Baseball Hall of Fame is incomplete without Curt Flood and Marvin Miller
Thursday, 21 July 2011 16:49
http://www.newjerseynewsroom.com/professional/baseball-hall-of-fame-is-incomplete-without-curt-flood-and-marvin-miller
BY EVAN WEINER
NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM
THE BUSINESS AND POLITICS OF SPORTS
There will be a few new plaques hanging in the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York as of this weekend but the baseball equivalent of the Smithsonian really is not a complete museum. Unlike the basketball shrine in Springfield, Massachusetts (which included Larry Fleischer who was the first Executive Director of the National Basketball Players Association as a builder) and the hockey Valhalla in Toronto, Ontario (a museum which inducted Alan Eagleson who founded the National Hockey League Players Association until he was booted for illegal activities), the Cooperstown museum has no room for perceived enemies of baseball like Marvin Miller, the founder of the Major League Baseball Players Association or Curt Flood who challenged baseball's reserve clause. Miller and Flood were major contributors to the game but perhaps they did it in a negative way. Cooperstown does honor two-bit baseball scribes for their contributions for providing baseball propaganda and inducts them into a special wing very year.
Miller just missed being elected into the Cooperstown shrine this year. Apparently there are still resentments from certain segments of baseball that linger. Flood has never been considered a serious candidate for an inclusion as a player.
Roberto Alomar and Bert Blyleven were voted into the Hall of Fame by baseball's ultimate sycophants--the Baseball Writers of America- last winter. Pat Gillick, a former General Manager whose stops included a stint with the Philadelphia Phillies was voted in by the veteran's committee. This year's winner of the writer's award goes to Bill Conlin who worked in Philadelphia. Roland Hemond got the Buck O'Neill lifetime achievement award and one time Montreal Expos and Florida Marlins announcer Dave Van Horne gets the announcers award.
Flood challenged the reserve clause which used to literally bind players in perpetuity to a club until the player was deemed by a general manager to be unnecessary.
"Evan, I am so pleased you said that,' was Curt Flood's response to a question back in the early 1990s when asked about the baseball fan's joy of the winter meetings--which is a meat market for baseball teams who trade human beings for others in the hopes that the teams will improve and yet forget that they trade a human being.” You know you kind of have that feeling many many times that at this huge conference table, these wonderful men sit in front of all these contracts and like cards they deal them out, you know.
"You want a shortstop, you want a shortstop, here's a shortstop and unfortunately every time you move a piece of paper and I want you to think about it now. Every time you move one piece of paper from this seat in front of someone else, Mrs. Flood has to find a new school, a new apartment, a new set of friends. Mrs. Flood has to find a new neighborhood. Enormous things happen when you move one player from one town to another when you trade or sell him.
"Sometimes the owners lose sight of that."
Curt Flood was a really good baseball player who began his career in 1956 with the Cincinnati Redlegs (the franchise owners for some reason lengthened the name from the Reds to Redlegs in the 1950s partially in response to America's "anti-Red", anti-communist mood with the Reds name removed from the logo. The name Reds would return in the 1960s). He played some games with Cincinnati and was traded during the December 1957 winter meetings to St. Louis.
Flood spent 12 years in St. Louis and was dealt on October 7, 1969 to Philadelphia along with Tim McCarver, Byron Browne and Joe Horner for Dick Allen, Cookie Rojas and Jerry Johnson. It was on October 7, 1969 that life would not only change for Flood and the other players involved in the deal but the baseball industry as a whole.
Flood refused to report to Philadelphia for a variety of reasons.
"I think it was a decision that came over many, many years of subtle abuses that people under contract have to live with," he explained. "It seems that when a handful of men own the industry, advantages are taking of the employees that under no other circumstances would you sit still for. That was true in baseball before we had the chance to really seriously negotiate the rest of our lives and I guess over the years and over a period of time where I saw men being traded while they drove to the ballpark and they heard on the radio that they no longer worked for the team that they were going to get ready to go suit up for, they were traded in between doubleheaders, they were traded or sold for one reason or another, after enduring that with a lot of my friends, I'd often wonder what the heck would happen if it even happened to me.
"And in 1969 that happened and after great successes in St. Louis, one of the, I can't call them underling, but it certainly wasn't Mr. (Gussie) Busch, the owner, called me on the phone one morning and said hi Curt, you know you have been traded. You know, that was probably the most important conversation in my lifetime and sure as check, the next day, a messenger delivered an envelope with an index sized card in it and it said 'Dear" and someone types your name in, you have been and there are five possibilities. You might not know that. You could have been sold, traded, optioned or whatever, outright, right and traded was checked.
"In the 13 years in St. Louis, I don't know. I think on top of all of the other situations that I saw happen over my career span that had to be the last kick in the pants that baseball wanted to give me."
Flood was a very good player and had won seven Gold Gloves as the best centerfielder in the National League between 1963 and 1969. He hit .300 or better six times and set defensive records for a centerfielder. He was part of two St. Louis Cardinals World Series championships and was co-captain of the team. But his relationship with Busch and the Cardinals had fallen apart by 1969. One reason? He asked for $100,000 which in those days was given to just a few players like Willie Mays, Mickey Mantle and Flood’s one time Cardinals teammate Stan Musial.
"I guess a week went by before you say to yourself, this is not a joke, this is serious. You no longer work here. And I guess about a week and I talked to Alan Zerman, who was my attorney then in St. Louis. He said Curt, you know baseball has been doing this to men for 200 years and you are just part of the machinery and there is very little you can do about it. You can challenge this if you want to and it started to germinate then that something illegal had been done to me.
"Something almost inhumane had been done to me. It kind of snowballed from there."
Curt Flood never did report to Philadelphia and filed a lawsuit against Major League Baseball Commissioner Bowie Kuhn in January 1970 contending that Major League Baseball had committed an antitrust violation. Flood made $90,000 in 1969 and gave up a $100,000 deal to play for the Phillies in 1970. Instead Flood became immersed in learning about the Sherman Antitrust Act and baseball's history with the legal system. Marvin Miller and the Major League Baseball Players Association picked up Flood's legal bills.
"I learned a lot about the law system," Flood said. "And how it operates. I guess not playing that one year, it is necessary to be damaged in that one year and that would have done that. As I thought about it later on, I wished I had not played that one year in 1971 (with the Washington Senators) and the only thing that made me do it was (manager) Ted Williams, I love him. He was going to manage in Washington and he called me. I was in Denmark and he called up and said can I come up and see you. I thought he was down in the lobby. He said no I am in Washington. He said I will meet you halfway. So him (Senators owner Robert Short), they were both on the phone together and he said, no, no, I am not in the lobby. First of all, Robert Short said I got some guys on this team, I don't know if they can play baseball or not but I know you can and I will send you a contract, you sign it and you fill it in. Hohohoho, now you are talking.
"I said Mr. Short, you know the situation, you know the problems we are having with the reserve clause, all this thing is being litigated now in New York. He said they talked to Arthur Goldberg who then was my attorney, Justice Goldberg said that whatever decision the Supreme Court had made it, it already decided and there is nothing you can do short of jumping off a building, unquote, that would change their mind. So I did, I called Justice Goldberg and Marvin Miller and they said if you want to play again, I don't think there is anything you can do to hurt your case.
"How many times can you turn down $150,000 a year?
"Once there may I tell you.
"So they gave me the opportunity to play again and I wasn't going to turn that down. I'm a nice guy; I think I deserved to play for the Senators."
But Flood was busy litigating in 1970 and the baseball inactivity took its toll on the then 33-year old Flood in 1971. He retired after just 13 games with Washington.
"Seventy was like a long winter. You were always expect that at any moment you were going to go back to (the St. Louis Cardinals spring training site) St. Petersburg (Florida) and start what you really do for a living. After a while all of this kind of settles in and your mind accepts that you are no longer a baseball player," he recalled. "But I spent most of 1970 in Denmark, in Copenhagen, in a little place called Vivek where these wonderful nice Danish people would say what do you do for a living? I'm a baseball player. They would say no no no what do you do? I’m a baseball player.
"How do you feed your family?' he laughed.”They know so little about baseball that you could travel in circles where you could have complete anonymity which delighted me. So, it was not easy.
"It was getting over, cold turkey, something you have done every year for almost 15 years. It wasn't easy. 1970 was not an easy year."
Ultimately the Supreme Court of the United States ruled against Flood and his challenge of Baseball's reserve clause. Baseball had won again in the Supreme Court. In 1922, the National and the American Leagues got a favorable ruling in a lawsuit filed by the owners of the Baltimore team in the Federal League which provided the leagues with protection from the country's antitrust laws.
"I was flabbergasted because I am an American and I thought like an American and I thought that everyone could see that baseball players were getting the short end of a very short stick," Flood said more than two decades after the decision.
"However I was trying to explain this to men who would give their first born child to wear this uniform for a minute. Just let me touch it, you know, for me to tell them in this culture look at you how you too would have loved to have worn that uniform for me to say there is something wrong in baseball is like defiling the flag.
"The Supreme Court, I guess they felt the same way that being a baseball player is the best of all worlds and I ought to sit down someplace and shut up. The Supreme Court did not say that, they said they were going to leave this decision to someone else."
That someone else would be an arbitrator named Peter Seitz who ruled against baseball's reserve clause in 1975 after two pitchers, Andy Messersmith and Dave McNally, played without contracts that season. Both became free agents following the 1975 season and were free to pursue contracts with other teams in 1976.
"I was disappointed (in the Supreme Court decision), I really was," Flood said. "When you look at the issue and the issue is this. Should a man be able to work wherever he wants to? Everyone is shaking their heads yes except if you are a baseball player. If you are a baseball player you have all those fans there who love you. You ought to stay in St. Louis until the owner wants to trade you.
"So I was caught up in the fact that this is America and this is probably the greatest country in the world and you can work in quotes any place you want to with the exception at that time in baseball. Now it's come around (early 1990s) where players are starting to make a fair share of the revenue being made in baseball and that delights me. The press seems to think I had a little to do with it and that pleases me."
Six year minor league players can today opted out of major league organizations and seek a chance elsewhere. Six year major league players can become free agents. Flood was the first player to challenge the reserve clause and before his death in 1997 he talked about whether players like him and Jim Bouton (whose book Ball Four made him the bane of baseball and Commissioner Bowie Kuhn's existence) were still lepers in the baseball community.
"No, no no. Well, you see there is a whole new ownership now but they still feel the pinch of the first and 15th (paydays) that may resent me a little. Many of the things I learned in first few days, when you said what was the first week like, in the first week I learned this," Flood explained. "That you will never be a manager (there was no African-American managers in Major League Baseball's modern history through 1969), you will never be in the Hall of Fame and you probably never play baseball again. There are three important points you have to know if you go through with this lawsuit against baseball and now in retrospect those things have never happened. And for me to say that is the reason why would be to get into the heads of ownership which I cannot do."
Flood did say back in the 1990s he was welcomed back to St. Louis. ”One of my teammates (Dal Maxvill) is the General Manager, one of my teammates (Joe Torre) is the manager and many of my greatest friends in the world that I made over 13 years that I was in St. Louis are in some position with the Cardinals there. Joe Cunningham is still with the Cardinals, Ted Savage is still with the Cardinals so of course I am welcomed there," he said.
Curt Flood was never really embraced by baseball. He was hired by another Bowie Kuhn enemy, Oakland A's owner Charles Finley, to work on Athletics radio in 1978 and was the Commissioner of the short-lived Senior Professional Baseball Association, an entity that lasted two years. Flood became involved with the United Baseball League, an idea that never got beyond the let's do it stage after Rupert Murdoch's FOX Sports merged with Liberty Media. Murdoch had a deal with Major League Baseball at the time.
Flood's lawsuit was filed more than 40 years ago and changed the game. In the 1960s athletes were in some cases activists. Billie Jean King has been marginalized in the 21st century but she fought for equal pay and equal educational opportunities for women in an effort to break the college quota system. The Title IX legislation signed into law by President Richard M. Nixon in 1972 was not a sports act rather an education law which gave women equal access to classes and majors in colleges and universities accepting federal funding. Muhammad Ali stuck to his principles in refusing to go into the armed forces in 1967. John Carlos and Tommie Smith staged a black power protest on the podium at the 1968 Mexico City Olympics which drew the ire of International Olympic Committee head Avery Brundage. All of those athletes were vilified in one way or another in those days. Flood has not been recognized by Cooperstown but his legacy is lasting.
The Curt Flood Act of 1998, signed into law by President Bill Clinton gives baseball players the same rights under American antitrust laws that basketball, football, hockey and soccer players enjoy.
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 bickley.com, Barnes and Noble or amazonkindle.
Friday, July 22, 2011
Monday, July 18, 2011
Rupert Murdoch's News Corp scandal could mean trouble for U.S. sports partners
Monday, 18 July 2011 11:33
http://www.newjerseynewsroom.com/professional/rupert-murdochs-news-corp-scandal-could-mean-trouble-for-us-sports-partners
BY EVAN WEINER
NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM
THE BUSINESS AND POLITICS OF SPORTS
The National Football League lockout may be winding down but NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell, the 31 franchise owners and the Green Bay Packers Board of Directors may be facing a much bigger problem in the very near future if Rupert Murdoch's media business problems in England spread across the Atlantic and hit News Corp properties in the United States.
Murdoch has taken a financial hit which has forced him to buy back a significant share of his company's stock. In the case of the National Football League and Major League Baseball, he doesn't have cable subscriber fees to help pay off the licensing fees to show games on over-the-air television. His cable TV properties have no such problems in that most of the ones that pay huge rights fees to teams are on the basic expanded tier which means all of the people who get basic expanded are paying for what a few watch. It is cable TV socialism that makes Rupert Murdoch's business work, a cable TV socialism bill in the form of a 1984 piece of Congressional legislation signed into law by President Ronald Reagan allows the bundling of cable channels to be sold as one to consumers.
