilf’s Vikings lost to the finest team that Louisiana taxpayers could fund, Tom Benson’s New Orleans Saints.
Benson used some of the $23.5 million in state aid he got last July to, presumably, pay for players and could use some of the $23.5 million in state aid due next July to extend Drew Brees’ contract. The Louisiana handouts will be capped at $6 million starting in 2011.
Wilf is still in the hunt to play in the “Big Game” however. You see Wilf’s lease at the Metrodome in Minneapolis is done following the 2011 season and Wilf wants a new stadium somewhere in the Minneapolis-St. Paul market and is planning to pitch the Minnesota legislature in this session to get a stadium built or Wilf’s Vikings may have a new home out of state.
Wilf may come up big this time. Vikings ownership thinks the federal stimulus money might be available for the project, which would put Wilf at odds with Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty, a Republican who is not a stimulus fan. Minnesota’s capital St. Paul would become a battleground in a way, President Obama’s stimulus plan, the Recovery Act of 2009, versus a lame duck governor who has Presidential aspirations in 2012 and would like to be the Republican nominee.
In December 2009, Pawlenty said there would be no new taxes to pay for a new Vikings stadium. Yet in the past week, Pawlenty seems to have changed his tune. Pawlenty may not like stimulus money but he has another idea that does involve taxpayers’ money.
Pawlenty thinks funds generated from a new Minnesota lottery could generate enough money to fund construction for a new football stadium. Pawlenty has also thrown out another idea, tax increment financing, which allows developers to pay less money than normal property taxes as long as that money is funneled back into the development project.
There are no proposals on the table though at this point.
Minnesota legislators have seen this act before and have responded in kind by finding public money for stadiums and arenas for more than a half century. The city of Minneapolis put up some $8.5 million in mid-1950s dollars to build Metropolitan Stadium for the minor league baseball team, the Minneapolis Millers. The stadium opened in 1956 as a minor league park but was upgraded when Calvin Griffith moved his Washington Senators to Minnesota after the 1961 season. “The Met” was enough of a lure for Lamar Hunt’s new American Football League that Hunt and his partners awarded an AFL franchise to Minnesota, but somehow the National Football League got to the Minnesota ownership and convinced them to jump leagues and start in 1961.
The National Football League and the American Football League merged on June 8, 1966 and one of the merger conditions was that every NFL stadium had to have a seating capacity of more than 50,000. Congress approved the merger in October 1966 and that started the clock ticking to get a new football facility built for the Vikings as “the Met” had just 48,700 chairs.
Minnesota ownership decided not to renew the lease at “the Met” and actively looked at other options including a move to Los Angeles when the lease ended in 1981.
In December 1979, construction started on the $68 million domed stadium in downtown Minneapolis that would house the Minnesota Twins and Vikings although neither team seemed too happy with the building. Twins ownership was unhappy with revenues generated inside the building but Griffith negotiated a bad deal in the 1970s, which allowed the Vikings ownership to keep a lion share of luxury box money. Additionally, Griffith didn’t get enough concession money. In the late 1990s, Don Beaver attempted to move the Twins franchise to a publicly funded stadium in Greensboro, N. C., if voters said yes.
The voters rejected the stadium plan in 1998.
On May 26 2006, Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty signed legislation to build a new baseball park for the Twins. Hennepin County taxpayers would fund most of the costs for the new building through a 0.15 cent sales tax. The fiscally conservative Pawlenty gave the go ahead for the tax hike, which was designed to raise about $392 million; Minnesota’s ownership would pick up the rest of the tab which is about $140 million more.
On May 24, 2006, three days after the legislature said yes to spending $392 for a baseball park, Minnesota taxpayers were again asked to dig into their pockets to fund a football stadium for the University of Minnesota Golden Gophers. The university is picking up 52 percent of the costs of the $288 million stadium while the state is paying for the rest.
The state legislature also picked up the costs of Minneapolis’ arena that was constructed in the late 19880s through private money. The National Basketball Association gave Minneapolis a franchise in the late 1980s but the team owners, Marvin Wolfenson and Harvey Ratner could not swing the $32.5 million entry fee into the NBA and the cost of the building, which was over $100 million. The legislature gave the approval for the city of Minneapolis to take over the building in 1995.
In 1997, the National Hockey League was looking for expansion cities. St. Paul Mayor Norm Coleman got a franchise by promising to build a new taxpayers funded arena in the city. The NHL granted St/ Paul a franchise as long as the arena was built. Minnesota taxpayers put up about half of the $130 million cost of the building.
In 1965, Minnesota taxpayers put up money to build an arena in Bloomington next to “the Met” and got an NHL expansion teamin 1967. That team, the North Stars left in 1993 for Dallas. One of the reasons the North Stars franchise moved? The arena was not adequate for an NHL team.
Minnesota has spent an enormous amount of public funds on athletic facilities, probably more than a billion dollars when infrastructure and debt service costs are added. That is the price for being a major league area.
The Obama versus Pawlenty 2012 President race may never play out, but a mini version of the 2012 Presidential campaign could be taking place this winter and spring in the St. Paul statehouses and at the end of the day, Zygi Wilf’s Minnesota Vikings, a team that has never won the Super Bowl, may finally win the big game, which in this case is a new stadium with all of the bells and whistles of revenue producing luxury boxes, club seats, in-stadium restaurants and stores and lots of concession money.
That is better than winning a Super Bowl.
Vikings Stadium Plan? Obama vs. Pawlenty
By Evan Weiner - The Daily Caller 02/12/10 at 9:36 am
Zygi Wilf’s National Football League’s Minnesota Vikings franchise didn’t win the big game this year, in fact Wilf’s team did not qualify for the big game in South Florida as Wilf’s Vikings lost to the finest team that Louisiana taxpayers could fund, Tom Benson’s New Orleans Saints.
Benson used some of the $23.5 million in state aid he got last July to, presumably, pay for players and could use some of the $23.5 million in state aid due next July to extend Drew Brees’ contract. The Louisiana handouts will be capped at $6 million starting in 2011.
Wilf is still in the hunt to play in the “Big Game” however. You see Wilf’s lease at the Metrodome in Minneapolis is done following the 2011 season and Wilf wants a new stadium somewhere in the Minneapolis-St. Paul market and is planning to pitch the Minnesota legislature in this session to get a stadium built or Wilf’s Vikings may have a new home out of state.
