Rant by LeBron James speaks volumes about the real world of sports
TUESDAY, 14 JUNE 2011 16:14
http://www.newjerseynewsroom.com/professional/rant-by-lebron-james-speaks-volumes-about-the-real-world-of-sports
BY EVAN WEINER
NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM
Perhaps in the smoke and mirrors and laser light shows filled with loud music of 2011 sports, LeBron James should be introduced with some Billy Joel music the next time he goes onto the basketball court.
The song "My Life" seems apropos but if you think LeBron's post game rift was out of line, think again. High salaried athletes of the 21st century in America live in gated communities and don't have much to do with fans on a daily basis. It is no longer the 1950s — a time when members of the Brooklyn Dodgers lived in the Brooklyn community, members of the New York Giants baseball team lived in Dobbs Ferry, New York and were a part of that community.
Phil Rizzuto and Yogi Berra are no longer selling suits in a Newark clothing store in the off season to supplement their New York Yankees income.
Sports fans and sports media employees expect a lot out of their athletic heroes.
At one time LeBron James was a hero but he has become the equivalent of a wrestling heel, a bad guy after leaving the Cleveland Cavaliers franchise and announcing his intentions during a made for cable TV show on ESPN. Forgotten in the criticism of the show which was dubbed "The Decision" was that LeBron James made some money for charity. Athletes are supposed to be role models and the excuse is always because kids look up to sports heroes. LeBron has been clean, no drugs, no jail time yet he is a villain while scores of athletes are arrested on an annual basis for various crimes.
Plaxico Burress and Michael Vick seem to be coming back into sports as conquering heroes after doing jail time. LeBron James doesn't seem to have humility or has yet to be humbled by the sports media so he is a bad, bad guy now. Athletes are supposed to be humble. Entertainers on the other hand are applauded for being wild people. The Lindsay Lohans, Britney Spears of the world are great copy. The sporting media expects athletes lead the way by example because the kids look up to them.
Babe Ruth was hardly a role model but the Babe was out there signing autographs for the kids back in the 1920s and 1930s. But Babe was also a businessman and in 1930 made more money than President Herbert Hoover. Babe’s response drew chuckles when asked about making more money than the President of the United States.
“I know, but I had a better year than Hoover,” he said.
LeBron James problem seems to be his lack of a quick wit and humor. His statement was innocuous. LeBron James is not refusing to go into military service as a conscientious objector and not following Muhammad Ali’s 1967 lead. He wasn’t on the podium in Mexico City with a black glove raised in the air like John Carlos and Tommie Smith did in 1968 protesting poverty in America.
There was a no political statement here. It was just a pro wrestling type rant.
James should have been signing the final words from the 1978 song — I don't care what you say anymore, this is my life. Go ahead with your own life, leave me alone.
"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 said after the game.
James is getting excoriated for his statement.
James is saying publicly what athletes have thought and talked about privately for years. Athletes are not normal people as just everyday performers. LeBron James is in a different stratosphere from the average NBA player. Athletes are coddled, put on pedestals by fans — many of them adults who are in their 40s, 50s and 60s and wear the name of their favorite athlete on their back. They are pursued by autograph hounds and other jock sniffers and there are groupies who chase them. Their athletic exploits are recorded and chronicled for the ages.
Athletes are supposed to be happy just playing a child's game and at one time, great players like Honey Russell back before the days of the National Basketball League and the Basketball Association of America in the 1930s played for nothing. Even a great player like George Yardley played for nothing with the Los Angeles Jets of the American Basketball League (an organization that featured a Cleveland franchise owned by George M. Steinbrenner III). Yardley took the opportunity to play because he only participated in home games and select road games where his business would have taken him anyway. But as the late George Young pointed out in the 1980s while running the New York Giants in selecting player personnel and coaches that if a player says he will play for nothing, he is a liar.
It is a business and LeBron James is merely a businessman who let out a secret that is well known in his community, sports. You play a game and then get on with your life. Jim Bouton in his ground breaking baseball book Ball Four wrote that in 1970.
Sports is nothing more than a business even though fans are asked and give unconditional love for the team. But fans have to put up with an awful lot in exchange for a team. Madison Square Garden displaced the true "fans" decades ago when the building owners tore out the blue seats and replaced them with luxury boxes. The blue collar worker has been evicted from the best seats in that and other buildings.
All of the new buildings that have gone up since the 1986 federal tax code update (which shifted the way municipalities could charge owners for debt payment and put the onus of paying the bills for the facility on the taxpayers) also gave owners an excuse to hike ticket prices. The new places became malls complete with a sporting event, restaurants, shops and some new places included a Ferris Wheel or a swimming pool. In a 2000 interview, long time basketball executive John Nash, talking before Nets game at the Meadowlands, wondered if ticket prices for sporting events became too high.
"Cost is obviously a factor and it is directly related to players salaries," said Nash who was the General Manager of the New Jersey Nets at that time. "The players get 53 percent of the gross revenues by virtue of the agreement they made with the NBA. And as their salaries go up, the revenues streams necessarily have to go up."
In 2000 Nash and other sports executives were asking the same question. Were ticket prices hitting a plateau? The answer was no as ticket prices continue to escalate shifting the culture and social class inside of the arena to a high income "fan" and leaving behind the real sports lovers.
"That's a great question and I think every year teams have to decide for themselves," Nash said. "What has happened in many cases is that corporations have become our top customers as opposed to the everyday fan who cannot afford either the time commitment of 41 games or the cost."
In two weeks, NBA players may be locked out by the owners over money issues.
Politicians are willing to invest hundreds of millions of dollars to build sports stadiums and arenas and in some cases go the extra mile and hand owners money so their cities can be considered big league.
This is the culture of sports and Lebron James is part of that culture.
There is a National Football League owners led work stoppage taking place right now. On July 1, there could very well be an owners-led National Basketball Association work stoppage. Looking down the pike, the possibility of a Major League Baseball work stoppage exists as the Collective Bargaining Agreement between the owners and players expires in December. That National Hockey League owners and players CBA ends in the summer of 2012.
Since the Nash interview, the three NBA franchises have been relocated. Vancouver lost the Grizzlies franchise when Michael Heisley went shopping for a better arena deal in 2001. Heisley took an offer from Memphis. George Shinn relocated his Charlotte Hornets franchise in 2002 to New Orleans also in search of a better arena deal. The Oklahoma City-based owners of the Seattle SuperSonics took the franchise to Oklahoma City in 2008 after Seattle officials refused to build a new arena for the team some 13 years after the city rebuilt the municipally owned arena that housed the NBA team. The owners left despite having two years remaining on the lease between the city and franchise.
New Jersey will be losing the NBA Nets soon as that team will relocate to Brooklyn.
Allegedly 22 of the NBA’s 30 teams are losing money.
National Hockey League owners locked out their players in 2004 and shut down the business for an entire year. The NHL figures to approve the relocation of the Atlanta franchise to Winnipeg in a few days. Glendale, Arizona is paying $25 million a year for the privilege of having an NHL franchise in the Phoenix suburb.
Hawaiian officials are questioning why they are paying the NFL $4 million annually to host the league's annual all-star game, the Pro Bowl.
Businessmen in the Los Angeles area are demanding Los Angeles taxpayers kick money into a stadium for a National Football league team. In Sacramento, police, firefighters, teachers and other municipal employees are getting fired but Sacramento Mayor Kevin Johnson is determined to spend taxpayers dollars to build an arena for the Maloof brothers Kings NBA franchise and keep the team in town.
Stadiums and arenas are costly projects and sports owners are smart enough to know that they don't want to build one on their own dime if possible.
Sports is filled with entitlement.
It doesn't matter if it is pro sports, college sports or in Lebron James case, the AAU. LeBron James and other talented young teens are courted by sneaker companies and push into colleges whose coaches have deals with sneaker companies. The money game starts very early in life for basketball players.
LeBron James talked and the sports world went into a tizzy.
He said nothing.
America is fighting two declared wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and is involved with NATO in Libya. There seems to be secret wars taking place in Pakistan and Yemen. The economy is still struggling; politicians are more concerned with ideology than settling real problems yet LeBron James' my life statement is being scrutinized.
LeBron James is nothing more than a highly paid basketball player and entertainer. He's right. People go back to their lives after a game and he has his own life. He just plays a game, nothing more, nothing less.
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.
Showing posts with label Lebron James. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Lebron James. Show all posts
Tuesday, June 14, 2011
Wednesday, March 2, 2011
A Sacramento Kings move to Anaheim could open door for new NBA franchise in Newark
WEDNESDAY, 02 MARCH 2011 14:38
BY EVAN WEINER
NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM
http://www.newjerseynewsroom.com/professional/a-sacramento-kings-move-to-anaheim-could-open-door-for-new-nba-franchise-in-newark
THE BUSINESS AND POLITICS OF SPORTS
If you listen to the sports radio talk shows, as painful as that can be at times, there seems to be a resentment that basketball players such as LeBron James, Chris Bosh, Dwayne Wade, Carmelo Anthony, Chris Paul and Dwight Howard are manipulating the system using impending free agency as leverage to force trades or collude to play with other big time players.
In the CNN-SI Truth and Rumors section, Howard is leaving Orlando for the Los Angeles Lakers as a free agent or maybe he will join the Brooklyn Nets.
The New York Knicks flagship radio station, WEPN which along with New York newspaper sports sections led the cheerleading for the Knicks pursuit of Anthony ran a promo pushing Chris Paul to the Knicks when Paul becomes a free agent after 2012. It seems the NBA's major market teams can somehow fit stars into big cities despite the presence of a salary cap just like Major League Baseball, which has no salary cap but significant revenue sharing.
But no one ever talks about the ultimate free agency — franchise relocation.
The prevailing thinking is that the NBA's big stars want to go to big markets. LeBron James and Chris Bosh didn't go to a big market; they went to Miami where they joined Wade. Anthony ended up with the Knicks. Will small market NBA owners look to big markets like Los Angeles, Chicago and New York (Newark) if they cannot make it in Sacramento, Indiana, New Orleans, Memphis and Charlotte to name a few struggling markets?
The National Basketball Association has approved a number of moves in the past decade. Michael Heisley left behind Vancouver, Canada for a new arena in Memphis in 2001. George Shinn took his Charlotte Hornets basketball team to New Orleans in 2002. Two years ago, Clayton Bennett failed at his attempt to get a new Seattle arena for his SuperSonics basketball franchise and literally went home — his home — to Oklahoma City.
Memphis, New Orleans and Oklahoma City are small markets and there seems to be a feeling that the small markets cannot work over the long haul in the NBA.
The Maloof brothers, the owners of the Sacramento Kings, apparently are very interested in moving their basketball business from California's capital to a very crowded professional and college market in Anaheim, California which is south of Los Angeles. The Maloofs have received permission from the NBA to pursue a transfer to the arena close to Disneyland and will tell league officials in mid April if they intend to move south.
Anaheim is a much wealthier market than Sacramento and potentially oozes TV money, which is extremely important.
The Maloofs are negotiating with Anaheim officials and could be speaking with the big bosses from Rupert Murdoch's FOX Sports West about the huge hole in programming at the regional cable network starting in the fall of 2012 when Jerry Buss's Los Angeles Lakers join forces with Time Warner and form a potentially high revenue English- language Lakers channel and a Spanish-language Lakers channel.
In the David Stern world of success, a franchise needs three components — strong government support (Anaheim is pushing to get the Maloofs to sign a deal with Henry Samueli and share the city owned arena with Samueli's NHL Anaheim Ducks franchise), a strong local cable TV contract (FOX Sports West will have an opening for programming) and strong corporate support.
Newark has an NBA franchise at the moment but the city's arena will have an opening, presumably in 2012-13 when the present NBA franchise moves to Brooklyn. New Jersey Governor Chris Christie has spoken to Stern about that opening, so presumably there is strong government support for a Newark NBA franchise. The Comcast-Time Warner and New York Mets owned SNY regional cable network has no professional (NHL-NBA) games during the winter and could use programming. New Jersey has not shown strong corporate support for the Nets or NHL Devils and that might be a problem. The New York market oozes TV money too despite two Major League Baseball teams, two NFL teams, three National Hockey League teams, two NBA teams and a few of Big East basketball teams.
That leads to this question. For an owner, is being a big fish in a small pond better than being third fiddle in a super market like New York or Los Angeles?
The Maloofs are exploring that question.
If the answer is yes, the Maloofs move could open the door for Christie to recruit a disgruntled NBA owner once Mikhail Prokhorov takes his Nets through the Holland Tunnel and the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel (or whatever it will soon be renamed) to Brooklyn in two years. There are some financially-challenged franchises in the NBA which may trigger an owners lockout starting July 1. The suspects include the NBA-owned New Orleans Hornets, Charlotte, Memphis and Indiana.
Sacramento and Charlotte were once model NBA franchises. Both businesses had phenomenal success complete with sellouts and rabid fans. But both cities didn’t have the proper facilities to maximize revenues complete with luxury boxes and club seats along with restaurants in the arena. Shinn never got a new arena and left. The city built a new arena for an expansion team and that team has not been embraced.
Sacramento has had a long history of flirtation with Anaheim.
For years various Kings ownership groups have sought public funding to replace the privately funded Arco Arena, which opened in 1988, and build a new arena for the city's NBA franchise. Now, Sacramento Mayor Kevin Johnson, a former NBA player, and city officials are scrambling to put together a proposal that pleases the Maloof brothers.
Johnson and city elected officials and business leaders have about six weeks to accomplish the nearly impossible. Get funding for a new arena and do it in an economically stressed climate in California.
A little background is necessary.
In 1996, the Kings owner at the time, Jim Thomas, proposed building both a Major League Baseball stadium and an NBA arena in the city, but by January 1997, the idea fell apart and Thomas began threatening to sell the team because the franchise was losing money. Sacramento city leaders, fearing that Thomas might move the team to Anaheim or some other city, loaned him $82 million to help ease his financial burden.
Thomas sold the franchise to the Maloof brothers in 1998.
In 2001, Sacramento's mayor, Heather Fargo, put together a task force to study whether Sacramento should green light an arena and entertainment center in the city's downtown area and, by November 2002, there was some sort of commitment to the plan. But the Maloof brothers pulled out of the proposed venture within a year, partly because they didn't want to get stuck with a debt service bill. When the issue was revisited in 2004, the Maloofs were unhappy that a city councilman offered a resolution that would cap spending at $175 million for the city and $175 million for the Maloofs.
Apparently a salary cap on NBA players' payroll is fine for the brothers, but a municipal spending cap for an arena is unacceptable.
In 2006, there was another arena proposal on the table and Sacramento officials appeared to have deliberately used language that made it unclear what voters are being asked to approve. The two-part referendum called for a quarter of a cent general tax hike for 15 years and then asked whether voters would like to see the estimated $1.2 billion in proceeds go to building an arena and other community projects.
Why didn't Sacramento politicians mention that the tax increase in question is in fact a sales tax hike?
The answer seemed to be that the arena referendum had to be worded in such a way because it was never going to get the two-thirds approval needed under California law to pass a sales tax increase. Officials need just a simple majority, a 50.1% plurality, to win a general tax hike.
The politics of sports is at its best extremely messy, and politicians generally go to great lengths to keep stadium and arena building proposals off the ballot. In 2006, Sacramento city officials seemed to have reached a new high — or low, depending on one's viewpoint — in making sure they do right by the Maloof brothers and the NBA. They were determined to build an arena despite the language in Proposition 218, which calls for a two-thirds majority on specific tax increases like arena and stadium projects.
If you looked at the details of the proposed lease between Sacramento and the Maloof brothers, it was clear that the Maloofs would be walking away with a windfall, but that's how the government–sports franchise partnership works and you can't fault the Maloofs in this deal. Sacramento was so desperate to hold on to its only major league team that it was willing to give away the store if voters say yes.
The city, through the general tax, would have put up at least $470 million for the arena and parking. Sacramento officials thought it would have cost as much as $542 million for both, and there also would have been a cost of between $35 and $51 million to pay off the debt service on the loans that will be taken out for the construction. The city would own the building, but all of the revenue generated for all events held inside the building would go to the Maloof brothers. Not only that: The siblings would keep all the money earned from selling the naming rights to the city owned arena.
The Maloofs would pay off Thomas' old loan, which they inherited after they purchased the team. Additionally, they would pay $4 million in annual rent, an amount that could easily come in 2006 from naming rights. The brothers would also have had to kick in $20 million for arena repairs. It was a sweet deal for the Maloofs and a rotten one for Sacramento.
The Maloof-Sacramento "agreement" fell apart because the Maloofs did not want an "arena-village" sprouting up around the arena and wanted lots and lots of parking.
The Maloofs and the city began fighting over development surrounding the arena, the city wanted commercial and residential building to ring the new facility to spur downtown development but the Maloofs, who would get just about every nickel of revenue inside the building, wanted the land for an 8,000 space parking lot. The Maloofs wanted the big parking lot because they would keep all of the money generated from the lot. The Maloofs wanted the same parking deal they have now at the old arena.
That might not seem like a deal breaker until you do the math. Assuming the Maloofs fill the lot and charge $10 a car, that would mean $80,000 a night multiplied by 41 and you get more than $3 million annually from parking alone just from Kings events. The Maloofs would also get parking money from non-Kings events at the building, so the parking lot issue has become significant and a deal breaker.
The two questions on the November 2006 ballot were sounded defeated but there is never surrender in the "arena-game." Stern took over the negotiations in 2007 and nothing happened. The NBA recently walked away from the bargaining table leaving the Maloofs to look elsewhere. Still Sacramento Mayor Kevin Johnson is looking to get an arena done and the NBA has a history of going back to failed cities. Charlotte, Memphis, New Orleans, Minneapolis, Salt Lake City and Toronto among others were failed basketball cities. Dallas, Houston, Philadelphia (the Warriors moved to San Francisco in 1962 abandoning the town. Syracuse moved to Philadelphia in 1963.) and Chicago failed to support NBA or ABA franchises.
In April 2005, NBA Commissioner David Stern threw a hissy fit when New Jersey officials would not commit to building an arena for Nets basketball in Newark.
"New Jersey blew it," Stern said before a Nets playoff game. "We practically begged them, and the New Jersey politicians did not step up." Stern was irate because New Jersey politicians said no to public funding for a Newark building.
Newark, Seattle, Louisville, Kansas City, Pittsburgh and Vancouver could be in the mix if an owner decides his present market does not work financially. The Maloof's decision to become a small fish in a large pond could have some major reverberations. Newark might be a free agent destination, not for Dwight Howard or Chris Paul, rather an NBA owner.