The 1984 cable television legislation seems to be at complete odds with the free market principles espoused by Murdoch's news and financial channels but Murdoch is all about money, not ideology.
In 1993, Murdoch gave the NFL a huge amount of money after his company won bidding rights for National Football Conference telecasts and the marriage seems to have been a happy one for both sides. So much so that Murdoch agreed to help underwrite the 2011 NFL Lockout and provide the owners with money (along with General Electric's NBC, the Walt Disney Company's ESPN, Sumner Redstone's CBS and DirecTV) to get along if there was no 2011 NFL season.
That seems like gratitude but the NFL made that demand of over-the-air, cable and satellite TV networks in the last television negotiations and got the five TV partners to agree to their demands.
Back in 1993, the NFL got billions and Rupert Murdoch was able to get his FOX over-the-air television network (although technically FOX is a syndication arm) off the ground. The NFL gave Murdoch and FOX credibility and once Murdoch got that street cred, he was able to work on other United States projects including the launch of the FOX News Channel.
There has never been any hint of impropriety in Murdoch's sports businesses whether it was with over-the-air network contracts with the National Football League, National Hockey League, Major League Baseball, NASCAR and other properties including the Bowl Championship Series or his relatively brief ownership of the Los Angeles Dodgers at the turn of the century.
(Murdoch's FOX Los Angeles regional cable sports network recently worked a deal with embattled Dodgers owner Frank McCourt, some of the money would come out of subscribers' pockets would have gone to help pay the divorce settlement between Frank McCourt and his soon to be former wife Jamie. The deal was stopped by Selig but someone will eventually get big money for Dodgers TV rights from someone whether that someone is Murdoch or some other Los Angeles cable TV entity)
But make no mistake, Rupert Murdoch and News Corp is heavily invested in American sports and given his seemingly significant problems in London that include the folding of the News of the World newspaper, numerous arrests of News International employees, the resignation of the top cop at Scotland Yard in conjunction phone hacking scandal that is engulfing Murdoch's empire that could be a problem for Goodell, Major League Baseball Commissioner Bud Selig and others.
Do sports leagues want to be associated anymore with Murdoch and what happens if there are complaints about Murdoch's suitability to own TV stations in the United States? What happens to the rights deals that Murdoch's people have worked out with sports leagues and teams?
That may be an issue facing Goodell, Selig and others down the road depending on just how large the News of the World and other Murdoch properties in the UK, US and Australia scandal become. Murdoch has shut down the paper and has seen one of his closest associates arrested. That is not good on the resume for TV station license renewals.
Before the NFL, Murdoch's FOX network was a weak collection of UHF stations with the exception of a few cities like New York, Washington, and Los Angeles. Before the NFL, FOX had a few shows that drew some attention, the It's Gary Shandling's Show, the Tracy Ullman Show and Married With Children. Out of the Ullman show came The Simpsons, Shandling's show originally ran on Showtime and then went to FOX. Ullman's show was canceled in 1990. FOX could not establish a late night talk show, the Joan Rivers experiment was a disaster and a 1993 Chevy Chase late night show as a bomb. Not much worked for Murdoch.
Neither Al Bundy nor Bart Simpson, as popular as the characters would become, could bolster FOX. Murdoch's team was buying TV stations and became the biggest owner of over-the-air stations in the United States but by 1993, it was still the fourth network in a three horse race for ratings behind CBS, NBC and ABC.
The NFL changed all of that. Actually, it was Jerry Jones, the owner of the Dallas Cowboys that put Murdoch on the map as Jones and Murdoch negotiated the TV deal that would change everything. The NFL had been prospering from TV rights fees since the 1961 Sports Broadcast Act which allowed the league commissioner, who is also the league's chief negotiator and lobbyist in all things NFL, to bundle the 14 member franchises into one entity in order to negotiate a TV deal. Three decades later, the NFL was a 30 franchise entity with four separate and distinct elements. CBS had the National Football Conference contests and paid slightly more money for the NFC than NBC did for American Football Conference games because the NFC had more major markets. ABC had Monday Night Football and ESPN and Turner Sports split a Sunday night package.
The NFL was being paid $3.6 million over a four year period between 1990 and 1993.
Murdoch's fourth place network was desperate for a game changer and the NFL provided him with an opening. The NFL and Jones were knocked over by Murdoch's bid for the NFC games. Murdoch was willing to fork over $1.58 billion over four years to get the NFC package along with the Super Bowl. Murdoch had a syndication arm but no news division, no sports division, none of the apparatus that CBS, ABC and NBC had. Murdoch knew that the NFL deals with an old philosophy, cash on the barrel head gets serious consideration and because he blew CBS out of the water with his bid, the NFL and Jones knew they would be getting a new partner with a patchwork of big city VHF and small area UHF stations and both sides would have to make it work.
In December 1993, The NFL took the money. In retrospect, it was the right decision but at the time it looked like just a money grab.
In early 1994, Murdoch started to prepare for the 1994 season by quickly established a sports department by giving John Madden an enormous contact and hiring his sidekick Pat Summerall. Murdoch also took Madden's CBS support team and made John feel right at home. Madden would become the face of FOX sports and with the NFL in tow, Murdoch was able to steal VHF stations in Detroit and Milwaukee away from CBS. Murdoch had one of TV's crown jewels, the NFL, and FOX would now be in a position to become a serious player in American TV.
It can be suggested that the success of the NFL and Madden on FOX led to Murdoch to start the FOX News Channel. The over-the-air network, still technically a syndication arm, started producing hits like the X-Files along with Beverly Hills 90210, Melrose Place, In Living Color to go along with The Simpsons and Married With Children. Murdoch didn't have blockbuster ratings but the network was doing okay business and he already had a satellite news network in Europe, Murdoch turned to creating a United States cable TV news channel.
There are no what if questions. The NFL changed the fortunes of both Murdoch and Lawrence Tisch's CBS. In 1993, CBS completed the TV hat trick; it won daytime, prime time and late night ratings. David Letterman had just moved over to the network and things were looking good. But Tisch's CBS did not invest in cable TV, lost the NFL and Madden, football's top star both on and off the field, lost affiliates and would start a downward spiral. Murdoch's FOX Sports added the National Hockey League and Major League Baseball soon after the NFL deal. Eventually Murdoch would gain NASCAR and the Bowl Championship Series. On the cable TV side, Murdoch's regional sports cable networks are still strong despite being challenged by upstarts in the past few years. FOX either owns or has agreements with 24 regionals. There is also a partnership with The Big Ten Network and another with the Pac12 conference.
Murdoch's Fox Soccer Channel has the UEFA Champions League, Premier League, and Serie A among other competitions. Fox Soccer Plus has soccer and rugby programming from around the world. Murdoch's Speed Channel provides NASCAR and F-1 coverage,
Murdoch's Fuel TV presents action sports such as skateboarding, surfing, snowboarding, BMX and FMX.
Murdoch's Fox Deportes provides Spanish-language coverage of UEFA Champions League, Premiere League, and Serie A as well as Beach Soccer and the F.A. Cup. It also presents the Spanish-language Major League Baseball Game of the Week, the All Star Game, and the World Series, as well as division and league playoffs. Fox Deportes probably would not play well with FOX News Channel viewers but Murdoch doesn't really have an ideology except identifying an audience to exploit to make money. FOX Deportes is aimed at Spanish speakers in the United States, some illegal aliens more than likely, not at FOX News Channel watchers.
That's Murdoch.
Rupert Murdoch built over-the-air viable network thanks to throwing money at the NFL, he had built a strong regional sports cable network, he had his news channel and became an American citizen because non American citizens could not own TV networks. Murdoch, the Australian, should not have owned FOX but American President Bill Clinton's Federal Communication Commission in 1995 allowed Murdoch to run FOX because it was "in the best interest of the public."
Murdoch has invested billions in American sports. So far the leagues and teams have said nothing about the events in London. FOX Sports has been above board according to those in the know but league and team operators have to be keeping a close eye on what is going on with the News of the World unraveling because it could have a real impact on their businesses.
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 bickley.com, Barnes and Noble or amazonkindle.
Monday, 18 July 2011 11:33
http://www.newjerseynewsroom.com/professional/rupert-murdochs-news-corp-scandal-could-mean-trouble-for-us-sports-partners
BY EVAN WEINER
NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM
THE BUSINESS AND POLITICS OF SPORTS
The National Football League lockout may be winding down but NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell, the 31 franchise owners and the Green Bay Packers Board of Directors may be facing a much bigger problem in the very near future if Rupert Murdoch's media business problems in England spread across the Atlantic and hit News Corp properties in the United States.
Murdoch has taken a financial hit which has forced him to buy back a significant share of his company's stock. In the case of the National Football League and Major League Baseball, he doesn't have cable subscriber fees to help pay off the licensing fees to show games on over-the-air television. His cable TV properties have no such problems in that most of the ones that pay huge rights fees to teams are on the basic expanded tier which means all of the people who get basic expanded are paying for what a few watch. It is cable TV socialism that makes Rupert Murdoch's business work, a cable TV socialism bill in the form of a 1984 piece of Congressional legislation signed into law by President Ronald Reagan allows the bundling of cable channels to be sold as one to consumers.
The 1984 cable television legislation seems to be at complete odds with the free market principles espoused by Murdoch's news and financial channels but Murdoch is all about money, not ideology.
In 1993, Murdoch gave the NFL a huge amount of money after his company won bidding rights for National Football Conference telecasts and the marriage seems to have been a happy one for both sides. So much so that Murdoch agreed to help underwrite the 2011 NFL Lockout and provide the owners with money (along with General Electric's NBC, the Walt Disney Company's ESPN, Sumner Redstone's CBS and DirecTV) to get along if there was no 2011 NFL season.
That seems like gratitude but the NFL made that demand of over-the-air, cable and satellite TV networks in the last television negotiations and got the five TV partners to agree to their demands.
Back in 1993, the NFL got billions and Rupert Murdoch was able to get his FOX over-the-air television network (although technically FOX is a syndication arm) off the ground. The NFL gave Murdoch and FOX credibility and once Murdoch got that street cred, he was able to work on other United States projects including the launch of the FOX News Channel.
There has never been any hint of impropriety in Murdoch's sports businesses whether it was with over-the-air network contracts with the National Football League, National Hockey League, Major League Baseball, NASCAR and other properties including the Bowl Championship Series or his relatively brief ownership of the Los Angeles Dodgers at the turn of the century.
(Murdoch's FOX Los Angeles regional cable sports network recently worked a deal with embattled Dodgers owner Frank McCourt, some of the money would come out of subscribers' pockets would have gone to help pay the divorce settlement between Frank McCourt and his soon to be former wife Jamie. The deal was stopped by Selig but someone will eventually get big money for Dodgers TV rights from someone whether that someone is Murdoch or some other Los Angeles cable TV entity)
But make no mistake, Rupert Murdoch and News Corp is heavily invested in American sports and given his seemingly significant problems in London that include the folding of the News of the World newspaper, numerous arrests of News International employees, the resignation of the top cop at Scotland Yard in conjunction phone hacking scandal that is engulfing Murdoch's empire that could be a problem for Goodell, Major League Baseball Commissioner Bud Selig and others.
Do sports leagues want to be associated anymore with Murdoch and what happens if there are complaints about Murdoch's suitability to own TV stations in the United States? What happens to the rights deals that Murdoch's people have worked out with sports leagues and teams?
That may be an issue facing Goodell, Selig and others down the road depending on just how large the News of the World and other Murdoch properties in the UK, US and Australia scandal become. Murdoch has shut down the paper and has seen one of his closest associates arrested. That is not good on the resume for TV station license renewals.
Before the NFL, Murdoch's FOX network was a weak collection of UHF stations with the exception of a few cities like New York, Washington, and Los Angeles. Before the NFL, FOX had a few shows that drew some attention, the It's Gary Shandling's Show, the Tracy Ullman Show and Married With Children. Out of the Ullman show came The Simpsons, Shandling's show originally ran on Showtime and then went to FOX. Ullman's show was canceled in 1990. FOX could not establish a late night talk show, the Joan Rivers experiment was a disaster and a 1993 Chevy Chase late night show as a bomb. Not much worked for Murdoch.
Neither Al Bundy nor Bart Simpson, as popular as the characters would become, could bolster FOX. Murdoch's team was buying TV stations and became the biggest owner of over-the-air stations in the United States but by 1993, it was still the fourth network in a three horse race for ratings behind CBS, NBC and ABC.
The NFL changed all of that. Actually, it was Jerry Jones, the owner of the Dallas Cowboys that put Murdoch on the map as Jones and Murdoch negotiated the TV deal that would change everything. The NFL had been prospering from TV rights fees since the 1961 Sports Broadcast Act which allowed the league commissioner, who is also the league's chief negotiator and lobbyist in all things NFL, to bundle the 14 member franchises into one entity in order to negotiate a TV deal. Three decades later, the NFL was a 30 franchise entity with four separate and distinct elements. CBS had the National Football Conference contests and paid slightly more money for the NFC than NBC did for American Football Conference games because the NFC had more major markets. ABC had Monday Night Football and ESPN and Turner Sports split a Sunday night package.
The NFL was being paid $3.6 million over a four year period between 1990 and 1993.
Murdoch's fourth place network was desperate for a game changer and the NFL provided him with an opening. The NFL and Jones were knocked over by Murdoch's bid for the NFC games. Murdoch was willing to fork over $1.58 billion over four years to get the NFC package along with the Super Bowl. Murdoch had a syndication arm but no news division, no sports division, none of the apparatus that CBS, ABC and NBC had. Murdoch knew that the NFL deals with an old philosophy, cash on the barrel head gets serious consideration and because he blew CBS out of the water with his bid, the NFL and Jones knew they would be getting a new partner with a patchwork of big city VHF and small area UHF stations and both sides would have to make it work.
In December 1993, The NFL took the money. In retrospect, it was the right decision but at the time it looked like just a money grab.
