New Jersey’s horse racing problems rooted in NFL wanderlust
Monday, 06 December 2010 12:01
http://www.newjerseynewsroom.com/professional/new-jerseys-horse-racing-problems-rooted-in-nfl-wanderlust
BY EVAN WEINER
NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM
THE BUSINESS AND POLITICS OF SPORTS
As New Jersey continues to figure out what to do with the state's financially ailing horse racing tracks, the "popular" (according to media pundits who like to affix tags like popular, hapless or weak to political figures or sports teams) or "superstar" (according to the Tucker Carlson founded Daily Caller conservative political website) Governor of New Jersey Chris Christie has to balance his desire to "fix" the industry with the reality that New Jersey is leaking gambling money to New York, Pennsylvania and Delaware. For more than four decades states have been adding all sorts of ways for the average person to spend money gambling near their homes whether it was at an Off Track Betting facility (and that is now an endangered species in New York) to playing all sorts of games at the local 7-Eleven or Wawa stores. The state would get a percentage of the take and pay off bills.
That opens up a real ethical debate that no one seems to want to address.
Should the state encourage legal gambling knowing that people who have addiction problems might add betting to their addictions as a way to generate revenue or just raise taxes?
Tax hikes, of course, are highly unpopular so why not hide them?
Gambling is a form of taxation and across the Hudson River in Queens, New York, a casino will be opening in 2011 at Aqueduct racetrack. New York's gain could potentially be a New Jersey's revenue loss.
The Queens casino will be operated by a Malaysian company, Genting, and will eventually house 4,525 video lottery terminals. The first 1,600 will be opened sometime in early 2011.There will eventually be a major structure housing the terminals at the Queens racetrack and New York racing will be able to up purses and draw a better grade of horse to Aqueduct, Belmont and Saratoga. New York is also hoping that some of the casinos proceeds will go to pay off education costs in the state. That brings up another ethical question that politicians ran away from.
"Neighborhood" casinos don't attract the "high rollers" who can afford to lose money. The crowd is a lower to middle class crowd that is there for either enjoyment or hoping to hit the jackpot. It is a tax although on the lower and middle class yet it never is packaged that way. Those people will be paying a tax they have never considered because gambling is a form of recreation even though they are the ones shouting about high tax rates.
The same media people who tout "rising star" politicians or "popular" politicians or "superstar" politicians never bother to actually understand that an elected official makes decisions that impact lives and is not a celebrity. The pundits never explain state gambling. Politicians more than four decades ago decided to start state gambling games as a way to collect revenues. That is why there are so many "racinos" — racetracks with slot machines and in some cases table games. That is why restaurant goers can play keno while waiting for a slice of pizza in New York.
Aqueduct will be just another casino within a driving distance of northern New Jersey. It will join the Empire City Casino at Yonkers Raceway as a close competitor. Pennsylvania casinos are also within a quick drive and one Poconos casino regularly runs ads on an AM northern New Jersey radio station telling people to make the drive there. In the Philadelphia area, there are slots at racetracks and Delaware along with Maryland also feature slot parlors. Atlantic City is not the only game in town anymore and for those in northern New Jersey, there will be a casino/resort opening in what used to be known as the Borscht Belt near Monticello, New York in the next few years.
That is a problem for the "popular" and "superstar" governor whose main job is to get New Jersey out of the fiscal mess the state is coping with. Of course New Jersey is not alone in the budget problems and no amount of "media celebrity" accolades is going to pull the any state out of the financial crisis.
If that were the case, California with Governor Schwarzenegger would have turn the financial ship around and the Golden State would be swimming in money. It is just not that easy.
Both the thoroughbred and standard bred horse racing industry have been dying for years. At one time, Yonkers Raceway packed 40,000 people into the stands on a Saturday night. That was four decades ago. Now the venue is a casino that features some racing most nights. The same is true at Dover Downs in Delaware and the trend around the country has been to put slots into tracks in an attempt to get people into the venue to bet on something, not necessarily horses. Christie's problem is that Atlantic City is the hub of gambling in New Jersey and the casinos there don't really want any in-state competition for gambling dollars from New Jersey racetracks. Ideally the Meadowlands and Monmouth Park would be the perfect venues for slot machines but that is not happening anytime soon, like this afternoon, and New Jersey is losing money on the racetracks.
Apparently Monmouth lost about $6.5 million this year and the Meadowlands came in at around $11 million in losses. The total was offset by contributions from Atlantic City casinos and taxpayers dollars. Governor Christie wants to end the subsidies but others want to save horse racing in the state and some of the suggestions include internet gambling on races, opening New Jersey's version of Off Track Betting, selling off Monmouth (no one would buy the facility for just horse racing) and limiting racing at the Meadowlands to just a few days a year.
All of the solutions are flawed. If New Jersey does get out of the horse racing industry, the state will lose horse farms and that has a domino falling impact on all sorts of secondary industries from veterinarians to stable operators to people spending money in the community where the farms are located. That means a job and tax revenue loss. Because of casino gambling, Delaware was able to save horse farms that would surely had left if horse racing ended at the remaining tracks in the state. New York and Maryland are struggling with that problem although both states think that they can stem the tide of farms leaving with money from the "machines" as Yonkers Raceway owner Tim Rooney calls them.
The National Football League and other sports leagues would fight legalized sports gambling in Atlantic City although New Jersey lawmakers had the ability to legalize sports gambling in 1993 and passed on the opportunity.
Delaware does have legalized "parlay" National Football League action at the state's casinos.
Ironically, New Jersey got into the racetrack business because of the National Football League. In 1971 and 1972, state elected officials built the Meadowlands racetrack with the thought that the proceeds from the track would help pay down the debt at the new football facility that would eventually house the New York Giants. The football venue was completed in 1976. Meanwhile Leon Hess was becoming more and more unhappy with the terms of his lease at Shea Stadium as his Jets franchise played second fiddle to the New York Mets at the New York City-owned sports facility in Queens. Hess was eyeing New Jersey and his lease with the New York City ended in 1983.
Hess was a member of the Board of Directors of the Monmouth Park Jockey Club. By 1985, Hess had a deal for his Jets to play in the Meadowlands and New Jersey bought Monmouth Park from Hess and his fellow Jockey Club members for $45 million. The Hess-New Jersey negotiations for the football team move to New Jersey started in 1983 as did the Monmouth Park talks. The two negotiations were not linked.
At least not officially.
The state originally went after the Yankees in 1972 and thought a deal which about to be struck between Yankees owner CBS and a local New Jersey businessmen for about $13 million. New Jersey would have built a baseball park in the Meadowlands for the Yankees. In 1972, CBS Chairman William Paley told Yankees President Michael Burke to either sell the team or buy it himself. CBS could not put Yankees games on CBS' owned and operated WCBS-TV, Channel 2 in New York because of Federal Communication Commission rules. Back in 1972, that was where the real money on the team could have been made through TV advertising revenue and promotions. New Jersey officials felt that a deal to move the team to the state was imminent but Burke informed New Jersey interests that the team wasn't for sale near the end of 1972, A few days later, on January 3, 1973, Burke announced that a group led by George M. Steinbrenner III had purchased the club for $10 million (along with a $1.5 million tax credit).
The New York Yankees franchise remained in the Bronx.
New Jersey has to do something soon because of pressures from inside the state and external pressure has gambling money seeps into neighboring states. The longer politicians kick the can down the street, the harder it will be to solve New Jersey's horse racing and gambling problem.
Evan Weiner, the winner of the United States Sports Academy's 2010 Ronald Reagan Media Award, is an author, radio-TV commentator and speaker on "The Politics of Sports Business." His book, "The Business and Politics of Sports, Second Edition is available at www.bickley.com or amazonkindle. He can be reached at evanjweiner@yahoo.com
Showing posts with label Meadowlands Stadium. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Meadowlands Stadium. Show all posts
Monday, December 6, 2010
Wednesday, August 11, 2010
How Adolf Hitler and the Nazis cost the Giants and Jets $30 million a year
How Adolf Hitler and the Nazis cost the Giants and Jets $30 million a year
Wednesday, 11 August 2010 13:40
http://www.newjerseynewsroom.com/professional/how-adolf-hitler-and-the-nazis-cost-the-giants-and-jets-30-million-a-year
BY EVAN WEINER
NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM
POLITICS OF SPORTS BUSINESS
Had all gone according to the original plan, the first "American" football game, which will be played on Monday night at the new Meadowlands Stadium between the East Rutherford-based New York Giants and the Florham Park-based New York Jets, would have had the name Allianz attached to the stadium. The Munich, Germany-based financial services and insurance company was negotiating with the Giants-Jets stadium management group to be the naming rights partner of the new East Rutherford stadium but those talks ended on September 9, 2008 after news broke that the two football teams were negotiating a deal with the Munich company which had ties to the Third Reich and Nazi Germany.