Wilf may come up big this time. Vikings ownership thinks the federal stimulus money might be available for the project, which would put Wilf at odds with Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty, a Republican who is not a stimulus fan. Minnesota’s capital St. Paul would become a battleground in a way, President Obama’s stimulus plan, the Recovery Act of 2009, versus a lame duck governor who has Presidential aspirations in 2012 and would like to be the Republican nominee.
In December 2009, Pawlenty said there would be no new taxes to pay for a new Vikings stadium. Yet in the past week, Pawlenty seems to have changed his tune. Pawlenty may not like stimulus money but he has another idea that does involve taxpayers’ money.
Pawlenty thinks funds generated from a new Minnesota lottery could generate enough money to fund construction for a new football stadium. Pawlenty has also thrown out another idea, tax increment financing, which allows developers to pay less money than normal property taxes as long as that money is funneled back into the development project.
There are no proposals on the table though at this point.
Minnesota legislators have seen this act before and have responded in kind by finding public money for stadiums and arenas for more than a half century. The city of Minneapolis put up some $8.5 million in mid-1950s dollars to build Metropolitan Stadium for the minor league baseball team, the Minneapolis Millers. The stadium opened in 1956 as a minor league park but was upgraded when Calvin Griffith moved his Washington Senators to Minnesota after the 1961 season. “The Met” was enough of a lure for Lamar Hunt’s new American Football League that Hunt and his partners awarded an AFL franchise to Minnesota, but somehow the National Football League got to the Minnesota ownership and convinced them to jump leagues and start in 1961.
The National Football League and the American Football League merged on June 8, 1966 and one of the merger conditions was that every NFL stadium had to have a seating capacity of more than 50,000. Congress approved the merger in October 1966 and that started the clock ticking to get a new football facility built for the Vikings as “the Met” had just 48,700 chairs.
Minnesota ownership decided not to renew the lease at “the Met” and actively looked at other options including a move to Los Angeles when the lease ended in 1981.
In December 1979, construction started on the $68 million domed stadium in downtown Minneapolis that would house the Minnesota Twins and Vikings although neither team seemed too happy with the building. Twins ownership was unhappy with revenues generated inside the building but Griffith negotiated a bad deal in the 1970s, which allowed the Vikings ownership to keep a lion share of luxury box money. Additionally, Griffith didn’t get enough concession money. In the late 1990s, Don Beaver attempted to move the Twins franchise to a publicly funded stadium in Greensboro, N. C., if voters said yes.
The voters rejected the stadium plan in 1998.
On May 26 2006, Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty signed legislation to build a new baseball park for the Twins. Hennepin County taxpayers would fund most of the costs for the new building through a 0.15 cent sales tax. The fiscally conservative Pawlenty gave the go ahead for the tax hike, which was designed to raise about $392 million; Minnesota’s ownership would pick up the rest of the tab which is about $140 million more.
On May 24, 2006, three days after the legislature said yes to spending $392 for a baseball park, Minnesota taxpayers were again asked to dig into their pockets to fund a football stadium for the University of Minnesota Golden Gophers. The university is picking up 52 percent of the costs of the $288 million stadium while the state is paying for the rest.
The state legislature also picked up the costs of Minneapolis’ arena that was constructed in the late 19880s through private money. The National Basketball Association gave Minneapolis a franchise in the late 1980s but the team owners, Marvin Wolfenson and Harvey Ratner could not swing the $32.5 million entry fee into the NBA and the cost of the building, which was over $100 million. The legislature gave the approval for the city of Minneapolis to take over the building in 1995.
In 1997, the National Hockey League was looking for expansion cities. St. Paul Mayor Norm Coleman got a franchise by promising to build a new taxpayers funded arena in the city. The NHL granted St/ Paul a franchise as long as the arena was built. Minnesota taxpayers put up about half of the $130 million cost of the building.
In 1965, Minnesota taxpayers put up money to build an arena in Bloomington next to “the Met” and got an NHL expansion teamin 1967. That team, the North Stars left in 1993 for Dallas. One of the reasons the North Stars franchise moved? The arena was not adequate for an NHL team.
Minnesota has spent an enormous amount of public funds on athletic facilities, probably more than a billion dollars when infrastructure and debt service costs are added. That is the price for being a major league area.
The Obama versus Pawlenty 2012 President race may never play out, but a mini version of the 2012 Presidential campaign could be taking place this winter and spring in the St. Paul statehouses and at the end of the day, Zygi Wilf’s Minnesota Vikings, a team that has never won the Super Bowl, may finally win the big game, which in this case is a new stadium with all of the bells and whistles of revenue producing luxury boxes, club seats, in-stadium restaurants and stores and lots of concession money.
That is better than winning a Super Bowl.
Wednesday, February 10, 2010
The Vancouver Olympics: Owe Canada, a blueprint for major financial losses
The Vancouver Olympics: Owe Canada, a blueprint for major financial losses
http://www.examiner.com/examiner/x-3926-Business-of-Sports-Examiner~y2010m2d10-The-Vancouver-Olympics-Owe-Canada-a-blueprint-for-major--financial-losses
By Evan Weiner
February 10, 2010
(New York, N. Y.) -- It is a good thing that sports journalists (the New York Times, New York Post, New York Daily News and New York Newsday all contributed money to help New York land the 2012 Summer Games which under normal circumstances is a blatant conflict of interest), politicians and sports fans never really seriously question International Olympic Committee President Jacques Rogge or the entire Olympic movement. Rogge and his group think they are above everything and the way politicians genuflect when Rogge and his minions say jump, there is no wonder why the International Olympic Committee members feel that way.
Rogge has opened his mouth again calling the soon to start 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympic Games a “blueprint” for future games. Rogge apparently likes how the Vancouver organizers have not only taken into account than hosting an Olympics is just more than two-week sports orgy. There is an afterlife and that the 2010 Olympics is environmentally friendly and that sports facilities will be used after the competing athletes both in these games and the Paralympics leave in March.
What Rogge didn’t say is that if Vancouver is a blueprint, then future host cities and American media partners better watch out. The Vancouver legacy is going to be one of extreme red ink. General Electric’s NBCUniversal television division is preparing for losses that will exceed $200 million (US). The Vancouver organizers will not be able to recoup their loonies which means British Columbia taxpayers will be on the hook for whatever cost overruns accrue.