In early 1994, Murdoch started to prepare for the 1994 season by quickly established a sports department by giving John Madden an enormous contact and hiring his sidekick Pat Summerall. Murdoch also took Madden's CBS support team and made John feel right at home. Madden would become the face of FOX sports and with the NFL in tow, Murdoch was able to steal VHF stations in Detroit and Milwaukee away from CBS. Murdoch had one of TV's crown jewels, the NFL, and FOX would now be in a position to become a serious player in American TV.
It can be suggested that the success of the NFL and Madden on FOX led to Murdoch to start the FOX News Channel. The over-the-air network, still technically a syndication arm, started producing hits like the X-Files along with Beverly Hills 90210, Melrose Place, In Living Color to go along with The Simpsons and Married With Children. Murdoch didn't have blockbuster ratings but the network was doing okay business and he already had a satellite news network in Europe, Murdoch turned to creating a United States cable TV news channel.
There are no what if questions. The NFL changed the fortunes of both Murdoch and Lawrence Tisch's CBS. In 1993, CBS completed the TV hat trick; it won daytime, prime time and late night ratings. David Letterman had just moved over to the network and things were looking good. But Tisch's CBS did not invest in cable TV, lost the NFL and Madden, football's top star both on and off the field, lost affiliates and would start a downward spiral. Murdoch's FOX Sports added the National Hockey League and Major League Baseball soon after the NFL deal. Eventually Murdoch would gain NASCAR and the Bowl Championship Series. On the cable TV side, Murdoch's regional sports cable networks are still strong despite being challenged by upstarts in the past few years. FOX either owns or has agreements with 24 regionals. There is also a partnership with The Big Ten Network and another with the Pac12 conference.
Murdoch's Fox Soccer Channel has the UEFA Champions League, Premier League, and Serie A among other competitions. Fox Soccer Plus has soccer and rugby programming from around the world. Murdoch's Speed Channel provides NASCAR and F-1 coverage,
Murdoch's Fuel TV presents action sports such as skateboarding, surfing, snowboarding, BMX and FMX.
Murdoch's Fox Deportes provides Spanish-language coverage of UEFA Champions League, Premiere League, and Serie A as well as Beach Soccer and the F.A. Cup. It also presents the Spanish-language Major League Baseball Game of the Week, the All Star Game, and the World Series, as well as division and league playoffs. Fox Deportes probably would not play well with FOX News Channel viewers but Murdoch doesn't really have an ideology except identifying an audience to exploit to make money. FOX Deportes is aimed at Spanish speakers in the United States, some illegal aliens more than likely, not at FOX News Channel watchers.
That's Murdoch.
Rupert Murdoch built over-the-air viable network thanks to throwing money at the NFL, he had built a strong regional sports cable network, he had his news channel and became an American citizen because non American citizens could not own TV networks. Murdoch, the Australian, should not have owned FOX but American President Bill Clinton's Federal Communication Commission in 1995 allowed Murdoch to run FOX because it was "in the best interest of the public."
Murdoch has invested billions in American sports. So far the leagues and teams have said nothing about the events in London. FOX Sports has been above board according to those in the know but league and team operators have to be keeping a close eye on what is going on with the News of the World unraveling because it could have a real impact on their businesses.
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 bickley.com, Barnes and Noble or amazonkindle.
Wednesday, July 13, 2011
Deron Williams revives NBA players' interest in Europe
WEDNESDAY, 13 JULY 2011 10:23
http://www.newjerseynewsroom.com/professional/deron-williams-revives-nba-players-interest-in-europe
BY EVAN WEINER
NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM
THE BUSINESS AND POLITICS OF SPORTS
It has been 36 years since high school, college, and the NBA had a legitimate choice when it came to where they wanted to play professional basketball. In 1975, a high school player could go to college or into the American Basketball Association. A college player could leave school early and have either the NBA or the ABA offer him a huge — by 1975 standards — pro contract. And NBA players could jump over to the ABA, and vice versa. Since the NBA's absorption of four ABA teams in 1976, players have been limited in their location choices.
The NBA lockout wants to tighten player movement in free agency and bring down salaries and owners expenses. But the locked players may be looking elsewhere to work if you believe Deron Williams. The New Jersey Nets player is thinking of playing professional ball in Turkey if the National Basketball Association lockout lasts an extended time. But Williams is not the first player in recent time who is considering European basketball.
In 2008, just before the global financial meltdown, some players such as Ben Gordon, who was a restricted free agent, suddenly thought they had a European option. Gordon, the first rookie ever to win the NBA's Sixth Man of the Year Award in 2004-05, considered leaving the NBA for Europe if the circumstances were right.
Gordon ultimately signed a five year contract with Detroit in 2009 foregoing Europe. But the NBA has locked out the players and the hostility between the two sides is evident on individual team websites. Current players have vanished from team sites and are apparently free to play in any other league in the world. It seems that the players are free to go elsewhere like National Hockey League players did in 2004 when NHL owners shut the doors on the players.
"What has been happening this year (2008), especially with the free agents, you are starting to see guys who are using overseas as another option," Gordon said in an interview. "To me, personally, I think it is a beautiful thing that people from all over the world and players from all over the world have a chance to play in the NBA, and players over here a chance to play in Europe.
"When you get a guy like Kobe Bryant mentioning or considering playing overseas, if everything was right, I think it totally changes the whole landscape of basketball."
In 2008, nine NBA players have decided that the league isn't the end-all for them, and have signed with European, Russian, and Israeli teams. No big names crossed the Atlantic but Bryant sent out a message that once he was done with his Lakers contract after the 2009 campaign he thought Italy could be calling him. LeBron James said at that time that he might be open to a European team offer when his deal with the Cleveland Cavaliers ends in 2010. Dwyane Wade's deal with Miami also ended in 2010. In the NBA, there is a salary cap that limits how much money Bryant, James, or Wade can be paid. There is no salary cap in Europe.
None of the three players left the NBA.
"I know, growing up, my dream was to play in the NBA, hands down. It wasn't about the money," Gordon said. "Once you get to the NBA, things begin to change, it becomes more of a business. When you hear players as big as the Kobes and LeBrons talking about the possibility of playing overseas, it [shows it] is more of a business now. They are just not basketball players — now they are businessmen, so they have to think from a different aspect."
James and Bryant are corporations and brand names, and that could have played into the final decision on where they want to play. What if James's shoe partner, Nike, wanted to make him a bigger brand name in Europe and whispers in his ear that it makes sense for him to play in Barcelona or Athens. Because of the partners and the strength of the euro against the American dollar it was conceivable that James could have played in Europe. And Bryant might have ended up owning a team in Italy.
Nothing happened after 2008 but with the NBA out of business it could be a different story. Big name Americans may jump across the pond.
The commissioner of the NBA, David Stern, has spent the better part of the last 10 years promoting European expansion. Originally, Stern envisioned an NBA European league by 2010. Europe is lagging in building NBA state-of-the-art facilities, but more are coming online. London is ready, Berlin has an NBA-style arena opening and Rome may soon follow suit. The other European problem is whether or not local companies will want to pay the price for NBA tickets, and if local cable and satellite TV networks would want to pay a heavy price for the rights to NBA games.
The players who left the NBA in 2008 (the last major migration of NBA players to Europe), for the most part, were Europeans returning home, with the exceptions of Josh Childress, who left the Atlanta Hawks to sign a more lucrative deal with Olympicos in Greece's basketball league, and Carlos Arroyo, who will play with Maccabi Tel Aviv in Israel. Arroyo got a deal that was better than what he would have received with his former team, the Orlando Magic.
The NBA doesn't seem too concerned that Childress or the others have left, and the league has adopted the position that the best players in the world will want to play in the NBA anyway. But eventually wheelbarrows filled with Euros can trump that notion.
Not every elite player can play in the NBA, because of Stern's desire to keep 18-year-olds out of his league. Ultimately, American college basketball could find itself in the same position as it was when elite high school players skipped college and went into the NBA. Brandon Jennings could have been the trailblazer who could upset the applecart.
Jennings didn't play much in Europe but when he came back to the United States after a year overseas, he became a star with Milwaukee. A few other players tried to go Jennings' route but didn’t succeed.
The Jennings signing with Pallacanestro Virtus Roma of the Italian pro league didn’t hurt the NBA and had virtually no impact on college basketball. Jennings was supposed to play as an 18-year-old at the University of Arizona on a college scholarship. Instead, he signed a multiyear contract with an escape clause should an NBA team take him in the 2009 draft. Jennings may have been the best point guard in high school in 2007-08, and under the old collective bargaining agreement, he would have been eligible to be selected that year.
Had Jennings been able to make a smooth transition from being a high school player to living in Rome while playing pro basketball that would have opened up Europe as a pretty good alternative to college basketball in America. Sneaker companies will again be able to sign top American high school basketball players to endorsement deals, and this time, they will be able to showcase the player to a European market. But Jennings didn’t get much playing time and very few followed him overseas.
The timing may be better for a jump across the pond now that the NBA is on hiatus.
"The landscape is changing and the market and climate is a little different than it has been in the past," Gordon said in 2008. He was correct three years ago and is right today: The NBA may still be the best basketball league on the planet, but it has been closed down and it is not the only league willing to pay big salaries, and players and their agents know it.
The NBA lockout may revive an idea that some players were thinking of pursuing in 2008. Go to Europe and play.
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 bickley.com, Barnes and Noble or amazonkindle.
WEDNESDAY, 13 JULY 2011 10:23
http://www.newjerseynewsroom.com/professional/deron-williams-revives-nba-players-interest-in-europe
BY EVAN WEINER
NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM
THE BUSINESS AND POLITICS OF SPORTS
It has been 36 years since high school, college, and the NBA had a legitimate choice when it came to where they wanted to play professional basketball. In 1975, a high school player could go to college or into the American Basketball Association. A college player could leave school early and have either the NBA or the ABA offer him a huge — by 1975 standards — pro contract. And NBA players could jump over to the ABA, and vice versa. Since the NBA's absorption of four ABA teams in 1976, players have been limited in their location choices.
The NBA lockout wants to tighten player movement in free agency and bring down salaries and owners expenses. But the locked players may be looking elsewhere to work if you believe Deron Williams. The New Jersey Nets player is thinking of playing professional ball in Turkey if the National Basketball Association lockout lasts an extended time. But Williams is not the first player in recent time who is considering European basketball.
In 2008, just before the global financial meltdown, some players such as Ben Gordon, who was a restricted free agent, suddenly thought they had a European option. Gordon, the first rookie ever to win the NBA's Sixth Man of the Year Award in 2004-05, considered leaving the NBA for Europe if the circumstances were right.
Gordon ultimately signed a five year contract with Detroit in 2009 foregoing Europe. But the NBA has locked out the players and the hostility between the two sides is evident on individual team websites. Current players have vanished from team sites and are apparently free to play in any other league in the world. It seems that the players are free to go elsewhere like National Hockey League players did in 2004 when NHL owners shut the doors on the players.
"What has been happening this year (2008), especially with the free agents, you are starting to see guys who are using overseas as another option," Gordon said in an interview. "To me, personally, I think it is a beautiful thing that people from all over the world and players from all over the world have a chance to play in the NBA, and players over here a chance to play in Europe.
"When you get a guy like Kobe Bryant mentioning or considering playing overseas, if everything was right, I think it totally changes the whole landscape of basketball."
In 2008, nine NBA players have decided that the league isn't the end-all for them, and have signed with European, Russian, and Israeli teams. No big names crossed the Atlantic but Bryant sent out a message that once he was done with his Lakers contract after the 2009 campaign he thought Italy could be calling him. LeBron James said at that time that he might be open to a European team offer when his deal with the Cleveland Cavaliers ends in 2010. Dwyane Wade's deal with Miami also ended in 2010. In the NBA, there is a salary cap that limits how much money Bryant, James, or Wade can be paid. There is no salary cap in Europe.
None of the three players left the NBA.
"I know, growing up, my dream was to play in the NBA, hands down. It wasn't about the money," Gordon said. "Once you get to the NBA, things begin to change, it becomes more of a business. When you hear players as big as the Kobes and LeBrons talking about the possibility of playing overseas, it [shows it] is more of a business now. They are just not basketball players — now they are businessmen, so they have to think from a different aspect."
James and Bryant are corporations and brand names, and that could have played into the final decision on where they want to play. What if James's shoe partner, Nike, wanted to make him a bigger brand name in Europe and whispers in his ear that it makes sense for him to play in Barcelona or Athens. Because of the partners and the strength of the euro against the American dollar it was conceivable that James could have played in Europe. And Bryant might have ended up owning a team in Italy.
Nothing happened after 2008 but with the NBA out of business it could be a different story. Big name Americans may jump across the pond.
The commissioner of the NBA, David Stern, has spent the better part of the last 10 years promoting European expansion. Originally, Stern envisioned an NBA European league by 2010. Europe is lagging in building NBA state-of-the-art facilities, but more are coming online. London is ready, Berlin has an NBA-style arena opening and Rome may soon follow suit. The other European problem is whether or not local companies will want to pay the price for NBA tickets, and if local cable and satellite TV networks would want to pay a heavy price for the rights to NBA games.
The players who left the NBA in 2008 (the last major migration of NBA players to Europe), for the most part, were Europeans returning home, with the exceptions of Josh Childress, who left the Atlanta Hawks to sign a more lucrative deal with Olympicos in Greece's basketball league, and Carlos Arroyo, who will play with Maccabi Tel Aviv in Israel. Arroyo got a deal that was better than what he would have received with his former team, the Orlando Magic.
The NBA doesn't seem too concerned that Childress or the others have left, and the league has adopted the position that the best players in the world will want to play in the NBA anyway. But eventually wheelbarrows filled with Euros can trump that notion.
Not every elite player can play in the NBA, because of Stern's desire to keep 18-year-olds out of his league. Ultimately, American college basketball could find itself in the same position as it was when elite high school players skipped college and went into the NBA. Brandon Jennings could have been the trailblazer who could upset the applecart.
