Sports and Arizona's Relationship is Going to Become Quite Complicated Soon
By Evan Weiner
April 24, 2010
http://www.examiner.com/examiner/x-3926-Business-of-Sports-Examiner~y2010m4d24-Sports-and-Arizonas-relationship-is-going-to-become-quite-complicated-soon#
(New York, N. Y.) -- Has Arizona once again risked losing the Super Bowl?
No, this is not about the Arizona Cardinals football team bowing to the Pittsburgh Steelers in the 2009 Super Bowl and returning to the “Big Game”. That is merely a game on the field. But off the field there is now a big question.
How will the sports world react now that the Arizona Governor Jan Brewer and the state's two legislative bodies have passed a tough immigration law? Could Arizona lose major sporting events like the Super Bowl? The National Football League is in the midst of the league's draft and probably will not get around to comment on the new Arizona law but given the very political nature of the league and how the league is very sensitive to the NFL's image, it is probably a good thing that Glendale, Arizona is not in the running for the 2014 Super Bowl.
The new Arizona law will go into effect sometime this summer assuming that there are no court orders to stop it.
The National Football League has a history of pulling a Super Bowl from Arizona and putting the political weight of the entity known as the NFL into a lobbying position. Arizona "celebrates" Martin Luther King Day as the result of direct intervention by the National Football League in terms of dangling a Super Bowl in front of voters. In 1987, newly elected Arizona Governor Evan Mecham's first act in his new job was to erase Martin Luther King Day from the Arizona calendar as an official state holiday. That decision set off a boycott of the state with entertainers like Stevie Wonder refusing to perform in any venue in Arizona.
Governor Mecham's reasoning was simple. The Arizona legislature in 1986 and Governor Bruce Babbitt, in Mecham's opinion, created the holiday illegally.
The National Football League, in an attempt to help the Phoenix Cardinals owner Bill Bidwill to sell more seats after he misread the Phoenix-area market following the move of his Cardinals from St. Louis to Tempe in 1988, awarded Tempe the January 31, 1993 Super Bowl. But Mecham's decision created a number of problems for the league, specifically the National Football League Players Association was not too keen on playing the NFL's showcase game in a state where a governor took away the holiday and the action was supported by Senator John McCain.
In 1989, the Arizona state legislature approved a law making Martin Luther King Day a state holiday but voters needed to approve the measure. In 1990, Arizonans went to the polls and rejected the making Martin Luther King Day a state holiday. Shortly after the voters said no, the NFL said no to Arizona and pulled the January 31, 1993 game from Tempe.
The Super Bowl allegedly pumps money into the local economy although in the Phoenix-area's case it is not as much as say putting the "Big Game" in Pontiac, Michigan or Detroit or Minneapolis since a good number of "snowbirds" vacation or spent winters in warmer climates like the Phoenix-area, South Florida or the Tampa, Florida area. What the Super Bowl does do is bring "high rollers" into town and the local community hopes that the "high rollers" such as corporate CEOs like a local area and will leave a piece of their business in the area and open up a local headquarters and create jobs.
That rarely happens but it is a selling point for the local group hoping to land a Super Bowl.
The National Football League after pulling the 1993 game went back to Arizona and laid the cards out on the table telling voters if they approved the holiday in a November 1992 vote, the NFL would award the next available Super Bowl to Tempe. Arizona voters approved the 1992 ballot initiative and five months later the NFL lived up to their part of the bargain and granted Tempe the January 28, 1996 game.
The next available Super Bowl is the 2014 game but Glendale and Arizona officials are not bidding for that event which is probably a good thing for everyone involved at this point. The NFL also holds a spring meeting once every four years or so at the Arizona Biltmore in Phoenix.
There is another real sports prize that could impacted by the new Arizona law. The Glendale, Arizona stadium, that is the home to the NFL's Arizona Cardinals and hosted the 2008 Super Bowl, is one of the 18 cities that has been proposed for use by USA Bid Committee in an effort to win the FIFA World Cup in either 2018 or 2022.
The FIFA World Cup is the biggest sports event on earth.
The new law will not play well with the FIFA delegates or some of the members of the USA Bid Committee which include Houston Dynamo and Los Angeles Galaxy owner Philip Anschutz, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, comedian and Seattle Sounders FC part-owner Drew Carey, former Goldman Sachs Vice Chairman (Asia) Carlos Cordeiro, U.S. Men’s National Team player Landon Donovan, Executive Director David Downs, U.S. Soccer CEO and General Secretary Dan Flynn, U.S. Soccer Foundation President Ed Foster-Simeon, Major League Soccer Commissioner Don Garber, U.S. Soccer President and USA Bid Committee Chairman Sunil Gulati, U.S. Women’s National Team former player Mia Hamm, Walt Disney Company President and CEO Robert Iger, former U.S. Secretary of State Dr. Henry Kissinger, New England Revolution and New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft, Motion Picture Director Spike Lee, California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, University of Miami President Donna Shalala, ESPN Executive Vice President for Content John Skipper, Univision CEO Joe Uva and Washington Post CEO and Publisher Katharine Weymouth.
The Glendale stadium hosted the highest attended soccer match in the state of Arizona on February 7, 2007 when 62,462 fans watched the U.S. National team defeat Mexico, 2-0. Will the new Arizona law put a halt to international football "friendlies" in Arizona featuring Mexican teams?
Major League Baseball might be keeping a close eye on the developments in Arizona. The Chicago Cubs and the Milwaukee Brewers are looking for improvements at spring training bases in Mesa and Maryvale for their teams. Naples, Florida officials have made an offer to Cubs ownership to relocate the team's spring training facilities from Mesa to Naples.
If the National Hockey League's Phoenix Coyotes remain in Glendale, the franchise's new owners could be to host the 2012 or 2013 NHL All-Star Game. Glendale was supposed to venue of the 2011 event but the club's bankruptcy filing and financial uncertainty forced the league to move the game to Raleigh, North Carolina.