Evan Weiner, the winner of the United States Sports Academy's 2010 Ronald Reagan Media Award, is an author, radio-TV commentator and speaker on "The Politics of Sports Business." His book, "The Business and Politics of Sports, Second Edition is available at www.bickley.com, Barnes and Noble or amazonkindle. He can be reached at evanjweiner@yahoo.com
WEDNESDAY, 02 MARCH 2011 14:38
BY EVAN WEINER
NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM
http://www.newjerseynewsroom.com/professional/a-sacramento-kings-move-to-anaheim-could-open-door-for-new-nba-franchise-in-newark
THE BUSINESS AND POLITICS OF SPORTS
If you listen to the sports radio talk shows, as painful as that can be at times, there seems to be a resentment that basketball players such as LeBron James, Chris Bosh, Dwayne Wade, Carmelo Anthony, Chris Paul and Dwight Howard are manipulating the system using impending free agency as leverage to force trades or collude to play with other big time players.
In the CNN-SI Truth and Rumors section, Howard is leaving Orlando for the Los Angeles Lakers as a free agent or maybe he will join the Brooklyn Nets.
The New York Knicks flagship radio station, WEPN which along with New York newspaper sports sections led the cheerleading for the Knicks pursuit of Anthony ran a promo pushing Chris Paul to the Knicks when Paul becomes a free agent after 2012. It seems the NBA's major market teams can somehow fit stars into big cities despite the presence of a salary cap just like Major League Baseball, which has no salary cap but significant revenue sharing.
But no one ever talks about the ultimate free agency — franchise relocation.
The prevailing thinking is that the NBA's big stars want to go to big markets. LeBron James and Chris Bosh didn't go to a big market; they went to Miami where they joined Wade. Anthony ended up with the Knicks. Will small market NBA owners look to big markets like Los Angeles, Chicago and New York (Newark) if they cannot make it in Sacramento, Indiana, New Orleans, Memphis and Charlotte to name a few struggling markets?
The National Basketball Association has approved a number of moves in the past decade. Michael Heisley left behind Vancouver, Canada for a new arena in Memphis in 2001. George Shinn took his Charlotte Hornets basketball team to New Orleans in 2002. Two years ago, Clayton Bennett failed at his attempt to get a new Seattle arena for his SuperSonics basketball franchise and literally went home — his home — to Oklahoma City.
Memphis, New Orleans and Oklahoma City are small markets and there seems to be a feeling that the small markets cannot work over the long haul in the NBA.
The Maloof brothers, the owners of the Sacramento Kings, apparently are very interested in moving their basketball business from California's capital to a very crowded professional and college market in Anaheim, California which is south of Los Angeles. The Maloofs have received permission from the NBA to pursue a transfer to the arena close to Disneyland and will tell league officials in mid April if they intend to move south.
Anaheim is a much wealthier market than Sacramento and potentially oozes TV money, which is extremely important.
The Maloofs are negotiating with Anaheim officials and could be speaking with the big bosses from Rupert Murdoch's FOX Sports West about the huge hole in programming at the regional cable network starting in the fall of 2012 when Jerry Buss's Los Angeles Lakers join forces with Time Warner and form a potentially high revenue English- language Lakers channel and a Spanish-language Lakers channel.
In the David Stern world of success, a franchise needs three components — strong government support (Anaheim is pushing to get the Maloofs to sign a deal with Henry Samueli and share the city owned arena with Samueli's NHL Anaheim Ducks franchise), a strong local cable TV contract (FOX Sports West will have an opening for programming) and strong corporate support.
Newark has an NBA franchise at the moment but the city's arena will have an opening, presumably in 2012-13 when the present NBA franchise moves to Brooklyn. New Jersey Governor Chris Christie has spoken to Stern about that opening, so presumably there is strong government support for a Newark NBA franchise. The Comcast-Time Warner and New York Mets owned SNY regional cable network has no professional (NHL-NBA) games during the winter and could use programming. New Jersey has not shown strong corporate support for the Nets or NHL Devils and that might be a problem. The New York market oozes TV money too despite two Major League Baseball teams, two NFL teams, three National Hockey League teams, two NBA teams and a few of Big East basketball teams.
That leads to this question. For an owner, is being a big fish in a small pond better than being third fiddle in a super market like New York or Los Angeles?
The Maloofs are exploring that question.
If the answer is yes, the Maloofs move could open the door for Christie to recruit a disgruntled NBA owner once Mikhail Prokhorov takes his Nets through the Holland Tunnel and the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel (or whatever it will soon be renamed) to Brooklyn in two years. There are some financially-challenged franchises in the NBA which may trigger an owners lockout starting July 1. The suspects include the NBA-owned New Orleans Hornets, Charlotte, Memphis and Indiana.
Sacramento and Charlotte were once model NBA franchises. Both businesses had phenomenal success complete with sellouts and rabid fans. But both cities didn’t have the proper facilities to maximize revenues complete with luxury boxes and club seats along with restaurants in the arena. Shinn never got a new arena and left. The city built a new arena for an expansion team and that team has not been embraced.
Sacramento has had a long history of flirtation with Anaheim.
For years various Kings ownership groups have sought public funding to replace the privately funded Arco Arena, which opened in 1988, and build a new arena for the city's NBA franchise. Now, Sacramento Mayor Kevin Johnson, a former NBA player, and city officials are scrambling to put together a proposal that pleases the Maloof brothers.
Johnson and city elected officials and business leaders have about six weeks to accomplish the nearly impossible. Get funding for a new arena and do it in an economically stressed climate in California.
A little background is necessary.
In 1996, the Kings owner at the time, Jim Thomas, proposed building both a Major League Baseball stadium and an NBA arena in the city, but by January 1997, the idea fell apart and Thomas began threatening to sell the team because the franchise was losing money. Sacramento city leaders, fearing that Thomas might move the team to Anaheim or some other city, loaned him $82 million to help ease his financial burden.
Thomas sold the franchise to the Maloof brothers in 1998.
In 2001, Sacramento's mayor, Heather Fargo, put together a task force to study whether Sacramento should green light an arena and entertainment center in the city's downtown area and, by November 2002, there was some sort of commitment to the plan. But the Maloof brothers pulled out of the proposed venture within a year, partly because they didn't want to get stuck with a debt service bill. When the issue was revisited in 2004, the Maloofs were unhappy that a city councilman offered a resolution that would cap spending at $175 million for the city and $175 million for the Maloofs.
Apparently a salary cap on NBA players' payroll is fine for the brothers, but a municipal spending cap for an arena is unacceptable.
In 2006, there was another arena proposal on the table and Sacramento officials appeared to have deliberately used language that made it unclear what voters are being asked to approve. The two-part referendum called for a quarter of a cent general tax hike for 15 years and then asked whether voters would like to see the estimated $1.2 billion in proceeds go to building an arena and other community projects.
Why didn't Sacramento politicians mention that the tax increase in question is in fact a sales tax hike?
The answer seemed to be that the arena referendum had to be worded in such a way because it was never going to get the two-thirds approval needed under California law to pass a sales tax increase. Officials need just a simple majority, a 50.1% plurality, to win a general tax hike.
The politics of sports is at its best extremely messy, and politicians generally go to great lengths to keep stadium and arena building proposals off the ballot. In 2006, Sacramento city officials seemed to have reached a new high — or low, depending on one's viewpoint — in making sure they do right by the Maloof brothers and the NBA. They were determined to build an arena despite the language in Proposition 218, which calls for a two-thirds majority on specific tax increases like arena and stadium projects.
If you looked at the details of the proposed lease between Sacramento and the Maloof brothers, it was clear that the Maloofs would be walking away with a windfall, but that's how the government–sports franchise partnership works and you can't fault the Maloofs in this deal. Sacramento was so desperate to hold on to its only major league team that it was willing to give away the store if voters say yes.
The city, through the general tax, would have put up at least $470 million for the arena and parking. Sacramento officials thought it would have cost as much as $542 million for both, and there also would have been a cost of between $35 and $51 million to pay off the debt service on the loans that will be taken out for the construction. The city would own the building, but all of the revenue generated for all events held inside the building would go to the Maloof brothers. Not only that: The siblings would keep all the money earned from selling the naming rights to the city owned arena.
The Maloofs would pay off Thomas' old loan, which they inherited after they purchased the team. Additionally, they would pay $4 million in annual rent, an amount that could easily come in 2006 from naming rights. The brothers would also have had to kick in $20 million for arena repairs. It was a sweet deal for the Maloofs and a rotten one for Sacramento.
The Maloof-Sacramento "agreement" fell apart because the Maloofs did not want an "arena-village" sprouting up around the arena and wanted lots and lots of parking.
The Maloofs and the city began fighting over development surrounding the arena, the city wanted commercial and residential building to ring the new facility to spur downtown development but the Maloofs, who would get just about every nickel of revenue inside the building, wanted the land for an 8,000 space parking lot. The Maloofs wanted the big parking lot because they would keep all of the money generated from the lot. The Maloofs wanted the same parking deal they have now at the old arena.
That might not seem like a deal breaker until you do the math. Assuming the Maloofs fill the lot and charge $10 a car, that would mean $80,000 a night multiplied by 41 and you get more than $3 million annually from parking alone just from Kings events. The Maloofs would also get parking money from non-Kings events at the building, so the parking lot issue has become significant and a deal breaker.
The two questions on the November 2006 ballot were sounded defeated but there is never surrender in the "arena-game." Stern took over the negotiations in 2007 and nothing happened. The NBA recently walked away from the bargaining table leaving the Maloofs to look elsewhere. Still Sacramento Mayor Kevin Johnson is looking to get an arena done and the NBA has a history of going back to failed cities. Charlotte, Memphis, New Orleans, Minneapolis, Salt Lake City and Toronto among others were failed basketball cities. Dallas, Houston, Philadelphia (the Warriors moved to San Francisco in 1962 abandoning the town. Syracuse moved to Philadelphia in 1963.) and Chicago failed to support NBA or ABA franchises.
In April 2005, NBA Commissioner David Stern threw a hissy fit when New Jersey officials would not commit to building an arena for Nets basketball in Newark.
"New Jersey blew it," Stern said before a Nets playoff game. "We practically begged them, and the New Jersey politicians did not step up." Stern was irate because New Jersey politicians said no to public funding for a Newark building.
Newark, Seattle, Louisville, Kansas City, Pittsburgh and Vancouver could be in the mix if an owner decides his present market does not work financially. The Maloof's decision to become a small fish in a large pond could have some major reverberations. Newark might be a free agent destination, not for Dwight Howard or Chris Paul, rather an NBA owner.
Evan Weiner, the winner of the United States Sports Academy's 2010 Ronald Reagan Media Award, is an author, radio-TV commentator and speaker on "The Politics of Sports Business." His book, "The Business and Politics of Sports, Second Edition is available at www.bickley.com, Barnes and Noble or amazonkindle. He can be reached at evanjweiner@yahoo.com
Tuesday, December 28, 2010
NBA contraction: LeBron James says he didn’t mean to get rid of N.J. Nets
Tuesday, 28 December 2010 11:59 .BY EVAN WEINER
NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM
THE BUSINESS AND POLITICS OF SPORTS
There is nothing like a feud in sports and apparently LeBron James has picked a senseless fight with the National Basketball Players Association, the New Jersey Nets and Minnesota Timberwolves. It would have made far more sense for LeBron from Miami to call one of the sports talk radio shows in Miami than tell NBA beat reporters that in the 1980s, people like watching NBA games because stars played together because there were less teams. LeBron from Miami could have told one of the carnival barkers on WQAM or WINZ "let's Kevin Love off Minnesota or Brook Lopez and Devin Harris off New Jersey put them on a team to a team that could be really good." It would have made good talk radio but in the business of the NBA, LeBron from Miami could not have said anything dumber from a business standpoint.
"Not saying let's take New Jersey and let's take Minnesota out of the league," James said last Thursday. "But hey, you guys are not stupid, I'm not stupid, it would be great for the league."
Great for the league?
Maybe on the court but LeBron from Miami also wants to put at least 30 players out of work, which will not make his fellow player association members too happy, along with head coaches, assistant coaches, scouts, athletic trainers, equipment managers, front office staff and per diem employees who work for the team on game day or at the arena on game day along with reporters because they won't have a team to cover.
But on Monday, LeBron from Miami backtracked. "I'm with the players, and the players know that," James said. "I've been with the players. It's not about getting guys out of the league or knocking teams out. I didn't mean to upset nobody. I didn't tell Avery Johnson to leave, either. I didn't say let's abandon the Nets, and not let them move to Brooklyn or let's tear down the Target Center in Minnesota. I never said that."
LeBron from Miami didn't even know what "contract" meant.
The damage was done however, Nets coach Avery Johnson said, "We're going to Brooklyn. We're not going to contract."
But for LeBron from Miami and the beat reporters who don't know much about NBA or sports business and for book publishers who claim there is no market for basketball history books complete with accounts from those who played the game in the 1940s and 1950s, here is how the NBA worked back in the 1950s when the league last contracted a team. Actually, the NBA didn't contract a team as the owners of the Baltimore Bullets didn't wait for Commissioner Maurice Podoloff to contract them and gave up on November 27, 1954. That was the last time an NBA team went out of business although many have moved and there were a number of American Basketball Association franchises that met the same fate as Baltimore. The NBA took the four surviving ABA teams in a "merger" in 1976.
For even more New Jersey sports, visit the NJNR Press Box
The NBA, like the National Football League of that era was a step above semi-pro level.
In the late 1950s, television became an integral part of sports. The National Football League became engrained in the American culture on December 28, 1958 when Johnny Unitas lead the Baltimore Colts downfield in overtime to beat the New York Giants. That game changed pro football and led to the formation of the American Football League. NBA owners also took notice of the game and the power of TV according to Bailey Howell who was a rookie with Detroit in 1959
"It was a period of transition because shortly after that they started adding teams," said Howell of the NBA in 1959. "They added Chicago and teams were moving out of the small markets to the big market areas, Minneapolis moved to LA, Philadelphia moved to San Francisco and Syracuse moved down to Philadelphia so they were targeting the bigger markets and hopefully the TV revenue that would result from it."
As NBA owners moved to the bigger markets, they encountered another problem. Too many home games, so the solution was simple. Instead of having the Harlem Globetrotters play the Washington Generals or any other team as the preliminary game before an NBA contest, they would schedule an NBA doubleheader in a proven market like New York and so they owners hold less home games or farm out home games to cities that could handle a game.
"All the cities had doubleheaders but the Knicks had more, of course," recalled Howell. "The league was struggling so and in Detroit they (owner Fred Zollner) didn't think they could have 40 home games and draw good crowds, so we would play about 30-32 games at home and the rest were doubleheaders or we would take a home game down to Toledo or go back to Fort Wayne. We played somewhere different every night; we never played two or three nights in the same place. The Celtics played doubleheaders in New York in the first game of a doubleheader and in Providence. The league was struggling; it was really struggling in those years."
The NBA played, it seems, whenever there was a court and two baskets. The 1953-54 Baltimore Bullets franchise was scheduled in the least likely basketball outposts in the United States at that time. Baltimore played games in Buffalo, Indianapolis, Miami Beach, Miami, Birmingham, Alabama and Troy, Ohio. George Mikan's 53-54 Minneapolis Lakers played in Moorhead, Minnesota, Chicago, Kansas City, Missouri, Grand Forks, North Dakota, Spencer, Iowa, Huron, South Dakota, Toledo, Ohio, Grand Rapids, Michigan, Hibbing, Minnesota and New Haven, Connecticut. The Milwaukee Hawks in 1953-54 went to Omaha, Nebraska, Collingsworth, Michigan, and Iowa City, Iowa. Rochester played a game in Cleveland that year. Syracuse had a contest in Cleveland. Eddie Gottlieb's Philadelphia Warriors played the New York Knicks in White Plains at a building that decades later would serve as the home of an NBA summer rookie league, the Westchester County Center, as well as playing in Hershey. Boston had games in New London, Connecticut, Providence, Rhode Island and Waterville, Maine. Throughout the 1950s, the NBA would be barnstorming during the regular season in addition to the pre-season. The Lakers after Mikan retired performed in Houston and Dallas.
In 1959-60, the lame duck Minneapolis Lakers played the Philadelphia Warriors on January 31, 1960 in San Francisco and on February 1, 1960 in Los Angeles. It was the first time the Warriors and Lakers would play one another in the two California cities. Within two and a half years, the Los Angeles Lakers and the San Francisco Warriors would play one another regularly in NBA action. Minneapolis also played a game in Seattle.
The NBA would approve the relocation of the Minneapolis Lakers to Los Angeles in 1960 and add the Chicago territory in 1961 to give the league a presence in the country's top three markets. The league was also in Detroit and auto manufacturers were spending money on sports sponsorships. The NBA, it seemed by 1961, to position itself into a good spot for United States network TV and with President John F. Kennedy's signature on the Sports Broadcasting Act of 1961, the league could bundle its teams together and sell rights to its games without running afoul of United States Anti-trust laws.
Oddly enough, David Sarnoff's NBC TV dumped the NBA after the 1961-62 season. The league would find a home on ABC in 1963 which was a languishing network. ABC would carry NBA games until the 1972-73 season. Today, television, specifically cable TV provides a revenue stream that is essential to the survival of the league. The Christmas Day games, which Los Angeles Lakers coach Phil Jackson and LeBron from Miami complained about, are the start off point for league marketing for the season, which is a bit strange in that the season is approaching the two-month mark at that point.
LeBron's comments were ill advised but that's not the first time he has run into that problem this year. The NBA does have financial problems and there is a reason that there are 30 franchises today and some of that had to do with potential owners wanting to get into the league (Vancouver's Arthur Griffiths spent $100 million for a Vancouver franchise when the league wasn't even thinking about Vancouver back in the mid-1990s and that franchise was sold to Michael Heisley in 2000. Heisley took the franchise to Memphis and has lost money. NBA owners wanted Griffiths' $100 million and gave him a franchise), sudden availability of arenas (Charlotte, Miami, Minneapolis and Orlando). Replacing a transferred team with an expansion team (Charlotte) and numerous exemptions that are available to teams in the salary cap. That is just the tip of the iceberg.
NBA Commissioner David Stern took over a league in 1984, which was financially reeling. NBA Commissioner Larry O'Brien and players association Executive Director Larry Fleisher came up with the 1983 Collective Bargaining Agreement that put a salary cap in place is considered to be the turning point in the league's history by the owners and by the players. The 23-team league survived and both sides formed a working alliance, which would allow the league to grow. It also helped that two entities were about ready to join the league, Michael Jordan and Nike. The salary cap was the brainchild of a new lawyer that came on the scene named Gary Bettman. Bettman would become one of the three key people that would run the NBA in the mid-1980s and beyond. David Stern would be the boss, Russell Granik the number two guy followed by Bettman. Without the 83 agreement, there might not have been a Cleveland Cavaliers, which is something that LeBron from Miami should know.
The Collective Bargaining was Commissioner Larry O'Brien's last major work for the NBA and it is one of the reasons that the NBA of the 1980s became popular and it didn't hurt the Boston and Los Angeles had stars as did Philadelphia but LeBron from Miami should know this too. There were bad teams in the 1980s, franchises moved and not all the stars played together — Charles Barkley, Patrick Ewing and Chris Mullin never had the "Big 3" around them like this year's Miami Heat.