Politicians seemingly never learn from history. Vancouver and British Columbia public officials and private sector leaders who pushed for the Olympics apparently never heard of the philosopher George Santayana who in 1905 in the Life of Reason, Vol. 1 “those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”
Santayana was not talking about the 1976 Montreal Summer Olympics when he penned the thought, but Vancouver and British Columbia and Canadian residents know that it took 30 years to pay off the debt from those Games and that the Montreal legacy includes a lot of corruption when it came to building the Big O (or Big Owe as it was referred to in Montreal) and the African nations boycott because the politically insensitive International Olympic Committee did not expel New Zealand after that country’s rugby team played in the apartheid country of South Africa that year. Montreal paid off the bills eventually. Athens and Greece should be so lucky, with Greece in a very deep economic decline; the bills from the 2004 Athens Summer Games won’t be paid for a long, long time.
The lessons learned in Sydney (Australia), Athens, Montreal and other places that have paid for what is a private organization’s event have not resonated with other governments. The London 2012 Summer Games will cost English taxpayers a bundle and things are not very promising in Russia for the 2014 Sochi Games. Still the line forms on both the left and right with politicians and corporate leaders tripping all over themselves for a chance to host the Olympics in 2018 and 2020.
Rogge has promised that the Vancouver Games will help support the rebuilding of sports infrastructure in earthquake ravaged Haiti but offered no specifics and repeated his tired mantra of athletes should be role models and not take performance enhancing drugs.
In 2003, Rogge put pressure on the United States Congress and President George W. Bush to rid Major League Baseball of performance enhancing drugs. What is conveniently left out of the Rogge narrative was that the IOC was unhappy with Major League Baseball for not stopping the regular season for a couple of weeks to sent the best MLB players to take part in what really would have been a meaningless two week international baseball tournament. Rogge in 2006 begged Italian authorities to let the IOC take care of any drug problems in the Turin Olympic Village because taking illegal drugs really isn’t illegal, it is just cheating and that an IOC suspension was more of a punishment than going to jail.
Major League Baseball and the Major League Baseball Players Association have now played two World Baseball Classic tournaments and IOC delegates have told baseball (and softball) officials they are not welcomed in the Olympics as the sport has been dropped from the Summer Games.
The IOC continues to mesmerize people including the people running Vancouver’s Public Libraries. The libraries were instructed not to hold any gatherings that were sponsored by someone other than an official Vancouver Olympics sponsor. The IOC actually has that type of power as the deal between the Vancouver Olympics organizers and the international body that oversees the Games requires that the host city makes sure than Olympics sponsors are treated with kid gloves and in 2007, the Canadian government bent over backwards to protect the Golden Arches of McDonald’s and other sponsors.
The IOC also really doesn’t care what happens after the Vancouver Games. The world is littered with Olympics-sized financial debt from Games in Sydney, Australia in 2000 and Athens, Greece in 2004. No one will ever really find out what Beijing spent on the 2008 Games but the Bird Nest stadium goes for the most part unused in the post-Olympics era and someone in China is paying about nine million dollars annually to keep the place maintained. Vancouver’s sponsors have done the barest minimum to fund the Games.
The bill for the Olympics will come due in 2011 and there will be a lot of questions that will need answers when the day of reckoning arrives as British Columbia taxpayers will be asked to pay the debt. That is not a concern of the International Olympics Committee, host cities should be happy that the IOC even gave them the time of day. When a host city signs a contract with the IOC, the host city taxpayers have to pay cost overruns, not the IOC.
If Vancouver is a blueprint for future Games, then people bidding for the 2018 Winter Games should be running away as quickly as possible as they are doomed to financial failure.
evanjweiner@yahoo.com
http://www.examiner.com/examiner/x-3926-Business-of-Sports-Examiner~y2010m2d10-The-Vancouver-Olympics-Owe-Canada-a-blueprint-for-major--financial-losses
By Evan Weiner
February 10, 2010
(New York, N. Y.) -- It is a good thing that sports journalists (the New York Times, New York Post, New York Daily News and New York Newsday all contributed money to help New York land the 2012 Summer Games which under normal circumstances is a blatant conflict of interest), politicians and sports fans never really seriously question International Olympic Committee President Jacques Rogge or the entire Olympic movement. Rogge and his group think they are above everything and the way politicians genuflect when Rogge and his minions say jump, there is no wonder why the International Olympic Committee members feel that way.
Rogge has opened his mouth again calling the soon to start 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympic Games a “blueprint” for future games. Rogge apparently likes how the Vancouver organizers have not only taken into account than hosting an Olympics is just more than two-week sports orgy. There is an afterlife and that the 2010 Olympics is environmentally friendly and that sports facilities will be used after the competing athletes both in these games and the Paralympics leave in March.
What Rogge didn’t say is that if Vancouver is a blueprint, then future host cities and American media partners better watch out. The Vancouver legacy is going to be one of extreme red ink. General Electric’s NBCUniversal television division is preparing for losses that will exceed $200 million (US). The Vancouver organizers will not be able to recoup their loonies which means British Columbia taxpayers will be on the hook for whatever cost overruns accrue.
Politicians seemingly never learn from history. Vancouver and British Columbia public officials and private sector leaders who pushed for the Olympics apparently never heard of the philosopher George Santayana who in 1905 in the Life of Reason, Vol. 1 “those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”
Santayana was not talking about the 1976 Montreal Summer Olympics when he penned the thought, but Vancouver and British Columbia and Canadian residents know that it took 30 years to pay off the debt from those Games and that the Montreal legacy includes a lot of corruption when it came to building the Big O (or Big Owe as it was referred to in Montreal) and the African nations boycott because the politically insensitive International Olympic Committee did not expel New Zealand after that country’s rugby team played in the apartheid country of South Africa that year. Montreal paid off the bills eventually. Athens and Greece should be so lucky, with Greece in a very deep economic decline; the bills from the 2004 Athens Summer Games won’t be paid for a long, long time.
The lessons learned in Sydney (Australia), Athens, Montreal and other places that have paid for what is a private organization’s event have not resonated with other governments. The London 2012 Summer Games will cost English taxpayers a bundle and things are not very promising in Russia for the 2014 Sochi Games. Still the line forms on both the left and right with politicians and corporate leaders tripping all over themselves for a chance to host the Olympics in 2018 and 2020.
Rogge has promised that the Vancouver Games will help support the rebuilding of sports infrastructure in earthquake ravaged Haiti but offered no specifics and repeated his tired mantra of athletes should be role models and not take performance enhancing drugs.