The National Collegiate Athletic Association held a "March Madness" men's basketball tournament event in Glendale in 2009. Will the NCAA bypass Glendale because of the new law?
Then there is another issue. Will athletes speak up either in favor or against the new law? Athletes now tend to shut up on issues with the exception of a handful of performers like then Dallas Mavericks basketball player Steve Nash who spoke out against the Iraq War. Wayne Gretzky supported the Iraq War. Ironically Nash now plays in Phoenix and Gretzky coached in Glendale.
Arizona is a hub of sports activities. Glendale is the home of the NFL's Arizona Cardinals and the NHL's Phoenix Coyotes. The NBA Suns and Major League Baseball's Diamondbacks reside in downtown Phoenix. There is a NASCAR event along with golf and tennis events. Fifteen Major League Baseball teams hold spring training in the Phoenix area, there are major college football, basketball and baseball programs along with minor league baseball and hockey teams scattered throughout the state. The United Football League holds training camp in Casa Grande.
There is a belief that sports is the "toy store" of life and that it is just a game, an entertainment diversion. The truth is that the toy store yarn that is constantly spun is a lie. The NFL proved that in 1991 and 1992 in Arizona. There will be a sports reaction to the legislation signed into law by Arizona Governor Jan Brewer, it is just a matter of time before a powerful sports group reacts and it just might cost Arizona a big event if history is any indication.
Evan Weiner is an author, radio-TV commentator and lecturer on "The Politics of Sports Business" and "Sports in Society." He can be reached at evanjweiner@yahoo.com
Showing posts with label mlb. Show all posts
Showing posts with label mlb. Show all posts
Saturday, April 24, 2010
Wednesday, April 21, 2010
Major League Baseball's cable TV problem
Major League Baseball's cable TV problem
Tuesday, 20 April 2010 23:12
BY EVAN WEINER
NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM
http://www.newjerseynewsroom.com/professional/major-league-baseballs-cable-tv-problem
COMMENTARY
It is not very often that anything that comes out of talk radio is worth a follow up discussion but a rare nugget of information came out of the Colin Cowherd show on New York's WEPN on Monday morning.
Cowherd was in a discussion with ESPN baseball reporter Tim Kirkjian about the economics of Major League Baseball and how that the discrepancy between "haves" (the Yankees) and "have nots" (Kansas City, Baltimore, Cleveland) was widening. Kirkjian agreed with the host and said Major League Baseball is trying to increase revenue sharing between the "haves" and have nots" but Major League Baseball would never have a salary cap because of the players union.
But, Kirkjian assured Cowherd that the owners and players will address the issue during the negotiations for the next Collective Bargaining Agreement which will begin presumably sometime in 2011 as the existing players/owners accord ends in December 2011.
There are a number of owners, men who live and die in their "real" businesses as free market capitalists, who would like to see more revenue sharing or wealth redistribution from the big market teams (i.e. the Yankees) to the game's financially weaker franchises (the soon to be renamed Florida Marlins, Pittsburgh, Kansas City, Milwaukee and others) to level the financial playing field and allow teams like Cincinnati to bid on big ticket free agents.
The owners want more Major League Baseball socialism and that would start by forcing the Yankees franchise to pay an even larger percentage of "luxury" tax on the team's payroll than the Steinbrenner family does presently and those extra revenues would be sent to the most neediest in Major League Baseball.
Here is the rub with Major League Baseball financial parity plan. If baseball fans only were paying for a regional sports channel's bills like the YES Network or SNY, then Major League Baseball financial woes should be taken care of with baseball fans' money.
But, a lot of the dollars the Steinbrenner Yankees generate comes from people who have no interest in either the Yankees or Major League Baseball - about 95 percent of the subscribers - yet they have to pay for the channel anyway because of the 1984 Cable TV Act.
That leads to the following question.
Is it fair that cable money — which comes from non-interested subscribers from New Jersey, New York and Connecticut that should be going to the Yankees (and for that matter the Mets) and should stay in New Jersey, New York and Connecticut — ends up in the pocket of say the owners of the Florida Marlins, Kansas City Royals or the Baltimore Orioles?
The question of cable TV wealth distribution can be is easily answered.
In 1984, Congress passed the Cable TV Act, which was signed into law by President Ronald Reagan and assured the survival of ESPN, the Weather Channel, MTV, WTBS and CNN. Multiple System Operators (MSOs) were able to sign deals with cable networks and then bunch the networks together in a package and sell the package as one to cable subscribers.
Consumers had no say in what networks were thrown into the basic expanded tier but if they wanted a special channel, say CNN or CNN Headline News, they would also have to take ESPN, the Weather Channel and MTV. The legislation gave cable consumers three options. They could take the entire package, basic and basic expanded, just basic ... or quit cable.
ESPN would not be the business as it is today without federal government intervention. Major League Baseball teams were slowly moving games to cable TV in the 1970s and by the 1980s, all sorts of regional sports networks were popping up nationally.
The Boston Red Sox became a more than just a New England franchise because of exposure on WSBK, Channel 38. The Mets and Yankees were also up on the "bird" as both teams were seen beyond the New York area on WOR and WPIX. The Chicago Cubs became a national team when the Cubs ownership, the Tribune Company, went national with WGN and Ted Turner had his Atlanta Braves on WTBS.
Those teams started pocketing extra revenue and MSOs snapped up the stations has the games brought more subscribers.
(Major League Baseball denied the sale of the Texas Rangers from Eddie Chiles to Edwin Gaylord in 1986 and in 1988 because Gaylord planned to put Rangers games on KTVT, Channel 11 because there were too many games on national cable TV with the Braves, Mets, Yankees, Red Sox and Cubs. Eventually Major League Baseball Commissioner Peter Ueberroth worked with George W. Bush and put together an ownership group that would buy the Rangers in 1989. Major League Baseball has never figured out how to deal with television.)