According to some reports, Allianz was willing to pay as much as $30 million annually for the naming rights. The Giants-Jets group is still looking for a naming rights partner in what has become an extremely difficult financial environment. Many companies don't see the value in purchasing naming rights to a stadium. The one-year old Dallas Cowboys Stadium in Arlington, Texas still does not have a corporate naming sponsor which is a bit surprising in that Cowboys owner Jerry Jones is hosting the 2011 Super Bowl next February and the Super Bowl is a prime advertising vehicle.
The Giants-Jets stadium will host the 2014 Super Bowl.
It is not unusual for a non-American company to buy the naming rights of an American arena or stadium. LM Ericcson, a telecommunications company based in Sweden, bought the naming rights for the new Charlotte football stadium in a ten-year, $25 million deal that started in 1996.
Last January, the Canadian insurance company Sun Life Financial signed a five-year, $20 million agreement with Miami Dolphins owner (and New York-New Jersey real estate magnate) Stephen Ross for the naming rights to the Dolphins' Broward County stadium. Sun Life, which is Canada's third-largest insurer, was looking to increase the company's visibility in the United States and probably did well on the deal as the Sun Life name and signage was plastered all over last February's Super Bowl broadcast. That exposure was more important than the other aspects of the deal which included having the Sun Life name printed on tickets to sporting events at the stadium.
Two other Canadian financial institutions have their names affixed on arenas in the United States. In 2005, TD Bank bought the naming rights to the arena that houses the National Basketball Association's Boston Celtics and the National Hockey league's Boston Bruins The building is called TD Banknorth Garden. Royal Bank reached an agreement with the Carolina Hurricanes ownership in 2002 for the naming rights to the Raleigh, North Carolina arena. The venue is known as the RBC Center.
If the New Jersey Nets franchise does ever move to Brooklyn, the building will be called Barclay's Center. The England-based Barclay's does not have any bank branches in the United States but the bank does have a number of global locations.
The Giants-Jets/Allianz deal was stopped when Jewish groups and holocaust survivors learned of the talks. The Giants-Jets negotiations brought to light Allianz's history with Adolf Hitler and Nazi, Germany. A little history lesson needs to be told to understand the opposition to Allianz putting the company name on the sides of the East Rutherford stadium.
In 1993, Allianz's CEO Henning Schulte-Noelle decided to take a look at Allianz's corporate history and research the role the company might have played between 1933 and 1945 with Adolf Hitler and the Nazi government. By 1997, Schulte-Noelle found the man he needed to do the research in at Cal-Berkeley, Dr. Gerald Feldman, who was the director of the University of California's Center for German and European Studies. Dr. Feldman had spent a good chunk of his adult life studying all aspects of German history. Dr. Feldman's 2001 book, "Allianz and the German Insurance Business, 1933-1945," explained how Allianz had given money owed to Jewish life insurance policy beneficiaries to the Nazi government.
Among Dr. Feldman's findings were records which showed that Allianz insured the property and personnel of the Auschwitz extermination camp, as well as the Dachau concentration camp. Additionally, Allianz also insured the engineers working at the IG Farben Company, the company that oversaw the manufacture of the Zyklon B cyanide gas used at concentration camps to kill Jews and other victims. Allianz provided insurance throughout the war to Nazis who had seized valuables from those victims captured and forced into the camps.
Dr. Feldman also related that Allianz Chief Executive Kurt Schmitt was Hitler's Economy Minister from June 1933 until January 1935, and found a picture of Schmitt wearing an SS-Oberführer's uniform. Allianz General Director Eduard Hilgard led the "Reich Association for Private Insurance" and helped create and enforce termination and refusal policies to pay off any life insurance policies issued to Jews. Beneficiary payments went directly sent to the Nazis instead.
Feldman said in a 2001 interview that is posted on the Allianz website that he had "unrestricted freedom" to do independent research.
Allianz had hoped that the company would have been able to do business in the United States like other German companies that had ties to Hitler and Nazi Germany and pleaded that the present day company leaders had nothing to do with the Nazi era. Allianz and four other German insurance companies were key backers of the "International Commission on Holocaust Era Insurance Claims" and Allianz was a founder of the German Foundation "Remembrance, Responsibility and Future." Dr. Feldman's findings in the book along with Allianz taking responsibility for being involved with the Third Reich did nothing to sway Holocaust survivors who were aghast at the thought of Allianz putting the company moniker on the East Rutherford football stadium.
Allianz has never dabbled much into the sports world. The company has the naming rights for the football (soccer) stadium in Munich that houses two clubs, FC Bayern Munich of the Bundesliga and TSV Munich 1860 of the Second Bundesliga. The company also owns Gornik Zabrze, a Poland football club and Allianz also is a sponsor of the AT and T Williams Formula 1 racing team.
On Monday, Allianz joined Adidas, BMW, Lufthansa and Finanzgruppe in financial support of Munich's bid for the 2018 Winter Olympics. The 1972 Munich Summer Games was the scene of killing of 11 Israeli Olympic athletes in the Olympic Village by the Palestinian Black September terrorist cell. Annecy, France, Munich and PyeongChang, South Korea have moved to the final round of the 2018 Olympic Winter Games bid process. The 2018 Games winning bid will be announced by the International Olympic Committee in July 2011. Munich is attempting to become the first city to host a Summer and Winter Olympics.
There will be no corporate name on the Giants-Jets Stadium on Monday night. Naming rights deals have been dwindling although the Jacksonville Jaguars National Football League franchise did get a five-year, $16.6 million contract signed with EverBank at the end of July. That is slightly more than $3 million a year and stipend won't cover the annual contract of a good offensive lineman. The EverBank-Jaguars deal nearly fell through because the city of Jacksonville was entitled to 25 percent of the money. On Tuesday night, the Jacksonville City Council voted 14-3 to give up the approximate $4 million that the city was contractually due and took one for the financially troubled team. City leaders are afraid that Wayne Weaver will move his franchise because there is a lack of support for the team and every million helps. Presumably the Giants-Jets business arrangement is still looking for someone ready to hand over hundreds of millions of dollars in naming rights to help pay down the stadium debt. Jerry Jones is still looking for a big payday in Arlington, Texas for Cowboys Stadium. Companies have tightened spending which is why the East Rutherford football venue is called the New Meadowlands Stadium.
Evan Weiner is an award winning author, radio-TV commentator and speaker on the "Politics of Sports Business" and can be reached at evanjweiner@yahoo.com
Wednesday, 11 August 2010 13:40
http://www.newjerseynewsroom.com/professional/how-adolf-hitler-and-the-nazis-cost-the-giants-and-jets-30-million-a-year
BY EVAN WEINER
NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM
POLITICS OF SPORTS BUSINESS
Had all gone according to the original plan, the first "American" football game, which will be played on Monday night at the new Meadowlands Stadium between the East Rutherford-based New York Giants and the Florham Park-based New York Jets, would have had the name Allianz attached to the stadium. The Munich, Germany-based financial services and insurance company was negotiating with the Giants-Jets stadium management group to be the naming rights partner of the new East Rutherford stadium but those talks ended on September 9, 2008 after news broke that the two football teams were negotiating a deal with the Munich company which had ties to the Third Reich and Nazi Germany.
According to some reports, Allianz was willing to pay as much as $30 million annually for the naming rights. The Giants-Jets group is still looking for a naming rights partner in what has become an extremely difficult financial environment. Many companies don't see the value in purchasing naming rights to a stadium. The one-year old Dallas Cowboys Stadium in Arlington, Texas still does not have a corporate naming sponsor which is a bit surprising in that Cowboys owner Jerry Jones is hosting the 2011 Super Bowl next February and the Super Bowl is a prime advertising vehicle.
The Giants-Jets stadium will host the 2014 Super Bowl.
It is not unusual for a non-American company to buy the naming rights of an American arena or stadium. LM Ericcson, a telecommunications company based in Sweden, bought the naming rights for the new Charlotte football stadium in a ten-year, $25 million deal that started in 1996.
Last January, the Canadian insurance company Sun Life Financial signed a five-year, $20 million agreement with Miami Dolphins owner (and New York-New Jersey real estate magnate) Stephen Ross for the naming rights to the Dolphins' Broward County stadium. Sun Life, which is Canada's third-largest insurer, was looking to increase the company's visibility in the United States and probably did well on the deal as the Sun Life name and signage was plastered all over last February's Super Bowl broadcast. That exposure was more important than the other aspects of the deal which included having the Sun Life name printed on tickets to sporting events at the stadium.
