Baseball Hall of Fame should include Marvin Miller
FRIDAY, 12 NOVEMBER 2010 11:16
http://www.newjerseynewsroom.com/professional/baseball-hall-of-fame-should-include-marvin-miller
BY EVAN WEINER
NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM
THE BUSINESS AND POLITICS OF SPORTS
Marvin Miller is once again up for election to the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown. The 93-year-old Miller literally built the Major League Baseball Players Association with Richard Moss from scratch starting in 1966. By the time Miller left his post as the association's executive director Major League Baseball was transformed with the players gaining free agency and huge sums of money.
Miller, according to many sportswriters and baseball executives, ruined the game.
There are 12 names that the 16-member Hall of Fame Committee will consider at a December 6th vote. Miller's credentials will be examined long with those of eight players, Vida Blue, Dave Concepcion, Steve Garvey, Ron Guidry, Tommy John, Al Oliver, Ted Simmons and Rusty Staub; former five time Yankees manager Billy Martin; and long time baseball executive Pat Gillick, who built championship teams in Toronto and Philadelphia and the late Yankees owner George Steinbrenner.
There are other names that should get consideration are missing, one time Boston and Milwaukee Braves owner Lou Perini, one time Houston Colt 45s and Astros owner Roy Hofheinz and one time Kansas City and Oakland A's owner Charles Finley, The Baseball Hall of Fame is far from perfect and those three along with Miller should have been members of the Baseball Parthenon a long time ago.
Miller was passed over in 2003 and 2007 for baseball political reasons. Miller was not liked because he changed the economics of the industry in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s. He negotiated new deals with the owners and took their concerns to the courts, the National Labor Relations Board, and arbitrators. His actions eventually led to free agency.
If Jim Kaat, a long time pitcher and announcer, had a vote, Miller would be enshrined immediately. If Bill Madlock, a good hitter in his playing days in the 1970s and 1980s had a vote, Miller would have gotten a call years ago.
"Actually, the central issue that Marvin went after was always the pension plan," said Kaat in an interview in 2000. "Nowadays, you would not think that but the pension plan in the 1960s was much more important to the players than salary. Because in those days, if you projected to when you were 55 or 60 years old and you could draw $30,000 a year in a pension plan...a lot of players weren't making that much in salaries.
"That's how he kept everyone together. If you talk to Marvin, he will reiterate that. It was a big issue.
Kaat came up to the major leagues with the Washington Senators in 1959 and was with the Twins when Miller entered the picture in 1966.
In 1966, the players were tied to their teams because of the reserve clause.
The maximum salary seemed to be $100,000 and that money went to Mickey Mantle and Willie Mays type players. There was no free agency. The owners controlled the game and the players had little to say in their careers.
"It was a combination of getting organized as a players association with all of the television revenue that came until the game," said Kaat. "It gave the players an awful lot of strength. The owners didn't have a lot of foresight in what was going to be."
Kaat went on strike in 1972 along with his fellow association members over the percentage of the nation television revenues that went into the pension plan. That strike lasted nine days and the players got a guaranteed percentage of the TV revenues.
"Marvin used the pension plan as the cornerstone. He got all the stars with a few exceptions," Kaat recalled. "The (Chicago) Cubs had a very good owner in Mr. (Phil) Wrigley, a player-friendly owner. And so did the (Boston) Red Sox in Mr. (Tom) Yawkey. They were a little tougher sell. But we had a big rally in New York City in the late 1960s with Willie Mays, Willie Stargell and Roberto Clemente. You had all of these stars saying we won't give in. They stayed together and encouraged all of the players to stay together."
That generation passed the torch to Bill Madlock and the players of the 1970s and 1980s.
"We started off with the Andy Messersmith decision," said Madlock of his introduction to Miller. Messersmith and Dave McNally were granted free agency by arbitrator Peter Seitz and that opened the floodgates in the mid-1970s for player freedom.
"It just got better and better," Madlock said also in 2000. "I think the owners got intimidated by him. They knew very few guys could get these millionaire players together as one. There was no hesitation, what he said we did."
Madlock added that Miller explained all the options that were available to them and let the players decide.
"He did not try to make the decision for us," said Madlock. "He would put out all the information and what affect it would have — not only then but in five or 10 years down the road. He made it very simple.
Miller is head and shoulders ahead of the other 2010 candidates but there are a good number of people who helped "change" the game that aren't honored either.
Without Lou Perini, there is a good chance that Los Angeles and San Francisco, along with the Twin Cities in Minnesota, would have waited until the lords of baseball decided to expand beyond 16 teams to enter those cities. Because of Charles O. Finley, Major League Baseball had teams in Oakland, Kansas City, Seattle, San Diego, Milwaukee, Toronto, and Montreal. Without Roy Hofheinz, it might have taken a lot longer to change the blue-collar fan-base not only of MLB, but also the NFL, into well-heeled customers.
Perini had owned the Boston Braves, a franchise that could not get people out to Braves Field in the early 1950s. He started looking around for greener pastures and knew that Milwaukee city officials were intending on getting an MLB franchise. Milwaukee was the first city to put up taxpayer dollars to build a facility and had talked not only to Perini, but also to the owner of the St. Louis Browns, Bill Veeck, about relocating to the city. Perini took the offer and moved his team in the middle of spring training in 1953. The Milwaukee Braves' franchise broke National League box office records, Perini was suddenly awash with money, and that got the attention of Brooklyn Dodgers owner Walter O'Malley. Because of Milwaukee's success, O'Malley concluded Brooklyn could no longer compete with Milwaukee as long as the team played in Ebbets Field.