The NBA is not a perfect world.
Evan Weiner, the winner of the United States Sports Academy's 2010 Ronald Reagan Media Award, is an author, radio-TV commentator and speaker on "The Politics of Sports Business." His book, "The Business and Politics of Sports, Second Edition is available at www.bickley.com, xplana.com or amazonkindle. He can be reached at evanjweiner@yahoo.com
Tuesday, 28 December 2010 11:59 .BY EVAN WEINER
NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM
THE BUSINESS AND POLITICS OF SPORTS
There is nothing like a feud in sports and apparently LeBron James has picked a senseless fight with the National Basketball Players Association, the New Jersey Nets and Minnesota Timberwolves. It would have made far more sense for LeBron from Miami to call one of the sports talk radio shows in Miami than tell NBA beat reporters that in the 1980s, people like watching NBA games because stars played together because there were less teams. LeBron from Miami could have told one of the carnival barkers on WQAM or WINZ "let's Kevin Love off Minnesota or Brook Lopez and Devin Harris off New Jersey put them on a team to a team that could be really good." It would have made good talk radio but in the business of the NBA, LeBron from Miami could not have said anything dumber from a business standpoint.
"Not saying let's take New Jersey and let's take Minnesota out of the league," James said last Thursday. "But hey, you guys are not stupid, I'm not stupid, it would be great for the league."
Great for the league?
Maybe on the court but LeBron from Miami also wants to put at least 30 players out of work, which will not make his fellow player association members too happy, along with head coaches, assistant coaches, scouts, athletic trainers, equipment managers, front office staff and per diem employees who work for the team on game day or at the arena on game day along with reporters because they won't have a team to cover.
But on Monday, LeBron from Miami backtracked. "I'm with the players, and the players know that," James said. "I've been with the players. It's not about getting guys out of the league or knocking teams out. I didn't mean to upset nobody. I didn't tell Avery Johnson to leave, either. I didn't say let's abandon the Nets, and not let them move to Brooklyn or let's tear down the Target Center in Minnesota. I never said that."
LeBron from Miami didn't even know what "contract" meant.
The damage was done however, Nets coach Avery Johnson said, "We're going to Brooklyn. We're not going to contract."
But for LeBron from Miami and the beat reporters who don't know much about NBA or sports business and for book publishers who claim there is no market for basketball history books complete with accounts from those who played the game in the 1940s and 1950s, here is how the NBA worked back in the 1950s when the league last contracted a team. Actually, the NBA didn't contract a team as the owners of the Baltimore Bullets didn't wait for Commissioner Maurice Podoloff to contract them and gave up on November 27, 1954. That was the last time an NBA team went out of business although many have moved and there were a number of American Basketball Association franchises that met the same fate as Baltimore. The NBA took the four surviving ABA teams in a "merger" in 1976.
For even more New Jersey sports, visit the NJNR Press Box
The NBA, like the National Football League of that era was a step above semi-pro level.
In the late 1950s, television became an integral part of sports. The National Football League became engrained in the American culture on December 28, 1958 when Johnny Unitas lead the Baltimore Colts downfield in overtime to beat the New York Giants. That game changed pro football and led to the formation of the American Football League. NBA owners also took notice of the game and the power of TV according to Bailey Howell who was a rookie with Detroit in 1959
"It was a period of transition because shortly after that they started adding teams," said Howell of the NBA in 1959. "They added Chicago and teams were moving out of the small markets to the big market areas, Minneapolis moved to LA, Philadelphia moved to San Francisco and Syracuse moved down to Philadelphia so they were targeting the bigger markets and hopefully the TV revenue that would result from it."
As NBA owners moved to the bigger markets, they encountered another problem. Too many home games, so the solution was simple. Instead of having the Harlem Globetrotters play the Washington Generals or any other team as the preliminary game before an NBA contest, they would schedule an NBA doubleheader in a proven market like New York and so they owners hold less home games or farm out home games to cities that could handle a game.
"All the cities had doubleheaders but the Knicks had more, of course," recalled Howell. "The league was struggling so and in Detroit they (owner Fred Zollner) didn't think they could have 40 home games and draw good crowds, so we would play about 30-32 games at home and the rest were doubleheaders or we would take a home game down to Toledo or go back to Fort Wayne. We played somewhere different every night; we never played two or three nights in the same place. The Celtics played doubleheaders in New York in the first game of a doubleheader and in Providence. The league was struggling; it was really struggling in those years."
The NBA played, it seems, whenever there was a court and two baskets. The 1953-54 Baltimore Bullets franchise was scheduled in the least likely basketball outposts in the United States at that time. Baltimore played games in Buffalo, Indianapolis, Miami Beach, Miami, Birmingham, Alabama and Troy, Ohio. George Mikan's 53-54 Minneapolis Lakers played in Moorhead, Minnesota, Chicago, Kansas City, Missouri, Grand Forks, North Dakota, Spencer, Iowa, Huron, South Dakota, Toledo, Ohio, Grand Rapids, Michigan, Hibbing, Minnesota and New Haven, Connecticut. The Milwaukee Hawks in 1953-54 went to Omaha, Nebraska, Collingsworth, Michigan, and Iowa City, Iowa. Rochester played a game in Cleveland that year. Syracuse had a contest in Cleveland. Eddie Gottlieb's Philadelphia Warriors played the New York Knicks in White Plains at a building that decades later would serve as the home of an NBA summer rookie league, the Westchester County Center, as well as playing in Hershey. Boston had games in New London, Connecticut, Providence, Rhode Island and Waterville, Maine. Throughout the 1950s, the NBA would be barnstorming during the regular season in addition to the pre-season. The Lakers after Mikan retired performed in Houston and Dallas.
In 1959-60, the lame duck Minneapolis Lakers played the Philadelphia Warriors on January 31, 1960 in San Francisco and on February 1, 1960 in Los Angeles. It was the first time the Warriors and Lakers would play one another in the two California cities. Within two and a half years, the Los Angeles Lakers and the San Francisco Warriors would play one another regularly in NBA action. Minneapolis also played a game in Seattle.
The NBA would approve the relocation of the Minneapolis Lakers to Los Angeles in 1960 and add the Chicago territory in 1961 to give the league a presence in the country's top three markets. The league was also in Detroit and auto manufacturers were spending money on sports sponsorships. The NBA, it seemed by 1961, to position itself into a good spot for United States network TV and with President John F. Kennedy's signature on the Sports Broadcasting Act of 1961, the league could bundle its teams together and sell rights to its games without running afoul of United States Anti-trust laws.
Oddly enough, David Sarnoff's NBC TV dumped the NBA after the 1961-62 season. The league would find a home on ABC in 1963 which was a languishing network. ABC would carry NBA games until the 1972-73 season. Today, television, specifically cable TV provides a revenue stream that is essential to the survival of the league. The Christmas Day games, which Los Angeles Lakers coach Phil Jackson and LeBron from Miami complained about, are the start off point for league marketing for the season, which is a bit strange in that the season is approaching the two-month mark at that point.
LeBron's comments were ill advised but that's not the first time he has run into that problem this year. The NBA does have financial problems and there is a reason that there are 30 franchises today and some of that had to do with potential owners wanting to get into the league (Vancouver's Arthur Griffiths spent $100 million for a Vancouver franchise when the league wasn't even thinking about Vancouver back in the mid-1990s and that franchise was sold to Michael Heisley in 2000. Heisley took the franchise to Memphis and has lost money. NBA owners wanted Griffiths' $100 million and gave him a franchise), sudden availability of arenas (Charlotte, Miami, Minneapolis and Orlando). Replacing a transferred team with an expansion team (Charlotte) and numerous exemptions that are available to teams in the salary cap. That is just the tip of the iceberg.
NBA Commissioner David Stern took over a league in 1984, which was financially reeling. NBA Commissioner Larry O'Brien and players association Executive Director Larry Fleisher came up with the 1983 Collective Bargaining Agreement that put a salary cap in place is considered to be the turning point in the league's history by the owners and by the players. The 23-team league survived and both sides formed a working alliance, which would allow the league to grow. It also helped that two entities were about ready to join the league, Michael Jordan and Nike. The salary cap was the brainchild of a new lawyer that came on the scene named Gary Bettman. Bettman would become one of the three key people that would run the NBA in the mid-1980s and beyond. David Stern would be the boss, Russell Granik the number two guy followed by Bettman. Without the 83 agreement, there might not have been a Cleveland Cavaliers, which is something that LeBron from Miami should know.
The Collective Bargaining was Commissioner Larry O'Brien's last major work for the NBA and it is one of the reasons that the NBA of the 1980s became popular and it didn't hurt the Boston and Los Angeles had stars as did Philadelphia but LeBron from Miami should know this too. There were bad teams in the 1980s, franchises moved and not all the stars played together — Charles Barkley, Patrick Ewing and Chris Mullin never had the "Big 3" around them like this year's Miami Heat.
The NBA is not a perfect world.
Evan Weiner, the winner of the United States Sports Academy's 2010 Ronald Reagan Media Award, is an author, radio-TV commentator and speaker on "The Politics of Sports Business." His book, "The Business and Politics of Sports, Second Edition is available at www.bickley.com, xplana.com or amazonkindle. He can be reached at evanjweiner@yahoo.com
Thursday, July 22, 2010
Forget Lebron — bigger NBA stories are on tap for the summer
Forget Lebron — bigger NBA stories are on tap for the summer
By Evan Weiner - TheDC 2:07 AM 07/22/2010
http://dailycaller.com/2010/07/22/forget-lebron-bigger-nba-stories-are-on-tap-for-the-summer/print/
The National Basketball Association’s biggest public splash of the summer is the Miami franchise signings of Lebron James and Chris Bosh and getting Dwayne Wade to stay in South Florida and forming the nucleus of a “super” team.
That story is garnering a lot of attention globally, but underneath Heat owner Ted Arison’s opening the checkbook and getting three stars on his roster, there is a boat load of trouble brewing in NBA Commissioner David Stern’s world. The sale of the Golden State Warriors by Chris Cohan to a group led by Jacob Lacob for a reported $450 million is a silver lining because it means there are still people willing to put up big money for a franchise for Stern, but it is one of the few pieces of good news that the NBA bean counters will get in the next 12 months.
In Stern’s world, two immediate problems have cropped up. And in the somewhat distant future, there is a possibility that the owners will lockout the players on July 1, 2011 in an attempt to rein in salaries as part of a new collective bargaining agreement. Stern’s owners allegedly lost $400 million in their business last year.
In California, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has threatened to cut state employees hourly wages to the minimum wage of $7.25 because of California’s extreme budget crisis, and that is not good news for the Sacramento Kings ownership group looking for funding for a new arena in California’s state capital. A good many workers in Sacramento are state employees and might not be able to afford Kings games if they lose money or their jobs. How can the Maloof brothers, the Kings owners, ask for public funds when there is nothing but fiscal bad news coming out of the state house on a daily basis?
Schwarzenegger had a court’s backing to cut the salaries of some 200,000 state workers until a state budget is passed. Schwarzenegger’s leverage in the political process disappeared last Friday. The Sacramento area could have lost as much as $60 million a week in wages if Schwarzenegger went ahead with the plan. But Schwarzenegger’s idea has been blocked by Judge Patrick Marlette of Sacramento County Superior Court for the time being.
On Tuesday, the Sacramento City Council passed a resolution asking Schwarzenegger to reconsider his order as one in five Sacramento workers are state employees.
Schwarzenegger promised that the pay cuts will be rescinded when the state comes up with a budget. None of this can please NBA Commissioner David Stern who stepped into the Sacramento arena battle in December 2006.
On November 7, 2006, Sacramento voters flatly turned down Proposition Q 72-28 and Proposition R 80-20; both measures would have provided funding for a new arena.
Sacramento voters just did not want to fork over anything extra for a sports arena for the Maloofs, but that did not made Sacramento politicians and business leaders any less determined to build a new venue for an NBA team. Nearly four years later, there are still options on the table.
Stern hired John Moag, who helped negotiate the deal which brought Art Modell and his Cleveland Browns to Baltimore. Modell cut the deal with Maryland in the fall of 2005 and moved his NFL team to Baltimore for the 1996 season. Moag has been working at an arena proposal for years but hasn’t delivered one quite yet.
Sacramento politicians were prepared to give the Maloofs something no other California city would agree to in 2006. There was five hundred millions of dollar available for a sports facility. But the Maloof brothers didn’t really like the Sacramento deal as presented. Compared with New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago, Sacramento is a weak TV and corporate market, so the Maloofs needed every penny generated in the arena for their business and wanted no competing businesses near the building. The Maloofs wanted a parking lot, not a rebirth for a depressed economic area, by the rail yards. The parking lot would have been a revenue generator for the Maloofs, the city wanted to build on the parking lot in an effort to create businesses, jobs and a tax base.
The parking lot was a deal breaker as the Maloofs went to the sidelines during the 2006 arena campaign because business development was not good for them.
In Stern’s world — as in that of other big league sports commissioners — every team should be viewed as a three-legged stool. All three legs are needed or the stool falls over. In sports, the three all-important legs are big press and broadcast dollars, corporate support, and government. And if you can separate emotions and apply rationality to this issue, the Stern Theory makes a lot of sense.
Government: Without the support of a local mayor, city council, county officials, state government, governor, and federal government, you can’t operate a franchise. Local and state governments typically raise taxes to build arenas and stadiums or give land away for a sports owner to build on in exchange for payments (in lieu of taxes) and a promise that the arena or stadium will serve as an economic engine that will spark a local economy and create jobs.
There is a lot of local government support in Sacramento to build a new arena, an absolute necessity yet there are questions about where to put the building and how the construction will be funded.
Sports owners and sports leagues need government to give them total control of the revenues a municipally built facility generates, including on-site arena restaurants and stores and — a big revenue source — parking. Owners also need a government that will give them sweetheart leases and create special tax districts within the facility so that if a team owner contributes to the cost of the building, he/she can pocket some of the sales taxes collected and earmarked for government coffers.
Owners also don’t necessarily want to see development (such as restaurants and bars) outside their arena, because those establishments become competition for the dollar. The idea is to keep customers in the building, where they’ll spend on products and franchise-owned enterprises that their owners can cash in on.
For the Maloofs, a parking lot is more valuable than the potential for new businesses to pop up around the arena. It’s that simple: The brothers keep parking lot revenues and don’t have to compete with other businesses that might attract their customers.
Local Broadcasting: Comcast probably overpaid to land the Sacramento Kings cable TV rights so it could in turn launch a profitable San Francisco Bay Area regional sports network. Sports owners make billions from cable television, which Congress deregulated in the 1980s. Because of deregulation, everyone who has basic expanded cable pays for sports channels even if they never watch a regional sports network or tune in to national networks like ESPN and TNT. Hapless cable subscribers may pay anywhere between $7 and $12 a month for sports channels alone, and sports are the most costly part of the monthly cable bill. Congress refuses to address a la carte pricing, which would allow cable subscribers to choose which channels they want, in part because the financial toll could wipe out many cable TV networks and have serious impact on sports finances.
Corporate Support: Part three of the Stern trilogy. Someone has to pay for high-end seating like luxury boxes and club seats, and it’s not the everyday fan. In fact, owners don’t court fans; they want customers who can afford luxury suites and seats surrounding the basketball court or rink side seats at a hockey game. Corporate types buy seats and reap the tax write-off, whether they’ve gone to the games because they’re fans or just looking to be seen.
You can’t really blame the Maloofs for playing hardball in 2006. They were just following Stern’s three-legged sports business philosophy; Sacramento got a lesson in what it means to be a small market in the major leagues.
In Indianapolis, Herb Simon got another city bailout to help the “struggling” Indiana Pacers franchise. These two storylines are far more important to the financial health of the NBA than the Miami singings although the loss of Lebron James in Cleveland will return the northeastern Ohio city back into the NBA doldrums and that could add Cleveland owner Dan Gilbert to the list of financially hawks who might want to shut down the NBA next year when the collective bargaining agreement ends on June 30, 2011.
In a fiscal-conservative state, Indianapolis officials through the city’s Capital Improvement Board and Simon have adjusted a 1999 lease agreement and the city will give Simon $33.5 million over three seasons for expenditures to operate the city’s arena.
There will be a $10 million per year bailout to operate the arena along with $3.5 million for capital improvements between 2010 and 2013. The Capital Improvement Board, which is cash strapped, hopes to use funds from a one percent hike in the Indianapolis hotel tax to pay some of the $33.5 million they have committed.
Indianapolis has spent over a billion dollars on the arena and a new football stadium. Simon’s original lease gave him the ability to control the operations of the building, pay virtually no rent and keep all of the revenues from Pacers games and other events in the building. Despite the one-sided nature of the lease where Simon got virtually all of the revenues and the city got whatever was left, Simon has claimed his losses are staggering.
Simon’s Pacers will continue to play in the building for the next three years which ends Simon’s threat of moving the franchise for the time being. In 2013, Simon can move the team if his annual losses exceed $2 million. Should Simon find a greener pasture (Kansas City, Louisville, and Newark, New Jersey—the New Jersey Nets franchise does relocate to Brooklyn— he would have to give back a portion of the $30 million and pay money for breaking the 1999 lease that he signed with Indianapolis officials. Simon is free to leave without penalty in 2019.
Indianapolis is a small market and cannot compete with major markets on the same economic playing field and has given team owners the wherewithal with taxpayers dollars to be on an even playing field monetarily with New York, Los Angeles, Chicago and together big market cities.
Jim Irsay’s Indianapolis Colts National Football League franchise keeps rights to all football-related revenue in the almost new Indianapolis taxpayers funded stadium, as well as half the annual non- football revenue, up to $3.5 million. Irsay pays no rent to use the facility and has a lease until 2034. Irsay receives all revenues from a stadium name, signs and sponsorships in the stadium. The Capital Improvement Board picks up the tab for stadium maintenance and game-day expenses.
In the United States, local and state governments have been pouring millions of dollars into building sports facilities since Milwaukee funded County Stadium in 1950. Milwaukee pioneered giving away the store philosophy when the city finally got a Major League Baseball team. Lou Perini moved his Boston Braves to Wisconsin and got a gift, a stadium to use 77 times a year in 1953 (and beyond) in exchange for $1,000 in rent. Perini had some guilt about paying $1,000 in rent and keeping all the concession money so he gave Milwaukee $25,000 for rent after nearly 1.9 million people paid to see Braves baseball in Milwaukee in 1953. There is no real reason that municipalities spend billions on sports facilities other than it gives an area a sports identity and a meeting place where people to bond watching a game. But it sure seems rather expensive to prop up the sports business.
Evan Weiner is an author, radio-TV commentator and speaking on “The Politics of Sports Business” and can be reached atevanjweiner@yahoo.com
Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2010/07/22/forget-lebron-bigger-nba-stories-are-on-tap-for-the-summer/print/#ixzz0uPcY5MXt
By Evan Weiner - TheDC 2:07 AM 07/22/2010
http://dailycaller.com/2010/07/22/forget-lebron-bigger-nba-stories-are-on-tap-for-the-summer/print/
The National Basketball Association’s biggest public splash of the summer is the Miami franchise signings of Lebron James and Chris Bosh and getting Dwayne Wade to stay in South Florida and forming the nucleus of a “super” team.