It was George Steinbrenner who changed the game when he signed a 12-year deal worth nearly $500 million with Charles Dolan's Madison Square Garden Network in 1988. Dolan's network went from about 2.3 million to 7.5 million subscribers thanks to the Yankees deal and gave MSG a summer's worth of programming. Steinbrenner was able to use that money to spend on players and player development.
That cable TV deal put the Steinbrenner Yankees into a different economic class than the rest of Major League Baseball and MLB officials have spent the better part of two decades trying to devise a scheme that would somehow penalize first George Steinbrenner and his partners and now the Steinbrenner family for being in the right place at the right time and agreeing to the MSG deal.
Steinbrenner's Yankees lived up to the MSG agreement and then the team decided it would be so much better to own a network than have a rights deal with MSG. The result was the YES Network and virtually every cable TV subscriber in the tri-state area is paying for the YES Network whether they watch it or not because the YES Network made it to the basic expanded tier. There was one holdout for a while – Charles Dolan's Cablevision – but eventually YES was added to Dolan's MSOs.
Steinbrenner was just following a path blazed by Gulf and Western, an owner of Madison Square Garden back in the early 1970s. Gulf and Western established a hybrid sports and entertainment channel, the MSG Network in the formative days of cable TV networks.
Dolan started SportsChannel after the MSG Network debuted. There were other networks as well. In Philadelphia, there was PRISM, also a sports-entertainment hybrid and an entity that gave the Philadelphia Phillies some additional money in 1979 to sign Pete Rose. The Z-Channel in Los Angeles also played around with a sports-entertainment format.
The cable TV-sports teams nexus slowly took shape in the mid 1980s with virtually all of the teams in Major League Baseball, the National Hockey League and the National Basketball hooking up with small cable networks that planned to grown expediently. In some cases that happened and in other cases, the regional cable TV network struggled and was swallowed up by another entity.
Steinbrenner's Yankees just cashed checks in the heavily populated New York City area while the owners of the Montreal Expos failed. The Steinbrenners, the Wilpon Mets and Arte Moreno's Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim are raking in cable TV cash.
Philadelphia, Boston and Seattle are doing quite well and neither of the Chicago teams is hurting financially from their cable TV deals. Kansas City, Cincinnati and Milwaukee are not sharing in the wealth.
In the next collective bargaining negotiations, the "have nots" will go after the Yankees' TV money and for those who are unaware of just where their cable TV fees go, it might be worth checking with their local municipalities and find out if there are any clauses in the municipality-MSO contract that addresses the issue of whether local subscribers be distributed in other areas.
Cowherd and Kirkjian never did tackle the cable TV revenue issue. Nobody ever does, nobody ever thinks about it in Major League Baseball because they are entitled to that money under United States laws. The negotiators probably have no idea why they get the cable TV money they just know it is there.
Major League Baseball wants "parity" which really means socialism where are the teams are on an even financial playing field. The small market teams have been after Yankees TV money for two decades and the only legitimate argument those teams have is that they are half the TV show and that you cannot have a game which has only one team.
It is understandable that those teams want to share stadium revenues from attendance but there is something wrong when the owners of the lesser revenue markets want Yankees cable TV money when that money is coming from people who are totally unaware that they cable TV fees are being sent to owners in a different area under the guise of revenue sharing. That money should stay in the metropolitan area.
Evan Weiner is an author, columnist, radio-TV commentator and lecturer on "The Politics of Sports Business" and can be reached at evanjweiner@yahoo.com
Tuesday, 20 April 2010 23:12
BY EVAN WEINER
NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM
http://www.newjerseynewsroom.com/professional/major-league-baseballs-cable-tv-problem
COMMENTARY
It is not very often that anything that comes out of talk radio is worth a follow up discussion but a rare nugget of information came out of the Colin Cowherd show on New York's WEPN on Monday morning.
Cowherd was in a discussion with ESPN baseball reporter Tim Kirkjian about the economics of Major League Baseball and how that the discrepancy between "haves" (the Yankees) and "have nots" (Kansas City, Baltimore, Cleveland) was widening. Kirkjian agreed with the host and said Major League Baseball is trying to increase revenue sharing between the "haves" and have nots" but Major League Baseball would never have a salary cap because of the players union.
But, Kirkjian assured Cowherd that the owners and players will address the issue during the negotiations for the next Collective Bargaining Agreement which will begin presumably sometime in 2011 as the existing players/owners accord ends in December 2011.
There are a number of owners, men who live and die in their "real" businesses as free market capitalists, who would like to see more revenue sharing or wealth redistribution from the big market teams (i.e. the Yankees) to the game's financially weaker franchises (the soon to be renamed Florida Marlins, Pittsburgh, Kansas City, Milwaukee and others) to level the financial playing field and allow teams like Cincinnati to bid on big ticket free agents.
The owners want more Major League Baseball socialism and that would start by forcing the Yankees franchise to pay an even larger percentage of "luxury" tax on the team's payroll than the Steinbrenner family does presently and those extra revenues would be sent to the most neediest in Major League Baseball.
Here is the rub with Major League Baseball financial parity plan. If baseball fans only were paying for a regional sports channel's bills like the YES Network or SNY, then Major League Baseball financial woes should be taken care of with baseball fans' money.
But, a lot of the dollars the Steinbrenner Yankees generate comes from people who have no interest in either the Yankees or Major League Baseball - about 95 percent of the subscribers - yet they have to pay for the channel anyway because of the 1984 Cable TV Act.
That leads to the following question.
Is it fair that cable money — which comes from non-interested subscribers from New Jersey, New York and Connecticut that should be going to the Yankees (and for that matter the Mets) and should stay in New Jersey, New York and Connecticut — ends up in the pocket of say the owners of the Florida Marlins, Kansas City Royals or the Baltimore Orioles?
The question of cable TV wealth distribution can be is easily answered.
In 1984, Congress passed the Cable TV Act, which was signed into law by President Ronald Reagan and assured the survival of ESPN, the Weather Channel, MTV, WTBS and CNN. Multiple System Operators (MSOs) were able to sign deals with cable networks and then bunch the networks together in a package and sell the package as one to cable subscribers.