Perini's move did not go unnoticed in Minneapolis either, as city leaders decided that if Milwaukee could get a team, they could too. Minneapolis went after Veeck; Horace Stoneham, the owner of the New York Giants; the owners of the Philadelphia A's and the Cleveland Indians, and Calvin Griffith's Washington Senators.
Though private industry paid for the initial construction of the Bloomington, Minnesota, stadium, which opened in 1955, Minneapolis officials kicked in $9 million in 1958 to expand the stadium.
O'Malley took his Dodgers to Los Angeles in 1957, after striking out in his attempt to get a stadium to his liking from New York City officials. Griffith moved his Senators to Bloomington after the 1960 season.
Perini sold his majority share in the Braves in 1962, but remained on the Braves' board of directors and approved the Braves' franchise move to Atlanta in 1964, a move that opened up the southeast to MLB. O'Malley was elected to the Hall of Fame in December 2007 for his contributions to the industry — but Perini changed baseball, and he should be recognized in Cooperstown.
In 1952, Harris County, Texas, Judge Roy Hofheinz came up with an idea. Why not play baseball indoors under perfect weather conditions? Hofheinz eventually became mayor of Houston and spearheaded the campaign to bring MLB to the city. Hofheinz obtained a franchise for Houston in 1960 and got city and county dollars to pay for the first indoor stadium that featured baseball: the Astrodome. That should have been enough to warrant his inclusion in Cooperstown, but Hofheinz did something else that changed baseball and sports: He introduced the skybox.
Hofheinz was charging about $20,000 annually for the boxes, and that did not go unnoticed by his fellow owners. NFL Commissioner Pete Rozelle said in the 1980s that the skybox was a "bane to the business," and because of them, NFL owners needed stadium renovations or new stadiums with built-in luxury boxes.
Rozelle was correct, and the 1980s and 1990s were a time of franchise shifts in the NFL because owners were looking for stadiums with luxury boxes. Hofheinz also influenced entertainment by using a scoreboard to entertain people during games.
Finley is in the same category as Marvin Miller when it comes to baseball executives. They hated him and still bear a grudge. Finley tried to move his Kansas City A's a few times in the 1960s and eventually ended up in Oakland in 1968. He was another owner who tried to add some entertainment to baseball: Finley's A's experimented with orange baseballs in spring training; employed ballgirls instead of ballboys; built a zoo behind the outfield fence in Kansas City; advocated the use of the designated pinch hitter and pinch runner; World Series night games; started a trend by using multiple uniform combinations, and gave players money to grow moustaches.
His move to Oakland caused a major chain reaction in baseball that would eventually be felt in Kansas City, Seattle, Milwaukee, Montreal, San Diego, and Toronto. Kansas City did not stop Finley from moving, but a senator from Missouri, Stuart Symington, pressured MLB to get back into Kansas City as quickly as possible or he would begin to dismantle MLB's antitrust exemption. The American League filled the gap by awarding Kansas City and Seattle franchises in 1969, and the National League sped up a possible 1971 expansion and gave teams to Montreal and San Diego. Seattle went bankrupt and, in March 1970, a group led by Bud Selig scooped up the team and transferred it to Milwaukee during spring training. Seattle, which was planning to build a domed stadium, got into a legal battle with the American League, which was finally settled in 1976 when the AL granted teams to Seattle and Toronto. Finley changed the industry by making it more flexible for team migrations, and he should be acknowledged.
The Baseball Hall of Fame is more than just a room filled with plaques honoring great players, umpires and baseball executives. It should swing open the door to people who really made a significant mark on the industry.
Miller should have a plaque in Cooperstown. He is as much responsible for the growth of baseball as anyone who received Hall of Fame honors.
Evan Weiner, the winner of the United States Sports Academy's 2010 Ronald Reagan Media Award, is an author, radio-TV commentator and speaker on "The Politics of Sports Business." His book, "The Business and Politics of Sports, Second Edition is available at www.bickley.com or amazonkindle. He can be reached at evanjweiner@yahoo.com
Showing posts with label George Steinbrenner. Show all posts
Showing posts with label George Steinbrenner. Show all posts
Friday, November 12, 2010
Wednesday, July 14, 2010
Being lucky made all the difference for George Steinbrenner
Being lucky made all the difference for George Steinbrenner
Wednesday, 14 July 2010 08:03
http://www.newjerseynewsroom.com/professional/being-lucky-made-all-the-difference-for-george-steinbrenner
BY EVAN WEINER
NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM
THE POLITICS OF SPORTS BUSINESS
There is a lot of revisionist history that is being tossed around following the death of George Steinbrenner in terms of his building the Yankees into a global brand name. There was hard work, no doubt, and a lot of good people pitched in but George Steinbrenner never did want to buy the Yankees. He was from Cleveland and wanted the hometown Indians. The New York Yankees baseball team was his consolation prize when he and his group bought the team from CBS in 1973.
Steinbrenner had owned the American Basketball League's Cleveland Pipers in 1961. His team won the ABL title. Steinbrenner once tried to trade his whole team for Pittsburgh Rens star and future Hall of Famer Connie Hawkins. He wanted to move the Pipers into the National Basketball Association with his major signee Jerry Lucas in 1962 but had two problems. He didn't have the money on hand and his father would not advance him the cash needed to join the NBA and the American Basketball League claimed Steinbrenner had a deal with their league. Steinbrenner dropped out of the ABL and the ABL folded on New Year's Eve 1962. He nearly bought the Indians in 1972 but at the last moment Indians owner Vernon Stouffer backed out of the agreement.