That story is garnering a lot of attention globally, but underneath Heat owner Ted Arison’s opening the checkbook and getting three stars on his roster, there is a boat load of trouble brewing in NBA Commissioner David Stern’s world. The sale of the Golden State Warriors by Chris Cohan to a group led by Jacob Lacob for a reported $450 million is a silver lining because it means there are still people willing to put up big money for a franchise for Stern, but it is one of the few pieces of good news that the NBA bean counters will get in the next 12 months.
In Stern’s world, two immediate problems have cropped up. And in the somewhat distant future, there is a possibility that the owners will lockout the players on July 1, 2011 in an attempt to rein in salaries as part of a new collective bargaining agreement. Stern’s owners allegedly lost $400 million in their business last year.
In California, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has threatened to cut state employees hourly wages to the minimum wage of $7.25 because of California’s extreme budget crisis, and that is not good news for the Sacramento Kings ownership group looking for funding for a new arena in California’s state capital. A good many workers in Sacramento are state employees and might not be able to afford Kings games if they lose money or their jobs. How can the Maloof brothers, the Kings owners, ask for public funds when there is nothing but fiscal bad news coming out of the state house on a daily basis?
Schwarzenegger had a court’s backing to cut the salaries of some 200,000 state workers until a state budget is passed. Schwarzenegger’s leverage in the political process disappeared last Friday. The Sacramento area could have lost as much as $60 million a week in wages if Schwarzenegger went ahead with the plan. But Schwarzenegger’s idea has been blocked by Judge Patrick Marlette of Sacramento County Superior Court for the time being.
On Tuesday, the Sacramento City Council passed a resolution asking Schwarzenegger to reconsider his order as one in five Sacramento workers are state employees.
Schwarzenegger promised that the pay cuts will be rescinded when the state comes up with a budget. None of this can please NBA Commissioner David Stern who stepped into the Sacramento arena battle in December 2006.
On November 7, 2006, Sacramento voters flatly turned down Proposition Q 72-28 and Proposition R 80-20; both measures would have provided funding for a new arena.
Sacramento voters just did not want to fork over anything extra for a sports arena for the Maloofs, but that did not made Sacramento politicians and business leaders any less determined to build a new venue for an NBA team. Nearly four years later, there are still options on the table.
Stern hired John Moag, who helped negotiate the deal which brought Art Modell and his Cleveland Browns to Baltimore. Modell cut the deal with Maryland in the fall of 2005 and moved his NFL team to Baltimore for the 1996 season. Moag has been working at an arena proposal for years but hasn’t delivered one quite yet.
Sacramento politicians were prepared to give the Maloofs something no other California city would agree to in 2006. There was five hundred millions of dollar available for a sports facility. But the Maloof brothers didn’t really like the Sacramento deal as presented. Compared with New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago, Sacramento is a weak TV and corporate market, so the Maloofs needed every penny generated in the arena for their business and wanted no competing businesses near the building. The Maloofs wanted a parking lot, not a rebirth for a depressed economic area, by the rail yards. The parking lot would have been a revenue generator for the Maloofs, the city wanted to build on the parking lot in an effort to create businesses, jobs and a tax base.
The parking lot was a deal breaker as the Maloofs went to the sidelines during the 2006 arena campaign because business development was not good for them.
In Stern’s world — as in that of other big league sports commissioners — every team should be viewed as a three-legged stool. All three legs are needed or the stool falls over. In sports, the three all-important legs are big press and broadcast dollars, corporate support, and government. And if you can separate emotions and apply rationality to this issue, the Stern Theory makes a lot of sense.
Government: Without the support of a local mayor, city council, county officials, state government, governor, and federal government, you can’t operate a franchise. Local and state governments typically raise taxes to build arenas and stadiums or give land away for a sports owner to build on in exchange for payments (in lieu of taxes) and a promise that the arena or stadium will serve as an economic engine that will spark a local economy and create jobs.
There is a lot of local government support in Sacramento to build a new arena, an absolute necessity yet there are questions about where to put the building and how the construction will be funded.
Sports owners and sports leagues need government to give them total control of the revenues a municipally built facility generates, including on-site arena restaurants and stores and — a big revenue source — parking. Owners also need a government that will give them sweetheart leases and create special tax districts within the facility so that if a team owner contributes to the cost of the building, he/she can pocket some of the sales taxes collected and earmarked for government coffers.
Owners also don’t necessarily want to see development (such as restaurants and bars) outside their arena, because those establishments become competition for the dollar. The idea is to keep customers in the building, where they’ll spend on products and franchise-owned enterprises that their owners can cash in on.
For the Maloofs, a parking lot is more valuable than the potential for new businesses to pop up around the arena. It’s that simple: The brothers keep parking lot revenues and don’t have to compete with other businesses that might attract their customers.
Local Broadcasting: Comcast probably overpaid to land the Sacramento Kings cable TV rights so it could in turn launch a profitable San Francisco Bay Area regional sports network. Sports owners make billions from cable television, which Congress deregulated in the 1980s. Because of deregulation, everyone who has basic expanded cable pays for sports channels even if they never watch a regional sports network or tune in to national networks like ESPN and TNT. Hapless cable subscribers may pay anywhere between $7 and $12 a month for sports channels alone, and sports are the most costly part of the monthly cable bill. Congress refuses to address a la carte pricing, which would allow cable subscribers to choose which channels they want, in part because the financial toll could wipe out many cable TV networks and have serious impact on sports finances.
Corporate Support: Part three of the Stern trilogy. Someone has to pay for high-end seating like luxury boxes and club seats, and it’s not the everyday fan. In fact, owners don’t court fans; they want customers who can afford luxury suites and seats surrounding the basketball court or rink side seats at a hockey game. Corporate types buy seats and reap the tax write-off, whether they’ve gone to the games because they’re fans or just looking to be seen.
You can’t really blame the Maloofs for playing hardball in 2006. They were just following Stern’s three-legged sports business philosophy; Sacramento got a lesson in what it means to be a small market in the major leagues.
In Indianapolis, Herb Simon got another city bailout to help the “struggling” Indiana Pacers franchise. These two storylines are far more important to the financial health of the NBA than the Miami singings although the loss of Lebron James in Cleveland will return the northeastern Ohio city back into the NBA doldrums and that could add Cleveland owner Dan Gilbert to the list of financially hawks who might want to shut down the NBA next year when the collective bargaining agreement ends on June 30, 2011.
In a fiscal-conservative state, Indianapolis officials through the city’s Capital Improvement Board and Simon have adjusted a 1999 lease agreement and the city will give Simon $33.5 million over three seasons for expenditures to operate the city’s arena.
There will be a $10 million per year bailout to operate the arena along with $3.5 million for capital improvements between 2010 and 2013. The Capital Improvement Board, which is cash strapped, hopes to use funds from a one percent hike in the Indianapolis hotel tax to pay some of the $33.5 million they have committed.
Indianapolis has spent over a billion dollars on the arena and a new football stadium. Simon’s original lease gave him the ability to control the operations of the building, pay virtually no rent and keep all of the revenues from Pacers games and other events in the building. Despite the one-sided nature of the lease where Simon got virtually all of the revenues and the city got whatever was left, Simon has claimed his losses are staggering.
Simon’s Pacers will continue to play in the building for the next three years which ends Simon’s threat of moving the franchise for the time being. In 2013, Simon can move the team if his annual losses exceed $2 million. Should Simon find a greener pasture (Kansas City, Louisville, and Newark, New Jersey—the New Jersey Nets franchise does relocate to Brooklyn— he would have to give back a portion of the $30 million and pay money for breaking the 1999 lease that he signed with Indianapolis officials. Simon is free to leave without penalty in 2019.
Indianapolis is a small market and cannot compete with major markets on the same economic playing field and has given team owners the wherewithal with taxpayers dollars to be on an even playing field monetarily with New York, Los Angeles, Chicago and together big market cities.
Jim Irsay’s Indianapolis Colts National Football League franchise keeps rights to all football-related revenue in the almost new Indianapolis taxpayers funded stadium, as well as half the annual non- football revenue, up to $3.5 million. Irsay pays no rent to use the facility and has a lease until 2034. Irsay receives all revenues from a stadium name, signs and sponsorships in the stadium. The Capital Improvement Board picks up the tab for stadium maintenance and game-day expenses.
In the United States, local and state governments have been pouring millions of dollars into building sports facilities since Milwaukee funded County Stadium in 1950. Milwaukee pioneered giving away the store philosophy when the city finally got a Major League Baseball team. Lou Perini moved his Boston Braves to Wisconsin and got a gift, a stadium to use 77 times a year in 1953 (and beyond) in exchange for $1,000 in rent. Perini had some guilt about paying $1,000 in rent and keeping all the concession money so he gave Milwaukee $25,000 for rent after nearly 1.9 million people paid to see Braves baseball in Milwaukee in 1953. There is no real reason that municipalities spend billions on sports facilities other than it gives an area a sports identity and a meeting place where people to bond watching a game. But it sure seems rather expensive to prop up the sports business.
Evan Weiner is an author, radio-TV commentator and speaking on “The Politics of Sports Business” and can be reached atevanjweiner@yahoo.com
Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2010/07/22/forget-lebron-bigger-nba-stories-are-on-tap-for-the-summer/print/#ixzz0uPcY5MXt
Tuesday, July 13, 2010
There appears to be a player collusion problem in the NBA
There appears to be a player collusion problem in the NBA
TUESDAY, 13 JULY 2010 08:42
HTTP://WWW.NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM/PROFESSIONAL/THERE-APPEARS-TO-BE-A-PLAYER-COLLUSION-PROBLEM-IN-THE-NBA
BY EVAN WEINER
NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM
THE POLITICS OF SPORTS BUSINESS
There is a new contender for the dumbest athlete when it comes to the business of sports. The New Orleans Hornets guard Chris Paul now wants to join Amare Stoudemire in New York with the Knicks and Paul has also suggested that Denver Nuggets forward Carmelo Anthony joins James Dolan's crew in Manhattan. Paul, if the comments are correct, has thrown gasoline on a fire started by the Miami Heat's signing of Dwayne Wade, Chris Bosh and LeBron James that might have be a product of players' collusion.
On Monday, NBA Commissioner David Stern downplayed the collusion charge after an owners meeting in Las Vegas.
The National Basketball Association is out of control in terms of the normal sports business model and Chris Paul, not LeBron James, may be the final spark that lights a war between the owners and players in July 2011. The athletes may be the show but the owners are the employers and there are some rules that need to be followed both official and unofficial. When you play in New Orleans or Denver, you don't say you are going to New York or elsewhere in a year or two. It kills the local enthusiasm for the customer and fan base. Paul plays for a small market that was devastated by Hurricane Katrina five years ago. In fact Paul played the first two years of his pro career in Oklahoma City because New Orleans could not economically support an NBA after the disaster. Paul has done some great work raising money for New Orleans and the surrounding area but his business acumen is not there.
Paul's remarks were ill conceived for the overall business of the NBA.
That should not be surprising because all he does is play basketball for a living but his advisors would do well to tell him to keep quiet. Paul joins LeBron James as two players who need better public relations advisors.
NBA Commissioner David Stern and his owners (except perhaps the Knicks Jimmy Dolan) have to be upset that Paul allegedly said at Carmelo Anthony's wedding that "we will form our own Big 3." That statement was reported in the New York Post. The New York tabloids and some Wall Street types who buy corporate tickets at Madison Square Garden may be happy, but Stern's league has outlets beyond the Hudson River and the players may cause fans and even corporate backlash in other markets.
The economy breakdown has hurt the NBA but players making comments about going somewhere else is a punch in the gut that Stern and the 30 owners don't need.
Whether Paul did make that toast or not is immaterial. The story is out there and you have to wonder what the very powerful Denver Nuggets owner Stan Kroenke (whose wife is a Wal-Mart heir) or Hornets owner George Shinn who wants to sell the Hornets to an oilman and Hornets minority owner Gary Chouest are going to do. Paul and Anthony are under contract to their respective teams and are the centerpieces of the team's sales push for luxury boxes, club seats and cable TV advertising (Kroenke owns the Nuggets cable TV network, Altitude).
This is a problem.
If Paul and Anthony want to leave, why should local corporates buy luxury boxes, club seats and marketers buy signage in the arena and TV advertising? The players are mercenaries and have no loyalty to the area but sports sells the idea of the "Sixth Man" in basketball, the "12th Man" in football, the home ice advantage in hockey. The home crowd is worth something, so sportswriters say and other sports people contend.
Root, root, root for the home team is the mantra and the players do it for the fans or as one time Nets forward Derrick Coleman said for the "city of New Jersey." That is absolute fiction as players go for the best contract for the most part wherever they can find it and this is just a job for most players who go from team to team either on their own or because some general manager decides that the player isn't good enough and needs to be replaced.
Players come and go. But players should not call the shots, employees don't call shots, Management does.
The national TV packages and international deals and some marketing partners probably don't care about the players calling the shots and building teams.
Did LeBron James, Chris Bosh and Dwayne Wade collude to sign with the Miami Heat? There is some evidence that they wanted to play together however collusion is hard to prove. Eric Davis and Darryl Strawberry talked openly in 1990 about playing together for the Los Angeles Dodgers and eventually they did. Collusion has been a worry for 44 years going back to the Dodgers Sandy Koufax and Don Drysdale hold out. The two pitchers decided to negotiate together for a new deal for the 1966 season. The pair held out for 32 days and finally signed the most lucrative contracts for any player in 1966.
By 1968, the Major League Baseball Players Association and Major League owners agreed to an anti-collusion clause in the collective bargaining agreement. Major League Baseball Commissioner Peter Ueberroth in 1985 persuaded owners not to go after free agents. The policy continued in 1986 and 1987. The Major League Baseball Players Association filed a grievance with an arbitrator and won a $280 million award in November 1990.
Eric Davis and Darryl Strawberry talked about joining the Dodgers at some point during the 1989-90 time period. Davis was traded to the Dodgers from Cincinnati and Strawberry left the Mets after the 1990 season as a free agent and signed with the Dodgers.
The Wade-Bosh-James trio did nothing illegal. They fulfilled their contracts and went into free agency. Stoudemire finished out his Phoenix Suns contract and was free to negotiate elsewhere as was Joe Johnson. But the manner that LeBron James ended his free agency week and used a league partner — The Walt Disney Company's ESPN like it was another bad "reality" TV show on one of Disney's TV networks like ABC (which televises the NBA Finals) — will rub some people in the league the wrong way.
Here is a partial list of people who might not be very happy right now. The Chicago Bulls Jerry Reinsdorf (see his baseball history and his role in the 1994-95 Major League Baseball strike), the Hornets Shinn and Chouest, the Nuggets Kroenke (his Colorado Avalanche hockey team did not play in 2004-05 as part of the NHL owners lockout), the Cleveland Cavaliers Dan Gilbert, the Milwaukee Bucks Senator Herb Kohl, the Minnesota owner Glenn Taylor and owners in San Antonio, Salt Lake City, Portland, Sacramento, Oklahoma City and maybe Ted Leonsis in Washington who in May at a speech before the National Press Club said that the NHL (Leonsis owns the NHL's Washington Capitals) is in better financial shape than the NBA and pointed out that the NHL's collective bargaining agreement has a hard salary cap "that protects owners from taking stupid pills."
Paul apparently took a "stupid pill" when he suggested that he Stoudemire and Anthony team up with the Knicks in the same way that Wade, Bosh and James signed with the Miami Heat.
The NBA has had one major lockout, that in 1998-99 which took a few months to resolve. The players quickly agreed to a new collective bargaining agreement in 2005 possibly in part because some of the NBA owners had interest in National Hockey League teams (Los Angeles Phil Anschutz who owns the LA arena where the Lakers and Clippers play, the Toronto Raptors, Reinsdorf — a partner in Chicago's arena with the Wirtz family — the Philadelphia 76ers. Leonsis — a minority owner of the Wizards — the Atlanta Thrashers, the Colorado Avalanche and the Dolan-owned New York Rangers along with various TV and arena partnerships) and the players saw what happened with NHL players.
The players are the stars and performers and it is true that no own pays to watch Dolan or Portland's Paul Allen. But the players are also employees and there are some conditions that they need to meet. Announcing publicly that they want to play elsewhere is a major problem on many levels. The "alleged" bond between players, teams and fans that is being broken. Why would advertisers and marketers buy into a basketball team if they know the employees want to leave? Are municipalities who have poured hundreds of millions of dollars into arenas and stadiums that are not working out based on people flocking to the stadiums/arenas and businesses popping up around the building being duped? The NHL's Montreal Canadiens organization pays more in property taxes in Montreal than all 29 US-based NBA teams pay in property taxes.
There is also a question of whether the NBA is a bona fide competition. If Paul really wants to leave New Orleans for New York, is he playing his best before the people spending copious amounts of money in a very poor market or going through the motions until he gets to New York?
Dan Gilbert charged that LeBron James quit on the Cavaliers during the playoffs. Whether LeBron did or not cannot be quantified but it is not good if there is a suspicion that someone quit as a player during a competition.
The battle lines are being drawn. The big time players are flexing their collective muscles and the owners are not going to like that. Before the Miami Heat signings, owners are complaining about how too much basketball related income was going into the pockets of the players and that the owners have lost $400 million.
The summer of 2011 is coming up quickly for NBA owners and players as the collective bargaining agreement is done. Sports is business and the business of sports is about ready to put the economics and power of big name players on a collision course.
Evan Weiner is an author, radio-TV commentator and speaking on "The Politics of Sports Business." He can be reached at evanjweiner@yahoo.com
LAST UPDATED ( TUESDAY, 13 JULY 2010 08:42 )
TUESDAY, 13 JULY 2010 08:42
HTTP://WWW.NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM/PROFESSIONAL/THERE-APPEARS-TO-BE-A-PLAYER-COLLUSION-PROBLEM-IN-THE-NBA
BY EVAN WEINER
NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM
THE POLITICS OF SPORTS BUSINESS
There is a new contender for the dumbest athlete when it comes to the business of sports. The New Orleans Hornets guard Chris Paul now wants to join Amare Stoudemire in New York with the Knicks and Paul has also suggested that Denver Nuggets forward Carmelo Anthony joins James Dolan's crew in Manhattan. Paul, if the comments are correct, has thrown gasoline on a fire started by the Miami Heat's signing of Dwayne Wade, Chris Bosh and LeBron James that might have be a product of players' collusion.
On Monday, NBA Commissioner David Stern downplayed the collusion charge after an owners meeting in Las Vegas.