Consumers had no say in what networks were thrown into the basic expanded tier but if they wanted a special channel, say CNN or CNN Headline News, they would also have to take ESPN, the Weather Channel and MTV. The legislation gave cable consumers three options. They could take the entire package, basic and basic expanded, just basic ... or quit cable.
ESPN would not be the business as it is today without federal government intervention. Major League Baseball teams were slowly moving games to cable TV in the 1970s and by the 1980s, all sorts of regional sports networks were popping up nationally.
The Boston Red Sox became a more than just a New England franchise because of exposure on WSBK, Channel 38. The Mets and Yankees were also up on the "bird" as both teams were seen beyond the New York area on WOR and WPIX. The Chicago Cubs became a national team when the Cubs ownership, the Tribune Company, went national with WGN and Ted Turner had his Atlanta Braves on WTBS.
Those teams started pocketing extra revenue and MSOs snapped up the stations has the games brought more subscribers.
(Major League Baseball denied the sale of the Texas Rangers from Eddie Chiles to Edwin Gaylord in 1986 and in 1988 because Gaylord planned to put Rangers games on KTVT, Channel 11 because there were too many games on national cable TV with the Braves, Mets, Yankees, Red Sox and Cubs. Eventually Major League Baseball Commissioner Peter Ueberroth worked with George W. Bush and put together an ownership group that would buy the Rangers in 1989. Major League Baseball has never figured out how to deal with television.)
It was George Steinbrenner who changed the game when he signed a 12-year deal worth nearly $500 million with Charles Dolan's Madison Square Garden Network in 1988. Dolan's network went from about 2.3 million to 7.5 million subscribers thanks to the Yankees deal and gave MSG a summer's worth of programming. Steinbrenner was able to use that money to spend on players and player development.
That cable TV deal put the Steinbrenner Yankees into a different economic class than the rest of Major League Baseball and MLB officials have spent the better part of two decades trying to devise a scheme that would somehow penalize first George Steinbrenner and his partners and now the Steinbrenner family for being in the right place at the right time and agreeing to the MSG deal.
Steinbrenner's Yankees lived up to the MSG agreement and then the team decided it would be so much better to own a network than have a rights deal with MSG. The result was the YES Network and virtually every cable TV subscriber in the tri-state area is paying for the YES Network whether they watch it or not because the YES Network made it to the basic expanded tier. There was one holdout for a while – Charles Dolan's Cablevision – but eventually YES was added to Dolan's MSOs.
Steinbrenner was just following a path blazed by Gulf and Western, an owner of Madison Square Garden back in the early 1970s. Gulf and Western established a hybrid sports and entertainment channel, the MSG Network in the formative days of cable TV networks.
Dolan started SportsChannel after the MSG Network debuted. There were other networks as well. In Philadelphia, there was PRISM, also a sports-entertainment hybrid and an entity that gave the Philadelphia Phillies some additional money in 1979 to sign Pete Rose. The Z-Channel in Los Angeles also played around with a sports-entertainment format.
The cable TV-sports teams nexus slowly took shape in the mid 1980s with virtually all of the teams in Major League Baseball, the National Hockey League and the National Basketball hooking up with small cable networks that planned to grown expediently. In some cases that happened and in other cases, the regional cable TV network struggled and was swallowed up by another entity.
Steinbrenner's Yankees just cashed checks in the heavily populated New York City area while the owners of the Montreal Expos failed. The Steinbrenners, the Wilpon Mets and Arte Moreno's Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim are raking in cable TV cash.
Philadelphia, Boston and Seattle are doing quite well and neither of the Chicago teams is hurting financially from their cable TV deals. Kansas City, Cincinnati and Milwaukee are not sharing in the wealth.
In the next collective bargaining negotiations, the "have nots" will go after the Yankees' TV money and for those who are unaware of just where their cable TV fees go, it might be worth checking with their local municipalities and find out if there are any clauses in the municipality-MSO contract that addresses the issue of whether local subscribers be distributed in other areas.
Cowherd and Kirkjian never did tackle the cable TV revenue issue. Nobody ever does, nobody ever thinks about it in Major League Baseball because they are entitled to that money under United States laws. The negotiators probably have no idea why they get the cable TV money they just know it is there.
Major League Baseball wants "parity" which really means socialism where are the teams are on an even financial playing field. The small market teams have been after Yankees TV money for two decades and the only legitimate argument those teams have is that they are half the TV show and that you cannot have a game which has only one team.
It is understandable that those teams want to share stadium revenues from attendance but there is something wrong when the owners of the lesser revenue markets want Yankees cable TV money when that money is coming from people who are totally unaware that they cable TV fees are being sent to owners in a different area under the guise of revenue sharing. That money should stay in the metropolitan area.
Evan Weiner is an author, columnist, radio-TV commentator and lecturer on "The Politics of Sports Business" and can be reached at evanjweiner@yahoo.com
Thursday, April 1, 2010
Baseball’s Bay Problems
Baseball’s Bay Problems
By Evan Weiner
April 2, 2010
http://www.examiner.com/examiner/x-3926-Business-of-Sports-Examiner~y2010m4d2-Baseballs-Bay-Problems
(New York, N. Y.) --- Major League Baseball has a Bay problem in the East Bay area of the San Francisco Bay in Oakland and west of Tampa Bay, specifically in St. Petersburg. Neither the ownership group of the Oakland A's nor the ownership group of the Tampa Bay Rays want to operate in their present homes, the Oakland Coliseum or whatever it is being called today and at the dome in St. Petersburg which was built after Major League Baseball said no, no, don't build it for us to various Florida political entities in the late 1980s.
The politicians ignored Commissioner Peter Ueberroth and built the dome even though there was no real commitment from any team to move to St. Petersburg although San Francisco and Seattle were rumored to be ready to relocate until MLB expanded in 1995.