The Steinbrenner Years have been well documented. But there is a question that should be asked. Was George Steinbrenner a good baseball owner/businessman or was he just very lucky? The answer is that he was very lucky.
He got baseball's most famous, but weakened, franchise for about $250,000 as part of a group who put up about $10 million for the New York Yankees. He was at the right place at the right time to cash in on cable TV and the Yankees brand name became bigger than baseball, which allowed him to make more marketing dollars.
Steinbrenner, by virtue of being in New York, had more money available to him except for the Los Angeles Dodgers in terms of how baseball revenue was raised in the period after 1973. His first big free agent singing was Catfish Hunter on New Year's Eve 1975 after Oakland A's owner Charles Finley made a mistake in sending out Hunter's 1975 contract. Steinbrenner missed out on the first class of free agents which consisted of two pitchers, Andy Messersmith and Dave McNally. He did sign Reggie Jackson in 1977 but the first championship teams were built the old fashion way through trades and players from the farm system.
Steinbrenner became bigger than the team over time. He was a lunatic who was compulsively driven to win. The guy from Cleveland became a symbol of New York which is odd because he didn't live in New York and was not part of the city's business community. He was in the middle of Tampa's business community. New York George was a commercial pitchman, a baseball owner, a Saturday Night Live host, the punch line of many jokes, a buffoonish character in Seinfeld, a twice suspended owner and finally an elder statesman.
He owned the Yankees, the New Jersey Nets (two years with him in ownership, the Nets played in the NBA Finals) and the Devils. He also put up money to make sure the Tampa Bay Lightning survived and became an NHL franchise. He was a big wheel in the Olympics movement. But the shipbuilder from Cleveland was a reluctant Yankee at first.
Steinbrenner spent a lot of money in the 1980s and had virtually nothing to show for it. The 1980s was the first decade since the 1910s that the New York Yankees did not win a World Series. The transformation of the Yankees into a dominant brand started in 1988 and this is where Steinbrenner got very lucky. Gulf and Western owned the Madison Square Garden Network, a cable TV station that had a lot of sports programming between October and May with New York Rangers hockey games and New York Knicks basketball but the channel virtually ran the soundtrack of crickets in the summer.
There was some talk in the cable TV industry that the MSG Network could be swallowed by Charles Dolan SportsChannel, an entity that had the cable rights to Mets and Yankees baseball along with New York Islanders and New Jersey Devils hockey and New Jersey Nets basketball. Gulf and Western made a strategic decision to save the network.
Go after Yankees baseball and go for broke with the biggest TV contract ever offered to an individual team in North American history.
The ploy worked. MSG got the Yankees and had sports programming 12 months a year and with the Yankees on board, multiple systems cable operators away from New York City and the suburbs added MSG. Also, New York City was finally wired for cable.
Martin Davis and Gulf and Western never get credit for beginning the transformation of Steinbrenner's Yankees into a behemoth. The Yankees-Gulf and Western 12-year-agreement for about a half a billion dollars shook up the economics of baseball. The huge divide between high end revenue teams — there was one the Yankees — and the rest of baseball would take a few years to develop. The new cable deal though did not mean Steinbrenner was opening the checkbook to all free agents.
Davis and Gulf and Western outbid the Tribune Company's WPIX, Channel 11 and Dolan's SportsChannel.
Steinbrenner was kicked out of baseball by Commissioner Fay Vincent in 1990 for paying Howard Spira to spy on Dave Winfield. While he was gone, Yankees brass decided to build a farm system and eventually that farm system would produce Derek Jeter, Andy Pettitte, Jorge Posada and Bernie Williams. Steinbrenner was back in the picture in 1993 after Vincent was fired by Steinbrenner's fellow owners. Those owners that led the campaign to get rid of Vincent included the Chicago White Sox Jerry Reinsdorf and Eddie Einhorn (Steinbrenner friends who George once called "the Abbott and Costello of Baseball) and "Buddy", Bud Selig, the owner of the Milwaukee Brewers. The Tribune Company's Stanton Cook who ran the Chicago Cubs was also a key player in Vincent's dismissal.
Cook's Channel 11 in New York was still carrying a number of Yankees games at the time as part of a secondary deal with MSG.
In 1998, Steinbrenner was tired of the rebuilt Yankee Stadium. The 22-year-old stadium version of the original park was not in the same league as new parks that were coming on line. Yankee Stadium had narrow corridors, few luxury boxes and lacked the other gadgets that other owners had like food courts and other revenue generators.
While Steinbrenner was grousing over his old, non revenue producing stadium, he had the huge TV deal and another multimillion dollar marketing agreement with Adidas America that was signed in 1997. The nine-year, $95 million contract drew the ire of his fellow owners and Steinbrenner sued his fellow owners to make sure they didn't interfere with the marketing deal. Major League Baseball had an exclusive deal with Russell Athletic to produce baseball uniforms. Adidas and Steinbrenner were partners until 2008. Adidas was replaced by Nike in 2009.
The Steinbrenner-Adidas deal echoed a deal that Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones signed with Pepsi in 1995 despite the fact that the NFL's official soft drink sponsor was Coca Cola.
The Steinbrenner-Jones connection should not have been dismissed as coincidence.