In 2003, Rogge put pressure on the United States Congress and President George W. Bush to rid Major League Baseball of performance enhancing drugs. What is conveniently left out of the Rogge narrative was that the IOC was unhappy with Major League Baseball for not stopping the regular season for a couple of weeks to sent the best MLB players to take part in what really would have been a meaningless two week international baseball tournament. Rogge in 2006 begged Italian authorities to let the IOC take care of any drug problems in the Turin Olympic Village because taking illegal drugs really isn’t illegal, it is just cheating and that an IOC suspension was more of a punishment than going to jail.
Major League Baseball and the Major League Baseball Players Association have now played two World Baseball Classic tournaments and IOC delegates have told baseball (and softball) officials they are not welcomed in the Olympics as the sport has been dropped from the Summer Games.
The IOC continues to mesmerize people including the people running Vancouver’s Public Libraries. The libraries were instructed not to hold any gatherings that were sponsored by someone other than an official Vancouver Olympics sponsor. The IOC actually has that type of power as the deal between the Vancouver Olympics organizers and the international body that oversees the Games requires that the host city makes sure than Olympics sponsors are treated with kid gloves and in 2007, the Canadian government bent over backwards to protect the Golden Arches of McDonald’s and other sponsors.
The IOC also really doesn’t care what happens after the Vancouver Games. The world is littered with Olympics-sized financial debt from Games in Sydney, Australia in 2000 and Athens, Greece in 2004. No one will ever really find out what Beijing spent on the 2008 Games but the Bird Nest stadium goes for the most part unused in the post-Olympics era and someone in China is paying about nine million dollars annually to keep the place maintained. Vancouver’s sponsors have done the barest minimum to fund the Games.
The bill for the Olympics will come due in 2011 and there will be a lot of questions that will need answers when the day of reckoning arrives as British Columbia taxpayers will be asked to pay the debt. That is not a concern of the International Olympics Committee, host cities should be happy that the IOC even gave them the time of day. When a host city signs a contract with the IOC, the host city taxpayers have to pay cost overruns, not the IOC.
If Vancouver is a blueprint for future Games, then people bidding for the 2018 Winter Games should be running away as quickly as possible as they are doomed to financial failure.
evanjweiner@yahoo.com
Saturday, February 6, 2010
The Subsidized Bowl
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
http://www.examiner.com/x-3926-Business-of-Sports-Examiner~y2010m2d6-The-Subsidized-Bowl
The Subsidized Bowl
By Evan Weiner
February 6, 2010
(New York, N. Y.) --- Super Bowl XLIV is really the wrong title for this weekend’s championship game between the Indianapolis (by way of Dayton, Brooklyn, Boston, Miami, Baltimore, New York, Dallas and Baltimore) Colts and the team that Congress created in 1966, the New Orleans Saints. To be perfectly correct, the NFL should be calling this game the Subsidized Bowl I or maybe III or XII depending how deeply you want to explore the political relationship and taxpayers roles in the funding of Super Bowl teams.
The owners of the Indianapolis and New Orleans franchises do have a lengthy history of putting the screws to politicians for either new stadiums or outright payments to keep a team in town.
Saints owner Tom Benson probably cut the greatest bailout deal ever in 2001. Benson’s trek started in 2000 when he began to complain that his one time money producing lease at the Superdome was failing way behind other franchises because other cities and states were underwriting the costs for sports facilities and then giving most of the stadium revenue streams to “grateful” owners. (Under federal law only eight percent of stadium revenues are required to go to paying down the building’s debt if it the venue was paid by taxpayers.)
Benson did what any respectable owner would do. He threatened to leave town without a stadium. Benson’s options were limited: San Antonio had a relatively new stadium but was a very small market like New Orleans. Los Angeles was unsuitable as there was no stadium on the horizon, something that cost the area an NFL expansion team in 1999.
Louisiana didn’t have money on hand for a new stadium either, but in 2001 Governor Mike Foster and the legislature would cut a deal with Benson. They would give Benson handouts as a thank you for not breaking his Superdome lease and moving. The first check was for $12 million in July 2002. A $13 million check would be presented in July 2003. Benson would get the money from a number of ways. Louisiana hiked the hotel and motel sales tax and gave Benson the ability to sell the Superdome’s naming rights. Louisiana gave Benson $186.5 million in outright cash through 2010 so that he could spent money for players, front office people and marketing and keep his Saints competitive in a market that barely had any Fortune 500 companies and had a declining population.
The deal backfired on Louisiana taxpayers immediately. The multiple attacks on September 11th, 2001, in New York and Washington, had a dramatic impact on tourism in New Orleans and the falloff in the number of people going to New Orleans meant fewer revenues to payoff Benson. Additionally, no one stepped forward and bought the naming rights to the Superdome. By 2004, Louisiana was cash strapped and owed Benson $15 million on July 5th of that year. If Benson did not receive the check, he would have been a free agent and able to shop his franchise around by September 18th of that year. Somehow Louisiana found money and did not default on the agreement.
In 2005, Hurricane Katrina drowned New Orleans but that didn’t stop Benson from wanting his money when he returned in 2006. Louisiana continued paying and Benson because of Katrina ended up with over $200 million worth of renovations Superdome. In all, Benson got his money and a better facility but that did not mean Benson was committed to stay in New Orleans once the subsidies ran out in 2010.
Benson will get one more check from the 2001 deal in July for $23.5 million.
Benson and Louisiana officials signed a new 17-year agreement in 2009 that capped the outright cash subsidies to six million dollars annually over the life of the deal after 2010 and included a promise to continue renovating the Superdome with $85 million of subsidies. Additionally, Benson said he would buy the empty Dominion Tower near the Superdome and that Louisiana would lease space in the building. The deal would be worth $100 million for rental over 15 years for Benson. The Saints owner can also develop an entertainment district around the Superdome.
Louisiana taxpayers are one of Benson’s biggest partners and in a league with CBS, NBC, FOX, ESPN and DirecTV which pays Benson a huge sum of money annually. Because Louisiana citizens are so giving, the NFL rewarded New Orleans with the 2013 Super Bowl after dropping the city from the Super Bowl rotation before Katrina.
The Irsay family has also been blessed with willing government partners. Jim Irsay’s father Robert bought the Los Angeles Rams in 1972 and traded the franchise to Baltimore owner Carroll Rosenbloom in what can best be described as a tax deal. Irsay didn’t seem too impressed with Baltimore’s Memorial Stadium and started looking for a better deal. Irsay checked out Phoenix and Indianapolis and in 1980 struck up a conversation with the Los Angeles Coliseum Commission about relocated the Colts after Rosenbloom moved his Rams to Anaheim. He also looked at Memphis and Jacksonville. On March 29, 1984, Irsay moved his Colts to Indianapolis in the dead of night during a snowstorm because he feared Baltmore seize the team through eminent domain.