Jennings didn't play much in Europe but when he came back to the United States after a year overseas, he became a star with Milwaukee. A few other players tried to go Jennings' route but didn’t succeed.
The Jennings signing with Pallacanestro Virtus Roma of the Italian pro league didn’t hurt the NBA and had virtually no impact on college basketball. Jennings was supposed to play as an 18-year-old at the University of Arizona on a college scholarship. Instead, he signed a multiyear contract with an escape clause should an NBA team take him in the 2009 draft. Jennings may have been the best point guard in high school in 2007-08, and under the old collective bargaining agreement, he would have been eligible to be selected that year.
Had Jennings been able to make a smooth transition from being a high school player to living in Rome while playing pro basketball that would have opened up Europe as a pretty good alternative to college basketball in America. Sneaker companies will again be able to sign top American high school basketball players to endorsement deals, and this time, they will be able to showcase the player to a European market. But Jennings didn’t get much playing time and very few followed him overseas.
The timing may be better for a jump across the pond now that the NBA is on hiatus.
"The landscape is changing and the market and climate is a little different than it has been in the past," Gordon said in 2008. He was correct three years ago and is right today: The NBA may still be the best basketball league on the planet, but it has been closed down and it is not the only league willing to pay big salaries, and players and their agents know it.
The NBA lockout may revive an idea that some players were thinking of pursuing in 2008. Go to Europe and play.
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 bickley.com, Barnes and Noble or amazonkindle.
Friday, July 8, 2011
A sports FAQ guide to NFL and NBA lockouts
FRIDAY, 08 JULY 2011 07:52
http://www.newjerseynewsroom.com/professional/a-sports-faq-guide-to-nfl-and-nba-lockouts
BY EVAN WEINER
NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM
THE BUSINESS AND POLITICS OF SPORTS
Sports lockouts should come with a frequently asked questions guide for the sports media and sports fans. You see whether it is the National Football League lockout or the National Basketball Association lockout they is a small impact on virtually every American taxpayer and those who a cable TV basic expanded tier subscribers.
There are some questions that need to be answered for everyone. For instance, why are cable TV subscribers underwriting sports owners lockout? The Walt Disney Company plans to pay the National Football League a rights fee whether the NFL plans a full schedule or misses some games. Will cable TV subscribers get any refunds or rebates from ESPN? The answer is no.
National and regional cable TV sports networks have a long history of not refunding subscribers for missed sports programming including the 1998-1999 National Basketball Association lockout. Don't expect any refunds from ESPN, Cablevision's Madison Square Garden Network for missed Knicks games or Comcast for missed Philadelphia 76ers games. Cablevision owns the Knicks and Comcast owns the 76ers.
There are numerous sports owners who either own regional cable TV networks outright like Comcast or pieces of cable TV regional sports networks. In Chicago, Comcast is partners with Jerry Reinsdorf's Chicago Bulls, Reinsdorf's White Sox, the Chicago Cubs ownership and Rocky Wirtz's Chicago Blackhawks in the city's regional sports network.
What kind of economic impact will the lockouts have?
Not as much as people think. A National Football League team has 10 home dates (Buffalo has eight or nine with one regular season game in Toronto depending on the season) while an NBA team might host on average about six games a month between the beginning of November and mid-April to complete a 41 game home schedule. There may be a couple of pre-season games and playoff games. But the overall economic impact is minimal.
Visiting teams don't bring a lot of fans with them to attend NBA games and a typical NBA team sends players, coaches, equipment guys and trainers along with broadcasters on the road. It is not a big traveling party and that means not many hotel rooms are needed and restaurants aren't making a living off of having NBA teams come through.
In 1998-99, Golden State Warriors owner Charles Cohan didn't want to pay rent at the Oakland Arena for missed games during the NBA lockout. The municipally owned arena operators took Cohan to arbitration where he lost. How many owners in both the NFL and NBA will attempt to withhold rent payments?
That should be a FAQ.
Some municipalities will lose some sales tax monies from ticket sales and concessions but municipalities have decided not to collect property taxes on arenas throughout the country. In New York, Philadelphia and in California, municipalities will be denied of the "Michael Jordan tax" and collect taxes from players who are in for a day playing.
Some businesses around arenas and stadiums will lose money and that has caught the attention of the Attorney General of the State of New York. Eric T. Schneiderman claims he is taking action acting on behalf of a handful of businesses and workers whose incomes are threatened if there are no Bills games in Orchard Park.
The Florham Park, N.J.-based New York Jets franchise, which plays games in East Rutherford, will not be holding training camp at Cortland State in central New York.
Schneiderman's office sent NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell a letter informing him that the state plans to investigate the NFL to see if the league, the 31 owners and Green Bay, has violated New York antitrust laws.
The letter overstates the real impact the NFL lockout has on businesses but Schneiderman is the first politician seeking to involve himself in the lockout. Schneider is looking out for hotels, retailers, the New York transportation system of buses and trains and cars and the per diem workers who could lose between nine and 12 days worth of work in Orchard Park and the couple of weeks of pre-season workouts a New York State universities in Cortland, Albany and Fredonia training facilities.
To quote Donald Trump, the economic impact is small potatoes. A few people will get hurt but the jobs Schneiderman is protecting are part time minimum wage positions at the stadiums and training camps.
Sports teams’ economic impact on a given area is always overstated. Also people are going to spend money on entertainment, they will just shift that football or basketball dollars elsewhere.
"The expected blow to the state's economy will be tremendous," wrote Assistant Attorney general Richard L. Schwartz. "Many New York public and private institutions depend heavily on the NFL training camp and regular season games to generate revenue."
A note to the assistant attorney general, Cortland State, doesn’t depend on whether the New York Jets training camp takes place at the campus’ main stadium. Mr. Schwartz might want to check the books of the college to see just how profitable or unprofitable having an NFL team on the premises is for the school. It might startle him and others in the Attorney General’s office to see the books at Cortland.
Ralph Wilson's Buffalo Bills gets about $7 million in subsidies for stadium maintenance and day of game operations.
The entity formally known as the National Football League Players Association put out a paper that contended that if there was no 2011 NFL season, that $160 million in local spending in each league city and 3,000 jobs would be wiped out. The NFLPA stance seems absolutely ludicrous given the fact that the league plays just 10 home games except in East Rutherford where the stadium houses two teams and stadium jobs are dead end per diem positions which would supplement someone's income.
The real money losers are the players and cable TV subscribers underwriting labor actions and not even knowing it.
If Schneiderman really wanted to conduct a thorough investigation, he would start with the television networks, Sumner Redstone's CBS, General Electric's NBC (now majority owned by Comcast), Rupert Murdoch's News Corp (FOX), the Walt Disney Company (ESPN) and DirecTV and ask why those entities are underwriting the owners costs in the lockout. Schneider can also check in with the NBA and see if Time Warner's Turner Sports and the Walt Disney Company's ESPN are underwriting the NBA lockout and investigate the Dolan family's Cablevision and ask if any fees that are being collected are going to the Knicks from the Madison Square Garden Network. He can also ask Goldman-Sachs and the New York Yankees owned YES Network about fees going to the New Jersey Nets.
That would just be a New York investigation. Similar inquiries could take place around the country.
Those are just a few FAQs that should be asked and answered. In the toy store of media, the sports department-writers, TV talking heads and radio talk show hosts are infuriated that their world has collided with the real world sort of - after all they want to be entertained with games and want no part of how sports really operates. If Schneiderman was truly serious about probing sports, there is a lot out there but his inquiry will be forgotten once the two sides in the NFL battle call a truce and reach an agreement.
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 bickley.com, Barnes and Noble or amazonkindle.
FRIDAY, 08 JULY 2011 07:52
http://www.newjerseynewsroom.com/professional/a-sports-faq-guide-to-nfl-and-nba-lockouts
BY EVAN WEINER
NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM
THE BUSINESS AND POLITICS OF SPORTS
Sports lockouts should come with a frequently asked questions guide for the sports media and sports fans. You see whether it is the National Football League lockout or the National Basketball Association lockout they is a small impact on virtually every American taxpayer and those who a cable TV basic expanded tier subscribers.
There are some questions that need to be answered for everyone. For instance, why are cable TV subscribers underwriting sports owners lockout? The Walt Disney Company plans to pay the National Football League a rights fee whether the NFL plans a full schedule or misses some games. Will cable TV subscribers get any refunds or rebates from ESPN? The answer is no.
National and regional cable TV sports networks have a long history of not refunding subscribers for missed sports programming including the 1998-1999 National Basketball Association lockout. Don't expect any refunds from ESPN, Cablevision's Madison Square Garden Network for missed Knicks games or Comcast for missed Philadelphia 76ers games. Cablevision owns the Knicks and Comcast owns the 76ers.
There are numerous sports owners who either own regional cable TV networks outright like Comcast or pieces of cable TV regional sports networks. In Chicago, Comcast is partners with Jerry Reinsdorf's Chicago Bulls, Reinsdorf's White Sox, the Chicago Cubs ownership and Rocky Wirtz's Chicago Blackhawks in the city's regional sports network.
What kind of economic impact will the lockouts have?
Not as much as people think. A National Football League team has 10 home dates (Buffalo has eight or nine with one regular season game in Toronto depending on the season) while an NBA team might host on average about six games a month between the beginning of November and mid-April to complete a 41 game home schedule. There may be a couple of pre-season games and playoff games. But the overall economic impact is minimal.
Visiting teams don't bring a lot of fans with them to attend NBA games and a typical NBA team sends players, coaches, equipment guys and trainers along with broadcasters on the road. It is not a big traveling party and that means not many hotel rooms are needed and restaurants aren't making a living off of having NBA teams come through.
In 1998-99, Golden State Warriors owner Charles Cohan didn't want to pay rent at the Oakland Arena for missed games during the NBA lockout. The municipally owned arena operators took Cohan to arbitration where he lost. How many owners in both the NFL and NBA will attempt to withhold rent payments?
That should be a FAQ.
Some municipalities will lose some sales tax monies from ticket sales and concessions but municipalities have decided not to collect property taxes on arenas throughout the country. In New York, Philadelphia and in California, municipalities will be denied of the "Michael Jordan tax" and collect taxes from players who are in for a day playing.
Some businesses around arenas and stadiums will lose money and that has caught the attention of the Attorney General of the State of New York. Eric T. Schneiderman claims he is taking action acting on behalf of a handful of businesses and workers whose incomes are threatened if there are no Bills games in Orchard Park.
The Florham Park, N.J.-based New York Jets franchise, which plays games in East Rutherford, will not be holding training camp at Cortland State in central New York.
Schneiderman's office sent NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell a letter informing him that the state plans to investigate the NFL to see if the league, the 31 owners and Green Bay, has violated New York antitrust laws.
The letter overstates the real impact the NFL lockout has on businesses but Schneiderman is the first politician seeking to involve himself in the lockout. Schneider is looking out for hotels, retailers, the New York transportation system of buses and trains and cars and the per diem workers who could lose between nine and 12 days worth of work in Orchard Park and the couple of weeks of pre-season workouts a New York State universities in Cortland, Albany and Fredonia training facilities.
To quote Donald Trump, the economic impact is small potatoes. A few people will get hurt but the jobs Schneiderman is protecting are part time minimum wage positions at the stadiums and training camps.
Sports teams’ economic impact on a given area is always overstated. Also people are going to spend money on entertainment, they will just shift that football or basketball dollars elsewhere.
"The expected blow to the state's economy will be tremendous," wrote Assistant Attorney general Richard L. Schwartz. "Many New York public and private institutions depend heavily on the NFL training camp and regular season games to generate revenue."
A note to the assistant attorney general, Cortland State, doesn’t depend on whether the New York Jets training camp takes place at the campus’ main stadium. Mr. Schwartz might want to check the books of the college to see just how profitable or unprofitable having an NFL team on the premises is for the school. It might startle him and others in the Attorney General’s office to see the books at Cortland.
Ralph Wilson's Buffalo Bills gets about $7 million in subsidies for stadium maintenance and day of game operations.
The entity formally known as the National Football League Players Association put out a paper that contended that if there was no 2011 NFL season, that $160 million in local spending in each league city and 3,000 jobs would be wiped out. The NFLPA stance seems absolutely ludicrous given the fact that the league plays just 10 home games except in East Rutherford where the stadium houses two teams and stadium jobs are dead end per diem positions which would supplement someone's income.
The real money losers are the players and cable TV subscribers underwriting labor actions and not even knowing it.
If Schneiderman really wanted to conduct a thorough investigation, he would start with the television networks, Sumner Redstone's CBS, General Electric's NBC (now majority owned by Comcast), Rupert Murdoch's News Corp (FOX), the Walt Disney Company (ESPN) and DirecTV and ask why those entities are underwriting the owners costs in the lockout. Schneider can also check in with the NBA and see if Time Warner's Turner Sports and the Walt Disney Company's ESPN are underwriting the NBA lockout and investigate the Dolan family's Cablevision and ask if any fees that are being collected are going to the Knicks from the Madison Square Garden Network. He can also ask Goldman-Sachs and the New York Yankees owned YES Network about fees going to the New Jersey Nets.
That would just be a New York investigation. Similar inquiries could take place around the country.
Those are just a few FAQs that should be asked and answered. In the toy store of media, the sports department-writers, TV talking heads and radio talk show hosts are infuriated that their world has collided with the real world sort of - after all they want to be entertained with games and want no part of how sports really operates. If Schneiderman was truly serious about probing sports, there is a lot out there but his inquiry will be forgotten once the two sides in the NFL battle call a truce and reach an agreement.
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 bickley.com, Barnes and Noble or amazonkindle.