Steinbrenner's Yankees and Jones' Cowboys along with the Goldman Sachs Group and CIC Partners formed a food and retail company in 2008 called "Legends Hospitality Management LLC". The venture runs catering, concessions, merchandising and other management services at the new Yankees and Cowboys stadiums. Goldman Sachs was a minority partner in the regional sports cable network that the Yankees launched in 2002 after the Yankees-MSG deal ended. Steinbrenner finally got his new stadium in 2006. The new place opened in 2009 at a price tag of more than a billion dollars. It was a long slough for Steinbrenner who first pushed for a stadium in the 1980s.
New Jersey voters said no to a publicly funded stadium in 1985 but that didn't stop George from playing New Jersey versus New York for his affection. By 2001, New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani was carrying water for George and for the Mets Fred Wilpon in Queens.
New stadiums mean fresh revenue streams. Teams use new ballparks as an excuse to raise ticket prices and create high-priced club seats along with more luxury boxes. Wider concourses would allow more people to stand on concession lines and spend more money for beer, hot dogs, yearbooks and whatever else teams sell. It all brings in more revenue.
"There is a good chance that we will be able to work things out with the Mets and the Yankees," said the mayor, who has been a Yankee fan for life, in front of Yankee Stadium on opening day. "We are talking to them on a consistent basis and I have been in involved in some of the [talks]. I think there is a good chance we can work that out.
"The reality is, as I have said many times, both of them need new ballparks in order to be competitive. Maybe not this very year, but in order to be competitive over the next 10, 15, 20 years with their major competitors. Boston is getting a new ballpark; Baltimore has a new ballpark.
"Atlanta has a brand new ballpark. That's all going to enhance their revenues.
And if the Yankees and the Mets want to remain competitive with Baltimore, Boston or Atlanta, then that's something we just have to do."
Steinbrenner's Yankees always had money for free agents and Steinbrenner would pay for Reggie, Winfield, Dave Collins, Kenny Rogers and Alex Rodriguez. Whatever it took, the Yankees and Steinbrenner had the cash on hand which is a far different cry from 1962 and the Pipers.
In the game of sports business, George Steinbrenner, who was twice suspended from baseball, who fired people at his whims yet always took care of people in need, built a global brand in a sport that is played in North America, the Caribbean, the Pacific Rim, parts of South America and Australia. The New York Yankees compete with Manchester United (a former Yankees strategic partner) for world name recognition. Was it a master blueprint that made the Yankees and Steinbrenner brand names or was it just being in the right place at the right time?
There are a lot of what ifs. What would have happened if the Pipers continued to play? What if Stouffer said yes? What if Martin Davis and Gulf and Western didn't come up with the $500 million offer in 1988? Sometimes it is far better to be lucky than good.
Evan Weiner is an author, radio and TV commentator and speaker on "The Politics of Sports Business" and can be reached at evanjweiner@yahoo.comThis e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
Last Updated ( Wednesday, 14 July 2010 08:12 )
Wednesday, 14 July 2010 08:03
http://www.newjerseynewsroom.com/professional/being-lucky-made-all-the-difference-for-george-steinbrenner
BY EVAN WEINER
NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM
THE POLITICS OF SPORTS BUSINESS
There is a lot of revisionist history that is being tossed around following the death of George Steinbrenner in terms of his building the Yankees into a global brand name. There was hard work, no doubt, and a lot of good people pitched in but George Steinbrenner never did want to buy the Yankees. He was from Cleveland and wanted the hometown Indians. The New York Yankees baseball team was his consolation prize when he and his group bought the team from CBS in 1973.
Steinbrenner had owned the American Basketball League's Cleveland Pipers in 1961. His team won the ABL title. Steinbrenner once tried to trade his whole team for Pittsburgh Rens star and future Hall of Famer Connie Hawkins. He wanted to move the Pipers into the National Basketball Association with his major signee Jerry Lucas in 1962 but had two problems. He didn't have the money on hand and his father would not advance him the cash needed to join the NBA and the American Basketball League claimed Steinbrenner had a deal with their league. Steinbrenner dropped out of the ABL and the ABL folded on New Year's Eve 1962. He nearly bought the Indians in 1972 but at the last moment Indians owner Vernon Stouffer backed out of the agreement.
The Steinbrenner Years have been well documented. But there is a question that should be asked. Was George Steinbrenner a good baseball owner/businessman or was he just very lucky? The answer is that he was very lucky.
He got baseball's most famous, but weakened, franchise for about $250,000 as part of a group who put up about $10 million for the New York Yankees. He was at the right place at the right time to cash in on cable TV and the Yankees brand name became bigger than baseball, which allowed him to make more marketing dollars.
Steinbrenner, by virtue of being in New York, had more money available to him except for the Los Angeles Dodgers in terms of how baseball revenue was raised in the period after 1973. His first big free agent singing was Catfish Hunter on New Year's Eve 1975 after Oakland A's owner Charles Finley made a mistake in sending out Hunter's 1975 contract. Steinbrenner missed out on the first class of free agents which consisted of two pitchers, Andy Messersmith and Dave McNally. He did sign Reggie Jackson in 1977 but the first championship teams were built the old fashion way through trades and players from the farm system.
Steinbrenner became bigger than the team over time. He was a lunatic who was compulsively driven to win. The guy from Cleveland became a symbol of New York which is odd because he didn't live in New York and was not part of the city's business community. He was in the middle of Tampa's business community. New York George was a commercial pitchman, a baseball owner, a Saturday Night Live host, the punch line of many jokes, a buffoonish character in Seinfeld, a twice suspended owner and finally an elder statesman.