Two other Canadian financial institutions have their names affixed on arenas in the United States. In 2005, TD Bank bought the naming rights to the arena that houses the National Basketball Association's Boston Celtics and the National Hockey league's Boston Bruins The building is called TD Banknorth Garden. Royal Bank reached an agreement with the Carolina Hurricanes ownership in 2002 for the naming rights to the Raleigh, North Carolina arena. The venue is known as the RBC Center.
If the New Jersey Nets franchise does ever move to Brooklyn, the building will be called Barclay's Center. The England-based Barclay's does not have any bank branches in the United States but the bank does have a number of global locations.
The Giants-Jets/Allianz deal was stopped when Jewish groups and holocaust survivors learned of the talks. The Giants-Jets negotiations brought to light Allianz's history with Adolf Hitler and Nazi, Germany. A little history lesson needs to be told to understand the opposition to Allianz putting the company name on the sides of the East Rutherford stadium.
In 1993, Allianz's CEO Henning Schulte-Noelle decided to take a look at Allianz's corporate history and research the role the company might have played between 1933 and 1945 with Adolf Hitler and the Nazi government. By 1997, Schulte-Noelle found the man he needed to do the research in at Cal-Berkeley, Dr. Gerald Feldman, who was the director of the University of California's Center for German and European Studies. Dr. Feldman had spent a good chunk of his adult life studying all aspects of German history. Dr. Feldman's 2001 book, "Allianz and the German Insurance Business, 1933-1945," explained how Allianz had given money owed to Jewish life insurance policy beneficiaries to the Nazi government.
Among Dr. Feldman's findings were records which showed that Allianz insured the property and personnel of the Auschwitz extermination camp, as well as the Dachau concentration camp. Additionally, Allianz also insured the engineers working at the IG Farben Company, the company that oversaw the manufacture of the Zyklon B cyanide gas used at concentration camps to kill Jews and other victims. Allianz provided insurance throughout the war to Nazis who had seized valuables from those victims captured and forced into the camps.
Dr. Feldman also related that Allianz Chief Executive Kurt Schmitt was Hitler's Economy Minister from June 1933 until January 1935, and found a picture of Schmitt wearing an SS-Oberführer's uniform. Allianz General Director Eduard Hilgard led the "Reich Association for Private Insurance" and helped create and enforce termination and refusal policies to pay off any life insurance policies issued to Jews. Beneficiary payments went directly sent to the Nazis instead.
Feldman said in a 2001 interview that is posted on the Allianz website that he had "unrestricted freedom" to do independent research.
Allianz had hoped that the company would have been able to do business in the United States like other German companies that had ties to Hitler and Nazi Germany and pleaded that the present day company leaders had nothing to do with the Nazi era. Allianz and four other German insurance companies were key backers of the "International Commission on Holocaust Era Insurance Claims" and Allianz was a founder of the German Foundation "Remembrance, Responsibility and Future." Dr. Feldman's findings in the book along with Allianz taking responsibility for being involved with the Third Reich did nothing to sway Holocaust survivors who were aghast at the thought of Allianz putting the company moniker on the East Rutherford football stadium.
Allianz has never dabbled much into the sports world. The company has the naming rights for the football (soccer) stadium in Munich that houses two clubs, FC Bayern Munich of the Bundesliga and TSV Munich 1860 of the Second Bundesliga. The company also owns Gornik Zabrze, a Poland football club and Allianz also is a sponsor of the AT and T Williams Formula 1 racing team.
On Monday, Allianz joined Adidas, BMW, Lufthansa and Finanzgruppe in financial support of Munich's bid for the 2018 Winter Olympics. The 1972 Munich Summer Games was the scene of killing of 11 Israeli Olympic athletes in the Olympic Village by the Palestinian Black September terrorist cell. Annecy, France, Munich and PyeongChang, South Korea have moved to the final round of the 2018 Olympic Winter Games bid process. The 2018 Games winning bid will be announced by the International Olympic Committee in July 2011. Munich is attempting to become the first city to host a Summer and Winter Olympics.
There will be no corporate name on the Giants-Jets Stadium on Monday night. Naming rights deals have been dwindling although the Jacksonville Jaguars National Football League franchise did get a five-year, $16.6 million contract signed with EverBank at the end of July. That is slightly more than $3 million a year and stipend won't cover the annual contract of a good offensive lineman. The EverBank-Jaguars deal nearly fell through because the city of Jacksonville was entitled to 25 percent of the money. On Tuesday night, the Jacksonville City Council voted 14-3 to give up the approximate $4 million that the city was contractually due and took one for the financially troubled team. City leaders are afraid that Wayne Weaver will move his franchise because there is a lack of support for the team and every million helps. Presumably the Giants-Jets business arrangement is still looking for someone ready to hand over hundreds of millions of dollars in naming rights to help pay down the stadium debt. Jerry Jones is still looking for a big payday in Arlington, Texas for Cowboys Stadium. Companies have tightened spending which is why the East Rutherford football venue is called the New Meadowlands Stadium.
Evan Weiner is an award winning author, radio-TV commentator and speaker on the "Politics of Sports Business" and can be reached at evanjweiner@yahoo.com
Wednesday, May 26, 2010
Meadowlands Super Bowl the worst-kept secret in sports
Meadowlands Super Bowl the worst-kept secret in sports
TUESDAY, 25 MAY 2010 21:16
BY EVAN WEINER
NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM
If you understand how National Football League owners operate, then it is really no surprise that the 2014 Super Bowl will be played in the Meadowlands. The NFL has been targeting a New York/New Jersey Super Bowl for years, first as part of a Manhattan west side Olympics/football stadium and then after that project failed in 2005, East Rutherford, N.J., at the new football stadium that would eventually replace Giants Stadium.
The new place didn't have a roof, but that was no big deal, even though the NFL likes warm weather sites for the extravaganza. The NFL uses the Super Bowl for leverage in getting new facilities and rewarded Houston, Detroit and Glendale, Arizona for building new stadiums with the Super Bowl. Next February's Super Bowl is at Jerry Jones' new Cowboys Stadium in Arlington, Texas. If there is a 2011 NFL season, the big game will be played in Indianapolis in 2012. Indianapolis, despite the dome on the stadium, has been given the game because locals built a new stadium.
New Orleans gets the 2013 game partly because of guilt over Hurricane Katrina and because Louisiana came up with money to redo the Superdome and worked out a new lease arrangement with Saints owner Tom Benson.
The awarding of Super Bowls to communities who have done "the right thing" by NFL owners should not go unnoticed in places like San Diego, Santa Clara, California, Los Angeles and St. Paul, Minnesota. The NFL ownership is telling you, do the right thing – provide public money, and tax breaks such as payments in lieu of taxes or tax increment financing – and you will get a Super Bowl complete with the economic impact of at least $300 million although that figure is open to conjecture particularly in places like Miami, Tampa and Glendale, AZ., where "snowbirds" are displaced in favor of people coming to the Super Bowl.
Local motels and hotels raise their rates for the game but if the hotel/motel is part of a chain, the extra money goes back to the home office instead of the community. Hotel/motel workers do not get paid more money just because it is Super Bowl week. The economic impact is less than estimated in places like Miami, Tampa and Glendale and is substantially higher in Detroit and Minneapolis-St. Paul where there are not a lot of tourists in February. New York has a lull during February and this will bring some people to the area.
The New York/New Jersey Super Bowl's first impact might be felt in Santa Clara, California a week from Tuesday when voters will be asked to provide funding for a new San Francisco 49ers stadium. There has been one Bay Area Super Bowl at Stanford Stadium. The Super Bowl and the "economic impact" is a carrot that will be dangled before voters. No one knows exactly how much the Santa Clara stadium will cost or if it will house one team, the 49ers, or two, the 49ers and Oakland Raiders, or even if 49ers owner John York has the money to actually fund this nearly billion dollar building but proponents should be pointing to the Meadowlands Stadium as proof in the "if they build it, they will come" mantra.
South Florida may be out of the Super Bowl running because the NFL just doesn't like the present set up of the stadium and wants major improvements at the Miami Dolphins home just a few years after a major renovation. New York/New Jersey's 2014 win might be just the jolt that is needed to get someone to pony up a quarter of a billion dollars to fix up the Dolphins home. The NFL doesn't need Miami now that the door has been opened to Super Bowls in the metropolitan area and also Washington, Foxboro, MA., Philadelphia, Chicago, Denver and other cold weather cities.
San Diego and Minnesota are out of the Super Bowl rotation. The NFL wants no part of the more than four-decades old San Diego stadium and the nearly three-decades old Metrodome in Minneapolis. The Minnesota legislature tried to put together a Vikings stadium package in the recently concluded session but the clock ran out. They will try again next year with the Vikings/Metrodome lease expiring at the end of 2011. There seems to be nothing going on in Los Angeles in terms of getting a new stadium built and the NFL's hopes of holding Super Bowl L (50 for those who don't like Roman numerals) in 2016 seem to be fading. The Los Angeles Coliseum will still be there but it is not an NFL-friendly stadium.