Saturday, July 2, 2011
2011 NBA lockout can trace its roots back to 1983
FRIDAY, 01 JULY 2011 16:19
http://www.newjerseynewsroom.com/professional/2011-nba-lockout-can-trace-its-roots-back-to-1983
BY EVAN WEINER
NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM
Dear National Basketball Association fans:
A couple of weeks ago LeBron James told you like it is in sports when he said, “All the people that were rooting on me to fail, at the end of the day they have to wake up tomorrow and have the same life that they had before they woke up today. They have the same personal problems they had today. I'm going to continue to live the way I want to live and continue to do the things that I want to do with me and my family and be happy with that. So they can get a few days or a few months or whatever the case may be on being happy about not only myself, but the Miami Heat not accomplishing their goal. But they got to get back to the real world at some point.”
James apologized for his statement even though what he said was true. But his rant was just the prelude to the next moment of truth in the world of a sports fan, an NBA fan. The owners and players don’t care if you offer unconditional loyalty to a logo or, as Jerry Seinfeld aptly says, dirty laundry. The NBA – and all sports -- are big business and if the NBA owners have to lock out the players to get a better deal, so be it.
The NBA is in a lockout mode. There will be teeth gnashing about greedy owners and greedy players but one day fans will have to be broken from their unconditional love, the face painting of colors, the tattoo team logo proudly displayed on some part of the body, the shirts, hats and realize that sports is nothing more than a business.
NBA fans really have not lost anything yet. Sure the rookie leagues have been cancelled and free agency is being delayed but there are still more than three months to go before the product disappears from the shelf -- pre-season games.
There is a question about the finances of the NBA. Commissioner David Stern, the owners’ front man, wants hundreds of millions of dollars in worker givebacks so that the league can be financially viable. Twenty-eight years ago, Commissioner Larry O’Brien was looking for givebacks to make the then 23-team league financially viable.
These were desperate time for the league, so much so that the owners of Madison Square Garden, Gulf and Western, somehow convinced New York City Mayor Ed Koch that the Gulf and Western’s subsidiary -- Madison Square Garden and the two franchises, the NBA Knicks and the National Hockey League Rangers -- could not compete with San Diego, Indiana, Cleveland, Salt Lake City for basketball players and Winnipeg, Hartford, Quebec City, Edmonton, Calgary along with Denver for hockey players.
Without property tax relief, Gulf and Western would relocate the Knicks to Nassau County and the Rangers to the Meadowlands. Gulf and Western never did like Madison Square Garden all that much and within four years of the building’s reopening in 1972, the company was considering moving both teams to an arena that would be built in East Rutherford.
Gulf and Western got the property tax break that the Dolan family, the Garden’s current owners, presently enjoys.
Despite the fact that both Larry Bird in Boston and Magic Johnson in Los Angeles were winning titles and a strong presence in Philadelphia where the old ABA star Julius Erving had won a title, the NBA was at the crossroads in 1983.
A good many franchises were losing money, the Collective Bargaining Agreement was up and the 23 team NBA was thinking of cutting as many as seven teams with Cleveland, Denver, Indiana, Kansas City, San Diego and Utah losing an enormous amount of money. Some teams fell behind on their deferred payments, estimated to be between $80 million and $90 million, which nearly prompted a player’s strike in 1982. There were rumors that Denver and Utah were going to consolidate into one franchise and that other teams would move. Donald Sterling moved the San Diego Clippers to Los Angeles following the 1983-84 season without the NBA's permission. The Kansas City Kings, a franchise that tried to regionalize itself in the 1970s by splitting home games between Kansas City and Omaha after leaving Cincinnati in 1972, went west to Sacramento in 1984-85. Utah attempted to solve some of its financial problems by playing a number of home games in Las Vegas.
The players and owners met for nine months and completely rewrote the Collective Bargaining Agreement from its foundations. The league opened its books and let the players see what the profits and losses really were and a deal was brokered.
“I think it just had a number of important consequences,” said NBA Deputy Commissioner Russell Granik who was part of the NBA management and negotiating team in 1983. “One, by having rolling around in that stuff, for the first time, I think that process in the nine months or the year of negotiations, was that the players for the first time got complete financial information. Everybody knew everything.
“That really, I think, sort of created a feeling of we are in this together as a partnership that maybe hadn’t existed between the players and the league. I think that was a great boast. The other thing by having the salary cap and the revenue sharing system in place, we were able to go out and attract new ownership in places that up until then we were struggling.”
Two franchises that were struggling were the Cleveland Cavaliers and the Indiana Pacers. All together the league might have been left with just 16 teams without the new bargaining agreement.
“I believe Gordon and George Gund at the time would not have purchased the Cleveland Cavaliers shortly thereafter except we had this deal. At that point Indiana was really struggling. Shortly after that Herb and Mel Simon purchased the team in Indiana. Both are still in the league (in 2001) many years later. Two of the strongest ownership groups we had. I think there were others that followed thereafter that probably would not have happened if we hadn’t been able to say OK I think we got a system that’s going to make sense.
“At the time we were very serious and I think Larry (Fleischer) and the players, you know your first reaction is they are bluffing, but again having been in the process and learn all the numbers, we were seriously thinking of at least right away folding two or three times, buying them back or merging them or something. I don’t have any doubt but for that kind of deal that would have happened as well,” said Granik. 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, Granik the No. 2 guy, followed by Bettman.
The Collective Bargaining was Commissioner Larry O’Brien’s last major work for the NBA.
O’Brien was in a sense a transitional commissioner. The NBA was a business under his predecessor Walter Kennedy, but under O’Brien it became a bigger business. O’Brien replaced Kennedy in 1975 and guided the NBA in the league’s “merger” with the ABA. O’Brien was the lead negotiator in two Collective Bargaining Agreements in 1976 and 1983. During O’Brien, gate receipts doubled and TV revenues increased by threefold. Still O’Brien was unable to financially stabilize the league and without the 1983 labor agreement, which established a partnership with the Players Association and its Executive Director Larry Fleischer, the NBA might have contracted franchises.
The 1983 agreement propelled the league into a better financial position.
Or did it? Kansas City ownership sold the franchise to a Sacramento group. Twenty-eight years later, Sacramento is in dire fiscal shape. Indiana remains a troubled franchise. The league over the years added teams; Charlotte was an initial success but eventually moved. Vancouver lasted just six years before the owner Michael Heisley uprooted the franchise and placed it in Memphis. A second Charlotte franchise has not been financially successful. The second New Orleans franchise is on the financial ropes. Seattle no longer has a team.
Cost certainty is fleeting. The owners and players celebrated in 1983 a new deal. In retrospect, it didn’t work for everyone.
David Stern replaced O'Brien as commissioner on February 1, 1984. Stern was an attorney who had been the NBA's Executive Vice President. Stern would direct a tremendous expansion in the marketing of the NBA and develop a cohesive and profitable broadcasting strategy. He would move try to ensure the stability of NBA franchises by increasing licensing revenues, and developing corporate sponsorships.
In the buildup to the potential NBA lockout of 1998, NBC and TNT guaranteed owners that they would pay out $465 million dollars for broadcast rights whether the league played a game or not. The NBA had been very good to NBC and TNT in 1997-98 as they shared $400 million in profits from TV. Those two items did not go unnoticed by the National Basketball Players Association.
The players promised that it would boycott interviews with NBC and TNT personnel because the association’s leadership felt the networks were bankrolling the lockout and provided a guarantee of money against losses if no basketball was being played. Phoenix Suns CEO Jerry Colangelo disputed that saying television had no influence on the lockout and that owners were merely seeking a better collective bargaining agreement.
Each owner would get more than $15 million from the NBC and TNT and more from local cable contracts. Cable consumers would help pay for the lockout unknowingly. Cable consumers did not receive any rebates from games missed because of work stoppages in Major League Baseball in 1994 and 1995 and in the National Hockey League in 1994-95.
On March 23, 1998 NBA owners voted to reopen the talks because the players’ share of the revenues exceeded 57 percent. The league shut down operations on July 1, 1998 and both sides dug in. The owners had a nest egg and could afford to wait until the players caved. The television unit of General Electric, the National Broadcasting Company and Ted Turner’s Turner Sports agreed to pay the owners a rights fee even though there was a possibility that games would be cancelled. If the games were cancelled, NBC would get money back either in a form or a rebate of a reduced rights fee schedule in the final three years of the TV agreement while Turner would have the contract extended by a year.
A few players boycotted NBC TV interviews whether they were on a national or a local affiliate level but TV interviews with NBC or CNN (TNT’s sister network) were of little concern.
The players sat for 202 days. In the end, the owners kept the salary cap, keep the draft and got a ceiling on top salaries at $14 million and a limit on how many years a team could pay a player at the $14 million level at seven. There was always a rookie minimum salary and stiffer drug testing policies. The middle class NBA player got more money; the stars were capped. David Stern had turned the middle class player against the stars in the fight and won the battle and the war.
The NBA got cost certainty in 1999 but not everyone made out. Charlotte and Vancouver quickly became former NBA cities. In 2005, the NBA and the players cut yet another cost certainty deal. Seattle didn’t make it and Sacramento ownership seriously considered moving to Anaheim this past spring.
The business of the NBA will go on despite a lockout. Anaheim will continue to push to get the Maloof brothers’ Sacramento Kings. Louisville may want in once the dust settles. San Jose and Newark will be buyers as well. Meanwhile the fans take another one on the chin. But they will be back … well some of them in the arena if they can afford the price of the tickets. If not, the corporate crowd will go to a game and treat it as an event and the real fans can stay home and watch it on TV.
LeBron told it like it is and he was vilified for that. David Stern, Players Executive Director Billy Hunter and others won’t be as blunt. The NBA is a business and the two sides will eventually settle this dispute without any worry about the fans.
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 bickley.com, Barnes and Noble or amazonkindle.
FRIDAY, 01 JULY 2011 16:19
http://www.newjerseynewsroom.com/professional/2011-nba-lockout-can-trace-its-roots-back-to-1983
BY EVAN WEINER
NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM
Dear National Basketball Association fans:
A couple of weeks ago LeBron James told you like it is in sports when he said, “All the people that were rooting on me to fail, at the end of the day they have to wake up tomorrow and have the same life that they had before they woke up today. They have the same personal problems they had today. I'm going to continue to live the way I want to live and continue to do the things that I want to do with me and my family and be happy with that. So they can get a few days or a few months or whatever the case may be on being happy about not only myself, but the Miami Heat not accomplishing their goal. But they got to get back to the real world at some point.”
James apologized for his statement even though what he said was true. But his rant was just the prelude to the next moment of truth in the world of a sports fan, an NBA fan. The owners and players don’t care if you offer unconditional loyalty to a logo or, as Jerry Seinfeld aptly says, dirty laundry. The NBA – and all sports -- are big business and if the NBA owners have to lock out the players to get a better deal, so be it.
The NBA is in a lockout mode. There will be teeth gnashing about greedy owners and greedy players but one day fans will have to be broken from their unconditional love, the face painting of colors, the tattoo team logo proudly displayed on some part of the body, the shirts, hats and realize that sports is nothing more than a business.
NBA fans really have not lost anything yet. Sure the rookie leagues have been cancelled and free agency is being delayed but there are still more than three months to go before the product disappears from the shelf -- pre-season games.
There is a question about the finances of the NBA. Commissioner David Stern, the owners’ front man, wants hundreds of millions of dollars in worker givebacks so that the league can be financially viable. Twenty-eight years ago, Commissioner Larry O’Brien was looking for givebacks to make the then 23-team league financially viable.
These were desperate time for the league, so much so that the owners of Madison Square Garden, Gulf and Western, somehow convinced New York City Mayor Ed Koch that the Gulf and Western’s subsidiary -- Madison Square Garden and the two franchises, the NBA Knicks and the National Hockey League Rangers -- could not compete with San Diego, Indiana, Cleveland, Salt Lake City for basketball players and Winnipeg, Hartford, Quebec City, Edmonton, Calgary along with Denver for hockey players.
Without property tax relief, Gulf and Western would relocate the Knicks to Nassau County and the Rangers to the Meadowlands. Gulf and Western never did like Madison Square Garden all that much and within four years of the building’s reopening in 1972, the company was considering moving both teams to an arena that would be built in East Rutherford.
Gulf and Western got the property tax break that the Dolan family, the Garden’s current owners, presently enjoys.
Despite the fact that both Larry Bird in Boston and Magic Johnson in Los Angeles were winning titles and a strong presence in Philadelphia where the old ABA star Julius Erving had won a title, the NBA was at the crossroads in 1983.
A good many franchises were losing money, the Collective Bargaining Agreement was up and the 23 team NBA was thinking of cutting as many as seven teams with Cleveland, Denver, Indiana, Kansas City, San Diego and Utah losing an enormous amount of money. Some teams fell behind on their deferred payments, estimated to be between $80 million and $90 million, which nearly prompted a player’s strike in 1982. There were rumors that Denver and Utah were going to consolidate into one franchise and that other teams would move. Donald Sterling moved the San Diego Clippers to Los Angeles following the 1983-84 season without the NBA's permission. The Kansas City Kings, a franchise that tried to regionalize itself in the 1970s by splitting home games between Kansas City and Omaha after leaving Cincinnati in 1972, went west to Sacramento in 1984-85. Utah attempted to solve some of its financial problems by playing a number of home games in Las Vegas.
The players and owners met for nine months and completely rewrote the Collective Bargaining Agreement from its foundations. The league opened its books and let the players see what the profits and losses really were and a deal was brokered.
“I think it just had a number of important consequences,” said NBA Deputy Commissioner Russell Granik who was part of the NBA management and negotiating team in 1983. “One, by having rolling around in that stuff, for the first time, I think that process in the nine months or the year of negotiations, was that the players for the first time got complete financial information. Everybody knew everything.
“That really, I think, sort of created a feeling of we are in this together as a partnership that maybe hadn’t existed between the players and the league. I think that was a great boast. The other thing by having the salary cap and the revenue sharing system in place, we were able to go out and attract new ownership in places that up until then we were struggling.”
Two franchises that were struggling were the Cleveland Cavaliers and the Indiana Pacers. All together the league might have been left with just 16 teams without the new bargaining agreement.