He owned the Yankees, the New Jersey Nets (two years with him in ownership, the Nets played in the NBA Finals) and the Devils. He also put up money to make sure the Tampa Bay Lightning survived and became an NHL franchise. He was a big wheel in the Olympics movement. But the shipbuilder from Cleveland was a reluctant Yankee at first.
Steinbrenner spent a lot of money in the 1980s and had virtually nothing to show for it. The 1980s was the first decade since the 1910s that the New York Yankees did not win a World Series. The transformation of the Yankees into a dominant brand started in 1988 and this is where Steinbrenner got very lucky. Gulf and Western owned the Madison Square Garden Network, a cable TV station that had a lot of sports programming between October and May with New York Rangers hockey games and New York Knicks basketball but the channel virtually ran the soundtrack of crickets in the summer.
There was some talk in the cable TV industry that the MSG Network could be swallowed by Charles Dolan SportsChannel, an entity that had the cable rights to Mets and Yankees baseball along with New York Islanders and New Jersey Devils hockey and New Jersey Nets basketball. Gulf and Western made a strategic decision to save the network.
Go after Yankees baseball and go for broke with the biggest TV contract ever offered to an individual team in North American history.
The ploy worked. MSG got the Yankees and had sports programming 12 months a year and with the Yankees on board, multiple systems cable operators away from New York City and the suburbs added MSG. Also, New York City was finally wired for cable.
Martin Davis and Gulf and Western never get credit for beginning the transformation of Steinbrenner's Yankees into a behemoth. The Yankees-Gulf and Western 12-year-agreement for about a half a billion dollars shook up the economics of baseball. The huge divide between high end revenue teams — there was one the Yankees — and the rest of baseball would take a few years to develop. The new cable deal though did not mean Steinbrenner was opening the checkbook to all free agents.
Davis and Gulf and Western outbid the Tribune Company's WPIX, Channel 11 and Dolan's SportsChannel.
Steinbrenner was kicked out of baseball by Commissioner Fay Vincent in 1990 for paying Howard Spira to spy on Dave Winfield. While he was gone, Yankees brass decided to build a farm system and eventually that farm system would produce Derek Jeter, Andy Pettitte, Jorge Posada and Bernie Williams. Steinbrenner was back in the picture in 1993 after Vincent was fired by Steinbrenner's fellow owners. Those owners that led the campaign to get rid of Vincent included the Chicago White Sox Jerry Reinsdorf and Eddie Einhorn (Steinbrenner friends who George once called "the Abbott and Costello of Baseball) and "Buddy", Bud Selig, the owner of the Milwaukee Brewers. The Tribune Company's Stanton Cook who ran the Chicago Cubs was also a key player in Vincent's dismissal.
Cook's Channel 11 in New York was still carrying a number of Yankees games at the time as part of a secondary deal with MSG.
In 1998, Steinbrenner was tired of the rebuilt Yankee Stadium. The 22-year-old stadium version of the original park was not in the same league as new parks that were coming on line. Yankee Stadium had narrow corridors, few luxury boxes and lacked the other gadgets that other owners had like food courts and other revenue generators.
While Steinbrenner was grousing over his old, non revenue producing stadium, he had the huge TV deal and another multimillion dollar marketing agreement with Adidas America that was signed in 1997. The nine-year, $95 million contract drew the ire of his fellow owners and Steinbrenner sued his fellow owners to make sure they didn't interfere with the marketing deal. Major League Baseball had an exclusive deal with Russell Athletic to produce baseball uniforms. Adidas and Steinbrenner were partners until 2008. Adidas was replaced by Nike in 2009.
The Steinbrenner-Adidas deal echoed a deal that Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones signed with Pepsi in 1995 despite the fact that the NFL's official soft drink sponsor was Coca Cola.
The Steinbrenner-Jones connection should not have been dismissed as coincidence.
Steinbrenner's Yankees and Jones' Cowboys along with the Goldman Sachs Group and CIC Partners formed a food and retail company in 2008 called "Legends Hospitality Management LLC". The venture runs catering, concessions, merchandising and other management services at the new Yankees and Cowboys stadiums. Goldman Sachs was a minority partner in the regional sports cable network that the Yankees launched in 2002 after the Yankees-MSG deal ended. Steinbrenner finally got his new stadium in 2006. The new place opened in 2009 at a price tag of more than a billion dollars. It was a long slough for Steinbrenner who first pushed for a stadium in the 1980s.
New Jersey voters said no to a publicly funded stadium in 1985 but that didn't stop George from playing New Jersey versus New York for his affection. By 2001, New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani was carrying water for George and for the Mets Fred Wilpon in Queens.
New stadiums mean fresh revenue streams. Teams use new ballparks as an excuse to raise ticket prices and create high-priced club seats along with more luxury boxes. Wider concourses would allow more people to stand on concession lines and spend more money for beer, hot dogs, yearbooks and whatever else teams sell. It all brings in more revenue.
"There is a good chance that we will be able to work things out with the Mets and the Yankees," said the mayor, who has been a Yankee fan for life, in front of Yankee Stadium on opening day. "We are talking to them on a consistent basis and I have been in involved in some of the [talks]. I think there is a good chance we can work that out.
"The reality is, as I have said many times, both of them need new ballparks in order to be competitive. Maybe not this very year, but in order to be competitive over the next 10, 15, 20 years with their major competitors. Boston is getting a new ballpark; Baltimore has a new ballpark.
"Atlanta has a brand new ballpark. That's all going to enhance their revenues.