The NFL is a business and can do what it wants with Super Bowls. The Giants' and Jets' new building lacks a corporate naming rights partner. The two teams might pick one up with the Super Bowl coming as Joe Robbie/Dolphin and a-host-of-naming-rights-partners Stadium did prior to this year's Super Bowl in Broward County in South Florida. But Jones' Cowboys Stadium is still Cowboys Stadium and the Super Bowl is just nine months away.
The Super Bowl is a big-ticket item and is not designed for the average fan. The high rollers are around for just Super Bowl weekend and just to clear up one misconception that Jacksonville learned the hard way, the high rollers just want to be seen at the game and have no intentions of relocating their business or opening up a branch for their business just because they are in town for a game. Jacksonville thought that would happen in 2005.
It didn't.
People are having trouble understanding the rationale behind the New York/New Jersey Super Bowl. Woody Johnson and John Mara are in the club, the owners club, and they were taken care of by their brethren. Just wait until the NFL decides to hold a game in London – not Ontario, but England. The Super Bowl might be a TV ratings monster in the U.S. and grab some Canadian viewership along with Mexico but globally the NFL is a dud.
The NFL would kill for the eyeballs that India/Pakistan gets for cricket or table tennis watchers in China. New York/New Jersey just might be the launching pad in a whole new chapter for the Super Bowl with just one goal in mind. Get as much money as possible from the Super Bowl franchise no matter what the weather is.
Evan Weiner is an author, radio-TV commentator, lecturer on the Business of Sports and can be reached at evanjweiner@yahoo.com
LAST UPDATED ( TUESDAY, 25 MAY 2010
TUESDAY, 25 MAY 2010 21:16
BY EVAN WEINER
NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM
If you understand how National Football League owners operate, then it is really no surprise that the 2014 Super Bowl will be played in the Meadowlands. The NFL has been targeting a New York/New Jersey Super Bowl for years, first as part of a Manhattan west side Olympics/football stadium and then after that project failed in 2005, East Rutherford, N.J., at the new football stadium that would eventually replace Giants Stadium.
The new place didn't have a roof, but that was no big deal, even though the NFL likes warm weather sites for the extravaganza. The NFL uses the Super Bowl for leverage in getting new facilities and rewarded Houston, Detroit and Glendale, Arizona for building new stadiums with the Super Bowl. Next February's Super Bowl is at Jerry Jones' new Cowboys Stadium in Arlington, Texas. If there is a 2011 NFL season, the big game will be played in Indianapolis in 2012. Indianapolis, despite the dome on the stadium, has been given the game because locals built a new stadium.
New Orleans gets the 2013 game partly because of guilt over Hurricane Katrina and because Louisiana came up with money to redo the Superdome and worked out a new lease arrangement with Saints owner Tom Benson.
The awarding of Super Bowls to communities who have done "the right thing" by NFL owners should not go unnoticed in places like San Diego, Santa Clara, California, Los Angeles and St. Paul, Minnesota. The NFL ownership is telling you, do the right thing – provide public money, and tax breaks such as payments in lieu of taxes or tax increment financing – and you will get a Super Bowl complete with the economic impact of at least $300 million although that figure is open to conjecture particularly in places like Miami, Tampa and Glendale, AZ., where "snowbirds" are displaced in favor of people coming to the Super Bowl.
Local motels and hotels raise their rates for the game but if the hotel/motel is part of a chain, the extra money goes back to the home office instead of the community. Hotel/motel workers do not get paid more money just because it is Super Bowl week. The economic impact is less than estimated in places like Miami, Tampa and Glendale and is substantially higher in Detroit and Minneapolis-St. Paul where there are not a lot of tourists in February. New York has a lull during February and this will bring some people to the area.
The New York/New Jersey Super Bowl's first impact might be felt in Santa Clara, California a week from Tuesday when voters will be asked to provide funding for a new San Francisco 49ers stadium. There has been one Bay Area Super Bowl at Stanford Stadium. The Super Bowl and the "economic impact" is a carrot that will be dangled before voters. No one knows exactly how much the Santa Clara stadium will cost or if it will house one team, the 49ers, or two, the 49ers and Oakland Raiders, or even if 49ers owner John York has the money to actually fund this nearly billion dollar building but proponents should be pointing to the Meadowlands Stadium as proof in the "if they build it, they will come" mantra.
South Florida may be out of the Super Bowl running because the NFL just doesn't like the present set up of the stadium and wants major improvements at the Miami Dolphins home just a few years after a major renovation. New York/New Jersey's 2014 win might be just the jolt that is needed to get someone to pony up a quarter of a billion dollars to fix up the Dolphins home. The NFL doesn't need Miami now that the door has been opened to Super Bowls in the metropolitan area and also Washington, Foxboro, MA., Philadelphia, Chicago, Denver and other cold weather cities.
San Diego and Minnesota are out of the Super Bowl rotation. The NFL wants no part of the more than four-decades old San Diego stadium and the nearly three-decades old Metrodome in Minneapolis. The Minnesota legislature tried to put together a Vikings stadium package in the recently concluded session but the clock ran out. They will try again next year with the Vikings/Metrodome lease expiring at the end of 2011. There seems to be nothing going on in Los Angeles in terms of getting a new stadium built and the NFL's hopes of holding Super Bowl L (50 for those who don't like Roman numerals) in 2016 seem to be fading. The Los Angeles Coliseum will still be there but it is not an NFL-friendly stadium.
The NFL is a business and can do what it wants with Super Bowls. The Giants' and Jets' new building lacks a corporate naming rights partner. The two teams might pick one up with the Super Bowl coming as Joe Robbie/Dolphin and a-host-of-naming-rights-partners Stadium did prior to this year's Super Bowl in Broward County in South Florida. But Jones' Cowboys Stadium is still Cowboys Stadium and the Super Bowl is just nine months away.
The Super Bowl is a big-ticket item and is not designed for the average fan. The high rollers are around for just Super Bowl weekend and just to clear up one misconception that Jacksonville learned the hard way, the high rollers just want to be seen at the game and have no intentions of relocating their business or opening up a branch for their business just because they are in town for a game. Jacksonville thought that would happen in 2005.
It didn't.
People are having trouble understanding the rationale behind the New York/New Jersey Super Bowl. Woody Johnson and John Mara are in the club, the owners club, and they were taken care of by their brethren. Just wait until the NFL decides to hold a game in London – not Ontario, but England. The Super Bowl might be a TV ratings monster in the U.S. and grab some Canadian viewership along with Mexico but globally the NFL is a dud.
The NFL would kill for the eyeballs that India/Pakistan gets for cricket or table tennis watchers in China. New York/New Jersey just might be the launching pad in a whole new chapter for the Super Bowl with just one goal in mind. Get as much money as possible from the Super Bowl franchise no matter what the weather is.
Evan Weiner is an author, radio-TV commentator, lecturer on the Business of Sports and can be reached at evanjweiner@yahoo.com
LAST UPDATED ( TUESDAY, 25 MAY 2010
Friday, April 30, 2010
Why isn’t Sonny Werblin in the Pro Football Hall of Fame?
Why isn’t Sonny Werblin in the Pro Football Hall of Fame?
FRIDAY, 30 APRIL 2010 13:42
BY EVAN WEINER
NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM
COMMENTARY
A quick exchange with Joe Namath this week got me to thinking. Why isn't Namath's old boss David A. "Sonny as in Money" Werblin enshrined in the Pro Football Hall of Fame in Canton, Ohio? Werblin, the New Jersey guy, is pretty much a forgotten figure in the history of pro football even though both Werblin and Namath helped create the Super Bowl as a non-official national holiday in the United States.
Both the New York Giants and Jets are looking at draft picks and free agents and will have mini-camps this month at multi-million dollar training complexes in East Rutherford and Florham Park. The two teams have built a new stadium that cost over a billion dollars and will manage a real estate around the facility. Werblin's fingerprints 19 years after he died are all over the place within the businesses of the Jets, the Giants and the National Football League.
Sonny Werblin along with his partners Leon Hess, Townsend Martin, Donald Lillis and Philip Iselin bought the bankrupt American Football League New York Titans franchise in 1963, renamed the team the Jets, and changed pro football although the quintet didn't alter the history of the game the minute they bought the franchise. That would not happen for about a year and it was circumstance that brought Werblin to the forefront.
The National Football League or the initials NFL of the days prior to Werblin's arrival in pro football, and today have just one thing in common — the name or the initials. As the David Letterman frequent guest and Pro Football Hall of Fame defensive tackle Arthur J. Donovan (by way of the Grand Concourse in da Bronx) who played for the original Baltimore Colts in 1950, the New York Yankees in 1951, the Dallas Texans in 1952 and the Colts again from 1953-61 (the original Colts, the Yankees and Texans all folded) pointed out.