The National Basketball Association is out of control in terms of the normal sports business model and Chris Paul, not LeBron James, may be the final spark that lights a war between the owners and players in July 2011. The athletes may be the show but the owners are the employers and there are some rules that need to be followed both official and unofficial. When you play in New Orleans or Denver, you don't say you are going to New York or elsewhere in a year or two. It kills the local enthusiasm for the customer and fan base. Paul plays for a small market that was devastated by Hurricane Katrina five years ago. In fact Paul played the first two years of his pro career in Oklahoma City because New Orleans could not economically support an NBA after the disaster. Paul has done some great work raising money for New Orleans and the surrounding area but his business acumen is not there.
Paul's remarks were ill conceived for the overall business of the NBA.
That should not be surprising because all he does is play basketball for a living but his advisors would do well to tell him to keep quiet. Paul joins LeBron James as two players who need better public relations advisors.
NBA Commissioner David Stern and his owners (except perhaps the Knicks Jimmy Dolan) have to be upset that Paul allegedly said at Carmelo Anthony's wedding that "we will form our own Big 3." That statement was reported in the New York Post. The New York tabloids and some Wall Street types who buy corporate tickets at Madison Square Garden may be happy, but Stern's league has outlets beyond the Hudson River and the players may cause fans and even corporate backlash in other markets.
The economy breakdown has hurt the NBA but players making comments about going somewhere else is a punch in the gut that Stern and the 30 owners don't need.
Whether Paul did make that toast or not is immaterial. The story is out there and you have to wonder what the very powerful Denver Nuggets owner Stan Kroenke (whose wife is a Wal-Mart heir) or Hornets owner George Shinn who wants to sell the Hornets to an oilman and Hornets minority owner Gary Chouest are going to do. Paul and Anthony are under contract to their respective teams and are the centerpieces of the team's sales push for luxury boxes, club seats and cable TV advertising (Kroenke owns the Nuggets cable TV network, Altitude).
This is a problem.
If Paul and Anthony want to leave, why should local corporates buy luxury boxes, club seats and marketers buy signage in the arena and TV advertising? The players are mercenaries and have no loyalty to the area but sports sells the idea of the "Sixth Man" in basketball, the "12th Man" in football, the home ice advantage in hockey. The home crowd is worth something, so sportswriters say and other sports people contend.
Root, root, root for the home team is the mantra and the players do it for the fans or as one time Nets forward Derrick Coleman said for the "city of New Jersey." That is absolute fiction as players go for the best contract for the most part wherever they can find it and this is just a job for most players who go from team to team either on their own or because some general manager decides that the player isn't good enough and needs to be replaced.
Players come and go. But players should not call the shots, employees don't call shots, Management does.
The national TV packages and international deals and some marketing partners probably don't care about the players calling the shots and building teams.
Did LeBron James, Chris Bosh and Dwayne Wade collude to sign with the Miami Heat? There is some evidence that they wanted to play together however collusion is hard to prove. Eric Davis and Darryl Strawberry talked openly in 1990 about playing together for the Los Angeles Dodgers and eventually they did. Collusion has been a worry for 44 years going back to the Dodgers Sandy Koufax and Don Drysdale hold out. The two pitchers decided to negotiate together for a new deal for the 1966 season. The pair held out for 32 days and finally signed the most lucrative contracts for any player in 1966.
By 1968, the Major League Baseball Players Association and Major League owners agreed to an anti-collusion clause in the collective bargaining agreement. Major League Baseball Commissioner Peter Ueberroth in 1985 persuaded owners not to go after free agents. The policy continued in 1986 and 1987. The Major League Baseball Players Association filed a grievance with an arbitrator and won a $280 million award in November 1990.
Eric Davis and Darryl Strawberry talked about joining the Dodgers at some point during the 1989-90 time period. Davis was traded to the Dodgers from Cincinnati and Strawberry left the Mets after the 1990 season as a free agent and signed with the Dodgers.
The Wade-Bosh-James trio did nothing illegal. They fulfilled their contracts and went into free agency. Stoudemire finished out his Phoenix Suns contract and was free to negotiate elsewhere as was Joe Johnson. But the manner that LeBron James ended his free agency week and used a league partner — The Walt Disney Company's ESPN like it was another bad "reality" TV show on one of Disney's TV networks like ABC (which televises the NBA Finals) — will rub some people in the league the wrong way.
Here is a partial list of people who might not be very happy right now. The Chicago Bulls Jerry Reinsdorf (see his baseball history and his role in the 1994-95 Major League Baseball strike), the Hornets Shinn and Chouest, the Nuggets Kroenke (his Colorado Avalanche hockey team did not play in 2004-05 as part of the NHL owners lockout), the Cleveland Cavaliers Dan Gilbert, the Milwaukee Bucks Senator Herb Kohl, the Minnesota owner Glenn Taylor and owners in San Antonio, Salt Lake City, Portland, Sacramento, Oklahoma City and maybe Ted Leonsis in Washington who in May at a speech before the National Press Club said that the NHL (Leonsis owns the NHL's Washington Capitals) is in better financial shape than the NBA and pointed out that the NHL's collective bargaining agreement has a hard salary cap "that protects owners from taking stupid pills."
Paul apparently took a "stupid pill" when he suggested that he Stoudemire and Anthony team up with the Knicks in the same way that Wade, Bosh and James signed with the Miami Heat.
The NBA has had one major lockout, that in 1998-99 which took a few months to resolve. The players quickly agreed to a new collective bargaining agreement in 2005 possibly in part because some of the NBA owners had interest in National Hockey League teams (Los Angeles Phil Anschutz who owns the LA arena where the Lakers and Clippers play, the Toronto Raptors, Reinsdorf — a partner in Chicago's arena with the Wirtz family — the Philadelphia 76ers. Leonsis — a minority owner of the Wizards — the Atlanta Thrashers, the Colorado Avalanche and the Dolan-owned New York Rangers along with various TV and arena partnerships) and the players saw what happened with NHL players.
The players are the stars and performers and it is true that no own pays to watch Dolan or Portland's Paul Allen. But the players are also employees and there are some conditions that they need to meet. Announcing publicly that they want to play elsewhere is a major problem on many levels. The "alleged" bond between players, teams and fans that is being broken. Why would advertisers and marketers buy into a basketball team if they know the employees want to leave? Are municipalities who have poured hundreds of millions of dollars into arenas and stadiums that are not working out based on people flocking to the stadiums/arenas and businesses popping up around the building being duped? The NHL's Montreal Canadiens organization pays more in property taxes in Montreal than all 29 US-based NBA teams pay in property taxes.
There is also a question of whether the NBA is a bona fide competition. If Paul really wants to leave New Orleans for New York, is he playing his best before the people spending copious amounts of money in a very poor market or going through the motions until he gets to New York?
Dan Gilbert charged that LeBron James quit on the Cavaliers during the playoffs. Whether LeBron did or not cannot be quantified but it is not good if there is a suspicion that someone quit as a player during a competition.
The battle lines are being drawn. The big time players are flexing their collective muscles and the owners are not going to like that. Before the Miami Heat signings, owners are complaining about how too much basketball related income was going into the pockets of the players and that the owners have lost $400 million.
The summer of 2011 is coming up quickly for NBA owners and players as the collective bargaining agreement is done. Sports is business and the business of sports is about ready to put the economics and power of big name players on a collision course.
Evan Weiner is an author, radio-TV commentator and speaking on "The Politics of Sports Business." He can be reached at evanjweiner@yahoo.com
LAST UPDATED ( TUESDAY, 13 JULY 2010 08:42 )
Saturday, July 10, 2010
Lebron, Economic Impact and a Cleveland Casino
Lebron, Economic Impact and a Cleveland Casino
http://www.examiner.com/examiner/x-3926-Business-of-Sports-Examiner~y2010m7d10-Lebron-economic-impacts-and-a--Cleveland-casino
By Evan Weiner
July 10, 2010
(New York, NY) -- The entire Lebron James free agency tale should make society reassess the importance of sports but society won't. People who should know better including New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg and the owners of the two tabloid New York newspapers, Mort Zuckerman of the Daily News and Rupert Murdoch of the Post looked like fools throughout the entire process along with a whole host of others. Bloomberg was out in the front waving the city's pom poms begging Lebron James to sign with the New York Knicks and Zuckerman and Murdoch were not very far behind nor were some of the "beautiful people", the actors and others with money to spend on Knicks tickets. Murdoch had a minority share in Madison Square Garden between 1997 and 2005.
All of this was going on while Bloomberg was cutting municipal jobs and the New York State legislature continued being dysfunction with a lame duck governor, David Patterson, cutting state jobs.
Zuckerman and Murdoch's papers reacted like heartbroken teenagers on Friday morning. The love of their life, Lebron to the Knicks, spurned New York City and that was a public slap to the face.
After all, New York is where basketball really matters. It has the world’s most famous arena and the Knicks are the Knicks. The truth is, basketball takes a far seat behind the Yankees in New York, the Garden is an antiquated arena that was poorly designed in the mid-1960s. Basketball in New York on the college level hasn’t mattered in generations, the NCAA College tournaments play on regional stages which are much more important to kids playing basketball than the Garden and the last time the Knicks won a championship was 37 years ago. Patrick Ewing is more of a villain in New York than a basketball hero because he could not deliver a championship.
New York is not a top destination in the NBA for players.
Meanwhile the adulation behavior is obscene. Gushing over a 25-year-old basketball player who is nothing more than an entertainer who puts on a show maybe 100 times a year is ridiculous.
Lebron James’ one hour infomercial with the "family-friendly" Walt Disney Company's ESPN was a total disgrace but it was no different than other disgraceful TV offered by Disney like the bachelor or bachelorette shows on the Disney owned ABC-TV network. It was a new form of "reality" programming that was tightly controlled by Jim Gray and Lebron James' management team.
The Bloomberg’s administration claim that Lebron James’ signing with the New York Knicks would pump $58 million into the city's economy was as fraudulent as the early 1990s contention by then Major League Baseball Commissioner Fay Vincent that a new baseball stadium in Cleveland would serve as an economic engine for that city.
If the Gateway Center was built, some 28,000 jobs would be created was the mantra. Cleveland voters said yes to building the ballpark with the $84 million in public financing coming from a "sin tax" or a tax on cigarettes and alcohol in Cuyahoga County.
A good Cleveland Indians team in the mid-1990s in a new baseball park probably gave life to some small businesses around the Gateway center where a new ballpark, a new arena and a football stadium were built along with the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, but overall Fay Vincent's plea to spend municipal dollars for the Cleveland Indians owners, the Jacobs Brothers, business and it would lead to an humming economic engine has proven very wrong. The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame gets local, state and federal subsidies to keep it going. Two Gateway Center garages have cost Cleveland millions of dollars because Cleveland officials gave away too many parking spaces to the Indians owners, the Jacobs and the then owners of the Cleveland Cavaliers, the Gund Brothers.
The two sets of owners got 250 parking spaces everyday for their private use. Jacobs also got 1,250 parking spaces for each Indians home game or 81 times a year. The Gunds got 1,450 spaces for each of 41 NBA games. The free spaces go to premium and loge ticket holders which meant that the high end ticket buyers went right into the stadium or arena and skipped businesses outside the buildings. Meanwhile Cleveland is paying off the stadium/arena garages by taking money from parking meters and parking garages to pay off the garage debt and that means less money for municipal workers.
Cleveland and Cuyahoga county taxpayers have a contract with the Indians, Cavaliers and National Football League Browns. They keep paying for the facilities whether they use the venues or not. The Cleveland Browns Stadium has cost taxpayers who smoke and drink $64,609,806.86 since August 2005. The "sin tax" also has paid about $266 million to cover some of Gateway’s costs at the baseball and basketball facilities. The "sin tax" is schedule to expire in 2015. But don't bet on that. Speaking of betting, because Cleveland's downtown was in such rotten shape economically, Cleveland politicians gave thought to opening casinos in an effort to create an economic engine. The dying rust belt city's political brain trust cannot find a formula to prime the economic engine pump.
In November 2009, Ohio voters said yes to building casinos in Cincinnati, Cleveland, Columbus and Toledo. Interestingly enough Cavaliers owner Dan Gilbert along with Penn National put up $35 million in campaign financing to support the initiative. There is a promise of 34,000 jobs with the creation of the casinos. Gilbert will own the casinos in Cleveland and Cincinnati.
Gilbert's tirade after Lebron James left might be more about his casino than basketball. Without Lebron James in the Cavaliers lineup, there will be thousands of people less in the arena and less people who could go to Gilbert's casino adjacent to the arena and spend money in Gilbert's casino.
Lebron James was not a linchpin of the economic pump and might have done more to harm Gilbert's business than Cleveland or James’ hometown of Akron.
The assertion that Lebron was worth $58 million to New York does need a closer inspection. Madison Square Garden, which sits on some valuable property in midtown Manhattan between 7th and 8th Avenue and 31st and 33rd Street does not pay city property taxes. It has been about 28 years since a tax bill was delivered to 4 Penn Plaza in care of Madison Square Garden. A basketball team plays just 41 regularly scheduled games during the season which runs between November and April, there may be a couple of pre-season games in October and maybe a dozen or so playoff games if a team goes far into the playoffs.
The basketball fan does not travel to games. The economic impact of a basketball game is minimal in a city's economy. Here is how this works. Sports teams need customers not fans because customers have more spending money than fans and are willing to dine in venue restaurants and other eatery which takes away from restaurants that surround arenas.
Madison Square Garden hosts about six NBA games a month between November and April. A basketball team has a coach, a number of assistant coaches, equipment and training staff along with the players and possibly a general manager. A total of perhaps 25 in a traveling party. At the upper extreme, if each member of the traveling party spent $1,000 on hotels and meals, the economic impact of a visiting team is $25,000 although some cities do tax visiting players while the perform in that city which might come out to $30,000 a day. The economic impact may be a million dollars a month which is a drop in the bucket.
Maybe.
Businesses are going to take clients somewhere to wine and dine them. If there was no basketball, there would be something else. Corporate ticket buyers also write 50 percent of the cost of a ticket of their taxes as a business expense.
The impact is not much. If business people in Miami are salivating over Lebron James, they are totally misguided. People will go to games because that is the "in thing" to do but what they are really doing is taking dollars that would be spent elsewhere in the area and there will be no uptick in sales at malls and supermarkets except in the immediate area of the arena.
Micky Arison, the owner of the Miami Heat and CEO of Carnival Cruises, will benefit financially. Arison knows how to work the system. The Heat’s arena was the product of the political process. In 1996, voters approved a bond for the construction of a new arena for the Heat. Arison kicked in $50 million to the costs of the building while hotel taxes were increased to pay for the other $163 million. Part of the deal was that Arison’s Carnival ships would use the nearby Miami port as a base. The Carnival Corporation has offices not far from the arena and the port.
Arison and the arena will make money. Money that had not been flowing into Heat games in the past few years will return from other parts of the region. As former New York Jets Vice President Jay Cross once pointed out when he was Jets owner Woody Johnson’s main negotiator for a Manhattan west side stadium accidentally pointed out, a new stadium (or arena) makes more for an owner, the players and maybe parking lot attendants. There is no trickle down for a municipality and in fact many municipalities are paying down large debts for venues and very few, if any, local businesses other than a bar or restaurant make measurable money off of sports teams.
Bloomberg has to know this. Sports makes people feel good or rotten. Too many people are too attached emotionally to their team. The players are not attached; it is a business no matter what they say about the home court, home ice, and home field advantage. The NFL stands for Not For Long for the players. They are feeling good in Miami, sports fans spew out venom in sports talk radio in New York. Lebron was called “The Queen” by callers, sports journalists are playing amateur shrink trying to figure out what makes Lebron James tick.
Lebron should have called his business partner Gilbert and told him that it was over. But is Lebron now a villain like sports people, media and fans, are painting him? The answer should be no. He did something stupid in the infomercial on ESPN and ESPN provided no strategic guidance but then again, ESPN is mostly geared for children anyway and this was a reality show of sorts. “The Decision”. ESPN is owned by Disney although the executives at Disney are hardly children and they too know how to work the political system.
Lebron James is a 25-year-old basketball player, an entertainer, nothing more and nothing less. Too many grownups genuflect in front of 20-something athletes. But then again fan is short for fanatic. Maybe it is time for the grownups (the politicians and the media) to grow up.
Evan Weiner is an author radio-TV commentator and speaking on “The Politics of Sports Business” and can be reached at evanjweiner@yahoo.com
http://www.examiner.com/examiner/x-3926-Business-of-Sports-Examiner~y2010m7d10-Lebron-economic-impacts-and-a--Cleveland-casino
By Evan Weiner
July 10, 2010
(New York, NY) -- The entire Lebron James free agency tale should make society reassess the importance of sports but society won't. People who should know better including New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg and the owners of the two tabloid New York newspapers, Mort Zuckerman of the Daily News and Rupert Murdoch of the Post looked like fools throughout the entire process along with a whole host of others. Bloomberg was out in the front waving the city's pom poms begging Lebron James to sign with the New York Knicks and Zuckerman and Murdoch were not very far behind nor were some of the "beautiful people", the actors and others with money to spend on Knicks tickets. Murdoch had a minority share in Madison Square Garden between 1997 and 2005.
All of this was going on while Bloomberg was cutting municipal jobs and the New York State legislature continued being dysfunction with a lame duck governor, David Patterson, cutting state jobs.
Zuckerman and Murdoch's papers reacted like heartbroken teenagers on Friday morning. The love of their life, Lebron to the Knicks, spurned New York City and that was a public slap to the face.
After all, New York is where basketball really matters. It has the world’s most famous arena and the Knicks are the Knicks. The truth is, basketball takes a far seat behind the Yankees in New York, the Garden is an antiquated arena that was poorly designed in the mid-1960s. Basketball in New York on the college level hasn’t mattered in generations, the NCAA College tournaments play on regional stages which are much more important to kids playing basketball than the Garden and the last time the Knicks won a championship was 37 years ago. Patrick Ewing is more of a villain in New York than a basketball hero because he could not deliver a championship.
New York is not a top destination in the NBA for players.
Meanwhile the adulation behavior is obscene. Gushing over a 25-year-old basketball player who is nothing more than an entertainer who puts on a show maybe 100 times a year is ridiculous.
Lebron James’ one hour infomercial with the "family-friendly" Walt Disney Company's ESPN was a total disgrace but it was no different than other disgraceful TV offered by Disney like the bachelor or bachelorette shows on the Disney owned ABC-TV network. It was a new form of "reality" programming that was tightly controlled by Jim Gray and Lebron James' management team.
The Bloomberg’s administration claim that Lebron James’ signing with the New York Knicks would pump $58 million into the city's economy was as fraudulent as the early 1990s contention by then Major League Baseball Commissioner Fay Vincent that a new baseball stadium in Cleveland would serve as an economic engine for that city.
If the Gateway Center was built, some 28,000 jobs would be created was the mantra. Cleveland voters said yes to building the ballpark with the $84 million in public financing coming from a "sin tax" or a tax on cigarettes and alcohol in Cuyahoga County.