The Oakland dilemma is simple. A's owner Lewis Wolff would like to move his team to San Jose which is more than 40 miles south of San Francisco down the 101 but because the San Francisco Giants control the territorial rights to the Bay Area's largest city, Wolff cannot relocate his team there. Wolff almost cut a deal to build a stadium down I-880 in Fremont which is as closed as you can get to San Jose without venturing into Giants territory but the deal fell though.
In St. Petersburg, the Rays ownership led by Stuart Sternberg has been pursuing a new stadium since 2007 when they proposed a building a stadium on the St. Petersburg waterfront. That idea was shelved in 2009 but that does not mean Sternberg has given up on getting his Rays a new ballyard.
Sternberg does have a significant obstacle to overcome in his pursuit of a new facility. The franchise is contractually obligated to play in the Suncoast Dome or whatever name is attached to the building until 2027 and St. Petersburg officials say they will make sure the team fulfills that contract.
But as the late Dr. John McMullen, who owned MLB's Houston Astros and the National Hockey League's New Jersey Devils, once said, a contract is just a piece of paper. In other words, the contract could be broken.
At this point, there are no real options for Stenberg in the Bay Area and even if someone approached the Rays owner about moving his team, St. Petersburg officials are threatening to sue anyone who interferes with the Rays lease at the stadium. But as Dr. McMullen once pointed out, a contract is just a piece of paper.
In the San Francisco Bay Area, Wolff has been looking for a stadium for years. Initially he wanted to claim some land north of the Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum and Arena and turn that into a stadium village. Oakland officials seemingly were not interested which forced Wolff to explore Fremont. That didn't work out. San Jose officials seem very interested in bringing Wolff's A's to town but there are numerous hurdles to overcome starting with the San Francisco Giants ownership getting the territorial rights to Santa Clara County in 1992. The Giants ownership still controls the territory even though voters in San Jose and Santa Clara said no to building a Giants ballpark. Then there is the matter of whether San Jose voters want to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to build a yard for Lewis Wolff.
Major League Baseball Commissioner Bud Selig appointed a committee to study the A's stadium situation and see if a deal can be worked out with the Giants and the A's ownership that would allow Wolff to move his franchise to San Jose. The Giants ownership does draw customers from San Jose/Santa Clara but that away is an hour away by car from the Giants ballpark in China Basin. The Oakland Coliseum is significantly closer to San Francisco and Oakland is easily accessible from San Francisco by car and train with the Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART). The television market doesn't matter, both teams saturate the entire market with games and both teams share the radio market.
Selig and Major League Baseball worked out a deal in 2004 which allowed the then 29 MLB owners of the Montreal Expos and move the franchise to Washington even though D. C. was part of Peter Angelos' Baltimore Orioles territory. MLB established a baseball-centric regional sports network, the Mid Atlantic Sports Network (MASN) with Angelos getting the lion’s share of cable TV revenues to offset his potential losses of customers from Washington and Northern Virginia. The new Washington franchise would have significantly less cable TV revenues.
The answer to the Oakland dilemma seems to be paying off the Giants ownership so that Wolff can end up in San Jose, assuming San Jose residents want a stadium.
If Selig's committee, Wolff and the Giants ownership cannot work out a deal, Wolff could move his team anyway to San Jose and then sue MLB for violating antitrust laws although MLB does have an antitrust exemption. Wolff doesn't seem to be the type to challenge MLB. It is an option however.
MLB’s bay problem will drag into the 2010 baseball season. Wolff has a few years left on his Oakland Coliseum lease and there is still a possibility that Oakland might come back with a stadium deal. In the Tampa Bay area, that battle could go on for years.
evanjweiner@yahoo.com
By Evan Weiner
April 2, 2010
http://www.examiner.com/examiner/x-3926-Business-of-Sports-Examiner~y2010m4d2-Baseballs-Bay-Problems
(New York, N. Y.) --- Major League Baseball has a Bay problem in the East Bay area of the San Francisco Bay in Oakland and west of Tampa Bay, specifically in St. Petersburg. Neither the ownership group of the Oakland A's nor the ownership group of the Tampa Bay Rays want to operate in their present homes, the Oakland Coliseum or whatever it is being called today and at the dome in St. Petersburg which was built after Major League Baseball said no, no, don't build it for us to various Florida political entities in the late 1980s.
The politicians ignored Commissioner Peter Ueberroth and built the dome even though there was no real commitment from any team to move to St. Petersburg although San Francisco and Seattle were rumored to be ready to relocate until MLB expanded in 1995.
The Oakland dilemma is simple. A's owner Lewis Wolff would like to move his team to San Jose which is more than 40 miles south of San Francisco down the 101 but because the San Francisco Giants control the territorial rights to the Bay Area's largest city, Wolff cannot relocate his team there. Wolff almost cut a deal to build a stadium down I-880 in Fremont which is as closed as you can get to San Jose without venturing into Giants territory but the deal fell though.
In St. Petersburg, the Rays ownership led by Stuart Sternberg has been pursuing a new stadium since 2007 when they proposed a building a stadium on the St. Petersburg waterfront. That idea was shelved in 2009 but that does not mean Sternberg has given up on getting his Rays a new ballyard.
Sternberg does have a significant obstacle to overcome in his pursuit of a new facility. The franchise is contractually obligated to play in the Suncoast Dome or whatever name is attached to the building until 2027 and St. Petersburg officials say they will make sure the team fulfills that contract.
But as the late Dr. John McMullen, who owned MLB's Houston Astros and the National Hockey League's New Jersey Devils, once said, a contract is just a piece of paper. In other words, the contract could be broken.
At this point, there are no real options for Stenberg in the Bay Area and even if someone approached the Rays owner about moving his team, St. Petersburg officials are threatening to sue anyone who interferes with the Rays lease at the stadium. But as Dr. McMullen once pointed out, a contract is just a piece of paper.