National Football League owners had a 12 team league in the 1950s and none of the 12 owners could figure out what to do with their business. Chicago's George Halas and Pittsburgh's Art Rooney along with Bert Bell have been glorified as football deities over the decades but the truth is that without Lamar Hunt the game might have strangled itself financially.
There was no forward thinking from Halas, Rooney, the Giants Tim Mara or NFL Commissioner Bert Bell in those days. They put a shingle up, "Football on Sunday" six times a year for six home games except in Chicago where there were two teams.
Hunt was unable to buy the Chicago Cardinals from the Bidwill family and move the team to Dallas. Bud Adams was unable to buy the Chicago Cardinals from the Bidwill family and move the team to Houston. Neither Hunt nor Adams could get an NFL expansion franchise in Dallas and Houston even though Halas and Rooney chaired an expansion committee starting in 1956. By 1959, Hunt decided he had enough and asked Adams if he wanted to join him in forming the fourth American Football League.
The AFL started play in 1960 and pushed the stodgy old football men into a different business plan, one they never wanted to explore. The AFL went to new cities and had a better TV plan. There were now two leagues and the older National Football League played follow the leader to the new league when it came to television. The AFL was able to sign a contract with the American Broadcasting Company, ABC, with each team sharing revenue equally. The AFL deal technically violated antitrust laws and was not originally a Hunt idea. Hunt borrowed a concept from Branch Rickey who was out of baseball and trying to form a third major league, the Continental Baseball League, and one of Rickey's ideas was for the 12-team Continental League owners to share national TV revenue equally.
Rickey's idea died but there are three living monuments to his league. The New York Mets, the Houston Colt 45s (now Astros) and the National Football League's "leaguethink" business plan.
The old line NFL owners didn't know what to do with TV as late as 1960 and NFL Commissioner Pete Rozelle had to persuade Giants owner Jack Mara along with the Chicago Bears Halas and the Los Angeles Rams owner Daniel Reeves that sharing TV revenues instead of having teams have their own networks was economically better for the league. He did just that and got Congress to approve the Sports Broadcast Act of 1961 which allowed the NFL to sell all 14 teams as one to a TV network.
In those days, it was just CBS and NBC.
Rozelle worked out a deal for the 1962 season which brought the 14 NFL owners more than $4 million that year and beyond. In late 1963 Rozelle pitted CBS against NBC in a battled for a long term TV agreement and this is where circumstances came into play. The NFL was in a battle with the AFL for players and control of football and a big money TV deal would give them cash to go after talented players coming out of college. Rozelle signed a big money deal with CBS and William Paley in 1964 and that deal infuriated NBC's David Sarnoff.
Sarnoff wanted revenge.
Sarnoff had worked with Lew Wasserman's MCA where Werblin was employed. MCA was placing TV shows on Sarnoff's network. Sarnoff and Werblin had a relationship and Werblin became the point guy between the AFL and NBC. Werblin knew TV and entertainment inside out and knew that football was more than just a game play, it was entertainment and it was TV programming. That was not something that was an easy sell to football men who in those days viewed football as a game. It was easy to understand the football owners mentality of the day. Football business operations were open between July and December. In the 1950s, if someone wanted to buy a Chicago Bears season ticket package in April, they would have to hunt down George Halas at his sporting goods store. Nobody protected team logos because no one was thinking of selling t-shirts, underwear and hats with team logos.
Werblin got the deal done with Sarnoff, which brought the AFL $7 million annually between 1965 and 1969. Sarnoff also advanced money to AFL teams so they could sign players out of college, which Sarnoff knew would enhance the AFL on NBC. With some of that money (and revenues Werblin and his fellow Jets owners suddenly got from larger crowds at the new Shea Stadium starting in 1964), Werblin signed Namath to a three-year $427,000 deal, the largest contract ever given to a player at that point.
Namath was going to be the face of the Jets and ultimately the face of the American Football League. The Werblin-Sarnoff connection changed football and for that alone, Werblin should be in the Pro Football Hall of Fame. Werblin changed the dynamics of pro football and eventually the two leagues merged with the formation of the Super Bowl as one of the after effects of the June 8, 1966 accord between the warring leagues.
Ironically, Werblin, Hess, Martin, Lillis and Iselin were not interested in joining the NFL because the merger agreement required them to pay the Giants $10 million for "invading" the New York territory. Werblin never did see the Jets win the Super Bowl as one of the team owners as he was bought out prior to the 1968 season, the year Namath led the Jets to a Super Bowl championship.
Namath's guarantee that the Jets would beat Baltimore in Super Bowl III was the foundation that built the Super Bowl franchise.
Werblin was permanently exiled from pro football but the story didn't end there. In 1971, the New Jersey guy Werblin was back but this time as a state employee and again Werblin changed the NFL. Werblin convinced Giants owner Wellington Mara to commit to move the Giants across the river to wetlands off of Route 3. The deal was inked in November 1972. Yankee Stadium was slated to be rebuilt and Mara's Giants played at the Yale Bowl in New Haven in 1974 and shared Shea Stadium with the Jets in 1975. Mara had a new stadium in 1976 and Giants revenues exploded.
Werblin left the New Jersey Sports and Exposition Authority in 1977. Hess moved his Jets to the Meadowlands in 1984.
Werblin's pro football career was rather short as an owner compared to those of Mara, Halas and Rooney, the NFL's Mount Rushmore, but he was far more a visionary than any of the faces on the NFL's Mount Rushmore. Halas last had a real idea in 1925 when he signed Red Grange and put him on tour with the Bears. Grange's appearance before more than 70,000 people at the Polo Grounds in a game against the Giants gave Tim Mara the money he needed to keep the Giants solvent and in business. Rooney was a grand old guy of the game but in the 1950s, his Pittsburgh Steelers franchise was the last stop for a player. If a player was cut by Pittsburgh, his football career probably was at an end. Ironically because of Werblin, Pittsburgh eventually was able to spend top dollars on players. Rooney was paid three million dollars to move the Steelers from the NFL to the American Football Conference prior to 1970. Rooney used that money to invest in players and scouting and won four Super Bowls.
Werblin is in the New Jersey Sports Hall of Fame, but there should be a bust of him in Canton. Without Werblin, Namath might have ended up in St. Louis or maybe the New York Giants. The Titans might have been sold to someone who knew football but not the TV business and the Super Bowl might have just been another championship game without the "wow" factor which Namath as the Jets quarterback, who was signed to a record contract by Werblin, gave the game. Without Werblin, the Giants might not be in New Jersey and Hess might have looked elsewhere for a stadium with clean bathrooms.
Werblin is more than a footnote in NFL history. He was a game changer.
Evan Weiner is an author, radio-TV commentator, and lecturer on the "Politics of Sports Business" and can be reached for speaking engagements at evanjweiner@yahoo.com
FRIDAY, 30 APRIL 2010 13:42
BY EVAN WEINER
NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM
COMMENTARY
A quick exchange with Joe Namath this week got me to thinking. Why isn't Namath's old boss David A. "Sonny as in Money" Werblin enshrined in the Pro Football Hall of Fame in Canton, Ohio? Werblin, the New Jersey guy, is pretty much a forgotten figure in the history of pro football even though both Werblin and Namath helped create the Super Bowl as a non-official national holiday in the United States.
Both the New York Giants and Jets are looking at draft picks and free agents and will have mini-camps this month at multi-million dollar training complexes in East Rutherford and Florham Park. The two teams have built a new stadium that cost over a billion dollars and will manage a real estate around the facility. Werblin's fingerprints 19 years after he died are all over the place within the businesses of the Jets, the Giants and the National Football League.
Sonny Werblin along with his partners Leon Hess, Townsend Martin, Donald Lillis and Philip Iselin bought the bankrupt American Football League New York Titans franchise in 1963, renamed the team the Jets, and changed pro football although the quintet didn't alter the history of the game the minute they bought the franchise. That would not happen for about a year and it was circumstance that brought Werblin to the forefront.
The National Football League or the initials NFL of the days prior to Werblin's arrival in pro football, and today have just one thing in common — the name or the initials. As the David Letterman frequent guest and Pro Football Hall of Fame defensive tackle Arthur J. Donovan (by way of the Grand Concourse in da Bronx) who played for the original Baltimore Colts in 1950, the New York Yankees in 1951, the Dallas Texans in 1952 and the Colts again from 1953-61 (the original Colts, the Yankees and Texans all folded) pointed out.
National Football League owners had a 12 team league in the 1950s and none of the 12 owners could figure out what to do with their business. Chicago's George Halas and Pittsburgh's Art Rooney along with Bert Bell have been glorified as football deities over the decades but the truth is that without Lamar Hunt the game might have strangled itself financially.