Indianapolis put cash on the barrelhead (the usual NFL currency) for Irsay by giving him a $12 million loan and promising him a $4 million training camp site along with a brand new stadium loaded with revenue generating gadgets. Irsay was happy in Indianapolis but when his son Jim took over, the Irsay gene that produced wanderlust in Bob hit Jim and the once lucrative Hoosier Dome lease was outdated and Irsay wanted a new stadium or was going to look outside of Indianapolis to get it.
Eventually Irsay got his wish, a new stadium funded by various taxes with Irsay throwing in $100 million of the estimated $720 million facility costs. To pay for the stadium, Marion County raised taxes on food and beverage sales, auto excise taxes, innkeeper's taxes and admission taxes. There was also an increase in food and beverage taxes in some surrounding counties and a tax hike the on Indiana's Colts license plates.
Irsay is not paying much rent and is keeping a large share of the new stadium’s generated revenues which he can do under federal law. Irsay is getting $6 million a year from Lucas Oil for naming rights and paying just $250,000 in annual rent. No wonder he can make Peyton Manning the highest paid player in the NFL. Meanwhile Indianapolis’s Capital Improvement Board cannot pay the anticipated operating costs of the new stadium. Jim Irsay who was in a hurry to get a new stadium has been rather slow in offering to help Indianapolis out of the money pit. He has a contract and a contract is a contract no matter what financial difficulties have befallen Indianapolis.
A Vince Lombardi Trophy is a nice piece of hardware but its worth is just $25,000 and that certainly is not enough to pay off any debt in Indianapolis or New Orleans that was incurred because those cities craved an NFL team.
evanjweiner@yahoo.com
http://www.examiner.com/x-3926-Business-of-Sports-Examiner~y2010m2d6-The-Subsidized-Bowl
The Subsidized Bowl
By Evan Weiner
February 6, 2010
(New York, N. Y.) --- Super Bowl XLIV is really the wrong title for this weekend’s championship game between the Indianapolis (by way of Dayton, Brooklyn, Boston, Miami, Baltimore, New York, Dallas and Baltimore) Colts and the team that Congress created in 1966, the New Orleans Saints. To be perfectly correct, the NFL should be calling this game the Subsidized Bowl I or maybe III or XII depending how deeply you want to explore the political relationship and taxpayers roles in the funding of Super Bowl teams.
The owners of the Indianapolis and New Orleans franchises do have a lengthy history of putting the screws to politicians for either new stadiums or outright payments to keep a team in town.
Saints owner Tom Benson probably cut the greatest bailout deal ever in 2001. Benson’s trek started in 2000 when he began to complain that his one time money producing lease at the Superdome was failing way behind other franchises because other cities and states were underwriting the costs for sports facilities and then giving most of the stadium revenue streams to “grateful” owners. (Under federal law only eight percent of stadium revenues are required to go to paying down the building’s debt if it the venue was paid by taxpayers.)
Benson did what any respectable owner would do. He threatened to leave town without a stadium. Benson’s options were limited: San Antonio had a relatively new stadium but was a very small market like New Orleans. Los Angeles was unsuitable as there was no stadium on the horizon, something that cost the area an NFL expansion team in 1999.
Louisiana didn’t have money on hand for a new stadium either, but in 2001 Governor Mike Foster and the legislature would cut a deal with Benson. They would give Benson handouts as a thank you for not breaking his Superdome lease and moving. The first check was for $12 million in July 2002. A $13 million check would be presented in July 2003. Benson would get the money from a number of ways. Louisiana hiked the hotel and motel sales tax and gave Benson the ability to sell the Superdome’s naming rights. Louisiana gave Benson $186.5 million in outright cash through 2010 so that he could spent money for players, front office people and marketing and keep his Saints competitive in a market that barely had any Fortune 500 companies and had a declining population.
The deal backfired on Louisiana taxpayers immediately. The multiple attacks on September 11th, 2001, in New York and Washington, had a dramatic impact on tourism in New Orleans and the falloff in the number of people going to New Orleans meant fewer revenues to payoff Benson. Additionally, no one stepped forward and bought the naming rights to the Superdome. By 2004, Louisiana was cash strapped and owed Benson $15 million on July 5th of that year. If Benson did not receive the check, he would have been a free agent and able to shop his franchise around by September 18th of that year. Somehow Louisiana found money and did not default on the agreement.
In 2005, Hurricane Katrina drowned New Orleans but that didn’t stop Benson from wanting his money when he returned in 2006. Louisiana continued paying and Benson because of Katrina ended up with over $200 million worth of renovations Superdome. In all, Benson got his money and a better facility but that did not mean Benson was committed to stay in New Orleans once the subsidies ran out in 2010.
Benson will get one more check from the 2001 deal in July for $23.5 million.
Benson and Louisiana officials signed a new 17-year agreement in 2009 that capped the outright cash subsidies to six million dollars annually over the life of the deal after 2010 and included a promise to continue renovating the Superdome with $85 million of subsidies. Additionally, Benson said he would buy the empty Dominion Tower near the Superdome and that Louisiana would lease space in the building. The deal would be worth $100 million for rental over 15 years for Benson. The Saints owner can also develop an entertainment district around the Superdome.
Louisiana taxpayers are one of Benson’s biggest partners and in a league with CBS, NBC, FOX, ESPN and DirecTV which pays Benson a huge sum of money annually. Because Louisiana citizens are so giving, the NFL rewarded New Orleans with the 2013 Super Bowl after dropping the city from the Super Bowl rotation before Katrina.
The Irsay family has also been blessed with willing government partners. Jim Irsay’s father Robert bought the Los Angeles Rams in 1972 and traded the franchise to Baltimore owner Carroll Rosenbloom in what can best be described as a tax deal. Irsay didn’t seem too impressed with Baltimore’s Memorial Stadium and started looking for a better deal. Irsay checked out Phoenix and Indianapolis and in 1980 struck up a conversation with the Los Angeles Coliseum Commission about relocated the Colts after Rosenbloom moved his Rams to Anaheim. He also looked at Memphis and Jacksonville. On March 29, 1984, Irsay moved his Colts to Indianapolis in the dead of night during a snowstorm because he feared Baltmore seize the team through eminent domain.