And if the Yankees and the Mets want to remain competitive with Baltimore, Boston or Atlanta, then that's something we just have to do."
Steinbrenner's Yankees always had money for free agents and Steinbrenner would pay for Reggie, Winfield, Dave Collins, Kenny Rogers and Alex Rodriguez. Whatever it took, the Yankees and Steinbrenner had the cash on hand which is a far different cry from 1962 and the Pipers.
In the game of sports business, George Steinbrenner, who was twice suspended from baseball, who fired people at his whims yet always took care of people in need, built a global brand in a sport that is played in North America, the Caribbean, the Pacific Rim, parts of South America and Australia. The New York Yankees compete with Manchester United (a former Yankees strategic partner) for world name recognition. Was it a master blueprint that made the Yankees and Steinbrenner brand names or was it just being in the right place at the right time?
There are a lot of what ifs. What would have happened if the Pipers continued to play? What if Stouffer said yes? What if Martin Davis and Gulf and Western didn't come up with the $500 million offer in 1988? Sometimes it is far better to be lucky than good.
Evan Weiner is an author, radio and TV commentator and speaker on "The Politics of Sports Business" and can be reached at evanjweiner@yahoo.comThis e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
Last Updated ( Wednesday, 14 July 2010 08:12 )
Wednesday, April 21, 2010
Major League Baseball's cable TV problem
Major League Baseball's cable TV problem
Tuesday, 20 April 2010 23:12
BY EVAN WEINER
NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM
http://www.newjerseynewsroom.com/professional/major-league-baseballs-cable-tv-problem
COMMENTARY
It is not very often that anything that comes out of talk radio is worth a follow up discussion but a rare nugget of information came out of the Colin Cowherd show on New York's WEPN on Monday morning.
Cowherd was in a discussion with ESPN baseball reporter Tim Kirkjian about the economics of Major League Baseball and how that the discrepancy between "haves" (the Yankees) and "have nots" (Kansas City, Baltimore, Cleveland) was widening. Kirkjian agreed with the host and said Major League Baseball is trying to increase revenue sharing between the "haves" and have nots" but Major League Baseball would never have a salary cap because of the players union.
But, Kirkjian assured Cowherd that the owners and players will address the issue during the negotiations for the next Collective Bargaining Agreement which will begin presumably sometime in 2011 as the existing players/owners accord ends in December 2011.
There are a number of owners, men who live and die in their "real" businesses as free market capitalists, who would like to see more revenue sharing or wealth redistribution from the big market teams (i.e. the Yankees) to the game's financially weaker franchises (the soon to be renamed Florida Marlins, Pittsburgh, Kansas City, Milwaukee and others) to level the financial playing field and allow teams like Cincinnati to bid on big ticket free agents.
The owners want more Major League Baseball socialism and that would start by forcing the Yankees franchise to pay an even larger percentage of "luxury" tax on the team's payroll than the Steinbrenner family does presently and those extra revenues would be sent to the most neediest in Major League Baseball.
Here is the rub with Major League Baseball financial parity plan. If baseball fans only were paying for a regional sports channel's bills like the YES Network or SNY, then Major League Baseball financial woes should be taken care of with baseball fans' money.
But, a lot of the dollars the Steinbrenner Yankees generate comes from people who have no interest in either the Yankees or Major League Baseball - about 95 percent of the subscribers - yet they have to pay for the channel anyway because of the 1984 Cable TV Act.
That leads to the following question.
Is it fair that cable money — which comes from non-interested subscribers from New Jersey, New York and Connecticut that should be going to the Yankees (and for that matter the Mets) and should stay in New Jersey, New York and Connecticut — ends up in the pocket of say the owners of the Florida Marlins, Kansas City Royals or the Baltimore Orioles?
The question of cable TV wealth distribution can be is easily answered.
In 1984, Congress passed the Cable TV Act, which was signed into law by President Ronald Reagan and assured the survival of ESPN, the Weather Channel, MTV, WTBS and CNN. Multiple System Operators (MSOs) were able to sign deals with cable networks and then bunch the networks together in a package and sell the package as one to cable subscribers.
Consumers had no say in what networks were thrown into the basic expanded tier but if they wanted a special channel, say CNN or CNN Headline News, they would also have to take ESPN, the Weather Channel and MTV. The legislation gave cable consumers three options. They could take the entire package, basic and basic expanded, just basic ... or quit cable.
ESPN would not be the business as it is today without federal government intervention. Major League Baseball teams were slowly moving games to cable TV in the 1970s and by the 1980s, all sorts of regional sports networks were popping up nationally.
The Boston Red Sox became a more than just a New England franchise because of exposure on WSBK, Channel 38. The Mets and Yankees were also up on the "bird" as both teams were seen beyond the New York area on WOR and WPIX. The Chicago Cubs became a national team when the Cubs ownership, the Tribune Company, went national with WGN and Ted Turner had his Atlanta Braves on WTBS.
Those teams started pocketing extra revenue and MSOs snapped up the stations has the games brought more subscribers.
(Major League Baseball denied the sale of the Texas Rangers from Eddie Chiles to Edwin Gaylord in 1986 and in 1988 because Gaylord planned to put Rangers games on KTVT, Channel 11 because there were too many games on national cable TV with the Braves, Mets, Yankees, Red Sox and Cubs. Eventually Major League Baseball Commissioner Peter Ueberroth worked with George W. Bush and put together an ownership group that would buy the Rangers in 1989. Major League Baseball has never figured out how to deal with television.)