There was no forward thinking from Halas, Rooney, the Giants Tim Mara or NFL Commissioner Bert Bell in those days. They put a shingle up, "Football on Sunday" six times a year for six home games except in Chicago where there were two teams.
Hunt was unable to buy the Chicago Cardinals from the Bidwill family and move the team to Dallas. Bud Adams was unable to buy the Chicago Cardinals from the Bidwill family and move the team to Houston. Neither Hunt nor Adams could get an NFL expansion franchise in Dallas and Houston even though Halas and Rooney chaired an expansion committee starting in 1956. By 1959, Hunt decided he had enough and asked Adams if he wanted to join him in forming the fourth American Football League.
The AFL started play in 1960 and pushed the stodgy old football men into a different business plan, one they never wanted to explore. The AFL went to new cities and had a better TV plan. There were now two leagues and the older National Football League played follow the leader to the new league when it came to television. The AFL was able to sign a contract with the American Broadcasting Company, ABC, with each team sharing revenue equally. The AFL deal technically violated antitrust laws and was not originally a Hunt idea. Hunt borrowed a concept from Branch Rickey who was out of baseball and trying to form a third major league, the Continental Baseball League, and one of Rickey's ideas was for the 12-team Continental League owners to share national TV revenue equally.
Rickey's idea died but there are three living monuments to his league. The New York Mets, the Houston Colt 45s (now Astros) and the National Football League's "leaguethink" business plan.
The old line NFL owners didn't know what to do with TV as late as 1960 and NFL Commissioner Pete Rozelle had to persuade Giants owner Jack Mara along with the Chicago Bears Halas and the Los Angeles Rams owner Daniel Reeves that sharing TV revenues instead of having teams have their own networks was economically better for the league. He did just that and got Congress to approve the Sports Broadcast Act of 1961 which allowed the NFL to sell all 14 teams as one to a TV network.
In those days, it was just CBS and NBC.
Rozelle worked out a deal for the 1962 season which brought the 14 NFL owners more than $4 million that year and beyond. In late 1963 Rozelle pitted CBS against NBC in a battled for a long term TV agreement and this is where circumstances came into play. The NFL was in a battle with the AFL for players and control of football and a big money TV deal would give them cash to go after talented players coming out of college. Rozelle signed a big money deal with CBS and William Paley in 1964 and that deal infuriated NBC's David Sarnoff.
Sarnoff wanted revenge.
Sarnoff had worked with Lew Wasserman's MCA where Werblin was employed. MCA was placing TV shows on Sarnoff's network. Sarnoff and Werblin had a relationship and Werblin became the point guy between the AFL and NBC. Werblin knew TV and entertainment inside out and knew that football was more than just a game play, it was entertainment and it was TV programming. That was not something that was an easy sell to football men who in those days viewed football as a game. It was easy to understand the football owners mentality of the day. Football business operations were open between July and December. In the 1950s, if someone wanted to buy a Chicago Bears season ticket package in April, they would have to hunt down George Halas at his sporting goods store. Nobody protected team logos because no one was thinking of selling t-shirts, underwear and hats with team logos.
Werblin got the deal done with Sarnoff, which brought the AFL $7 million annually between 1965 and 1969. Sarnoff also advanced money to AFL teams so they could sign players out of college, which Sarnoff knew would enhance the AFL on NBC. With some of that money (and revenues Werblin and his fellow Jets owners suddenly got from larger crowds at the new Shea Stadium starting in 1964), Werblin signed Namath to a three-year $427,000 deal, the largest contract ever given to a player at that point.
Namath was going to be the face of the Jets and ultimately the face of the American Football League. The Werblin-Sarnoff connection changed football and for that alone, Werblin should be in the Pro Football Hall of Fame. Werblin changed the dynamics of pro football and eventually the two leagues merged with the formation of the Super Bowl as one of the after effects of the June 8, 1966 accord between the warring leagues.
Ironically, Werblin, Hess, Martin, Lillis and Iselin were not interested in joining the NFL because the merger agreement required them to pay the Giants $10 million for "invading" the New York territory. Werblin never did see the Jets win the Super Bowl as one of the team owners as he was bought out prior to the 1968 season, the year Namath led the Jets to a Super Bowl championship.
Namath's guarantee that the Jets would beat Baltimore in Super Bowl III was the foundation that built the Super Bowl franchise.
Werblin was permanently exiled from pro football but the story didn't end there. In 1971, the New Jersey guy Werblin was back but this time as a state employee and again Werblin changed the NFL. Werblin convinced Giants owner Wellington Mara to commit to move the Giants across the river to wetlands off of Route 3. The deal was inked in November 1972. Yankee Stadium was slated to be rebuilt and Mara's Giants played at the Yale Bowl in New Haven in 1974 and shared Shea Stadium with the Jets in 1975. Mara had a new stadium in 1976 and Giants revenues exploded.
Werblin left the New Jersey Sports and Exposition Authority in 1977. Hess moved his Jets to the Meadowlands in 1984.
Werblin's pro football career was rather short as an owner compared to those of Mara, Halas and Rooney, the NFL's Mount Rushmore, but he was far more a visionary than any of the faces on the NFL's Mount Rushmore. Halas last had a real idea in 1925 when he signed Red Grange and put him on tour with the Bears. Grange's appearance before more than 70,000 people at the Polo Grounds in a game against the Giants gave Tim Mara the money he needed to keep the Giants solvent and in business. Rooney was a grand old guy of the game but in the 1950s, his Pittsburgh Steelers franchise was the last stop for a player. If a player was cut by Pittsburgh, his football career probably was at an end. Ironically because of Werblin, Pittsburgh eventually was able to spend top dollars on players. Rooney was paid three million dollars to move the Steelers from the NFL to the American Football Conference prior to 1970. Rooney used that money to invest in players and scouting and won four Super Bowls.
Werblin is in the New Jersey Sports Hall of Fame, but there should be a bust of him in Canton. Without Werblin, Namath might have ended up in St. Louis or maybe the New York Giants. The Titans might have been sold to someone who knew football but not the TV business and the Super Bowl might have just been another championship game without the "wow" factor which Namath as the Jets quarterback, who was signed to a record contract by Werblin, gave the game. Without Werblin, the Giants might not be in New Jersey and Hess might have looked elsewhere for a stadium with clean bathrooms.
Werblin is more than a footnote in NFL history. He was a game changer.
Evan Weiner is an author, radio-TV commentator, and lecturer on the "Politics of Sports Business" and can be reached for speaking engagements at evanjweiner@yahoo.com
Tuesday, March 16, 2010
New York Giants get first home Meadowlands game, so what?
New York Giants Get First Home Meadowlands game, So What?
http://www.examiner.com/x-3926-Business-of-Sports-Examiner~y2010m3d16-New-York-Giants-get-first-home-Meadowlands-game-so-what
By Evan Weiner
March 16, 2010
(New York, N. Y.) -- The owner of the East Rutherford, New Jersey-based New York Jets is unhappy that his team will not host the first “regular” season National Football League game at the new Meadowlands Stadium. Robert Wood Johnson IV, better known as Woody, unloaded on the way the National Football League handled the coin toss which decided the team that would get the first game honor without any representatives from Johnson’s Jets or the stadium’s other tenant and half owner, the Mara-Tisch families’ owned New York Giants. The Mara-Tisch Giants “won” the toss and got the first regular season game on Sunday, September 12th while Johnson’s Jets get the first Monday night game at the place on the following day.
Both teams are scheduled to play pre-season games in the new building including one against each other. The Mara-Tisch Giants practice outside the facility. The stadium opens April 10th with a college lacrosse tournament, there is a three day music festival at the end of April, the first “football” game will be a match between Mexico and Ecuador on May 7, Bon Jovi is performing for three nights there in May followed by the Eagles, not the ones from Philadelphia, in June and U2 is in for a July concert. NFL pre-season games come four months into the stadium’s existence.
The stadium, built for football, is featuring other events which should help pay some of the bills at the place. The stadium is also available for weddings and bar mitzvahs.
Johnson put up half the cash for the new place and the surrounding real estate which will be turned into a New York-area football hall of fame and other businesses, the Mara-Tisch families put up the other 50 percent with the state of New Jersey kicking in hundreds of millions of dollars for infrastructure and East Rutherford gets only a slice of what should be a multimillion check for property taxes through a mechanism called “Payments in Lieu of Taxes” or PILOT.
Johnson released a statement which condemned the league and probably the one-time Jets employee, NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell.