“I believe Gordon and George Gund at the time would not have purchased the Cleveland Cavaliers shortly thereafter except we had this deal. At that point Indiana was really struggling. Shortly after that Herb and Mel Simon purchased the team in Indiana. Both are still in the league (in 2001) many years later. Two of the strongest ownership groups we had. I think there were others that followed thereafter that probably would not have happened if we hadn’t been able to say OK I think we got a system that’s going to make sense.
“At the time we were very serious and I think Larry (Fleischer) and the players, you know your first reaction is they are bluffing, but again having been in the process and learn all the numbers, we were seriously thinking of at least right away folding two or three times, buying them back or merging them or something. I don’t have any doubt but for that kind of deal that would have happened as well,” said Granik. 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, Granik the No. 2 guy, followed by Bettman.
The Collective Bargaining was Commissioner Larry O’Brien’s last major work for the NBA.
O’Brien was in a sense a transitional commissioner. The NBA was a business under his predecessor Walter Kennedy, but under O’Brien it became a bigger business. O’Brien replaced Kennedy in 1975 and guided the NBA in the league’s “merger” with the ABA. O’Brien was the lead negotiator in two Collective Bargaining Agreements in 1976 and 1983. During O’Brien, gate receipts doubled and TV revenues increased by threefold. Still O’Brien was unable to financially stabilize the league and without the 1983 labor agreement, which established a partnership with the Players Association and its Executive Director Larry Fleischer, the NBA might have contracted franchises.
The 1983 agreement propelled the league into a better financial position.
Or did it? Kansas City ownership sold the franchise to a Sacramento group. Twenty-eight years later, Sacramento is in dire fiscal shape. Indiana remains a troubled franchise. The league over the years added teams; Charlotte was an initial success but eventually moved. Vancouver lasted just six years before the owner Michael Heisley uprooted the franchise and placed it in Memphis. A second Charlotte franchise has not been financially successful. The second New Orleans franchise is on the financial ropes. Seattle no longer has a team.
Cost certainty is fleeting. The owners and players celebrated in 1983 a new deal. In retrospect, it didn’t work for everyone.
David Stern replaced O'Brien as commissioner on February 1, 1984. Stern was an attorney who had been the NBA's Executive Vice President. Stern would direct a tremendous expansion in the marketing of the NBA and develop a cohesive and profitable broadcasting strategy. He would move try to ensure the stability of NBA franchises by increasing licensing revenues, and developing corporate sponsorships.
In the buildup to the potential NBA lockout of 1998, NBC and TNT guaranteed owners that they would pay out $465 million dollars for broadcast rights whether the league played a game or not. The NBA had been very good to NBC and TNT in 1997-98 as they shared $400 million in profits from TV. Those two items did not go unnoticed by the National Basketball Players Association.
The players promised that it would boycott interviews with NBC and TNT personnel because the association’s leadership felt the networks were bankrolling the lockout and provided a guarantee of money against losses if no basketball was being played. Phoenix Suns CEO Jerry Colangelo disputed that saying television had no influence on the lockout and that owners were merely seeking a better collective bargaining agreement.
Each owner would get more than $15 million from the NBC and TNT and more from local cable contracts. Cable consumers would help pay for the lockout unknowingly. Cable consumers did not receive any rebates from games missed because of work stoppages in Major League Baseball in 1994 and 1995 and in the National Hockey League in 1994-95.
On March 23, 1998 NBA owners voted to reopen the talks because the players’ share of the revenues exceeded 57 percent. The league shut down operations on July 1, 1998 and both sides dug in. The owners had a nest egg and could afford to wait until the players caved. The television unit of General Electric, the National Broadcasting Company and Ted Turner’s Turner Sports agreed to pay the owners a rights fee even though there was a possibility that games would be cancelled. If the games were cancelled, NBC would get money back either in a form or a rebate of a reduced rights fee schedule in the final three years of the TV agreement while Turner would have the contract extended by a year.
A few players boycotted NBC TV interviews whether they were on a national or a local affiliate level but TV interviews with NBC or CNN (TNT’s sister network) were of little concern.
The players sat for 202 days. In the end, the owners kept the salary cap, keep the draft and got a ceiling on top salaries at $14 million and a limit on how many years a team could pay a player at the $14 million level at seven. There was always a rookie minimum salary and stiffer drug testing policies. The middle class NBA player got more money; the stars were capped. David Stern had turned the middle class player against the stars in the fight and won the battle and the war.
The NBA got cost certainty in 1999 but not everyone made out. Charlotte and Vancouver quickly became former NBA cities. In 2005, the NBA and the players cut yet another cost certainty deal. Seattle didn’t make it and Sacramento ownership seriously considered moving to Anaheim this past spring.
The business of the NBA will go on despite a lockout. Anaheim will continue to push to get the Maloof brothers’ Sacramento Kings. Louisville may want in once the dust settles. San Jose and Newark will be buyers as well. Meanwhile the fans take another one on the chin. But they will be back … well some of them in the arena if they can afford the price of the tickets. If not, the corporate crowd will go to a game and treat it as an event and the real fans can stay home and watch it on TV.
LeBron told it like it is and he was vilified for that. David Stern, Players Executive Director Billy Hunter and others won’t be as blunt. The NBA is a business and the two sides will eventually settle this dispute without any worry about the fans.
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 bickley.com, Barnes and Noble or amazonkindle.
Wednesday, June 29, 2011
Handouts to NFL owners have been an absolute failure
Wednesday, 29 June 2011 08:14
http://www.newjerseynewsroom.com/professional/handouts-to-nfl-owners-have-been-an-absolute-failure
BY EVAN WEINER
NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM
THE BUSINESS AND POLITICS OF SPORTS
Cory Booker wants a National Basketball Association team in Newark. Tim Leiweke is working the room in Los Angeles trying to get government money to help his company, the Anschutz Entertainment Group, to build a football stadium in downtown Los Angeles. While Leiweke works the room and tries to entice the owners of various football teams—the Jacksonville Jaguars, the St. Louis Rams, the Minnesota Vikings, the Oakland Raiders and the San Diego Chargers—to move to the planned stadium.
Leiweke is going after a football team despite the fact that the National Football League owners have locked out their employees – the players.
Booker wants a new franchise even though the NBA plans to shut down on Thursday night if there is no new collective bargaining agreement between owners and players.
The National Football League business goes on despite the fact that the main product is not available—football games—and could conceivable not be available to consumers this fall. That doesn’t seem to bother Los Angeles politicians who are talking to Leiweke about funding a downtown facility or Minnesota politicians who are trying to figure out a way to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to satisfy New Jersey’s Zygi Wilf and his want for a new stadium for his Minnesota Vikings franchise.
Sports fans probably don’t want to read this, but the team you love or hate doesn’t belong to you. The team belongs to an owner and that owner is looking for government handouts and if he or she doesn’t get a handout from the local government, he or she will look elsewhere and probably find it.
It is about time that people understand that government support of big time sports has been an absolute failure since the 1986 tax reform that changed the way stadium and arena debt were paid. In 1986, President Ronald Reagan signed the tax reform that created a new formula for paying off municipally funded stadiums and arenas and placed the onus on local taxpayers to pay down the debt and gave the owners as much as 92 cents on every dollar generated within a stadium or arena and left just as little as eight cents on every dollar to pay off hundreds of millions of dollars worth of debt.
Despite sweetheart deals, the National Football League owners shutdown the business in March.
What is the real reason for labor strife?
Owners with older stadium such as Wilf’s Vikings and Al Davis’s Oakland Raiders have to invest more and more money into player’s salaries to meet the salary cap and salary floor NFL rules with the proliferation of municipally built facilities since 1986. Since the last National Football League owners and players collective bargaining agreement in 2006, new stadiums came online at the Meadowlands in East Rutherford, New Jersey, Arlington, Texas and Indianapolis and that forced up the salary cap and floor as more revenues flowed into the league.
Apparently the alleged new agreement that is being breathlessly reported by football insiders at a worldwide cable TV sports leader indicates that the very reason that triggered the lockout is not being addressed.
But life goes on in Los Angeles and in the legislative chambers in St. Paul, Minnesota and in Santa Clara, California where local officials are trying to cobble together a money deal to get the Santa Clara football stadium off the ground for the York family’s San Francisco 49ers.
The Santa Clara stadium is also a sore point for the owners. The Yorks have to throw money into the place and the NFL owners want the players to assume some of the costs for the Santa Clara building. The NFL owners basically have told the Yorks don’t seek any funding from the banks to cover their costs and they would try to extract that money from the players.
Meanwhile Booker wants a replacement for the departing Nets in Newark even though the NBA owners are on the verge of closing down the National Basketball Association business.
If the owners and players don’t come up with an agreement by Thursday night, the NBA owners will lockout the players.
Just how important is government as a sports partner? That is easy to answer. NBA Commissioner David Stern will tell you there are three major aspects in running a successful franchise. You need government to supply funding for arenas, you need government to continue the current cable TV rules which forces all consumers to pay for channels they don’t want in a basic expanded tier – where ESPN, TNT and regional sports channels reside because multiple cable systems operators place them there not consumers- and give corporations favorable tax breaks in buying tickets or club seats or luxury boxes.
If you don’t believe David Stern, perhaps Mario Cuomo’s words from 1991 will back up Stern. Cuomo, at that time, was the governor of New York and was lobbying the National League of Major League Baseball for an expansion team for Buffalo.
Cuomo was hardly a reluctant lobbyist as he told this reporter when he was asked if the Cuomo name—Mario Cuomo was considered a favorite for the 1992 Democratic Presidential nomination—would help get Buffalo a franchise.
“When you say enormous, you mean length?” joked Cuomo in response to the question. “Ah like Willie Sutton (the legendary bank robber). That’s an excellent question and it is a question I thought of before you did frankly.
“From the beginning I have said to (Buffalo mayor at the time) Jimmy Griffin, you know we have been very supportive from the beginning and it is not because I am a baseball fan. It is because this is a terrific investment for a strong part of the state.
“Pilot Field (the baseball park built in the late 1980s and a facility that is now known by yet another corporate name—the fourth since the stadium opened in 1988) was a great idea. I am proud of the judgment I made in giving nearly $22 million (to pay for the project). It wasn’t a gift, it was an investment and a very good investment and Buffalo proved that by setting (attendance) records for a few years and by qualifying by being this high up in consideration (for an expansion team).”
Buffalo was in the hunt along with the Miami area, St. Petersburg, Florida and Denver, Colorado. While Cuomo was a big name, he didn’t have the same clout as Florida Senator Connie Mack III and Colorado Senator Tim Wirth. Those two lawmakers could have played havoc on Major League Baseball by starting legislation that stripped Major League Baseball of antitrust protection from United States business laws which gave Florida and Colorado a leg up on Governor Cuomo.
But sports owners cannot afford to turn their collective backs on politicians of any stripe who can help that get a sweetheart lease for a team.
“But I said to Jimmy Griffin and Rich, Bob and Mindy, (the people pursuing the franchise for Buffalo) in the beginning. I am not sure exactly what role you should want me to play. How do they feel about politicians? If it is better for us to stay away, I will go nowhere near this thing. If you think it is helpful for me to talk to (National League President) Bart Giamatti, may he rest in peace, I will. But you tell me what your sense of how the owners feel about talking to politicians.
“Under some circumstance, your political identification could be a negative. I don’t know what these baseball people feel about it. Bob and Mindy came back to me and said we will tell you when and how you think you can be most affectively supportive. And they have from time to time. I spoke to Bart Giamatti, again may he rest in peace, he was a terrific, terrific human being. I knew him when he was president of Yale and I knew him as Commissioner.
“And they said when it is time to make the presentation; we would like you to be there. We understand other governors will be there. Their judgment is, it does not hurt for the political person to be there.
“I think from the owners point of view, they need to know what the governmental units, upstate New York. It is important for the owners to know that we are going to contribute to the stadium’s expansion. They want to hear you say it. They want to see you on the record. They want to know the money will be there, that the support for infrastructure will be there. That when you have a World Series, the police will be there. The security will be there. That is all a very important part in running a major sports franchise.”
Cuomo wasn’t done yet. He spoke the words that politicians that elected officials understand when it comes to government-sports partnerships.
“It is one of their stated criteria,” Cuomo said of what sports leagues want. “Indeed it is their first criteria. To what extent do you have sport and government?”
In the end, the National League did expand to the Miami area and Denver and the threat of having the antitrust exempt being pulled was gone.
Major League Baseball still has portions of the 1922 Supreme Court of the United States ruling that granted the industry an antitrust exemption in place. The 1922 decision is felt to this day in the New York City area.
New Jersey cannot get a Major League Baseball franchise because the owners of the game can block anyone from bringing a third team into the area. Oakland A’s ownership cannot move to San Jose because of the exemption.
Government has invested billions into helping sports reach a level that no one who played in the NFL or the NBA in the 1940s or 1950s could ever envision. The stadiums, the cable TV act, the 1986 tax reform, the Sports Broadcast Act of 1961, the 1966 American Football League-National Football League merger, the tax hikes for car rentals, hotel, motel rooms, and restaurant bills, sewer and water, alcohol, cigarettes (the so-called Sin Tax in Cleveland) and various tax hikes to build stadiums and arenas and yet, it is not enough.
The owners and players cannot figure out how to split up $9 billion in annual NFL revenue. The NBA owners want major salary givebacks because they claim they are losing money despite sweetheart leases because they cannot generate enough in arena revenues for many franchises.
The National Football League lockout allegedly will have an impact on communities that will not be hosting training camp this year regardless of whether there is a settlement or not in July. Yet Cuomo’s son Andrew has not said a word about the lockout as New York’s Governor even though the Madison, New Jersey based New York Jets will not hold training camp as planned in central New York State at the State University of New York – Cortland. The Baltimore Ravens franchise will stay at the team’s training facility instead of traveling to McDaniel College in Westminster, Maryland. Maryland Governor Martin O’Malley is quiet about the NFL Lockout even though his state seduced Cleveland Browns owner Art Modell to Baltimore with a generous lease offer and helped Modell through a tough financial situation in 1995.