Indianapolis put cash on the barrelhead (the usual NFL currency) for Irsay by giving him a $12 million loan and promising him a $4 million training camp site along with a brand new stadium loaded with revenue generating gadgets. Irsay was happy in Indianapolis but when his son Jim took over, the Irsay gene that produced wanderlust in Bob hit Jim and the once lucrative Hoosier Dome lease was outdated and Irsay wanted a new stadium or was going to look outside of Indianapolis to get it.
Eventually Irsay got his wish, a new stadium funded by various taxes with Irsay throwing in $100 million of the estimated $720 million facility costs. To pay for the stadium, Marion County raised taxes on food and beverage sales, auto excise taxes, innkeeper's taxes and admission taxes. There was also an increase in food and beverage taxes in some surrounding counties and a tax hike the on Indiana's Colts license plates.
Irsay is not paying much rent and is keeping a large share of the new stadium’s generated revenues which he can do under federal law. Irsay is getting $6 million a year from Lucas Oil for naming rights and paying just $250,000 in annual rent. No wonder he can make Peyton Manning the highest paid player in the NFL. Meanwhile Indianapolis’s Capital Improvement Board cannot pay the anticipated operating costs of the new stadium. Jim Irsay who was in a hurry to get a new stadium has been rather slow in offering to help Indianapolis out of the money pit. He has a contract and a contract is a contract no matter what financial difficulties have befallen Indianapolis.
A Vince Lombardi Trophy is a nice piece of hardware but its worth is just $25,000 and that certainly is not enough to pay off any debt in Indianapolis or New Orleans that was incurred because those cities craved an NFL team.
evanjweiner@yahoo.com
Thursday, February 4, 2010
Who Dat Who is Protecting Dat Saints Logo?
http://www.examiner.com/examiner/x-3926-Business-of-Sports-Examiner~y2010m2d4-Who-Dat-who-is-protecting-Dat-Saints-logo
Who Dat Who is Protecting Dat Saints Logo?
By Evan Weiner
February 4, 2010
(New York, N. Y.) -- About 22 or 23 years ago, then Major League Baseball Commissioner Peter Ueberroth held court one spring day at the Helmsley Palace in midtown Manhattan. Ueberroth’s marketing department had just struck a multimillion dollar partnership agreement with a Japanese film company and Ueberroth was talking as we was waiting for everyone who was going to be involved in the formal announcement to arrive for the news conference.
Ueberroth posed a question and the answer to that question is the reason the National Football League decided to go after Who Dat t-shirts and other products with the words Who Dat accompanied by the New Orleans Saints fleur-de-lis logo within the last week.
Ueberroth asked a very simple question. What is the most valuable possession that a league or a franchise has? The answer was not players, coaches, managers, TV-radio contracts or fans. Ueberroth quickly answered the question.
It is the logo and Ueberroth added that a league or a franchise has to do everything in the league or franchise’s power to protect the logo.
Under Ueberroth, Major League Baseball became very protective of not only the then 26 active franchises logos but also logos of defunct businesses like the Brooklyn Dodgers.
Walter O’Malley took his Brooklyn Dodgers to Los Angeles after the 1957 season but that didn’t mean the Brooklyn Dodgers name or logo disappeared. More than three decades after the O’Malley move Major League Baseball was in court suing the owner of the Brooklyn Dodger Sports Bar and Restaurant over the name Brooklyn Dodger. Major League Baseball lost the suit after a Manhattan judge ruled that O’Malley gave up exclusive rights to the name when he moved the team to Los Angeles.
One of the more interesting things that was brought up in that trial which took place in 1993 was just how valuable Major League Baseball logos became starting with the Ueberroth’s tenure. In 1986, Ueberroth’s second year as Major League Baseball Commissioner, MLB took in about $200 million licensing various Major League Baseball and Major League Baseball team logos. In 1991, that number rose to $2 billion.
Ueberroth certainly knew his business. The Los Angeles Dodgers lost the case because no one bothered to trademark the Brooklyn Dodger name. Sports executives followed the case and likely vowed never to allow anything that could be trademarked to not be trademarked.
There are certain trademarks that were never registered. The American Basketball Association’s red, white and blue basketball is probably sports most prominent symbol that was not trademarked. The National Hockey League did not buy the World Hockey Association’s logo in the 1979 “expansion” which was absorption of four WHA teams. The NHL probably felt there was no real money in keeping those logos around.
The NFL went after New Orleans vendors who were selling Who Dat t-shirts and alike with the New Orleans Saints logo after New Orleans won the National Football Conference championship. The NFL absorbed a lot of criticism for going after the vendors but the league was well within it right to tell the vendors cease and desist.
The t-shirts had the Saints logo which is a fleur-de-lis.
The NFL cannot stop anyone from printing up a t-shirt which has the words Who Dat on it. Who Dat is an old expression which may have had roots in 19th century minstrel shows. There was a Who Dat skit in the Marx Brothers 1937 movie A Day at the Races and one the Warner Brothers censored 11 cartoons, the 1943 Tin Alley Cats, features a Fats Waller-type cat who answers a question using a variation of who dat, wid dat. (The Cartoon is widely available on the net in decent quality.) The NFL is not going to sue Time Warner, the owners of Tin Alley Cats or whoever now owns the MGM A Day at the Races release.
The Saints logo was the problem for the vendors not the Who Dat phrase. It would be the same problem in New York if someone put out a blue shirt or a green shirt with the word fuggeddabotit with a Giants or Jets logo. The logo makes the difference.
The NFL Who Dat issue reached the governor’s office in Baton Rouge forcing Governor Bobby Jindal to ask Louisiana Attorney General Buddy Caldwell to look into whether or not the NFL was looking to declare that they owned the Who Dat phrase. The NFL has no claims on the fleur-de-lis either except for the Saints logo
The vendors can sell the Who Dat shirts and other items as long as the Saints and NFL trademarks are not on them.
The fleur-de-lis has been around for centuries on various coats of arms for kings and other royalty. The NFL would also have to sue Quebec if they were serious about claiming the fleur-de-lis. The Quebec blue and white flag has a fleur-de-lis. The Quebec Nordiques hockey team had a fleur-de-lis symbol on the bottom of a players shurt during the team’s years in the National Hockey League. The New Orleans Saints’ fleur-de-lis logo is gold with black trim.
The fleur-de-lis is Louisiana’s state symbol since 2008. The state colors are blue, white and gold. The Saints official colors are black and gold. There are no official Who Dat colors.
The NFL was correct in protecting the Saints logo. You see that little piece of art connected to a team or a league is worth a lot of money.
evanjweiner@yahoo.com
Who Dat Who is Protecting Dat Saints Logo?