“An NFL coin toss has a few fundamental elements that are missing here, most notably the presence of the teams involved,” said Johnson. “That's how it's always done in the League, whether it’s determining the order of the draft or deciding who’s going to kick off the game. When the issue of which team would be hosting the first regular season game could not be resolved on the merits, I suggested a coin toss as the fairest way to resolve this issue. The League rejected that idea. Then, I was told on Friday that a coin toss had taken place at the League office and that the Jets had lost. We rejected a process in which neither team was present. The League departed from our time-honored tradition and declined the opportunity to set the matter straight with a transparent process. “
And with that Mara-Tisch get to “open” the stadium and Johnson gets what New York Rangers forward Sean Avery might call “sloppy seconds”
Perhaps the National Football League was the wrong party to hold the coin flip. The truth of the matter is that the coin flip should have been held in the Trenton office of the Governor of the State of New Jersey, and Governor Chris Christie should have conducted the flip. Governor Christie was not in office in 2005 when the Mara/Tisch-Johnson stadium/real estate deal was signed and when New Jersey committed hundreds of millions of dollars to the project and signed off on giving East Rutherford a slice of the property tax assessment on the land. New Jersey is a partner in the stadium venture and should have been included in the process.
There will be all sorts of conspiracy theories about even whether there was a coin flip but the Maras have seemingly gotten their way virtually every time in the New York area since the one time bookie and bootlegger Tim Mara invested $500 to get an NFL franchise in 1925 for Manhattan. Mara’s Giants franchise was a financial disaster throughout the 1925 season and the team was saved from financial ruin by George Halas quite by accident. The Chicago Bears owner Halas signed Red Grange right after Grange’s college football season with Illinois was done and immediately went on tour with the “Galloping Ghost.”
One of the stops was the Polo Grounds in Manhattan with the Giants hosting the Bears and New Yorkers came to see not the Giants, but the legendary Grange. That game paid the bills and established Mara’s team, at least for the 1926 season. But the Grange game also caused Mara some problems.
Grange and his agent C. C. (Cash and Carry) Pyle applied to get an NFL franchise for Yankee Stadium for the 1926 season based on the Polo Grounds game. The NFL, protecting Mara’s franchise, said no. Grange and Pyle started the first American Football League in 1926. The league folded after just one season but the NFL took Grange and the Yankees franchise in 1927 to replace the Brooklyn Lions. Grange was injured in 1927 and his team folded after the 1928 season.
The New York territory has been in the Mara family since 1925 and as Bill Parcells said in 1991 when he quit as Giants coach, “it is the flagship franchise of the league.” Parcells spoke an awful lot of truth with that statement although there is little evidence that the Mara family was all that influential in the league and that whatever influence the Mara family may have had stemmed from being in the biggest city in America and their ability to withstand challenges from other owners trying to make it in New York in football.
The Mara family outlasted the Staten Island Stapletons (1929-32), the Newark Tornadoes (1930), the Brooklyn Dodgers (1930-43), and the Brooklyn Tigers (1944). In 1945, Dan Topping’s Dodgers merged forces with the Boston Yanks. Topping owned Major League Baseball’s New York Yankees owner was part owner of the Yanks-Dodgers combination. Topping decided to move his portion of the Tigers from Brooklyn’s Ebbets Field to Yankee Stadium, but Tim Mara refused to allow Topping to invade his territory as the Polo Grounds as across the Harlem River from Yankee Stadium. Topping took holdings out of the NFL and joined the rival All American Football Conference in 1946 playing as the Brooklyn Dodgers and eventually as the second New York Yankees in Yankee Stadium. That team folded when the National Football League absorbed three AAFC teams, Baltimore, Cleveland and San Francisco in 1950.
That was not the last time Mara had to face competition from another Yankee Stadium-based team. The Boston Yanks moved to New York and the Polo Grounds in 1949 and the owners, the singer Kate Smith and her agent Ted Collins renamed the team the New York Bulldogs. In 1950, Collins and Smith moved across the river to Yankee Stadium and called the team the New York Yankees. That NFL franchise folded after 1951 and ended up in Dallas.
The Mara family would not have any New York City rivals between 1952 and 1959. In 1960, the fourth American Football League put a team in the Polo Grounds, Mara moved to Topping’s Yankee Stadium in 1956 from the Polo Grounds. Harry Wismer’s New York Titans franchise was a financial shipwreck but the AFL was able to get new owners for the team in 1963 with a group led by David (Sonny) Werblin.
Sonny Werblin gave the Mara family a lot of trouble. Werblin was well connected in show business and worked for a company that provided programming for David Sarnoff’s National Broadcasting Company. Sarnoff’s NBC lost the bid to gain control over NFL television rights in 1964 to William Paley’s Columbia Broadcasting System. Sarnoff decided to get even through Werblin and discussed how NBC would fund the AFL giving the league a multimillion dollar, multiyear TV deal.
NBC landed the AFL beginning with the 1965 season which gave AFL owners more money to compete for players after their college careers were done. That raised salaries and old line NFL owners and AFL owners needed to solve their money problem. Ironically it was Mara’s Giants that poured fuel on the AFL-NFL rivalry by signing Buffalo kicker Pete Gogolak. It was the first time the NFL went after an AFL star and the AFL’s new commissioner, Al Davis, took notice and as a league, the AFL went after the NFL’s two of the top quarterbacks, Roman Gabriel and John Brodie.
Werblin understood football was entertainment, something old line NFL owners like Mara’s son Jack and Wellington did not. Werblin used some of NBC’s money and a new home field, Shea Stadium, to land players like Joe Namath. Werblin, who believed in the star system, had his star, Namath and his new home field, Shea Stadium and his Jets became a credible rival to the Mara family’s Giants.
The two leagues, the NFL and AFL, merged on June 8, 1966. Apparently neither the NFL nor the Maras wanted a second New York team and one of the merger plans on the table was to move Werblin’s Jets out of New York so that the Maras would continue to have an NFL monopoly in New York. The league also wanted to maintain the San Francisco 49ers one team market in the Bay Area. Werblin’s Jets would have been relocated to Los Angeles, LA Rams owner Daniel Reeves would have taken his team south to San Diego, Barron Hilton would have moved his Chargers from San Diego to fill a hole in New Orleans, the two leagues needed support from Louisiana Senator Russell Long and House member Hale Boggs to pass the merger through Congress, and the Oakland Raiders would exit the Bay Area and end up in the Pacific Northwest in either Seattle or Portland.
That plan died in a House of Representatives merger hearings when NFL Commissioner Pete Rozelle assured Brooklyn Congressman Emanuel Cellar, who has a very large place in NFL history despite never having played, coached or being an owner in the NFL, that all 24 teams, 15 NFL teams and nine AFL teams would not be relocated. Werblin and his partners, including Leon Hess, would pay Wellington and Jack Mara $10 million for invading the Giants New York territory and the Raiders ownership provide eight million dollars to the 49ers ownership to share the Bay Area marketplace.
Neither Werblin nor the Raiders ownership wanted a merger.
Wellington Mara became enough of an NFL visionary by 1971 that he accepted New Jersey’s new stadium offer which was presented to him by, of all people, Werblin who left the Jets partnership in 1968. Werblin headed up the New Jersey Sports Authority. Mara’s Giants moved into Giants Stadium in 1976 and played the venue’s first NFL regular season game on October 10th of that year losing to Dallas. Werblin’s former team, the Jets, moved into the Meadowlands in 1984. In 2005, Wellington Mara and Woody Johnson agreed to fund a new Meadowlands Stadium.
The Mara-Tisch guys beat Johnson this time around but the Giants and Jets franchises have been linked for decades and at the end of the day, Woody will get over not hosting the first NFL game in the new place, there is too much money at stake for him to continue having a fit and besides, the Mara-Tisch-Johnson troika will be bidding for a huge prize, the 2014 Super Bowl and NFL policy lately has been to reward owners who get municipal funding or build their own stadiums with a Super Bowl.
evanjweiner@yahoo.com
http://www.examiner.com/x-3926-Business-of-Sports-Examiner~y2010m3d16-New-York-Giants-get-first-home-Meadowlands-game-so-what
By Evan Weiner
March 16, 2010
(New York, N. Y.) -- The owner of the East Rutherford, New Jersey-based New York Jets is unhappy that his team will not host the first “regular” season National Football League game at the new Meadowlands Stadium. Robert Wood Johnson IV, better known as Woody, unloaded on the way the National Football League handled the coin toss which decided the team that would get the first game honor without any representatives from Johnson’s Jets or the stadium’s other tenant and half owner, the Mara-Tisch families’ owned New York Giants. The Mara-Tisch Giants “won” the toss and got the first regular season game on Sunday, September 12th while Johnson’s Jets get the first Monday night game at the place on the following day.
Both teams are scheduled to play pre-season games in the new building including one against each other. The Mara-Tisch Giants practice outside the facility. The stadium opens April 10th with a college lacrosse tournament, there is a three day music festival at the end of April, the first “football” game will be a match between Mexico and Ecuador on May 7, Bon Jovi is performing for three nights there in May followed by the Eagles, not the ones from Philadelphia, in June and U2 is in for a July concert. NFL pre-season games come four months into the stadium’s existence.