Maryland spent more than $100,000 per jobs created at the Ravens football facility. New York is kicking in about $3 million a year at the Orchard Park football field for the Buffalo Bills. Louisiana finished paying a $186.5 million bill to New Orleans Saints owner Tom Benson to keep him in town between 2002 and 2010 and renegotiated the contract that gave Benson a building (he is renting office space to the state) for about $10 million and reduced the state’s contribution to the team to as much as $6 million annually along with tax breaks.
Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal has said nothing about the NFL lockout and the upcoming NBA lockout. Louisiana pours millions of dollars in NBA’s New Orleans Hornets. Mitch Daniels is Governor of Indiana, a state that is basketball crazy. But the NBA’s Indiana Pacers cannot make money in what was a new building in 1999 and the team under the right set of circumstances could move in 2013. The Pacers ownership is paying virtually nothing to use the city’s municipally built arena and sucks out every nickel from the building.
Daniels is mute on the subject of sports. The NFL’s Indianapolis Colts are taking virtually every cent out of the city’s new stadium. Sports is costing Indiana residents millions upon millions of dollars.
Media anointed political superstars like New Jersey Governor Chris Christie is a heavyweight at putting down his bosses — the public — but he along with a lot of elected officials who pay the bills for sports are more like Harpo Marx or Marcel Marceau and are lightweights when it comes to solving lockouts that have been caused in part by using public dollars to build arenas in areas that should never have major league sports.
Christie inherited a bill of hundreds of millions of dollars for the now departed Giants Stadium and the Meadowland sports complex. New Jersey also supplied hundreds of millions of dollars for infrastructure for the New Meadowlands Stadium and provided property tax taxes for the Giants/Jets stadium. He should be vocal and pressure John Mara and Woody Johnson, the Giants and Jets owners but publicly he is not.
Cuomo never reviewed the property tax break that various owners of Madison Square Garden have enjoyed for nearly three decades. His son Andrew apparently doesn’t want to put the Garden back on the New York City tax roll either.
The public has a stake or an investment in stadiums and arenas and by extension sports franchise. The elected officials across the country should have stepped up and pressed NFL owners to get a new collective bargaining agreement done if having sports teams are important and if stadiums and arenas are economic engines. Elected officials should be all over David Stern and NBA players to get a deal done. The NBA has shutdown summer leagues due to the pending lockout.
If sports is so important and adds billions to the economy—like politicians who pitched voters to approve sports facilities—where is the pressure on keeping the games going?
Cuomo and Stern have let people in on a secret that sportswriters seem to blissfully ignore and that the worldwide leader in sports doesn’t want to talk about. By the way, the worldwide leader in sports owes its very existence to federal legislation in 1984.
Sports depends on government to survive. But do the politicians and the public know that? The answer seems to be no.
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 bickley.com, Barnes and Noble or amazonkindle.
Wednesday, 29 June 2011 08:14
http://www.newjerseynewsroom.com/professional/handouts-to-nfl-owners-have-been-an-absolute-failure
BY EVAN WEINER
NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM
THE BUSINESS AND POLITICS OF SPORTS
Cory Booker wants a National Basketball Association team in Newark. Tim Leiweke is working the room in Los Angeles trying to get government money to help his company, the Anschutz Entertainment Group, to build a football stadium in downtown Los Angeles. While Leiweke works the room and tries to entice the owners of various football teams—the Jacksonville Jaguars, the St. Louis Rams, the Minnesota Vikings, the Oakland Raiders and the San Diego Chargers—to move to the planned stadium.
Leiweke is going after a football team despite the fact that the National Football League owners have locked out their employees – the players.
Booker wants a new franchise even though the NBA plans to shut down on Thursday night if there is no new collective bargaining agreement between owners and players.
The National Football League business goes on despite the fact that the main product is not available—football games—and could conceivable not be available to consumers this fall. That doesn’t seem to bother Los Angeles politicians who are talking to Leiweke about funding a downtown facility or Minnesota politicians who are trying to figure out a way to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to satisfy New Jersey’s Zygi Wilf and his want for a new stadium for his Minnesota Vikings franchise.
Sports fans probably don’t want to read this, but the team you love or hate doesn’t belong to you. The team belongs to an owner and that owner is looking for government handouts and if he or she doesn’t get a handout from the local government, he or she will look elsewhere and probably find it.
It is about time that people understand that government support of big time sports has been an absolute failure since the 1986 tax reform that changed the way stadium and arena debt were paid. In 1986, President Ronald Reagan signed the tax reform that created a new formula for paying off municipally funded stadiums and arenas and placed the onus on local taxpayers to pay down the debt and gave the owners as much as 92 cents on every dollar generated within a stadium or arena and left just as little as eight cents on every dollar to pay off hundreds of millions of dollars worth of debt.
Despite sweetheart deals, the National Football League owners shutdown the business in March.
What is the real reason for labor strife?
Owners with older stadium such as Wilf’s Vikings and Al Davis’s Oakland Raiders have to invest more and more money into player’s salaries to meet the salary cap and salary floor NFL rules with the proliferation of municipally built facilities since 1986. Since the last National Football League owners and players collective bargaining agreement in 2006, new stadiums came online at the Meadowlands in East Rutherford, New Jersey, Arlington, Texas and Indianapolis and that forced up the salary cap and floor as more revenues flowed into the league.
Apparently the alleged new agreement that is being breathlessly reported by football insiders at a worldwide cable TV sports leader indicates that the very reason that triggered the lockout is not being addressed.
But life goes on in Los Angeles and in the legislative chambers in St. Paul, Minnesota and in Santa Clara, California where local officials are trying to cobble together a money deal to get the Santa Clara football stadium off the ground for the York family’s San Francisco 49ers.
The Santa Clara stadium is also a sore point for the owners. The Yorks have to throw money into the place and the NFL owners want the players to assume some of the costs for the Santa Clara building. The NFL owners basically have told the Yorks don’t seek any funding from the banks to cover their costs and they would try to extract that money from the players.
Meanwhile Booker wants a replacement for the departing Nets in Newark even though the NBA owners are on the verge of closing down the National Basketball Association business.
If the owners and players don’t come up with an agreement by Thursday night, the NBA owners will lockout the players.
Just how important is government as a sports partner? That is easy to answer. NBA Commissioner David Stern will tell you there are three major aspects in running a successful franchise. You need government to supply funding for arenas, you need government to continue the current cable TV rules which forces all consumers to pay for channels they don’t want in a basic expanded tier – where ESPN, TNT and regional sports channels reside because multiple cable systems operators place them there not consumers- and give corporations favorable tax breaks in buying tickets or club seats or luxury boxes.
If you don’t believe David Stern, perhaps Mario Cuomo’s words from 1991 will back up Stern. Cuomo, at that time, was the governor of New York and was lobbying the National League of Major League Baseball for an expansion team for Buffalo.
Cuomo was hardly a reluctant lobbyist as he told this reporter when he was asked if the Cuomo name—Mario Cuomo was considered a favorite for the 1992 Democratic Presidential nomination—would help get Buffalo a franchise.
“When you say enormous, you mean length?” joked Cuomo in response to the question. “Ah like Willie Sutton (the legendary bank robber). That’s an excellent question and it is a question I thought of before you did frankly.
“From the beginning I have said to (Buffalo mayor at the time) Jimmy Griffin, you know we have been very supportive from the beginning and it is not because I am a baseball fan. It is because this is a terrific investment for a strong part of the state.
“Pilot Field (the baseball park built in the late 1980s and a facility that is now known by yet another corporate name—the fourth since the stadium opened in 1988) was a great idea. I am proud of the judgment I made in giving nearly $22 million (to pay for the project). It wasn’t a gift, it was an investment and a very good investment and Buffalo proved that by setting (attendance) records for a few years and by qualifying by being this high up in consideration (for an expansion team).”
Buffalo was in the hunt along with the Miami area, St. Petersburg, Florida and Denver, Colorado. While Cuomo was a big name, he didn’t have the same clout as Florida Senator Connie Mack III and Colorado Senator Tim Wirth. Those two lawmakers could have played havoc on Major League Baseball by starting legislation that stripped Major League Baseball of antitrust protection from United States business laws which gave Florida and Colorado a leg up on Governor Cuomo.
But sports owners cannot afford to turn their collective backs on politicians of any stripe who can help that get a sweetheart lease for a team.
“But I said to Jimmy Griffin and Rich, Bob and Mindy, (the people pursuing the franchise for Buffalo) in the beginning. I am not sure exactly what role you should want me to play. How do they feel about politicians? If it is better for us to stay away, I will go nowhere near this thing. If you think it is helpful for me to talk to (National League President) Bart Giamatti, may he rest in peace, I will. But you tell me what your sense of how the owners feel about talking to politicians.
“Under some circumstance, your political identification could be a negative. I don’t know what these baseball people feel about it. Bob and Mindy came back to me and said we will tell you when and how you think you can be most affectively supportive. And they have from time to time. I spoke to Bart Giamatti, again may he rest in peace, he was a terrific, terrific human being. I knew him when he was president of Yale and I knew him as Commissioner.
“And they said when it is time to make the presentation; we would like you to be there. We understand other governors will be there. Their judgment is, it does not hurt for the political person to be there.
“I think from the owners point of view, they need to know what the governmental units, upstate New York. It is important for the owners to know that we are going to contribute to the stadium’s expansion. They want to hear you say it. They want to see you on the record. They want to know the money will be there, that the support for infrastructure will be there. That when you have a World Series, the police will be there. The security will be there. That is all a very important part in running a major sports franchise.”
Cuomo wasn’t done yet. He spoke the words that politicians that elected officials understand when it comes to government-sports partnerships.
“It is one of their stated criteria,” Cuomo said of what sports leagues want. “Indeed it is their first criteria. To what extent do you have sport and government?”
In the end, the National League did expand to the Miami area and Denver and the threat of having the antitrust exempt being pulled was gone.
Major League Baseball still has portions of the 1922 Supreme Court of the United States ruling that granted the industry an antitrust exemption in place. The 1922 decision is felt to this day in the New York City area.
New Jersey cannot get a Major League Baseball franchise because the owners of the game can block anyone from bringing a third team into the area. Oakland A’s ownership cannot move to San Jose because of the exemption.
Government has invested billions into helping sports reach a level that no one who played in the NFL or the NBA in the 1940s or 1950s could ever envision. The stadiums, the cable TV act, the 1986 tax reform, the Sports Broadcast Act of 1961, the 1966 American Football League-National Football League merger, the tax hikes for car rentals, hotel, motel rooms, and restaurant bills, sewer and water, alcohol, cigarettes (the so-called Sin Tax in Cleveland) and various tax hikes to build stadiums and arenas and yet, it is not enough.
The owners and players cannot figure out how to split up $9 billion in annual NFL revenue. The NBA owners want major salary givebacks because they claim they are losing money despite sweetheart leases because they cannot generate enough in arena revenues for many franchises.
The National Football League lockout allegedly will have an impact on communities that will not be hosting training camp this year regardless of whether there is a settlement or not in July. Yet Cuomo’s son Andrew has not said a word about the lockout as New York’s Governor even though the Madison, New Jersey based New York Jets will not hold training camp as planned in central New York State at the State University of New York – Cortland. The Baltimore Ravens franchise will stay at the team’s training facility instead of traveling to McDaniel College in Westminster, Maryland. Maryland Governor Martin O’Malley is quiet about the NFL Lockout even though his state seduced Cleveland Browns owner Art Modell to Baltimore with a generous lease offer and helped Modell through a tough financial situation in 1995.
Maryland spent more than $100,000 per jobs created at the Ravens football facility. New York is kicking in about $3 million a year at the Orchard Park football field for the Buffalo Bills. Louisiana finished paying a $186.5 million bill to New Orleans Saints owner Tom Benson to keep him in town between 2002 and 2010 and renegotiated the contract that gave Benson a building (he is renting office space to the state) for about $10 million and reduced the state’s contribution to the team to as much as $6 million annually along with tax breaks.
Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal has said nothing about the NFL lockout and the upcoming NBA lockout. Louisiana pours millions of dollars in NBA’s New Orleans Hornets. Mitch Daniels is Governor of Indiana, a state that is basketball crazy. But the NBA’s Indiana Pacers cannot make money in what was a new building in 1999 and the team under the right set of circumstances could move in 2013. The Pacers ownership is paying virtually nothing to use the city’s municipally built arena and sucks out every nickel from the building.
Daniels is mute on the subject of sports. The NFL’s Indianapolis Colts are taking virtually every cent out of the city’s new stadium. Sports is costing Indiana residents millions upon millions of dollars.
Media anointed political superstars like New Jersey Governor Chris Christie is a heavyweight at putting down his bosses — the public — but he along with a lot of elected officials who pay the bills for sports are more like Harpo Marx or Marcel Marceau and are lightweights when it comes to solving lockouts that have been caused in part by using public dollars to build arenas in areas that should never have major league sports.
Christie inherited a bill of hundreds of millions of dollars for the now departed Giants Stadium and the Meadowland sports complex. New Jersey also supplied hundreds of millions of dollars for infrastructure for the New Meadowlands Stadium and provided property tax taxes for the Giants/Jets stadium. He should be vocal and pressure John Mara and Woody Johnson, the Giants and Jets owners but publicly he is not.
Cuomo never reviewed the property tax break that various owners of Madison Square Garden have enjoyed for nearly three decades. His son Andrew apparently doesn’t want to put the Garden back on the New York City tax roll either.
The public has a stake or an investment in stadiums and arenas and by extension sports franchise. The elected officials across the country should have stepped up and pressed NFL owners to get a new collective bargaining agreement done if having sports teams are important and if stadiums and arenas are economic engines. Elected officials should be all over David Stern and NBA players to get a deal done. The NBA has shutdown summer leagues due to the pending lockout.