A good Cleveland Indians team in the mid-1990s in a new baseball park probably gave life to some small businesses around the Gateway center where a new ballpark, a new arena and a football stadium were built along with the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, but overall Fay Vincent's plea to spend municipal dollars for the Cleveland Indians owners, the Jacobs Brothers, business and it would lead to an humming economic engine has proven very wrong. The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame gets local, state and federal subsidies to keep it going. Two Gateway Center garages have cost Cleveland millions of dollars because Cleveland officials gave away too many parking spaces to the Indians owners, the Jacobs and the then owners of the Cleveland Cavaliers, the Gund Brothers.
The two sets of owners got 250 parking spaces everyday for their private use. Jacobs also got 1,250 parking spaces for each Indians home game or 81 times a year. The Gunds got 1,450 spaces for each of 41 NBA games. The free spaces go to premium and loge ticket holders which meant that the high end ticket buyers went right into the stadium or arena and skipped businesses outside the buildings. Meanwhile Cleveland is paying off the stadium/arena garages by taking money from parking meters and parking garages to pay off the garage debt and that means less money for municipal workers.
Cleveland and Cuyahoga county taxpayers have a contract with the Indians, Cavaliers and National Football League Browns. They keep paying for the facilities whether they use the venues or not. The Cleveland Browns Stadium has cost taxpayers who smoke and drink $64,609,806.86 since August 2005. The "sin tax" also has paid about $266 million to cover some of Gateway’s costs at the baseball and basketball facilities. The "sin tax" is schedule to expire in 2015. But don't bet on that. Speaking of betting, because Cleveland's downtown was in such rotten shape economically, Cleveland politicians gave thought to opening casinos in an effort to create an economic engine. The dying rust belt city's political brain trust cannot find a formula to prime the economic engine pump.
In November 2009, Ohio voters said yes to building casinos in Cincinnati, Cleveland, Columbus and Toledo. Interestingly enough Cavaliers owner Dan Gilbert along with Penn National put up $35 million in campaign financing to support the initiative. There is a promise of 34,000 jobs with the creation of the casinos. Gilbert will own the casinos in Cleveland and Cincinnati.
Gilbert's tirade after Lebron James left might be more about his casino than basketball. Without Lebron James in the Cavaliers lineup, there will be thousands of people less in the arena and less people who could go to Gilbert's casino adjacent to the arena and spend money in Gilbert's casino.
Lebron James was not a linchpin of the economic pump and might have done more to harm Gilbert's business than Cleveland or James’ hometown of Akron.
The assertion that Lebron was worth $58 million to New York does need a closer inspection. Madison Square Garden, which sits on some valuable property in midtown Manhattan between 7th and 8th Avenue and 31st and 33rd Street does not pay city property taxes. It has been about 28 years since a tax bill was delivered to 4 Penn Plaza in care of Madison Square Garden. A basketball team plays just 41 regularly scheduled games during the season which runs between November and April, there may be a couple of pre-season games in October and maybe a dozen or so playoff games if a team goes far into the playoffs.
The basketball fan does not travel to games. The economic impact of a basketball game is minimal in a city's economy. Here is how this works. Sports teams need customers not fans because customers have more spending money than fans and are willing to dine in venue restaurants and other eatery which takes away from restaurants that surround arenas.
Madison Square Garden hosts about six NBA games a month between November and April. A basketball team has a coach, a number of assistant coaches, equipment and training staff along with the players and possibly a general manager. A total of perhaps 25 in a traveling party. At the upper extreme, if each member of the traveling party spent $1,000 on hotels and meals, the economic impact of a visiting team is $25,000 although some cities do tax visiting players while the perform in that city which might come out to $30,000 a day. The economic impact may be a million dollars a month which is a drop in the bucket.
Maybe.
Businesses are going to take clients somewhere to wine and dine them. If there was no basketball, there would be something else. Corporate ticket buyers also write 50 percent of the cost of a ticket of their taxes as a business expense.
The impact is not much. If business people in Miami are salivating over Lebron James, they are totally misguided. People will go to games because that is the "in thing" to do but what they are really doing is taking dollars that would be spent elsewhere in the area and there will be no uptick in sales at malls and supermarkets except in the immediate area of the arena.
Micky Arison, the owner of the Miami Heat and CEO of Carnival Cruises, will benefit financially. Arison knows how to work the system. The Heat’s arena was the product of the political process. In 1996, voters approved a bond for the construction of a new arena for the Heat. Arison kicked in $50 million to the costs of the building while hotel taxes were increased to pay for the other $163 million. Part of the deal was that Arison’s Carnival ships would use the nearby Miami port as a base. The Carnival Corporation has offices not far from the arena and the port.
Arison and the arena will make money. Money that had not been flowing into Heat games in the past few years will return from other parts of the region. As former New York Jets Vice President Jay Cross once pointed out when he was Jets owner Woody Johnson’s main negotiator for a Manhattan west side stadium accidentally pointed out, a new stadium (or arena) makes more for an owner, the players and maybe parking lot attendants. There is no trickle down for a municipality and in fact many municipalities are paying down large debts for venues and very few, if any, local businesses other than a bar or restaurant make measurable money off of sports teams.
Bloomberg has to know this. Sports makes people feel good or rotten. Too many people are too attached emotionally to their team. The players are not attached; it is a business no matter what they say about the home court, home ice, and home field advantage. The NFL stands for Not For Long for the players. They are feeling good in Miami, sports fans spew out venom in sports talk radio in New York. Lebron was called “The Queen” by callers, sports journalists are playing amateur shrink trying to figure out what makes Lebron James tick.
Lebron should have called his business partner Gilbert and told him that it was over. But is Lebron now a villain like sports people, media and fans, are painting him? The answer should be no. He did something stupid in the infomercial on ESPN and ESPN provided no strategic guidance but then again, ESPN is mostly geared for children anyway and this was a reality show of sorts. “The Decision”. ESPN is owned by Disney although the executives at Disney are hardly children and they too know how to work the political system.
Lebron James is a 25-year-old basketball player, an entertainer, nothing more and nothing less. Too many grownups genuflect in front of 20-something athletes. But then again fan is short for fanatic. Maybe it is time for the grownups (the politicians and the media) to grow up.
Evan Weiner is an author radio-TV commentator and speaking on “The Politics of Sports Business” and can be reached at evanjweiner@yahoo.com
Thursday, July 8, 2010
King James and Journalism: 2010
King James and Journalism: 2010
By Evan Weiner
July 8, 2010
http://www.examiner.com/x-3926-Business-of-Sports-Examiner~y2010m7d8-King-James-and-journalism--2010#
(New York, N. Y.) -- The National Basketball Association is a “players” league. The players are the boss and coaches and general managers don't have that much leverage. After all it is easier to replace a coach or a GM than a player but that could be said of any sport. But now certain NBA players have usurped the media. This isn't going to be a harangue because Lebron James' twitter site or his website. That's business. But working journalists should be appalled that Dwayne Wade and Chris Bosh decided to tell the world they signed with the Miami Heat on what amounted to nothing more than an infomercial on ESPN and that ESPN agreed to Lebron James' request to get a prime time slot on a Thursday night in July to announce where he plans to play in 2010 and beyond.
The ESPN-Lebron James co-production of "The Decision" should send a message to journalists and media companies. You are not welcomed at our party anymore or at least Lebron James' party.
Disney's ESPN does reap some benefits being Lebron James' own personal network. They will get more eyeballs than normal for a Thursday night in July and James, Wade and Bosh have to give the network favorite nation status whenever they want their message out on ESPN. The Boys and Girls Club will get exposure and some funding because Lebron's rules apply. It's the Lebron Show except he didn't buy the time. The Walt Disney Company is giving him the time on ESPN.
It is easy to dismiss this as just sports and ESPN does stand for Entertainment and Sports Programming Network. But journalists have lost control of their business although it should as no surprise. Ross Perot had a very comfortable spot on Larry King's CNN show when he ran for President in 1992. Politicians have gone on the Tonight Show to announce that they are seeking some form of office. Hillary Clinton sidestepped the media when she announced her candidacy for President in 2007 on her website. Oprah is a major stop for people running for office or for others looking to repair their public image.
Lebron James is bigger than sports, the media "experts" have concluded. Lebron James, Chris Bosh and Dwayne Wade are entertainers, nothing more and nothing less. They are relevant now but no more so than other jocks in other eras during their primes except they now control the message and the messenger delivery system and that's not good for entire journalism community.
Nothing against Michael Wilbon, he has a job to do which is playing the role of emcee in the greatest show on earth. Wilbon has ceased being a journalist and is a straight man in a comedy act. Journalists won't complain about the "new normal" for fear of being shut out of the "inner circle" whether it’s Lebron James-Dwayne Wade and Chris Bosh or the NBA itself.
There should be more than a bit of anger directed towards Lebron, Wade and Bosh at the headquarters of Time Warner and Turner Sports, one of the NBA's cable TV partners. They were passed over by Wade, Bosh and James and they are NBA rights holders and pay hundreds of millions of dollars for that right and some of that cash goes to Lebron, Wade and Bosh. Time Warner should show backbone and ignore the story on CNN, the company's signature news station, and all other Time Warner platforms. Sean McManus at CBS should tell his boss Sumner Redstone that CBS News and Sports isn't interested in Wade, Bosh and James. Dick Ebersol should inform his boss at NBC, General Electric CEO Jeffrey Immelt that NBC would rather cover Piers Morgan deciding who should move on to the next round on America's Got Talent and tell Lorne Michaels that Lebron James is no longer welcomed on Saturday Night Live. Ruppert Murdoch should not bother putting the story on FOX News Channel, FOX Sports or in the Wall Street Journal or the New York Post. Bill Keller should find some backbone and leave it out of the New York Times and the same should be true at other newspapers and news radio outlets.
The radio sports talk shows, the network news shows have been played for fools by Wade/Bosh and James.
Lebron James not only is getting prime time on ESPN but he or someone in his circle handpicked a reporter, Jim Gray, to be part of what really looks like a circus side show on ESPN. All the rules of journalism have been broken on this.
Welcome to the 21st century where the narrative is controlled tightly by the person under scrutiny.
This is sports and a good many reporters are basically extensions of leagues and teams public relations departments anyway. Whitey Herzog, who is entering the Baseball Hall of Fame later this summer, once said that the sportswriters (around baseball) are real baseball men. Former baseball manager John McNamara felt the same way. Sports reporters have in the past have taken a tape recorder to the head (Kansas City Royals Manager Hal McRae threw a tape recorder in frustration and the writer incredibly took one for the team), a Toronto reporter after being pushed by Toronto Maple Leafs coach Pat Quinn refused to press charges against Quinn because he didn't want to do anything to get in the way of the Maple Leafs playoffs run.
(In 1983, Boston manager Ralph Houk, stripped down to his underwear, chased me and yelled at me in the Boston clubhouse at Yankee Stadium after being questioned about the Red Sox thin pitching--years later Houk told me, it was just part of the job, no hard feelings. Reporters are supposed to be yelled at and in some cases physically abused. It is the jock world. I was also banned from the Edmonton Oilers locker room in 1983 by Glen Sather and Bill Tuele during the finals because I asked too many tough questions of Sather as his team was losing in the playoffs. As a peace offering Tuele mailed me an Edmonton Oilers hockey puck.)
So it should be no surprise that no one has suggested to let Wade, Bosh and James do their announcements on their websites or on twitter. Their message will go directly to whoever wants them.
Don't expect to McManus, Ebersol, Murdoch (or FOX's Ed Goren) or the Time Warner gang to turn their collective backs on Wade, Bosh and James. Miami Heat fans could care less about the media's feelings nor should they. But there really needs to be a change in the culture of the media in America. Journalists need to take back their business just like NBA owners might during the next collective bargaining agreement.
The NBA free agent season is a story and will have some repercussions in the next collective bargaining agreement. NBA Commissioner David Stern contends the league's owners might have lost up to $400 million during the past season yet the league has increased the salary cap that teams must commit to salaries to $58 million annually. Stern has also claimed the league owners lost $200 million a year collectively in the first four years of the present bargaining agreement (2006, 2007, 2008 and 2009). The players get 57 percent of basketball related income.
The present collective bargaining agreement ends following the 2011 season.
Three years ago, Memphis Grizzlies' majority owner, Michael Heisley, was not a happy camper. Yet despite the economic downturn in 2008 and less than ideal economic conditions in the Memphis market, Hesiley just gave Rudy Gay is huge contract, a five year $80 million contract as part of the free agent class of 2010. Heisley had the cash to pay Gay but is Heisley a happy camper in 2010 or is he still an owner looking for change?
He is probably looking for change.
In 2006, Heisley was unsuccessful in his effort to sell his share of the basketball franchise to investors; his team finished with the NBA's worst record, and his business is not thriving financially — in 2007 the Grizzlies ranked last in attendance among National Basketball Association teams. Moreover, Heisley cannot count on the kind of television revenue that is available to bigger markets such as New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago.
Four years ago, Heisley became a proponent of adopting revenue sharing practices in the NBA that would mirror those of the National Football League and Major League Baseball. But there has been scant support for any proposals to reconsider the NBA's financial policies, Heisley has been waiting for change for a long time. More likely, he will need the backing of Stern, who could go a long way in helping to convince big market owners such as the Knicks' James Dolan, the Lakers' Jerry Buss, and the Bulls' Jerry Reinsdorf that it is in the league's best interests to devise an equitable revenue-sharing plan. One that would allow small-market teams like the Grizzlies to keep up with those in the larger markets.
Heisley's wait could be over by summer 2011.
During an interview in May 2007 with this columnist, Heisley went on record about the need for an effective revenue-sharing plan in the NBA.
On September 29, 2006, Heisley, and the owners of small market teams in New Orleans, Milwaukee, Salt Lake City, Portland, Charlotte, Minnesota, and Indianapolis, sent Stern a letter asking for assistance: "If appropriately managed teams can't break even, let alone make a profit, we have an economic system that requires correction. The needed correction is serious revenue sharing not just modest revenue assistance and we urge you to address this issue on an urgent basis this year," the letter read. The correspondence prompted little, if any, league action, according to Heisley.
"Last year, (2006) we had the perfect storm and things just went wrong," said Heisley, who failed to sell his 70% percent stake in the franchise last winter.
"We lost the support of the fans for whatever reason it was. All I am trying to say is that if I knew what it was, I would fix it, but I don't know completely why we lost so much of it. I think we can get it back. If we can get it back to the level we had before, then I think it's a reasonable fan base to be in the middle of the pack [and] in the smallest market in the NBA."
But fan base is not the real problem. With limited resources, Heisley cannot afford the cost of additional assistant coaches, public relations and sales representatives, and other personnel that might bolster the business aspect of the franchise. And the lack of a profitable television market that generates revenue to cover increased operating costs means the business will likely continue to suffer.
Heisley's Grizzlies actually fail on two of three prerequisites for a healthy franchise: Television revenues are slim, and Memphis doesn't offer much in the way of corporate support, since there are not many Fortune 500 companies operating in the city. Federal Express' purchase of naming rights to the city owned arena, and the presence of the founder of AutoZone, J.R. "Pitt" Hyde, who is a partner in the team's ownership, have been sources of revenue for the Grizzlies, but there is not much else.
Heisley remains unapologetic about dashing off that owners' letter to Stern. "I think the NBA is way behind the times in that area," Heisley said. "I think if you look at the NFL and how successful they have been, how they spread the championship around to smaller market teams, big market teams. I have franchise companies in my business and the judge of the franchise is how all the franchises are doing and the strength of a franchise is how the weakest is doing, not the strongest."
"We get 100% of the [national] television revenue [from Disney's ESPN and Turner's TNT, as well as other broadcast properties], I think, but then we don't get a lot of the sales that take place overseas. For example, we get nothing outside of our territories when [Stern] sells our jerseys. (Ex-Memphis now Lakers player) Pau Gasol is extremely popular in Spain, I don't know how much he sells, but I get nothing in Spain. The money goes to the league and they use it for whatever they choose to use it for to run the league."
In 2007, Heisley said, “I would say, a significant percentage of the teams in our league are struggling financially."
So it has come down to this. ESPN and Lebron James are teaming up to make a major announcement. The rules of journalism have gone out the window. The NBA Free Agent Carnie Show will probably lead some NBA owners to close down the factory next year but will it lead journalists and media companies to take back journalism? The answer is probably no. After all, Lebron makes good TV.
Evan Weiner is an author, radio-TV commentator and speaker on "The Politics of Sports Business" and can be reached at evanjweiner@yahoo.com
By Evan Weiner
July 8, 2010
http://www.examiner.com/x-3926-Business-of-Sports-Examiner~y2010m7d8-King-James-and-journalism--2010#
(New York, N. Y.) -- The National Basketball Association is a “players” league. The players are the boss and coaches and general managers don't have that much leverage. After all it is easier to replace a coach or a GM than a player but that could be said of any sport. But now certain NBA players have usurped the media. This isn't going to be a harangue because Lebron James' twitter site or his website. That's business. But working journalists should be appalled that Dwayne Wade and Chris Bosh decided to tell the world they signed with the Miami Heat on what amounted to nothing more than an infomercial on ESPN and that ESPN agreed to Lebron James' request to get a prime time slot on a Thursday night in July to announce where he plans to play in 2010 and beyond.
The ESPN-Lebron James co-production of "The Decision" should send a message to journalists and media companies. You are not welcomed at our party anymore or at least Lebron James' party.
Disney's ESPN does reap some benefits being Lebron James' own personal network. They will get more eyeballs than normal for a Thursday night in July and James, Wade and Bosh have to give the network favorite nation status whenever they want their message out on ESPN. The Boys and Girls Club will get exposure and some funding because Lebron's rules apply. It's the Lebron Show except he didn't buy the time. The Walt Disney Company is giving him the time on ESPN.
It is easy to dismiss this as just sports and ESPN does stand for Entertainment and Sports Programming Network. But journalists have lost control of their business although it should as no surprise. Ross Perot had a very comfortable spot on Larry King's CNN show when he ran for President in 1992. Politicians have gone on the Tonight Show to announce that they are seeking some form of office. Hillary Clinton sidestepped the media when she announced her candidacy for President in 2007 on her website. Oprah is a major stop for people running for office or for others looking to repair their public image.
Lebron James is bigger than sports, the media "experts" have concluded. Lebron James, Chris Bosh and Dwayne Wade are entertainers, nothing more and nothing less. They are relevant now but no more so than other jocks in other eras during their primes except they now control the message and the messenger delivery system and that's not good for entire journalism community.
Nothing against Michael Wilbon, he has a job to do which is playing the role of emcee in the greatest show on earth. Wilbon has ceased being a journalist and is a straight man in a comedy act. Journalists won't complain about the "new normal" for fear of being shut out of the "inner circle" whether it’s Lebron James-Dwayne Wade and Chris Bosh or the NBA itself.