By Evan Weiner
February 4, 2010
(New York, N. Y.) -- About 22 or 23 years ago, then Major League Baseball Commissioner Peter Ueberroth held court one spring day at the Helmsley Palace in midtown Manhattan. Ueberroth’s marketing department had just struck a multimillion dollar partnership agreement with a Japanese film company and Ueberroth was talking as we was waiting for everyone who was going to be involved in the formal announcement to arrive for the news conference.
Ueberroth posed a question and the answer to that question is the reason the National Football League decided to go after Who Dat t-shirts and other products with the words Who Dat accompanied by the New Orleans Saints fleur-de-lis logo within the last week.
Ueberroth asked a very simple question. What is the most valuable possession that a league or a franchise has? The answer was not players, coaches, managers, TV-radio contracts or fans. Ueberroth quickly answered the question.
It is the logo and Ueberroth added that a league or a franchise has to do everything in the league or franchise’s power to protect the logo.
Under Ueberroth, Major League Baseball became very protective of not only the then 26 active franchises logos but also logos of defunct businesses like the Brooklyn Dodgers.
Walter O’Malley took his Brooklyn Dodgers to Los Angeles after the 1957 season but that didn’t mean the Brooklyn Dodgers name or logo disappeared. More than three decades after the O’Malley move Major League Baseball was in court suing the owner of the Brooklyn Dodger Sports Bar and Restaurant over the name Brooklyn Dodger. Major League Baseball lost the suit after a Manhattan judge ruled that O’Malley gave up exclusive rights to the name when he moved the team to Los Angeles.
One of the more interesting things that was brought up in that trial which took place in 1993 was just how valuable Major League Baseball logos became starting with the Ueberroth’s tenure. In 1986, Ueberroth’s second year as Major League Baseball Commissioner, MLB took in about $200 million licensing various Major League Baseball and Major League Baseball team logos. In 1991, that number rose to $2 billion.
Ueberroth certainly knew his business. The Los Angeles Dodgers lost the case because no one bothered to trademark the Brooklyn Dodger name. Sports executives followed the case and likely vowed never to allow anything that could be trademarked to not be trademarked.
There are certain trademarks that were never registered. The American Basketball Association’s red, white and blue basketball is probably sports most prominent symbol that was not trademarked. The National Hockey League did not buy the World Hockey Association’s logo in the 1979 “expansion” which was absorption of four WHA teams. The NHL probably felt there was no real money in keeping those logos around.
The NFL went after New Orleans vendors who were selling Who Dat t-shirts and alike with the New Orleans Saints logo after New Orleans won the National Football Conference championship. The NFL absorbed a lot of criticism for going after the vendors but the league was well within it right to tell the vendors cease and desist.
The t-shirts had the Saints logo which is a fleur-de-lis.
The NFL cannot stop anyone from printing up a t-shirt which has the words Who Dat on it. Who Dat is an old expression which may have had roots in 19th century minstrel shows. There was a Who Dat skit in the Marx Brothers 1937 movie A Day at the Races and one the Warner Brothers censored 11 cartoons, the 1943 Tin Alley Cats, features a Fats Waller-type cat who answers a question using a variation of who dat, wid dat. (The Cartoon is widely available on the net in decent quality.) The NFL is not going to sue Time Warner, the owners of Tin Alley Cats or whoever now owns the MGM A Day at the Races release.
The Saints logo was the problem for the vendors not the Who Dat phrase. It would be the same problem in New York if someone put out a blue shirt or a green shirt with the word fuggeddabotit with a Giants or Jets logo. The logo makes the difference.
The NFL Who Dat issue reached the governor’s office in Baton Rouge forcing Governor Bobby Jindal to ask Louisiana Attorney General Buddy Caldwell to look into whether or not the NFL was looking to declare that they owned the Who Dat phrase. The NFL has no claims on the fleur-de-lis either except for the Saints logo
The vendors can sell the Who Dat shirts and other items as long as the Saints and NFL trademarks are not on them.
The fleur-de-lis has been around for centuries on various coats of arms for kings and other royalty. The NFL would also have to sue Quebec if they were serious about claiming the fleur-de-lis. The Quebec blue and white flag has a fleur-de-lis. The Quebec Nordiques hockey team had a fleur-de-lis symbol on the bottom of a players shurt during the team’s years in the National Hockey League. The New Orleans Saints’ fleur-de-lis logo is gold with black trim.
The fleur-de-lis is Louisiana’s state symbol since 2008. The state colors are blue, white and gold. The Saints official colors are black and gold. There are no official Who Dat colors.
The NFL was correct in protecting the Saints logo. You see that little piece of art connected to a team or a league is worth a lot of money.
evanjweiner@yahoo.com
Wednesday, February 3, 2010
Is Super Bowl XLIV going to be Miami’s Super Bowl swan song?
http://dailycaller.com/2010/02/03/is-super-bowl-xliv-going-to-be-miami%e2%80%99s-super-bowl-swan-song/
Is Super Bowl XLIV going to be Miami’s Super Bowl swan song?
By Evan Weiner - The Daily Caller
The Miami area is the epicenter of the National Football League’s world until Monday, as the Pro Bowl has already taken place and the Super Bowl will be played at whatever company has paid for the naming rights at Joe Robbie Stadium. But will the Miami area remain a post-season NFL hub? Commissioner Roger Goodell has made clear that for Miami to remain in the Super Bowl rotation, significant upgrades need to be made to the stadium.
That is not good news for those in the Miami area who think that the Super Bowl is a massive economic boost for the host market. Goodell’s December announcement came about two years after some $250 million worth of improvements were made at what was called Dolphin Stadium. But the 22-year-old facility’s facelift was just a temporary fix, and the building still cannot compete with younger and more beautiful models in Arlington and Indianapolis, two stadiums that will host upcoming Super Bowls.
The old stadium has lighting problems and lower level seats are too far from the field. If there is a renovation, the stadium will get some sort of roof and other upgrades that would make it a Super Bowl contender again.
No one knows how much the upgrades will cost, but Dolphins ownership doesn’t seem too keen on paying for the improvements.
The February 7 Super Bowl will be the 10th time the Miami-area has hosted the big game, but there may not be an 11th unless Dolphins owner Stephen Ross, along with area business people and elected officials, knuckle under to Goodell’s (and NFL owners) wishes. Just ask business leaders in New Orleans, a former NFL Super Bowl favorite stop, Los Angeles and San Diego. The NFL dropped those cities from the Super Bowl rotation because the Louisiana Superdome, any Los Angeles area stadium and the San Diego facility were not up to state-of-the-art standards.