In the San Francisco Bay Area, Wolff has been looking for a stadium for years. Initially he wanted to claim some land north of the Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum and Arena and turn that into a stadium village. Oakland officials seemingly were not interested which forced Wolff to explore Fremont. That didn't work out. San Jose officials seem very interested in bringing Wolff's A's to town but there are numerous hurdles to overcome starting with the San Francisco Giants ownership getting the territorial rights to Santa Clara County in 1992. The Giants ownership still controls the territory even though voters in San Jose and Santa Clara said no to building a Giants ballpark. Then there is the matter of whether San Jose voters want to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to build a yard for Lewis Wolff.
Major League Baseball Commissioner Bud Selig appointed a committee to study the A's stadium situation and see if a deal can be worked out with the Giants and the A's ownership that would allow Wolff to move his franchise to San Jose. The Giants ownership does draw customers from San Jose/Santa Clara but that away is an hour away by car from the Giants ballpark in China Basin. The Oakland Coliseum is significantly closer to San Francisco and Oakland is easily accessible from San Francisco by car and train with the Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART). The television market doesn't matter, both teams saturate the entire market with games and both teams share the radio market.
Selig and Major League Baseball worked out a deal in 2004 which allowed the then 29 MLB owners of the Montreal Expos and move the franchise to Washington even though D. C. was part of Peter Angelos' Baltimore Orioles territory. MLB established a baseball-centric regional sports network, the Mid Atlantic Sports Network (MASN) with Angelos getting the lion’s share of cable TV revenues to offset his potential losses of customers from Washington and Northern Virginia. The new Washington franchise would have significantly less cable TV revenues.
The answer to the Oakland dilemma seems to be paying off the Giants ownership so that Wolff can end up in San Jose, assuming San Jose residents want a stadium.
If Selig's committee, Wolff and the Giants ownership cannot work out a deal, Wolff could move his team anyway to San Jose and then sue MLB for violating antitrust laws although MLB does have an antitrust exemption. Wolff doesn't seem to be the type to challenge MLB. It is an option however.
MLB’s bay problem will drag into the 2010 baseball season. Wolff has a few years left on his Oakland Coliseum lease and there is still a possibility that Oakland might come back with a stadium deal. In the Tampa Bay area, that battle could go on for years.
evanjweiner@yahoo.com
Monday, March 29, 2010
A three-league solution for the MLB
A three-league solution for the MLB
By Evan Weiner - The Daily Caller 03/29/10 at 1:20 AM
http://dailycaller.com/2010/03/29/a-three-league-solution-for-the-mlb/
The Major League Baseball season will be opening up shortly, and for baseball backers who follow the Pittsburgh Pirates or the Kansas City Royals, it figures to be yet another long season.
It’s been many years since Kansas City and Pittsburgh boosters have had something to cheer about in October, but at one time in the 1970s and 1980s, Kansas City had playoff teams and Pittsburgh had contenders in the early 1990s.
Pittsburgh lost Barry Bonds because the franchise simply did not have the money to keep him. Bonds ended up signing with the San Francisco Giants after the 1992 season when he received a six-year, $43.75 million offer from the Bay Area team. Kansas City’s failures stem more from not developing good players after the team’s championship run ended in 1985, although Kansas City still had some good teams into the 1990s because then-owner Ewing Kauffman opened his checkbook. After Kauffman died in 1993, the baseball team’s fortunes sunk with him.
Major League Baseball Commissioner Bud Selig, who himself was the owner of a struggling baseball team until he heard a higher call and took over as the owners’ top man, decided to ask some of the best minds in his industry to come up with plans to level the playing field.
The problem seems to be that the New York Yankees and the Boston Red Sox can just sign really good players to contracts that look more like telephone numbers, or they can bid for big-time Japanese players. New York and Boston have spent a lot of money and have been great teams; Boston has two championships in the past ten years; Philadelphia, is the best team (in theory) in the National League.
But the big money signings ruining the competitive balance argument has some flaws. Fred Wilpon’s New York Mets baseball club was awful in 2009 despite having a huge payroll, and Peter Angelos’ Baltimore Orioles won nothing in the past despite Angelos writing big checks to players.
Money is not the root of all evil in baseball, even if you believe the Red Sox CEO and President Larry Lucchino that the New York Yankees franchise is the “evil empire”.
Lucchino should not have spoken so quickly about his business partner. One of the Boston Red Sox’s properties is the Fenway Sports Group, and one of FSG’s clients is Dunkin’ Donuts. Guess which ad agency arranged a deal that featured Yankees pitcher Jaba Chamberlain in a Dunkin Donuts promotion?
Major League Baseball cannot split up the Yankees-Red Sox or there might be a whole new “Curse of the Bambino” on the industry.The Red Sox-Yankees rivalry is good for New York and Boston, for FOX, Turner Sports and ESPN. It is not good for people outside the northeast I-95 corridor, and that is something Selig wants to address.
Major League Baseball has had bad teams and bad franchises in the game since the start of the professional era in 1869. For some reason, neither the National nor the American League moved franchises around from 1903 to 1953. Team owners built their own stadiums.
The paradigm changed in March 1953, when Boston Braves owner Lou Perini moved his team to Milwaukee. Perini got a sweetheart deal from Milwaukee elected officials, who in 1950 decided to build a municipally funded baseball-football field to attract a Major League Baseball team and keep a portion of the Green Bay Packers home schedule in Milwaukee. Perini paid $1,000 in rent and got to keep concessions money, which got Walter O’Malley thinking about the future of his Brooklyn Dodgers. O’Malley felt the financially strong Dodgers franchise was going to fall behind Milwaukee, of all places, if he did not get a new stadium in Brooklyn.
O’Malley tested the waters in Jersey City, and his Dodgers played a handful of games west of the Hudson River hoping to get New York’s Mayor Robert Wagner and Robert Moses to listen to his plight. O’Malley took a deal in Los Angeles in 1957.
Financially struggling franchises followed Perini’s lead. O’Malley’s New York rival, Horace Stoneham, took his Giants to San Francisco in 1957 after taking a long look at Minneapolis-St. Paul.