If sports is so important and adds billions to the economy—like politicians who pitched voters to approve sports facilities—where is the pressure on keeping the games going?
Cuomo and Stern have let people in on a secret that sportswriters seem to blissfully ignore and that the worldwide leader in sports doesn’t want to talk about. By the way, the worldwide leader in sports owes its very existence to federal legislation in 1984.
Sports depends on government to survive. But do the politicians and the public know that? The answer seems to be no.
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 bickley.com, Barnes and Noble or amazonkindle.
Thursday, June 23, 2011
How the NHL and sports accidentally stumbled into globalization
THURSDAY, 23 JUNE 2011 12:26
http://www.newjerseynewsroom.com/professional/how-the-nhl-and-sports-accidentally-stumbled-into-globalization
BY EVAN WEINER
NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM
THE BUSINESS AND POLITICS OF SPORTS
Sports globalization will again be on display this week as the National Basketball Association holds the league’s annual draft in Newark on Thursday and the National Hockey league holds the league’s annual grab bag in St. Paul, Minnesota on Friday and Saturday.
The NBA, the NHL and Major League Baseball have been global entities for a long, long time with baseball signing players from outside of the United States for decades. In the 1960s, the National Hockey league was essentially a closed shop with the league players made up entirely of Canadians with just one American, Tommy Williams and one Swede, Ulf Sterner who played with the New York Rangers.
Today, the National Hockey League teams all feature a good number of young and talented players from around the globe. Canadians, Americans, Swedes, Finns, Swiss, Slovakians, Czechs, Russians and other nationalities who take to the ice but it wasn’t always like that.
The globalization of North American sports escalated in 1972 during the Summit Series between Canada and the Soviet Union. Team Canada took on the Swedish National Team in a pair of exhibition games in between the four games and Canada and the four scheduled games in Moscow. One NHL general manager, Toronto’s Jim Gregory, took notice of the Swedish team during the two game series and dispatched his scout Gerry McNamara to a Christmas tournament in Sweden a few months later to evaluate talent.
Gregory and McNamara found two players they immediately liked and felt would be good NHL players, defenseman Borje Salming and winger Inge Hammarstrom. That really was the start of the globalization of the National Hockey League. Both players were free agents, so there was no need to worry about taking them in the draft so Toronto was able to sign them under the radar.
The two players signed Maple Leafs contracts in May 1973 and that would start a revolution that would ultimately change how hockey was played. The Canadian game borrowed significantly from the European version of the game and Gregory was at the forefront.
Salming was a Hall of Fame player.
“I brought Hammarstrom in, Gerry McNamara was our scout and we brought Hammarstrom and Salming in and they were welcomed additions to our club despite what (owner) Harold Ballard said,” laughed Gregory who knew Ballard did not like non Canadian players.
“That was his prerogative. Borje Salming was an unbelievable player for the Toronto Maple Leafs and Inge Hammarstrom while he was there did a real good job as well.”
Ballard needed to be sold on the addition of Swedes to his lineup and every though he would eventually warm up to Salming, Ballard did say that Hammarstrom could go into a corner with six eggs in his pocket and not break any of them. Back in the 1970s, the NHL was still a league of mostly Canadians although Gregory did his best to change that.
“Actually the Rangers brought in a player in 1964 (from Sweden) named Ulf Sterner and then Detroit brought over a player (Thommie Bergmann) and we had started scouting and Gerry McNamara went over and we were very lucky to get the players we did.
“We had a couple of other ones that should have been on our team. (Anders) Hedberg and (Ulf) Nilsson. We got into a little bit of bidding (with the World Hockey Association’s Winnipeg Jets) and we did not win out.”
The World Hockey Association was vilified by the sports media for being an inferior product, but the sports media like Pavlov’s dog is conditioned to react in a certain way and putting down upstart leagues like Lamar Hunt’s American Football League, Dennis Murphy’s American Basketball Association and World Hockey Association was par for the course. The truth is that those leagues changed North American sports. Hunt brought new ideas to what was essentially a mom and pop organization—the National Football league. Murphy’s ABA is on display every night dressed as the NBA as the old league “borrowed” from Murphy and his associates ideas which included the three point play and the All Star Weekend. The WHA sold the naming rights to the league’s championship trophy and pioneered international play and welcomed Swedes and Finns into the league.
Established leagues were staid affairs.
Gregory left the Toronto Maple Leafs and joined Central Scouting in 1979. He fought to bring Europeans into the fold shortly after that.
“I had been to Europe very early when I worked with the Leafs and actually I was part of a committee that hired Jack Button, who started Central Scouting, and when I was let go by the Leafs, the league offered me that job. I had been to Europe and had seen the talent that was there and, of course, had Salming and Hammarstrom as part of the organization that I was with and we had some other players as well.
“I contacted a couple of gentlemen, one of whom who had lived in Toronto and was part of the Finnish Ice Hockey Association, and we get together in talking and formed European Central Scouting to augment what was already there for the National Hockey League.”
By 1979, NHL teams were very aware of European talent or at least players who could come over from Sweden and Finland. The Iron Curtain countries also had many talented players but Soviets and Czechoslovakians could only come to North America if they defected.
In 1981, Czechoslovakia allowed Ivan Hlinka and Jiri Bubla to join the Vancouver Canucks not long after the Statsny Brothers defected and signed with the Quebec Nordiques. Hlinka would eventually coach the Pittsburgh Penguins in 2000.
It was not until 1989 that players who played for Russia were able to free join NHL teams. The first Soviet player to legally join an NHL team was Sergei Priakin who signed a contract with Calgary. Later that summer, New Jersey added Vyacheslav Fetisov and Sergei Starikov. Sergei Marakov and Igor Larinov were also cleared to join NHL teams. Fetisov and Larionov are members of the Hockey Hall of Fame.
Gregory said it was inevitable that Europeans would seek to come to North America and NHL teams would hire them “because of the popularity of the World Cup and Canada playing Russia, Sweden and Finland and the US as well.”
The globalization of hockey and looking for hockey talent had an effect on the lifestyles of NHL scouts who back in the six-team league rarely ventured out of Canada looking for talent.
“No, I went close (to the Arctic Circle),” said Gregory of one of his initial trips to Sweden. “Salming’s hometown is right near the Arctic Circle. When I was with the scouting bureau and you have to go look.”
The National Hockey League started the ball rolling in North America as the effort to expand North American branded sports continued in 1974 when the World Hockey Association sent a touring team to play Europeans and the Soviets. The NBA did not catch up to the NHL until Ted Turner developed the Goodwill Games and sent his Atlanta Hawks to the Soviet Union for training camp in the late 1980s. The NHL and NBA finally landed Soviet players in the late 1980s.
The National Basketball Association is hoping to open up a marketplace in India; Major League Baseball is expanding the World Baseball Classic and wants to introduce the game to countries like Ghana. The NHL plays regular season games in Europe. Oddly enough, the National Football league is way behind the other leagues in global expansion. The NFL has not been able to stage any games in China and seems to be content to go to London for annual games. The NFL has to continue finding growth areas in the United States, if possible, because it has limited options outside of North America. People do not play American football elsewhere except in British Columbia, a market that the NFL has cornered.
Sports continues to be a multinational entity. The drafts illustrate that pointedly.
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 bickley.com, Barnes and Noble or amazonkindle.
THURSDAY, 23 JUNE 2011 12:26
http://www.newjerseynewsroom.com/professional/how-the-nhl-and-sports-accidentally-stumbled-into-globalization
BY EVAN WEINER
NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM
THE BUSINESS AND POLITICS OF SPORTS
Sports globalization will again be on display this week as the National Basketball Association holds the league’s annual draft in Newark on Thursday and the National Hockey league holds the league’s annual grab bag in St. Paul, Minnesota on Friday and Saturday.
The NBA, the NHL and Major League Baseball have been global entities for a long, long time with baseball signing players from outside of the United States for decades. In the 1960s, the National Hockey league was essentially a closed shop with the league players made up entirely of Canadians with just one American, Tommy Williams and one Swede, Ulf Sterner who played with the New York Rangers.
Today, the National Hockey League teams all feature a good number of young and talented players from around the globe. Canadians, Americans, Swedes, Finns, Swiss, Slovakians, Czechs, Russians and other nationalities who take to the ice but it wasn’t always like that.
The globalization of North American sports escalated in 1972 during the Summit Series between Canada and the Soviet Union. Team Canada took on the Swedish National Team in a pair of exhibition games in between the four games and Canada and the four scheduled games in Moscow. One NHL general manager, Toronto’s Jim Gregory, took notice of the Swedish team during the two game series and dispatched his scout Gerry McNamara to a Christmas tournament in Sweden a few months later to evaluate talent.
Gregory and McNamara found two players they immediately liked and felt would be good NHL players, defenseman Borje Salming and winger Inge Hammarstrom. That really was the start of the globalization of the National Hockey League. Both players were free agents, so there was no need to worry about taking them in the draft so Toronto was able to sign them under the radar.
The two players signed Maple Leafs contracts in May 1973 and that would start a revolution that would ultimately change how hockey was played. The Canadian game borrowed significantly from the European version of the game and Gregory was at the forefront.
Salming was a Hall of Fame player.
“I brought Hammarstrom in, Gerry McNamara was our scout and we brought Hammarstrom and Salming in and they were welcomed additions to our club despite what (owner) Harold Ballard said,” laughed Gregory who knew Ballard did not like non Canadian players.
“That was his prerogative. Borje Salming was an unbelievable player for the Toronto Maple Leafs and Inge Hammarstrom while he was there did a real good job as well.”
Ballard needed to be sold on the addition of Swedes to his lineup and every though he would eventually warm up to Salming, Ballard did say that Hammarstrom could go into a corner with six eggs in his pocket and not break any of them. Back in the 1970s, the NHL was still a league of mostly Canadians although Gregory did his best to change that.
“Actually the Rangers brought in a player in 1964 (from Sweden) named Ulf Sterner and then Detroit brought over a player (Thommie Bergmann) and we had started scouting and Gerry McNamara went over and we were very lucky to get the players we did.
“We had a couple of other ones that should have been on our team. (Anders) Hedberg and (Ulf) Nilsson. We got into a little bit of bidding (with the World Hockey Association’s Winnipeg Jets) and we did not win out.”
The World Hockey Association was vilified by the sports media for being an inferior product, but the sports media like Pavlov’s dog is conditioned to react in a certain way and putting down upstart leagues like Lamar Hunt’s American Football League, Dennis Murphy’s American Basketball Association and World Hockey Association was par for the course. The truth is that those leagues changed North American sports. Hunt brought new ideas to what was essentially a mom and pop organization—the National Football league. Murphy’s ABA is on display every night dressed as the NBA as the old league “borrowed” from Murphy and his associates ideas which included the three point play and the All Star Weekend. The WHA sold the naming rights to the league’s championship trophy and pioneered international play and welcomed Swedes and Finns into the league.
Established leagues were staid affairs.
Gregory left the Toronto Maple Leafs and joined Central Scouting in 1979. He fought to bring Europeans into the fold shortly after that.
“I had been to Europe very early when I worked with the Leafs and actually I was part of a committee that hired Jack Button, who started Central Scouting, and when I was let go by the Leafs, the league offered me that job. I had been to Europe and had seen the talent that was there and, of course, had Salming and Hammarstrom as part of the organization that I was with and we had some other players as well.
“I contacted a couple of gentlemen, one of whom who had lived in Toronto and was part of the Finnish Ice Hockey Association, and we get together in talking and formed European Central Scouting to augment what was already there for the National Hockey League.”
By 1979, NHL teams were very aware of European talent or at least players who could come over from Sweden and Finland. The Iron Curtain countries also had many talented players but Soviets and Czechoslovakians could only come to North America if they defected.
In 1981, Czechoslovakia allowed Ivan Hlinka and Jiri Bubla to join the Vancouver Canucks not long after the Statsny Brothers defected and signed with the Quebec Nordiques. Hlinka would eventually coach the Pittsburgh Penguins in 2000.
It was not until 1989 that players who played for Russia were able to free join NHL teams. The first Soviet player to legally join an NHL team was Sergei Priakin who signed a contract with Calgary. Later that summer, New Jersey added Vyacheslav Fetisov and Sergei Starikov. Sergei Marakov and Igor Larinov were also cleared to join NHL teams. Fetisov and Larionov are members of the Hockey Hall of Fame.
Gregory said it was inevitable that Europeans would seek to come to North America and NHL teams would hire them “because of the popularity of the World Cup and Canada playing Russia, Sweden and Finland and the US as well.”
The globalization of hockey and looking for hockey talent had an effect on the lifestyles of NHL scouts who back in the six-team league rarely ventured out of Canada looking for talent.
“No, I went close (to the Arctic Circle),” said Gregory of one of his initial trips to Sweden. “Salming’s hometown is right near the Arctic Circle. When I was with the scouting bureau and you have to go look.”
The National Hockey League started the ball rolling in North America as the effort to expand North American branded sports continued in 1974 when the World Hockey Association sent a touring team to play Europeans and the Soviets. The NBA did not catch up to the NHL until Ted Turner developed the Goodwill Games and sent his Atlanta Hawks to the Soviet Union for training camp in the late 1980s. The NHL and NBA finally landed Soviet players in the late 1980s.
The National Basketball Association is hoping to open up a marketplace in India; Major League Baseball is expanding the World Baseball Classic and wants to introduce the game to countries like Ghana. The NHL plays regular season games in Europe. Oddly enough, the National Football league is way behind the other leagues in global expansion. The NFL has not been able to stage any games in China and seems to be content to go to London for annual games. The NFL has to continue finding growth areas in the United States, if possible, because it has limited options outside of North America. People do not play American football elsewhere except in British Columbia, a market that the NFL has cornered.
Sports continues to be a multinational entity. The drafts illustrate that pointedly.
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 bickley.com, Barnes and Noble or amazonkindle.
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