It was George Steinbrenner who changed the game when he signed a 12-year deal worth nearly $500 million with Charles Dolan's Madison Square Garden Network in 1988. Dolan's network went from about 2.3 million to 7.5 million subscribers thanks to the Yankees deal and gave MSG a summer's worth of programming. Steinbrenner was able to use that money to spend on players and player development.
That cable TV deal put the Steinbrenner Yankees into a different economic class than the rest of Major League Baseball and MLB officials have spent the better part of two decades trying to devise a scheme that would somehow penalize first George Steinbrenner and his partners and now the Steinbrenner family for being in the right place at the right time and agreeing to the MSG deal.
Steinbrenner's Yankees lived up to the MSG agreement and then the team decided it would be so much better to own a network than have a rights deal with MSG. The result was the YES Network and virtually every cable TV subscriber in the tri-state area is paying for the YES Network whether they watch it or not because the YES Network made it to the basic expanded tier. There was one holdout for a while – Charles Dolan's Cablevision – but eventually YES was added to Dolan's MSOs.
Steinbrenner was just following a path blazed by Gulf and Western, an owner of Madison Square Garden back in the early 1970s. Gulf and Western established a hybrid sports and entertainment channel, the MSG Network in the formative days of cable TV networks.
Dolan started SportsChannel after the MSG Network debuted. There were other networks as well. In Philadelphia, there was PRISM, also a sports-entertainment hybrid and an entity that gave the Philadelphia Phillies some additional money in 1979 to sign Pete Rose. The Z-Channel in Los Angeles also played around with a sports-entertainment format.
The cable TV-sports teams nexus slowly took shape in the mid 1980s with virtually all of the teams in Major League Baseball, the National Hockey League and the National Basketball hooking up with small cable networks that planned to grown expediently. In some cases that happened and in other cases, the regional cable TV network struggled and was swallowed up by another entity.
Steinbrenner's Yankees just cashed checks in the heavily populated New York City area while the owners of the Montreal Expos failed. The Steinbrenners, the Wilpon Mets and Arte Moreno's Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim are raking in cable TV cash.
Philadelphia, Boston and Seattle are doing quite well and neither of the Chicago teams is hurting financially from their cable TV deals. Kansas City, Cincinnati and Milwaukee are not sharing in the wealth.
In the next collective bargaining negotiations, the "have nots" will go after the Yankees' TV money and for those who are unaware of just where their cable TV fees go, it might be worth checking with their local municipalities and find out if there are any clauses in the municipality-MSO contract that addresses the issue of whether local subscribers be distributed in other areas.
Cowherd and Kirkjian never did tackle the cable TV revenue issue. Nobody ever does, nobody ever thinks about it in Major League Baseball because they are entitled to that money under United States laws. The negotiators probably have no idea why they get the cable TV money they just know it is there.
Major League Baseball wants "parity" which really means socialism where are the teams are on an even financial playing field. The small market teams have been after Yankees TV money for two decades and the only legitimate argument those teams have is that they are half the TV show and that you cannot have a game which has only one team.
It is understandable that those teams want to share stadium revenues from attendance but there is something wrong when the owners of the lesser revenue markets want Yankees cable TV money when that money is coming from people who are totally unaware that they cable TV fees are being sent to owners in a different area under the guise of revenue sharing. That money should stay in the metropolitan area.
Evan Weiner is an author, columnist, radio-TV commentator and lecturer on "The Politics of Sports Business" and can be reached at evanjweiner@yahoo.com
Tuesday, 20 April 2010 23:12
BY EVAN WEINER
NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM
http://www.newjerseynewsroom.com/professional/major-league-baseballs-cable-tv-problem
COMMENTARY
It is not very often that anything that comes out of talk radio is worth a follow up discussion but a rare nugget of information came out of the Colin Cowherd show on New York's WEPN on Monday morning.
Cowherd was in a discussion with ESPN baseball reporter Tim Kirkjian about the economics of Major League Baseball and how that the discrepancy between "haves" (the Yankees) and "have nots" (Kansas City, Baltimore, Cleveland) was widening. Kirkjian agreed with the host and said Major League Baseball is trying to increase revenue sharing between the "haves" and have nots" but Major League Baseball would never have a salary cap because of the players union.
But, Kirkjian assured Cowherd that the owners and players will address the issue during the negotiations for the next Collective Bargaining Agreement which will begin presumably sometime in 2011 as the existing players/owners accord ends in December 2011.
There are a number of owners, men who live and die in their "real" businesses as free market capitalists, who would like to see more revenue sharing or wealth redistribution from the big market teams (i.e. the Yankees) to the game's financially weaker franchises (the soon to be renamed Florida Marlins, Pittsburgh, Kansas City, Milwaukee and others) to level the financial playing field and allow teams like Cincinnati to bid on big ticket free agents.
The owners want more Major League Baseball socialism and that would start by forcing the Yankees franchise to pay an even larger percentage of "luxury" tax on the team's payroll than the Steinbrenner family does presently and those extra revenues would be sent to the most neediest in Major League Baseball.
Here is the rub with Major League Baseball financial parity plan. If baseball fans only were paying for a regional sports channel's bills like the YES Network or SNY, then Major League Baseball financial woes should be taken care of with baseball fans' money.
But, a lot of the dollars the Steinbrenner Yankees generate comes from people who have no interest in either the Yankees or Major League Baseball - about 95 percent of the subscribers - yet they have to pay for the channel anyway because of the 1984 Cable TV Act.
That leads to the following question.