There should be more than a bit of anger directed towards Lebron, Wade and Bosh at the headquarters of Time Warner and Turner Sports, one of the NBA's cable TV partners. They were passed over by Wade, Bosh and James and they are NBA rights holders and pay hundreds of millions of dollars for that right and some of that cash goes to Lebron, Wade and Bosh. Time Warner should show backbone and ignore the story on CNN, the company's signature news station, and all other Time Warner platforms. Sean McManus at CBS should tell his boss Sumner Redstone that CBS News and Sports isn't interested in Wade, Bosh and James. Dick Ebersol should inform his boss at NBC, General Electric CEO Jeffrey Immelt that NBC would rather cover Piers Morgan deciding who should move on to the next round on America's Got Talent and tell Lorne Michaels that Lebron James is no longer welcomed on Saturday Night Live. Ruppert Murdoch should not bother putting the story on FOX News Channel, FOX Sports or in the Wall Street Journal or the New York Post. Bill Keller should find some backbone and leave it out of the New York Times and the same should be true at other newspapers and news radio outlets.
The radio sports talk shows, the network news shows have been played for fools by Wade/Bosh and James.
Lebron James not only is getting prime time on ESPN but he or someone in his circle handpicked a reporter, Jim Gray, to be part of what really looks like a circus side show on ESPN. All the rules of journalism have been broken on this.
Welcome to the 21st century where the narrative is controlled tightly by the person under scrutiny.
This is sports and a good many reporters are basically extensions of leagues and teams public relations departments anyway. Whitey Herzog, who is entering the Baseball Hall of Fame later this summer, once said that the sportswriters (around baseball) are real baseball men. Former baseball manager John McNamara felt the same way. Sports reporters have in the past have taken a tape recorder to the head (Kansas City Royals Manager Hal McRae threw a tape recorder in frustration and the writer incredibly took one for the team), a Toronto reporter after being pushed by Toronto Maple Leafs coach Pat Quinn refused to press charges against Quinn because he didn't want to do anything to get in the way of the Maple Leafs playoffs run.
(In 1983, Boston manager Ralph Houk, stripped down to his underwear, chased me and yelled at me in the Boston clubhouse at Yankee Stadium after being questioned about the Red Sox thin pitching--years later Houk told me, it was just part of the job, no hard feelings. Reporters are supposed to be yelled at and in some cases physically abused. It is the jock world. I was also banned from the Edmonton Oilers locker room in 1983 by Glen Sather and Bill Tuele during the finals because I asked too many tough questions of Sather as his team was losing in the playoffs. As a peace offering Tuele mailed me an Edmonton Oilers hockey puck.)
So it should be no surprise that no one has suggested to let Wade, Bosh and James do their announcements on their websites or on twitter. Their message will go directly to whoever wants them.
Don't expect to McManus, Ebersol, Murdoch (or FOX's Ed Goren) or the Time Warner gang to turn their collective backs on Wade, Bosh and James. Miami Heat fans could care less about the media's feelings nor should they. But there really needs to be a change in the culture of the media in America. Journalists need to take back their business just like NBA owners might during the next collective bargaining agreement.
The NBA free agent season is a story and will have some repercussions in the next collective bargaining agreement. NBA Commissioner David Stern contends the league's owners might have lost up to $400 million during the past season yet the league has increased the salary cap that teams must commit to salaries to $58 million annually. Stern has also claimed the league owners lost $200 million a year collectively in the first four years of the present bargaining agreement (2006, 2007, 2008 and 2009). The players get 57 percent of basketball related income.
The present collective bargaining agreement ends following the 2011 season.
Three years ago, Memphis Grizzlies' majority owner, Michael Heisley, was not a happy camper. Yet despite the economic downturn in 2008 and less than ideal economic conditions in the Memphis market, Hesiley just gave Rudy Gay is huge contract, a five year $80 million contract as part of the free agent class of 2010. Heisley had the cash to pay Gay but is Heisley a happy camper in 2010 or is he still an owner looking for change?
He is probably looking for change.
In 2006, Heisley was unsuccessful in his effort to sell his share of the basketball franchise to investors; his team finished with the NBA's worst record, and his business is not thriving financially — in 2007 the Grizzlies ranked last in attendance among National Basketball Association teams. Moreover, Heisley cannot count on the kind of television revenue that is available to bigger markets such as New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago.
Four years ago, Heisley became a proponent of adopting revenue sharing practices in the NBA that would mirror those of the National Football League and Major League Baseball. But there has been scant support for any proposals to reconsider the NBA's financial policies, Heisley has been waiting for change for a long time. More likely, he will need the backing of Stern, who could go a long way in helping to convince big market owners such as the Knicks' James Dolan, the Lakers' Jerry Buss, and the Bulls' Jerry Reinsdorf that it is in the league's best interests to devise an equitable revenue-sharing plan. One that would allow small-market teams like the Grizzlies to keep up with those in the larger markets.
Heisley's wait could be over by summer 2011.
During an interview in May 2007 with this columnist, Heisley went on record about the need for an effective revenue-sharing plan in the NBA.
On September 29, 2006, Heisley, and the owners of small market teams in New Orleans, Milwaukee, Salt Lake City, Portland, Charlotte, Minnesota, and Indianapolis, sent Stern a letter asking for assistance: "If appropriately managed teams can't break even, let alone make a profit, we have an economic system that requires correction. The needed correction is serious revenue sharing not just modest revenue assistance and we urge you to address this issue on an urgent basis this year," the letter read. The correspondence prompted little, if any, league action, according to Heisley.
"Last year, (2006) we had the perfect storm and things just went wrong," said Heisley, who failed to sell his 70% percent stake in the franchise last winter.
"We lost the support of the fans for whatever reason it was. All I am trying to say is that if I knew what it was, I would fix it, but I don't know completely why we lost so much of it. I think we can get it back. If we can get it back to the level we had before, then I think it's a reasonable fan base to be in the middle of the pack [and] in the smallest market in the NBA."
But fan base is not the real problem. With limited resources, Heisley cannot afford the cost of additional assistant coaches, public relations and sales representatives, and other personnel that might bolster the business aspect of the franchise. And the lack of a profitable television market that generates revenue to cover increased operating costs means the business will likely continue to suffer.
Heisley's Grizzlies actually fail on two of three prerequisites for a healthy franchise: Television revenues are slim, and Memphis doesn't offer much in the way of corporate support, since there are not many Fortune 500 companies operating in the city. Federal Express' purchase of naming rights to the city owned arena, and the presence of the founder of AutoZone, J.R. "Pitt" Hyde, who is a partner in the team's ownership, have been sources of revenue for the Grizzlies, but there is not much else.
Heisley remains unapologetic about dashing off that owners' letter to Stern. "I think the NBA is way behind the times in that area," Heisley said. "I think if you look at the NFL and how successful they have been, how they spread the championship around to smaller market teams, big market teams. I have franchise companies in my business and the judge of the franchise is how all the franchises are doing and the strength of a franchise is how the weakest is doing, not the strongest."
"We get 100% of the [national] television revenue [from Disney's ESPN and Turner's TNT, as well as other broadcast properties], I think, but then we don't get a lot of the sales that take place overseas. For example, we get nothing outside of our territories when [Stern] sells our jerseys. (Ex-Memphis now Lakers player) Pau Gasol is extremely popular in Spain, I don't know how much he sells, but I get nothing in Spain. The money goes to the league and they use it for whatever they choose to use it for to run the league."
In 2007, Heisley said, “I would say, a significant percentage of the teams in our league are struggling financially."
So it has come down to this. ESPN and Lebron James are teaming up to make a major announcement. The rules of journalism have gone out the window. The NBA Free Agent Carnie Show will probably lead some NBA owners to close down the factory next year but will it lead journalists and media companies to take back journalism? The answer is probably no. After all, Lebron makes good TV.
Evan Weiner is an author, radio-TV commentator and speaker on "The Politics of Sports Business" and can be reached at evanjweiner@yahoo.com
Thursday, July 1, 2010
What Would Lebron Really Mean in New York?
What Would Lebron Really Mean in New York?
By Evan Weiner
July 1, 2010
http://www.examiner.com/examiner/x-3926-Business-of-Sports-Examiner~y2010m7d1-What-Would-Lebron-Really-Mean-in-New-York
(New York, N. Y.) -- New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg wants the Knicks to sign Lebron James. Bloomberg's city is a financial mess with teachers getting fired and services being cutback. New York State is a financial disaster. Of course Bloomberg should not even be the city's mayor as he bypassed a law that term limited city elected officials to two terms (Rudy Giuliani left office because of term limits) but that is a story for another day. Bloomberg won last November for a third time and is the mayor.
Here is the rub with Bloomberg and his want of Lebron James in Manhattan.
Madison Square Garden does not pay city property taxes. It may be as much as $14 million a year that does not go into the city's coffers. Lebron James salary would be about $14 million a year. If the Garden's owners, the Dolan family (a family that made their fortune off of the government because of laws governing the cable TV business) paid the tax, perhaps some of those Knicks fans who are losing their jobs because the city is broke might be retained in their jobs.
(The Dolans did not negotiate the property tax deal, they inherited the break when they bought the Garden in 1995 with the ITT Corporation.)
The Dolans themselves have been cutting back on their "media empire" for a long time. Their News12s in various parts of the New York City metropolitan area have seen a departure of reporters and the Dolan's newspaper, Newsday, just got concessions from workers which will result in five to 10 percent wage cutbacks. The Dolans have money for players but seem to have short arms when reaching into their pockets when it comes to paying reporters and property taxes.
But sports is fantasyland and Lebron James going to the Knicks would be a feel good story for long suffering Knicks fans.
The sports pundits will talk about just how much money Lebron James will pump into the city. That's assuming he lives in the city. There are New York players whose residents are in Florida or in other states where there is no state income tax. They happen to play in New York.
But the "Trickle Down" theory is in play. Surely Lebron would bring more people into New York to see him play for the Knicks and that would mean more money to the city?
That's not true.
The Knicks play two pre-season games in October, then just 41 games between November and April and those dates are scattered. The playoffs would bring a few more dates but certainly nothing that would add up for the city. With or without Lebron or a number of players who would make the Knicks better, the city would not stand to make much. Economic impact is very overrated. People have a finite amount of dollars to spend on entertainment, if it doesn't go to the Knicks, it would go somewhere else in the city or in the metropolitan area.
There would be few people who would plan a trip to New York because of Lebron. As far as being a tourist attraction, Lebron's presence in New York City would pale in comparison to the amount of people who want to see Broadway shows or maybe the Big East Tournament.
Most sports is local. There are few teams that can pull people in and those teams are basically college football teams who travel with large contingents and perhaps St. Louis Cardinals fans.
Lebron doesn't even have the pull of the New York City Marathon. You want an event that brings a multitude of people and a ton of money into town? The Marathon attracts runners globally. There are about 100,000 people who want a shot at the 2010 New York City Marathon. Only 37,000 runners get to participate and an awful lot of those runners are not from New York who rent hotel and motel rooms, dine at area eateries and put money into not only the city but surrounding areas. The Marathon has international travel partners in about 40 countries. Lebron is a one man corporation but he is not going to be a money making attraction to the city and Bloomberg's budget.
Lebron is not as valuable to Bloomberg as the shows in the Javits Center such as the Toy Show or the Jewelry Show. Lebron is not in the same league as the Model United Nations which brings about 5,000 teenagers from all over the world to participate. Lebron cannot compete with Fashion Week or Fleet Week. The Javits Center events, the UN events including the annual world leaders session and the Model United Nations bring not only participants but guests into the area and those guests use hotels/motels and restaurants. Lebron is not the same draw as the US Open in Flushing Meadows in the late summer. How many Europeans will buy plane tickets and book hotels with various travel packages to watch Lebron for a game here or there when they can see two weeks of championship tennis and be in New York City?
Cities compete for conventions.
Conventions make money, sports teams make money for owners and players but in many ways they cannot even compete with a local 24 hour a day supermarket in terms of real economic impact.
A few people might get jobs helping Lebron if he signs with the Knicks but as far as a municipal money making machine. He is not.
There is some other nonsense about New York being the biggest stage in the world. Lebron's popularity began while he was in prep school and he has been in Cleveland, a decaying rust belt city, for the past seven years. He can make the same endorsement money in Cleveland that he can in New York. This is not the 1960s where Mickey Mantle ruled the roost along with other New York Yankees and New York Giants football players in terms of Madison Avenue. Henry Aaron was an afterthought in Milwaukee in the 1950s and 1960s but that was a different time.
New York isn't even the biggest NBA stage. It is just another franchise in the 30 team NBA. The Garden is an overrated building that has been living off the glory days of another Madison Square Garden that was located about a mile north of the place. Garden officials were so disgusted with the four-year-old building in 1972 that they looked at possibly relocating the Knicks and the NHL's Rangers to the New Jersey Meadowlands. Gulf and Western didn't think so highly of the building a decade later after the bought the place in the mid-1970s. In the early 1980s, the Garden owners were screaming that they could no longer be competitive in the then 15 year old building and unless New York City and New York State gave them a property tax break, the Knicks would move to Nassau County and the Rangers to the Meadowlands.
So much for sentimentally. It is all business.
New York Governor Mario Cuomo and New York Mayor Ed Koch cut a deal with the Garden which relieved the arena ownership of the burden of paying city property tax and the arena's electric bill. Everyone in the Con Ed power grid got to pay a portion of the Garden's electric bill. That has gone on for nearly three decades even though neither Cuomo nor Koch though the law was passed by the legislature in Albany in 1982 would last in perpetuity.
Lebron is a money making machine for Lebron and his company along with a sports team, a league and his marketing partners. Knicks ticket prices will go up with Lebron, of course they go up even when the team is bad.
There isn't that much room to expand the fan base at the Garden for Knicks games as remarkably the team is still selling tickets at a high volume at 98.7 percent capacity in a building that seats about 19,500 people in 2009-10. With the teetering economy, a bad record and a lot of sports competition for the dollar in the New York area, it is actually incredible that the Knicks are still sellable. The Yankees cannot sell high priced home plate ticket in a new stadium with a championship team, the Mets attendance is way down and the New York Jets have slashed prices on about a quarter of the seats at the team's new stadium in East Rutherford, New Jersey.
Lebron would probably help Madison Square Garden's cable TV channel because more eyeballs would be on the channel and that would bring in advertising. The network might demand a higher licensing fee from multiple system operators who would then pass that along to cable TV customers which means that all cable TV subscribers that have the Garden's channel on their basic tier would have to pay for what maybe three or four percent of the audience watch---Knicks basketball.
In the world of fantasy---sports---Lebron James to the Knicks is a gift to Knicks fans. In the real world though, it is far far different. Bloomberg wants Lebron, he wanted a New Jersey-based Super Bowl also in 2014 which he got. He has green lighted hundreds of millions of dollars worth of tax breaks and subsidies for the construction of athletic facilities while presiding over job cuts because the city is broke.
Lebron James might save the Knicks from basketball mediocrity but he will do very little for the city's economy and job growth.
Evan Weiner is an author, radio-TV commentator and speaker on the "Politics of Sports Business and can be reached at evanjweiner@yahoo.com
By Evan Weiner
July 1, 2010
http://www.examiner.com/examiner/x-3926-Business-of-Sports-Examiner~y2010m7d1-What-Would-Lebron-Really-Mean-in-New-York
(New York, N. Y.) -- New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg wants the Knicks to sign Lebron James. Bloomberg's city is a financial mess with teachers getting fired and services being cutback. New York State is a financial disaster. Of course Bloomberg should not even be the city's mayor as he bypassed a law that term limited city elected officials to two terms (Rudy Giuliani left office because of term limits) but that is a story for another day. Bloomberg won last November for a third time and is the mayor.
Here is the rub with Bloomberg and his want of Lebron James in Manhattan.
Madison Square Garden does not pay city property taxes. It may be as much as $14 million a year that does not go into the city's coffers. Lebron James salary would be about $14 million a year. If the Garden's owners, the Dolan family (a family that made their fortune off of the government because of laws governing the cable TV business) paid the tax, perhaps some of those Knicks fans who are losing their jobs because the city is broke might be retained in their jobs.
(The Dolans did not negotiate the property tax deal, they inherited the break when they bought the Garden in 1995 with the ITT Corporation.)
The Dolans themselves have been cutting back on their "media empire" for a long time. Their News12s in various parts of the New York City metropolitan area have seen a departure of reporters and the Dolan's newspaper, Newsday, just got concessions from workers which will result in five to 10 percent wage cutbacks. The Dolans have money for players but seem to have short arms when reaching into their pockets when it comes to paying reporters and property taxes.
But sports is fantasyland and Lebron James going to the Knicks would be a feel good story for long suffering Knicks fans.
The sports pundits will talk about just how much money Lebron James will pump into the city. That's assuming he lives in the city. There are New York players whose residents are in Florida or in other states where there is no state income tax. They happen to play in New York.
But the "Trickle Down" theory is in play. Surely Lebron would bring more people into New York to see him play for the Knicks and that would mean more money to the city?
That's not true.
The Knicks play two pre-season games in October, then just 41 games between November and April and those dates are scattered. The playoffs would bring a few more dates but certainly nothing that would add up for the city. With or without Lebron or a number of players who would make the Knicks better, the city would not stand to make much. Economic impact is very overrated. People have a finite amount of dollars to spend on entertainment, if it doesn't go to the Knicks, it would go somewhere else in the city or in the metropolitan area.
There would be few people who would plan a trip to New York because of Lebron. As far as being a tourist attraction, Lebron's presence in New York City would pale in comparison to the amount of people who want to see Broadway shows or maybe the Big East Tournament.
Most sports is local. There are few teams that can pull people in and those teams are basically college football teams who travel with large contingents and perhaps St. Louis Cardinals fans.
Lebron doesn't even have the pull of the New York City Marathon. You want an event that brings a multitude of people and a ton of money into town? The Marathon attracts runners globally. There are about 100,000 people who want a shot at the 2010 New York City Marathon. Only 37,000 runners get to participate and an awful lot of those runners are not from New York who rent hotel and motel rooms, dine at area eateries and put money into not only the city but surrounding areas. The Marathon has international travel partners in about 40 countries. Lebron is a one man corporation but he is not going to be a money making attraction to the city and Bloomberg's budget.
Lebron is not as valuable to Bloomberg as the shows in the Javits Center such as the Toy Show or the Jewelry Show. Lebron is not in the same league as the Model United Nations which brings about 5,000 teenagers from all over the world to participate. Lebron cannot compete with Fashion Week or Fleet Week. The Javits Center events, the UN events including the annual world leaders session and the Model United Nations bring not only participants but guests into the area and those guests use hotels/motels and restaurants. Lebron is not the same draw as the US Open in Flushing Meadows in the late summer. How many Europeans will buy plane tickets and book hotels with various travel packages to watch Lebron for a game here or there when they can see two weeks of championship tennis and be in New York City?
Cities compete for conventions.
Conventions make money, sports teams make money for owners and players but in many ways they cannot even compete with a local 24 hour a day supermarket in terms of real economic impact.
A few people might get jobs helping Lebron if he signs with the Knicks but as far as a municipal money making machine. He is not.