Following the Tax Act of 1986, Major League Baseball found Fool’s Gold. The 1986 federal tax reform had a loophole that put a ceiling on how much revenue generated inside a municipally funded stadium or arena at eight percent, which meant owners could negotiate sweetheart contracts and pay players. New stadiums quickly came online and added revenues into the pockets of the owners but there was a problem.
It was a temporary fix for small market teams. The big boys would also get shiny new stadiums to increase revenue and baseball’s revenue sharing policies were not good to struggling owners in the 1990s. Cable TV became prominent and teams like the Yankees an Red Sox ended up owning the regional network cable TV stations that gave them even more money.
The big market owners who had astute decision-makers could pay top dollar for talent became dominant. Small market teams with limited money for payroll or signing young talent could succeed on occasion, but the success would be short lived. Once a player got to his sixth year, he could leave. Many did.
Exhibit A is the Florida Marlins franchise. Champions one year, rebuilding the next because the team could not afford to pay high prices for established talent.
One of the ideas floating around has teams shifting divisions. If Cleveland builds a good enough team to win the American League Central and get to the World Series (and that happened in 1997), Cleveland could stay in that division.
But if Cleveland is rotten and ownership is looking for extra home games against the Yankees, ownership can apply to switch divisions or trade places with, say, Toronto or Baltimore or Tampa Bay. Any one of those teams could pursue a switch if ownership feels that their team might be good enough to win the Central.
Central teams can move east or west, but movements are limited to just a two hour switch in time zones, which might be a problem for Detroit if Mike Ilitch wants to move his Tigers into the American League or National League West. Detroit, despite being a Central team, is on the eastern time zone clock.
Perhaps it is time for Major League Baseball to split into three leagues, the American League, National League and the Continental League with eight teams in the American League, eight in the National League and the other 14 in the Continental League. “Turn back the clock day” has been a good Major League promotion, so this one could be a good idea. In fact, it almost came to pass in 1960.
The Continental League of Professional Baseball Clubs was a brainchild of long time Baseball executive Branch Rickey. The man who signed Jackie Robinson to a contract with Brooklyn in 1946 and developed the farm system wanted to build a third major league after the Brooklyn Dodgers and New York Giants relocated to California after the 1957 season. The plan in 1961 was for the Continental League to open the season with eight teams, Atlanta, Buffalo, Dallas-Ft. Worth, Denver, Houston, Minneapolis-St. Paul, New York and Toronto. The league would eventually claim Major League status while building baseball squads. The league folded in August 1960 after baseball’s National League decided to expand into New York and Houston.
The American League would house eight financially viable markets that have major government support (publicly supported stadiums or stadiums that give owners land and substantial tax breaks and incentives) along with big cable TV dollars and large corporate support. The AL would have the Yankees and Red Sox along with the Chicago White Sox and Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim as permanent members, sort of like the United Nations’ security council. Those four teams would stay in the AL unless they finish next to last or last.
Seattle has been profitable lately and would qualify for the league; Baltimore has a great TV deal and a sweetheart lease at Camden Yards, so it’s possible that Baltimore could be franchise number 6. Toronto with a huge market, Rogers Communications funding the enterprise and with Bay Street, the Canadian version of Wall Street, nearby should be franchise seven. Number eight is a toss-up between Detroit and Cleveland, with possibly the Texas Rangers because of the Dallas-Fort Worth or the Minnesota Twins, representing Minneapolis-St. Paul.
Six teams would be banished to the Continental League. Kansas City, Oakland, Tampa Bay are keepers. Cleveland or Detroit or Minnesota or Texas would be the fourth, fifth or sixth franchises.
Retaining a position in the American League would require that a team finishes better than sixth with the last two teams in the standings dropping to the Continental League and two former American League teams joining the league by qualifying for the CL playoffs. The 14-team CL would be split into two divisions, the American Conference and the National Conference.
The National League would also house eight financially viable markets with the same set of qualifications stemming from government backing, cable TV support and corporate financing. The NL would have the New York Mets, Philadelphia, Los Angeles and the Chicago Cubs as permanent members. St. Louis would be the fifth team; San Francisco would the sixth club. It is extremely hard to find the seventh and eighth teams to fill out the league although cases could be made for Washington and perhaps Denver.
The National Conference of the Continental League could include Arizona, Cincinnati, Colorado, Florida, Milwaukee, Pittsburgh, San Diego and Washington. The same rules would apply; the two top finishers in the National Conference would replace the two bottom feeders in the National League.
The result would be better baseball. Even though all 30 teams would get the same amount of national and international TV monies, the Continental League teams would be competing against similar sized markets and there would be incentive to win for the owners, the chance to return to the American and National League and a chance to play in the World Series. For the eight teams in the American and National League, being banished to the Continental League would be embarrassing so there is more incentive to win to stay in the big market leagues because only American and National league teams can play in the World Series.
There would be a Continental League championship and that would give fans in cities like Kansas City and Pittsburgh some hope for their baseball teams. The Continental League idea is just an idea and perhaps as valid of teams trading divisions.
Selig wants changes but baseball history suggests there will be always bad teams with financial problems. It’s just the way it is.
Evan Weiner is a radio-TV commentator, author and a lecturer on “The Politics of Sports Business.”
By Evan Weiner - The Daily Caller 03/29/10 at 1:20 AM
http://dailycaller.com/2010/03/29/a-three-league-solution-for-the-mlb/
The Major League Baseball season will be opening up shortly, and for baseball backers who follow the Pittsburgh Pirates or the Kansas City Royals, it figures to be yet another long season.
It’s been many years since Kansas City and Pittsburgh boosters have had something to cheer about in October, but at one time in the 1970s and 1980s, Kansas City had playoff teams and Pittsburgh had contenders in the early 1990s.
Pittsburgh lost Barry Bonds because the franchise simply did not have the money to keep him. Bonds ended up signing with the San Francisco Giants after the 1992 season when he received a six-year, $43.75 million offer from the Bay Area team. Kansas City’s failures stem more from not developing good players after the team’s championship run ended in 1985, although Kansas City still had some good teams into the 1990s because then-owner Ewing Kauffman opened his checkbook. After Kauffman died in 1993, the baseball team’s fortunes sunk with him.