The stadium, built for football, is featuring other events which should help pay some of the bills at the place. The stadium is also available for weddings and bar mitzvahs.
Johnson put up half the cash for the new place and the surrounding real estate which will be turned into a New York-area football hall of fame and other businesses, the Mara-Tisch families put up the other 50 percent with the state of New Jersey kicking in hundreds of millions of dollars for infrastructure and East Rutherford gets only a slice of what should be a multimillion check for property taxes through a mechanism called “Payments in Lieu of Taxes” or PILOT.
Johnson released a statement which condemned the league and probably the one-time Jets employee, NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell.
“An NFL coin toss has a few fundamental elements that are missing here, most notably the presence of the teams involved,” said Johnson. “That's how it's always done in the League, whether it’s determining the order of the draft or deciding who’s going to kick off the game. When the issue of which team would be hosting the first regular season game could not be resolved on the merits, I suggested a coin toss as the fairest way to resolve this issue. The League rejected that idea. Then, I was told on Friday that a coin toss had taken place at the League office and that the Jets had lost. We rejected a process in which neither team was present. The League departed from our time-honored tradition and declined the opportunity to set the matter straight with a transparent process. “
And with that Mara-Tisch get to “open” the stadium and Johnson gets what New York Rangers forward Sean Avery might call “sloppy seconds”
Perhaps the National Football League was the wrong party to hold the coin flip. The truth of the matter is that the coin flip should have been held in the Trenton office of the Governor of the State of New Jersey, and Governor Chris Christie should have conducted the flip. Governor Christie was not in office in 2005 when the Mara/Tisch-Johnson stadium/real estate deal was signed and when New Jersey committed hundreds of millions of dollars to the project and signed off on giving East Rutherford a slice of the property tax assessment on the land. New Jersey is a partner in the stadium venture and should have been included in the process.
There will be all sorts of conspiracy theories about even whether there was a coin flip but the Maras have seemingly gotten their way virtually every time in the New York area since the one time bookie and bootlegger Tim Mara invested $500 to get an NFL franchise in 1925 for Manhattan. Mara’s Giants franchise was a financial disaster throughout the 1925 season and the team was saved from financial ruin by George Halas quite by accident. The Chicago Bears owner Halas signed Red Grange right after Grange’s college football season with Illinois was done and immediately went on tour with the “Galloping Ghost.”
One of the stops was the Polo Grounds in Manhattan with the Giants hosting the Bears and New Yorkers came to see not the Giants, but the legendary Grange. That game paid the bills and established Mara’s team, at least for the 1926 season. But the Grange game also caused Mara some problems.
Grange and his agent C. C. (Cash and Carry) Pyle applied to get an NFL franchise for Yankee Stadium for the 1926 season based on the Polo Grounds game. The NFL, protecting Mara’s franchise, said no. Grange and Pyle started the first American Football League in 1926. The league folded after just one season but the NFL took Grange and the Yankees franchise in 1927 to replace the Brooklyn Lions. Grange was injured in 1927 and his team folded after the 1928 season.
The New York territory has been in the Mara family since 1925 and as Bill Parcells said in 1991 when he quit as Giants coach, “it is the flagship franchise of the league.” Parcells spoke an awful lot of truth with that statement although there is little evidence that the Mara family was all that influential in the league and that whatever influence the Mara family may have had stemmed from being in the biggest city in America and their ability to withstand challenges from other owners trying to make it in New York in football.
The Mara family outlasted the Staten Island Stapletons (1929-32), the Newark Tornadoes (1930), the Brooklyn Dodgers (1930-43), and the Brooklyn Tigers (1944). In 1945, Dan Topping’s Dodgers merged forces with the Boston Yanks. Topping owned Major League Baseball’s New York Yankees owner was part owner of the Yanks-Dodgers combination. Topping decided to move his portion of the Tigers from Brooklyn’s Ebbets Field to Yankee Stadium, but Tim Mara refused to allow Topping to invade his territory as the Polo Grounds as across the Harlem River from Yankee Stadium. Topping took holdings out of the NFL and joined the rival All American Football Conference in 1946 playing as the Brooklyn Dodgers and eventually as the second New York Yankees in Yankee Stadium. That team folded when the National Football League absorbed three AAFC teams, Baltimore, Cleveland and San Francisco in 1950.
That was not the last time Mara had to face competition from another Yankee Stadium-based team. The Boston Yanks moved to New York and the Polo Grounds in 1949 and the owners, the singer Kate Smith and her agent Ted Collins renamed the team the New York Bulldogs. In 1950, Collins and Smith moved across the river to Yankee Stadium and called the team the New York Yankees. That NFL franchise folded after 1951 and ended up in Dallas.
The Mara family would not have any New York City rivals between 1952 and 1959. In 1960, the fourth American Football League put a team in the Polo Grounds, Mara moved to Topping’s Yankee Stadium in 1956 from the Polo Grounds. Harry Wismer’s New York Titans franchise was a financial shipwreck but the AFL was able to get new owners for the team in 1963 with a group led by David (Sonny) Werblin.
Sonny Werblin gave the Mara family a lot of trouble. Werblin was well connected in show business and worked for a company that provided programming for David Sarnoff’s National Broadcasting Company. Sarnoff’s NBC lost the bid to gain control over NFL television rights in 1964 to William Paley’s Columbia Broadcasting System. Sarnoff decided to get even through Werblin and discussed how NBC would fund the AFL giving the league a multimillion dollar, multiyear TV deal.
NBC landed the AFL beginning with the 1965 season which gave AFL owners more money to compete for players after their college careers were done. That raised salaries and old line NFL owners and AFL owners needed to solve their money problem. Ironically it was Mara’s Giants that poured fuel on the AFL-NFL rivalry by signing Buffalo kicker Pete Gogolak. It was the first time the NFL went after an AFL star and the AFL’s new commissioner, Al Davis, took notice and as a league, the AFL went after the NFL’s two of the top quarterbacks, Roman Gabriel and John Brodie.
Werblin understood football was entertainment, something old line NFL owners like Mara’s son Jack and Wellington did not. Werblin used some of NBC’s money and a new home field, Shea Stadium, to land players like Joe Namath. Werblin, who believed in the star system, had his star, Namath and his new home field, Shea Stadium and his Jets became a credible rival to the Mara family’s Giants.
The two leagues, the NFL and AFL, merged on June 8, 1966. Apparently neither the NFL nor the Maras wanted a second New York team and one of the merger plans on the table was to move Werblin’s Jets out of New York so that the Maras would continue to have an NFL monopoly in New York. The league also wanted to maintain the San Francisco 49ers one team market in the Bay Area. Werblin’s Jets would have been relocated to Los Angeles, LA Rams owner Daniel Reeves would have taken his team south to San Diego, Barron Hilton would have moved his Chargers from San Diego to fill a hole in New Orleans, the two leagues needed support from Louisiana Senator Russell Long and House member Hale Boggs to pass the merger through Congress, and the Oakland Raiders would exit the Bay Area and end up in the Pacific Northwest in either Seattle or Portland.
That plan died in a House of Representatives merger hearings when NFL Commissioner Pete Rozelle assured Brooklyn Congressman Emanuel Cellar, who has a very large place in NFL history despite never having played, coached or being an owner in the NFL, that all 24 teams, 15 NFL teams and nine AFL teams would not be relocated. Werblin and his partners, including Leon Hess, would pay Wellington and Jack Mara $10 million for invading the Giants New York territory and the Raiders ownership provide eight million dollars to the 49ers ownership to share the Bay Area marketplace.
Neither Werblin nor the Raiders ownership wanted a merger.
Wellington Mara became enough of an NFL visionary by 1971 that he accepted New Jersey’s new stadium offer which was presented to him by, of all people, Werblin who left the Jets partnership in 1968. Werblin headed up the New Jersey Sports Authority. Mara’s Giants moved into Giants Stadium in 1976 and played the venue’s first NFL regular season game on October 10th of that year losing to Dallas. Werblin’s former team, the Jets, moved into the Meadowlands in 1984. In 2005, Wellington Mara and Woody Johnson agreed to fund a new Meadowlands Stadium.
The Mara-Tisch guys beat Johnson this time around but the Giants and Jets franchises have been linked for decades and at the end of the day, Woody will get over not hosting the first NFL game in the new place, there is too much money at stake for him to continue having a fit and besides, the Mara-Tisch-Johnson troika will be bidding for a huge prize, the 2014 Super Bowl and NFL policy lately has been to reward owners who get municipal funding or build their own stadiums with a Super Bowl.
evanjweiner@yahoo.com
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