There is some other nonsense about New York being the biggest stage in the world. Lebron's popularity began while he was in prep school and he has been in Cleveland, a decaying rust belt city, for the past seven years. He can make the same endorsement money in Cleveland that he can in New York. This is not the 1960s where Mickey Mantle ruled the roost along with other New York Yankees and New York Giants football players in terms of Madison Avenue. Henry Aaron was an afterthought in Milwaukee in the 1950s and 1960s but that was a different time.
New York isn't even the biggest NBA stage. It is just another franchise in the 30 team NBA. The Garden is an overrated building that has been living off the glory days of another Madison Square Garden that was located about a mile north of the place. Garden officials were so disgusted with the four-year-old building in 1972 that they looked at possibly relocating the Knicks and the NHL's Rangers to the New Jersey Meadowlands. Gulf and Western didn't think so highly of the building a decade later after the bought the place in the mid-1970s. In the early 1980s, the Garden owners were screaming that they could no longer be competitive in the then 15 year old building and unless New York City and New York State gave them a property tax break, the Knicks would move to Nassau County and the Rangers to the Meadowlands.
So much for sentimentally. It is all business.
New York Governor Mario Cuomo and New York Mayor Ed Koch cut a deal with the Garden which relieved the arena ownership of the burden of paying city property tax and the arena's electric bill. Everyone in the Con Ed power grid got to pay a portion of the Garden's electric bill. That has gone on for nearly three decades even though neither Cuomo nor Koch though the law was passed by the legislature in Albany in 1982 would last in perpetuity.
Lebron is a money making machine for Lebron and his company along with a sports team, a league and his marketing partners. Knicks ticket prices will go up with Lebron, of course they go up even when the team is bad.
There isn't that much room to expand the fan base at the Garden for Knicks games as remarkably the team is still selling tickets at a high volume at 98.7 percent capacity in a building that seats about 19,500 people in 2009-10. With the teetering economy, a bad record and a lot of sports competition for the dollar in the New York area, it is actually incredible that the Knicks are still sellable. The Yankees cannot sell high priced home plate ticket in a new stadium with a championship team, the Mets attendance is way down and the New York Jets have slashed prices on about a quarter of the seats at the team's new stadium in East Rutherford, New Jersey.
Lebron would probably help Madison Square Garden's cable TV channel because more eyeballs would be on the channel and that would bring in advertising. The network might demand a higher licensing fee from multiple system operators who would then pass that along to cable TV customers which means that all cable TV subscribers that have the Garden's channel on their basic tier would have to pay for what maybe three or four percent of the audience watch---Knicks basketball.
In the world of fantasy---sports---Lebron James to the Knicks is a gift to Knicks fans. In the real world though, it is far far different. Bloomberg wants Lebron, he wanted a New Jersey-based Super Bowl also in 2014 which he got. He has green lighted hundreds of millions of dollars worth of tax breaks and subsidies for the construction of athletic facilities while presiding over job cuts because the city is broke.
Lebron James might save the Knicks from basketball mediocrity but he will do very little for the city's economy and job growth.
Evan Weiner is an author, radio-TV commentator and speaker on the "Politics of Sports Business and can be reached at evanjweiner@yahoo.com
Thursday, June 17, 2010
Nets Basketball: First Newark, then Brooklyn ... and then the world
Nets Basketball: First Newark, then Brooklyn ... and then the world
WEDNESDAY, 16 JUNE 2010 22:31
http://www.newjerseynewsroom.com/professional/nets-basketball-first-newark-then-brooklyn-and-then-the-world
BY EVAN WEINER
NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM
So how do you push your way onto the world stage and become a global sports brand name like Manchester United, Michael Jordan and Tiger Woods? That is the question that Irina Pavlova will be attempting to answer in the upcoming months as she leads the campaign to make the New Jersey, soon-to-be Brooklyn Nets a player on the world stage.
The former majority leader of the United States House of Representatives Tip O'Neill joked that all politics is local and sports owners believed that all sports is local but that is no longer the case. Manchester United is better known as ManU and is a huge worldwide brand. ManU and other football (soccer) teams that have global name recognition but no National Basketball Association franchise is on that level.
New Nets owner Russia's Mikhail Prokhorov may be able to elevate the New Jersey, soon-to-be Brooklyn, Nets to that lofty perch but there is much work to be done locally whether it is in Newark or Brooklyn. Prokhorov's Nets franchise is scheduled to make a stop in Newark for two years before heading through either the Lincoln or Holland Tunnel and over either the Brooklyn or Manhattan Bridge or through the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel to the new Brooklyn arena.
So how do you make the Nets not only Moscow's team but Beijing's team?
"That's only the first step," said Pavlova, who is the President of Prokhorov's Onexim Sports and Entertainment, talking about her owner's purchase of the Nets. "We also have one of the two (NBA) Chinese players (Yi Jianlian) on our team that we are very excited about. I think really is no limit to how global the New Jersey Nets brand can become. I think Mikhail Prokhorov brings a new dimension to this team."
According to Nets President Rod Thorn, the Nets will be in China for pre-season games and will play two regular season games in London, England, which means the Nets franchise is about ready to enter the global stage. But again there is a matter of taking care of business at home.
"I think it is going to be a fluid process, it is not just three things we need to do get there," said Pavlova. "We have the move (from the Meadowlands to Newark), we have a very exciting summer ahead of us and I think we will look at it as more if you look at Michael Jordan or you look at Tiger Woods, there are both an international brand. I think our strategy is going to evolve around building the New Jersey Nets into something like that where the name transcends borders and cultures and countries."
The Nets franchise is moving. The Meadowlands is in the rear view mirror and there is a temporary stop in New Jersey before the migration across the Upper New York Bay to Brooklyn. Getting from point A (the Meadowlands) to Point C (Brooklyn) is not as easy as getting on Route 3 and hopping through the Lincoln Tunnel and turning to south to get to the Manhattan Bridge and then to the new Atlantic Yards building. How do you go from Point A to Point C?
"U-haul," laughed Pavlova. "Obviously it is a complicated process but it has been in the works for a while and we have a lot of support from a lot of our constituents. It is not easy but it is going to get done."
The Nets organization may have to go through three fan bases in the New York City area by the time the team is ready to become a player on the global stage. There is the fan base that was left behind at the Meadowlands, there will be an interim stop in Newark and then Brooklyn. NBA teams, along with those in all other sports, rely on a lot of corporate support. Will the corporate base that bought luxury boxes and club seats at the Meadowlands move to Newark and then will that money move to Brooklyn or will new corporate money be poured into the Nets and can the team induce the New Jersey corporate dollars to cross two tunnels or bridges to get to Brooklyn?
"We definitely hope our fans will follow us and that we gain new ones. We welcome everyone," she said.
The Brooklyn arena will be the fifth major venue in the New York area although it will be the newest one in 2012. There are plans to renovate the Charles Dolan-family owned Madison Square Garden in Manhattan, there are the two New Jersey buildings at the Meadowlands and Newark and the Nassau Coliseum out in Uniondale on the Island.
Chris Botta on his Islanders Point Blank website reported that the New York Mets ownership group, the Wilpon family (who are New York City real estate people), have brought in another real estate company – Jones, Lang and LaSalle – to kick the tires and explore the possibility of building an arena in Queens in the junkyards across the way from the Mets' new stadium.
Dolan's Newsday newspaper dismissed Botta's story but that property has been eyed by developers and once was mentioned by Donald Trump back in 1984 as a possible home for a new football stadium for his United States New Jersey Generals. Can six arenas in such a small area co-exist?
"To be honest with you, I am not following everything to same extent you mention, so I am not familiar with the Islanders situation," said Pavlova. "We broke ground in March (in Brooklyn), we are going ahead with it. So far everything is going smoothly and we are hope it will continue to go that way. We are planning to open in two years. So the season of 2012-23, we plan to be there."
How far into the building process is the Brooklyn arena?
"They're digging," said Pavlova.
The Nets basketball franchise has been around since 1967, first as the New Jersey Americans, Teaneck-based American Basketball Association squad then as the New York Nets between 1968 and 1977 in various buildings on Long Island and then back to New Jersey in 1977.
The team moved into the Meadowlands in 1981. Despite having Dr. J and winning two ABA titles in 1974 and 1976 and joining the NBA in 1976, the team has never captured the attention of the tri-state area like the Manhattan-based New York Knicks. Getting equal attention in New York has been a tough go for decades, so will it be easier to get global attention?
"I can't tell you exactly how it is going to go," said Pavlova. "Obviously we will have a marketing team that will work on that. It is not an overnight process but that's in the plan."
A Russian owner, a pre-season in China and regular season games in London could change the Nets perceived perception. People have a perceived perception of the Nets which is probably not deserved. New Jersey has had some NBA success but the Meadowlands and New Jersey have never been fairly compared to the Garden by the New York media even though Sumner Redstone once threatened to move his New York Rangers franchise to New Jersey and his Knicks to the Nets old Nassau Coliseum venue if he didn't get a break in property taxes and the electric bill at the Garden in the early 1980s. Redstone got both. Redstone had no problems with New Jersey for his hockey team but the New York media has never bought New Jersey or Long Island for that matter as the big time even though the National Football League Giants and Jets played across the street from the Meadowlands Arena and the Jets trained next to the Nassau Coliseum.
Again, it is all about perceived perception.
Rod Thorn, an NBA lifer who played in the league when teams were still moving from city to city back in the 1960s, would like to elevate the Nets franchise onto the global stage.
"I think that certainly is a lofty goal," said Thorn. "Something that we will obviously aspire to. We have a leg up by having an owner like Mikhail who is known all over the world and has owned sports teams before. That is something to really look forward to. I think our going to China has more to do with us having Yi right now than it does anything else and then we are also going to London in March to play regular season games. So, it is exciting, there are a lot of experiences that we are going to have here in the next couple of years and everybody is looking forward to it.
"Basketball is an international sport, teams play all over the world. So there is a base for basketball virtually anywhere. Pre-season for China. Two games in London."
Thorn started in the NBA in 1963 when the league barely had a TV contract, the NBA was not seen on national TV in the United States in 1961-62, and Chicago had just moved to Baltimore. Thorn was drafted by the Baltimore Bullets in 1963. Thorn also played for the St. Louis Hawks, a franchise that moved to Atlanta in 1968. The NBA of Thorn's youth only shares the initials NBA with today's league which is an international business.
"Not really," was Thorn's response when asked if he thought the NBA would grow into a global presence. "But during my time over there (with the NBA office between 1986-2000), the league really became more involved in international play with the McDonald's Open first (in 1987) and by participating in the Olympics and World Championships, so it happened while I was there, I didn't even think about things like that."
Now Thorn is running a team with an owner who plans to make the Nets brand a global presence along side of Manchester United and icons like Michael Jordan, Tiger Woods and Lebron James. It is all about getting the product in front of people whether it is in Moscow, Beijing or London. Prokhorov is planning to push the Nets onto the global stage which is so un-Nets-like.
Evan Weiner is an author, radio-TV commentator and lecturer on "The Politics of Sports Business" and can be reached at evanjweiner@yahoo.com
LAST UPDATED ( WEDNESDAY, 16 JUNE 2010 22:31 )
WEDNESDAY, 16 JUNE 2010 22:31
http://www.newjerseynewsroom.com/professional/nets-basketball-first-newark-then-brooklyn-and-then-the-world
BY EVAN WEINER
NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM
So how do you push your way onto the world stage and become a global sports brand name like Manchester United, Michael Jordan and Tiger Woods? That is the question that Irina Pavlova will be attempting to answer in the upcoming months as she leads the campaign to make the New Jersey, soon-to-be Brooklyn Nets a player on the world stage.
The former majority leader of the United States House of Representatives Tip O'Neill joked that all politics is local and sports owners believed that all sports is local but that is no longer the case. Manchester United is better known as ManU and is a huge worldwide brand. ManU and other football (soccer) teams that have global name recognition but no National Basketball Association franchise is on that level.
New Nets owner Russia's Mikhail Prokhorov may be able to elevate the New Jersey, soon-to-be Brooklyn, Nets to that lofty perch but there is much work to be done locally whether it is in Newark or Brooklyn. Prokhorov's Nets franchise is scheduled to make a stop in Newark for two years before heading through either the Lincoln or Holland Tunnel and over either the Brooklyn or Manhattan Bridge or through the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel to the new Brooklyn arena.
So how do you make the Nets not only Moscow's team but Beijing's team?
"That's only the first step," said Pavlova, who is the President of Prokhorov's Onexim Sports and Entertainment, talking about her owner's purchase of the Nets. "We also have one of the two (NBA) Chinese players (Yi Jianlian) on our team that we are very excited about. I think really is no limit to how global the New Jersey Nets brand can become. I think Mikhail Prokhorov brings a new dimension to this team."
According to Nets President Rod Thorn, the Nets will be in China for pre-season games and will play two regular season games in London, England, which means the Nets franchise is about ready to enter the global stage. But again there is a matter of taking care of business at home.
"I think it is going to be a fluid process, it is not just three things we need to do get there," said Pavlova. "We have the move (from the Meadowlands to Newark), we have a very exciting summer ahead of us and I think we will look at it as more if you look at Michael Jordan or you look at Tiger Woods, there are both an international brand. I think our strategy is going to evolve around building the New Jersey Nets into something like that where the name transcends borders and cultures and countries."
The Nets franchise is moving. The Meadowlands is in the rear view mirror and there is a temporary stop in New Jersey before the migration across the Upper New York Bay to Brooklyn. Getting from point A (the Meadowlands) to Point C (Brooklyn) is not as easy as getting on Route 3 and hopping through the Lincoln Tunnel and turning to south to get to the Manhattan Bridge and then to the new Atlantic Yards building. How do you go from Point A to Point C?
"U-haul," laughed Pavlova. "Obviously it is a complicated process but it has been in the works for a while and we have a lot of support from a lot of our constituents. It is not easy but it is going to get done."
The Nets organization may have to go through three fan bases in the New York City area by the time the team is ready to become a player on the global stage. There is the fan base that was left behind at the Meadowlands, there will be an interim stop in Newark and then Brooklyn. NBA teams, along with those in all other sports, rely on a lot of corporate support. Will the corporate base that bought luxury boxes and club seats at the Meadowlands move to Newark and then will that money move to Brooklyn or will new corporate money be poured into the Nets and can the team induce the New Jersey corporate dollars to cross two tunnels or bridges to get to Brooklyn?
"We definitely hope our fans will follow us and that we gain new ones. We welcome everyone," she said.
The Brooklyn arena will be the fifth major venue in the New York area although it will be the newest one in 2012. There are plans to renovate the Charles Dolan-family owned Madison Square Garden in Manhattan, there are the two New Jersey buildings at the Meadowlands and Newark and the Nassau Coliseum out in Uniondale on the Island.
Chris Botta on his Islanders Point Blank website reported that the New York Mets ownership group, the Wilpon family (who are New York City real estate people), have brought in another real estate company – Jones, Lang and LaSalle – to kick the tires and explore the possibility of building an arena in Queens in the junkyards across the way from the Mets' new stadium.
Dolan's Newsday newspaper dismissed Botta's story but that property has been eyed by developers and once was mentioned by Donald Trump back in 1984 as a possible home for a new football stadium for his United States New Jersey Generals. Can six arenas in such a small area co-exist?
"To be honest with you, I am not following everything to same extent you mention, so I am not familiar with the Islanders situation," said Pavlova. "We broke ground in March (in Brooklyn), we are going ahead with it. So far everything is going smoothly and we are hope it will continue to go that way. We are planning to open in two years. So the season of 2012-23, we plan to be there."
How far into the building process is the Brooklyn arena?
"They're digging," said Pavlova.
The Nets basketball franchise has been around since 1967, first as the New Jersey Americans, Teaneck-based American Basketball Association squad then as the New York Nets between 1968 and 1977 in various buildings on Long Island and then back to New Jersey in 1977.
The team moved into the Meadowlands in 1981. Despite having Dr. J and winning two ABA titles in 1974 and 1976 and joining the NBA in 1976, the team has never captured the attention of the tri-state area like the Manhattan-based New York Knicks. Getting equal attention in New York has been a tough go for decades, so will it be easier to get global attention?
"I can't tell you exactly how it is going to go," said Pavlova. "Obviously we will have a marketing team that will work on that. It is not an overnight process but that's in the plan."
A Russian owner, a pre-season in China and regular season games in London could change the Nets perceived perception. People have a perceived perception of the Nets which is probably not deserved. New Jersey has had some NBA success but the Meadowlands and New Jersey have never been fairly compared to the Garden by the New York media even though Sumner Redstone once threatened to move his New York Rangers franchise to New Jersey and his Knicks to the Nets old Nassau Coliseum venue if he didn't get a break in property taxes and the electric bill at the Garden in the early 1980s. Redstone got both. Redstone had no problems with New Jersey for his hockey team but the New York media has never bought New Jersey or Long Island for that matter as the big time even though the National Football League Giants and Jets played across the street from the Meadowlands Arena and the Jets trained next to the Nassau Coliseum.
Again, it is all about perceived perception.
Rod Thorn, an NBA lifer who played in the league when teams were still moving from city to city back in the 1960s, would like to elevate the Nets franchise onto the global stage.
"I think that certainly is a lofty goal," said Thorn. "Something that we will obviously aspire to. We have a leg up by having an owner like Mikhail who is known all over the world and has owned sports teams before. That is something to really look forward to. I think our going to China has more to do with us having Yi right now than it does anything else and then we are also going to London in March to play regular season games. So, it is exciting, there are a lot of experiences that we are going to have here in the next couple of years and everybody is looking forward to it.
"Basketball is an international sport, teams play all over the world. So there is a base for basketball virtually anywhere. Pre-season for China. Two games in London."
Thorn started in the NBA in 1963 when the league barely had a TV contract, the NBA was not seen on national TV in the United States in 1961-62, and Chicago had just moved to Baltimore. Thorn was drafted by the Baltimore Bullets in 1963. Thorn also played for the St. Louis Hawks, a franchise that moved to Atlanta in 1968. The NBA of Thorn's youth only shares the initials NBA with today's league which is an international business.
"Not really," was Thorn's response when asked if he thought the NBA would grow into a global presence. "But during my time over there (with the NBA office between 1986-2000), the league really became more involved in international play with the McDonald's Open first (in 1987) and by participating in the Olympics and World Championships, so it happened while I was there, I didn't even think about things like that."
Now Thorn is running a team with an owner who plans to make the Nets brand a global presence along side of Manchester United and icons like Michael Jordan, Tiger Woods and Lebron James. It is all about getting the product in front of people whether it is in Moscow, Beijing or London. Prokhorov is planning to push the Nets onto the global stage which is so un-Nets-like.
Evan Weiner is an author, radio-TV commentator and lecturer on "The Politics of Sports Business" and can be reached at evanjweiner@yahoo.com
LAST UPDATED ( WEDNESDAY, 16 JUNE 2010 22:31 )
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