New Orleans hosted the big game nine times, the Los Angeles-area was a seven-time host and San Diego had the game three times. New Orleans got back in the rotation because of the massive renovations at the Superdome following Hurricane Katrina in 2005 and will host the big game in 2013.
Goodell’s warning has caught the attention of the Chairman of the South Florida Super Bowl Host Committee Rodney Barreto, who told local media that using public dollars “needs to be debated and needs to be on the table,” adding, “Given the economy, hosting Pro Bowls and Super Bowls are fantastic. These are big money generators for the community.”
At least Barreto isn’t using the hosting of the Super Bowl as a chance to promote Miami to corporate CEOs as a possible place to shift all or part of their business operations to the area. In the lead up to the 2005 game, Jacksonville, Florida civic leaders hoped that corporate leaders would fall in love and move businesses to the northern Florida city.
South Florida Super Bowl proponents claim the 2007 Miami area Super Bowl brought in $463 million. It is a figure that is hard to quantify and more than likely highly over-inflated.
Barreto’s statement is at odds with those of a good many economists, including Andrew Zimbalist of Smith College.
South Florida in January and December is loaded with tourists, as are other Super Bowl stops such as Tampa and Glendale, Arizona. Because of how many people flock annually to Miami for non-Super Bowl reasons, Barreto’s assertion that the Pro Bowl and Super Bowl are big money makers needs some serious scrutiny.
Barreto has forgotten or wants to ignore something called the economic displacement theory.
Miami perennially gets snowbirds seeking refuge from the cold, harsh winters of the Northeast and Midwest who rent hotel and motel rooms, use local restaurants, rent cars and spend money in the Miami vicinity. The snowbirds are reliable clients.
“The displacement theory applies particularly in Miami,” said Zimbalist, who is a world-class sports economic expert. “You have fisherperople, tennis and golfers participants, sun lovers and businesses who go to Florida. They are displaced by (those going to the Super Bowl). Academic economists have found very little affect on the economy. Hotel occupancy doesn’t go up. Hotel rates do go up, but they are not hiring more people and the extra money goes back to the home office as the money does not go back to the local community.”
Sports leagues often overstate an event’s economic impact and that seems especially true in the Miami area. The Super Bowl would more likely have an economic impact on places not usually thought of as tourist destinations in the winter months such as Detroit, Michigan and Minneapolis, Minnesota.
evanjweiner@yahoo.com
Is Super Bowl XLIV going to be Miami’s Super Bowl swan song?
By Evan Weiner - The Daily Caller
The Miami area is the epicenter of the National Football League’s world until Monday, as the Pro Bowl has already taken place and the Super Bowl will be played at whatever company has paid for the naming rights at Joe Robbie Stadium. But will the Miami area remain a post-season NFL hub? Commissioner Roger Goodell has made clear that for Miami to remain in the Super Bowl rotation, significant upgrades need to be made to the stadium.
That is not good news for those in the Miami area who think that the Super Bowl is a massive economic boost for the host market. Goodell’s December announcement came about two years after some $250 million worth of improvements were made at what was called Dolphin Stadium. But the 22-year-old facility’s facelift was just a temporary fix, and the building still cannot compete with younger and more beautiful models in Arlington and Indianapolis, two stadiums that will host upcoming Super Bowls.
The old stadium has lighting problems and lower level seats are too far from the field. If there is a renovation, the stadium will get some sort of roof and other upgrades that would make it a Super Bowl contender again.
No one knows how much the upgrades will cost, but Dolphins ownership doesn’t seem too keen on paying for the improvements.
The February 7 Super Bowl will be the 10th time the Miami-area has hosted the big game, but there may not be an 11th unless Dolphins owner Stephen Ross, along with area business people and elected officials, knuckle under to Goodell’s (and NFL owners) wishes. Just ask business leaders in New Orleans, a former NFL Super Bowl favorite stop, Los Angeles and San Diego. The NFL dropped those cities from the Super Bowl rotation because the Louisiana Superdome, any Los Angeles area stadium and the San Diego facility were not up to state-of-the-art standards.
New Orleans hosted the big game nine times, the Los Angeles-area was a seven-time host and San Diego had the game three times. New Orleans got back in the rotation because of the massive renovations at the Superdome following Hurricane Katrina in 2005 and will host the big game in 2013.
Goodell’s warning has caught the attention of the Chairman of the South Florida Super Bowl Host Committee Rodney Barreto, who told local media that using public dollars “needs to be debated and needs to be on the table,” adding, “Given the economy, hosting Pro Bowls and Super Bowls are fantastic. These are big money generators for the community.”
At least Barreto isn’t using the hosting of the Super Bowl as a chance to promote Miami to corporate CEOs as a possible place to shift all or part of their business operations to the area. In the lead up to the 2005 game, Jacksonville, Florida civic leaders hoped that corporate leaders would fall in love and move businesses to the northern Florida city.
South Florida Super Bowl proponents claim the 2007 Miami area Super Bowl brought in $463 million. It is a figure that is hard to quantify and more than likely highly over-inflated.
Barreto’s statement is at odds with those of a good many economists, including Andrew Zimbalist of Smith College.
South Florida in January and December is loaded with tourists, as are other Super Bowl stops such as Tampa and Glendale, Arizona. Because of how many people flock annually to Miami for non-Super Bowl reasons, Barreto’s assertion that the Pro Bowl and Super Bowl are big money makers needs some serious scrutiny.
Barreto has forgotten or wants to ignore something called the economic displacement theory.
Miami perennially gets snowbirds seeking refuge from the cold, harsh winters of the Northeast and Midwest who rent hotel and motel rooms, use local restaurants, rent cars and spend money in the Miami vicinity. The snowbirds are reliable clients.
“The displacement theory applies particularly in Miami,” said Zimbalist, who is a world-class sports economic expert. “You have fisherperople, tennis and golfers participants, sun lovers and businesses who go to Florida. They are displaced by (those going to the Super Bowl). Academic economists have found very little affect on the economy. Hotel occupancy doesn’t go up. Hotel rates do go up, but they are not hiring more people and the extra money goes back to the home office as the money does not go back to the local community.”
Sports leagues often overstate an event’s economic impact and that seems especially true in the Miami area. The Super Bowl would more likely have an economic impact on places not usually thought of as tourist destinations in the winter months such as Detroit, Michigan and Minneapolis, Minnesota.
evanjweiner@yahoo.com
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