Is it fair that cable money — which comes from non-interested subscribers from New Jersey, New York and Connecticut that should be going to the Yankees (and for that matter the Mets) and should stay in New Jersey, New York and Connecticut — ends up in the pocket of say the owners of the Florida Marlins, Kansas City Royals or the Baltimore Orioles?
The question of cable TV wealth distribution can be is easily answered.
In 1984, Congress passed the Cable TV Act, which was signed into law by President Ronald Reagan and assured the survival of ESPN, the Weather Channel, MTV, WTBS and CNN. Multiple System Operators (MSOs) were able to sign deals with cable networks and then bunch the networks together in a package and sell the package as one to cable subscribers.
Consumers had no say in what networks were thrown into the basic expanded tier but if they wanted a special channel, say CNN or CNN Headline News, they would also have to take ESPN, the Weather Channel and MTV. The legislation gave cable consumers three options. They could take the entire package, basic and basic expanded, just basic ... or quit cable.
ESPN would not be the business as it is today without federal government intervention. Major League Baseball teams were slowly moving games to cable TV in the 1970s and by the 1980s, all sorts of regional sports networks were popping up nationally.
The Boston Red Sox became a more than just a New England franchise because of exposure on WSBK, Channel 38. The Mets and Yankees were also up on the "bird" as both teams were seen beyond the New York area on WOR and WPIX. The Chicago Cubs became a national team when the Cubs ownership, the Tribune Company, went national with WGN and Ted Turner had his Atlanta Braves on WTBS.
Those teams started pocketing extra revenue and MSOs snapped up the stations has the games brought more subscribers.
(Major League Baseball denied the sale of the Texas Rangers from Eddie Chiles to Edwin Gaylord in 1986 and in 1988 because Gaylord planned to put Rangers games on KTVT, Channel 11 because there were too many games on national cable TV with the Braves, Mets, Yankees, Red Sox and Cubs. Eventually Major League Baseball Commissioner Peter Ueberroth worked with George W. Bush and put together an ownership group that would buy the Rangers in 1989. Major League Baseball has never figured out how to deal with television.)
It was George Steinbrenner who changed the game when he signed a 12-year deal worth nearly $500 million with Charles Dolan's Madison Square Garden Network in 1988. Dolan's network went from about 2.3 million to 7.5 million subscribers thanks to the Yankees deal and gave MSG a summer's worth of programming. Steinbrenner was able to use that money to spend on players and player development.
That cable TV deal put the Steinbrenner Yankees into a different economic class than the rest of Major League Baseball and MLB officials have spent the better part of two decades trying to devise a scheme that would somehow penalize first George Steinbrenner and his partners and now the Steinbrenner family for being in the right place at the right time and agreeing to the MSG deal.
Steinbrenner's Yankees lived up to the MSG agreement and then the team decided it would be so much better to own a network than have a rights deal with MSG. The result was the YES Network and virtually every cable TV subscriber in the tri-state area is paying for the YES Network whether they watch it or not because the YES Network made it to the basic expanded tier. There was one holdout for a while – Charles Dolan's Cablevision – but eventually YES was added to Dolan's MSOs.
Steinbrenner was just following a path blazed by Gulf and Western, an owner of Madison Square Garden back in the early 1970s. Gulf and Western established a hybrid sports and entertainment channel, the MSG Network in the formative days of cable TV networks.
Dolan started SportsChannel after the MSG Network debuted. There were other networks as well. In Philadelphia, there was PRISM, also a sports-entertainment hybrid and an entity that gave the Philadelphia Phillies some additional money in 1979 to sign Pete Rose. The Z-Channel in Los Angeles also played around with a sports-entertainment format.
The cable TV-sports teams nexus slowly took shape in the mid 1980s with virtually all of the teams in Major League Baseball, the National Hockey League and the National Basketball hooking up with small cable networks that planned to grown expediently. In some cases that happened and in other cases, the regional cable TV network struggled and was swallowed up by another entity.
Steinbrenner's Yankees just cashed checks in the heavily populated New York City area while the owners of the Montreal Expos failed. The Steinbrenners, the Wilpon Mets and Arte Moreno's Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim are raking in cable TV cash.
Philadelphia, Boston and Seattle are doing quite well and neither of the Chicago teams is hurting financially from their cable TV deals. Kansas City, Cincinnati and Milwaukee are not sharing in the wealth.
In the next collective bargaining negotiations, the "have nots" will go after the Yankees' TV money and for those who are unaware of just where their cable TV fees go, it might be worth checking with their local municipalities and find out if there are any clauses in the municipality-MSO contract that addresses the issue of whether local subscribers be distributed in other areas.
Cowherd and Kirkjian never did tackle the cable TV revenue issue. Nobody ever does, nobody ever thinks about it in Major League Baseball because they are entitled to that money under United States laws. The negotiators probably have no idea why they get the cable TV money they just know it is there.
Major League Baseball wants "parity" which really means socialism where are the teams are on an even financial playing field. The small market teams have been after Yankees TV money for two decades and the only legitimate argument those teams have is that they are half the TV show and that you cannot have a game which has only one team.
It is understandable that those teams want to share stadium revenues from attendance but there is something wrong when the owners of the lesser revenue markets want Yankees cable TV money when that money is coming from people who are totally unaware that they cable TV fees are being sent to owners in a different area under the guise of revenue sharing. That money should stay in the metropolitan area.
Evan Weiner is an author, columnist, radio-TV commentator and lecturer on "The Politics of Sports Business" and can be reached at evanjweiner@yahoo.com
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)