Major League Baseball Commissioner Bud Selig, who himself was the owner of a struggling baseball team until he heard a higher call and took over as the owners’ top man, decided to ask some of the best minds in his industry to come up with plans to level the playing field.
The problem seems to be that the New York Yankees and the Boston Red Sox can just sign really good players to contracts that look more like telephone numbers, or they can bid for big-time Japanese players. New York and Boston have spent a lot of money and have been great teams; Boston has two championships in the past ten years; Philadelphia, is the best team (in theory) in the National League.
But the big money signings ruining the competitive balance argument has some flaws. Fred Wilpon’s New York Mets baseball club was awful in 2009 despite having a huge payroll, and Peter Angelos’ Baltimore Orioles won nothing in the past despite Angelos writing big checks to players.
Money is not the root of all evil in baseball, even if you believe the Red Sox CEO and President Larry Lucchino that the New York Yankees franchise is the “evil empire”.
Lucchino should not have spoken so quickly about his business partner. One of the Boston Red Sox’s properties is the Fenway Sports Group, and one of FSG’s clients is Dunkin’ Donuts. Guess which ad agency arranged a deal that featured Yankees pitcher Jaba Chamberlain in a Dunkin Donuts promotion?
Major League Baseball cannot split up the Yankees-Red Sox or there might be a whole new “Curse of the Bambino” on the industry.The Red Sox-Yankees rivalry is good for New York and Boston, for FOX, Turner Sports and ESPN. It is not good for people outside the northeast I-95 corridor, and that is something Selig wants to address.
Major League Baseball has had bad teams and bad franchises in the game since the start of the professional era in 1869. For some reason, neither the National nor the American League moved franchises around from 1903 to 1953. Team owners built their own stadiums.
The paradigm changed in March 1953, when Boston Braves owner Lou Perini moved his team to Milwaukee. Perini got a sweetheart deal from Milwaukee elected officials, who in 1950 decided to build a municipally funded baseball-football field to attract a Major League Baseball team and keep a portion of the Green Bay Packers home schedule in Milwaukee. Perini paid $1,000 in rent and got to keep concessions money, which got Walter O’Malley thinking about the future of his Brooklyn Dodgers. O’Malley felt the financially strong Dodgers franchise was going to fall behind Milwaukee, of all places, if he did not get a new stadium in Brooklyn.
O’Malley tested the waters in Jersey City, and his Dodgers played a handful of games west of the Hudson River hoping to get New York’s Mayor Robert Wagner and Robert Moses to listen to his plight. O’Malley took a deal in Los Angeles in 1957.
Financially struggling franchises followed Perini’s lead. O’Malley’s New York rival, Horace Stoneham, took his Giants to San Francisco in 1957 after taking a long look at Minneapolis-St. Paul.
Following the Tax Act of 1986, Major League Baseball found Fool’s Gold. The 1986 federal tax reform had a loophole that put a ceiling on how much revenue generated inside a municipally funded stadium or arena at eight percent, which meant owners could negotiate sweetheart contracts and pay players. New stadiums quickly came online and added revenues into the pockets of the owners but there was a problem.
It was a temporary fix for small market teams. The big boys would also get shiny new stadiums to increase revenue and baseball’s revenue sharing policies were not good to struggling owners in the 1990s. Cable TV became prominent and teams like the Yankees an Red Sox ended up owning the regional network cable TV stations that gave them even more money.
The big market owners who had astute decision-makers could pay top dollar for talent became dominant. Small market teams with limited money for payroll or signing young talent could succeed on occasion, but the success would be short lived. Once a player got to his sixth year, he could leave. Many did.
Exhibit A is the Florida Marlins franchise. Champions one year, rebuilding the next because the team could not afford to pay high prices for established talent.
One of the ideas floating around has teams shifting divisions. If Cleveland builds a good enough team to win the American League Central and get to the World Series (and that happened in 1997), Cleveland could stay in that division.
But if Cleveland is rotten and ownership is looking for extra home games against the Yankees, ownership can apply to switch divisions or trade places with, say, Toronto or Baltimore or Tampa Bay. Any one of those teams could pursue a switch if ownership feels that their team might be good enough to win the Central.
Central teams can move east or west, but movements are limited to just a two hour switch in time zones, which might be a problem for Detroit if Mike Ilitch wants to move his Tigers into the American League or National League West. Detroit, despite being a Central team, is on the eastern time zone clock.
Perhaps it is time for Major League Baseball to split into three leagues, the American League, National League and the Continental League with eight teams in the American League, eight in the National League and the other 14 in the Continental League. “Turn back the clock day” has been a good Major League promotion, so this one could be a good idea. In fact, it almost came to pass in 1960.
The Continental League of Professional Baseball Clubs was a brainchild of long time Baseball executive Branch Rickey. The man who signed Jackie Robinson to a contract with Brooklyn in 1946 and developed the farm system wanted to build a third major league after the Brooklyn Dodgers and New York Giants relocated to California after the 1957 season. The plan in 1961 was for the Continental League to open the season with eight teams, Atlanta, Buffalo, Dallas-Ft. Worth, Denver, Houston, Minneapolis-St. Paul, New York and Toronto. The league would eventually claim Major League status while building baseball squads. The league folded in August 1960 after baseball’s National League decided to expand into New York and Houston.
The American League would house eight financially viable markets that have major government support (publicly supported stadiums or stadiums that give owners land and substantial tax breaks and incentives) along with big cable TV dollars and large corporate support. The AL would have the Yankees and Red Sox along with the Chicago White Sox and Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim as permanent members, sort of like the United Nations’ security council. Those four teams would stay in the AL unless they finish next to last or last.
Seattle has been profitable lately and would qualify for the league; Baltimore has a great TV deal and a sweetheart lease at Camden Yards, so it’s possible that Baltimore could be franchise number 6. Toronto with a huge market, Rogers Communications funding the enterprise and with Bay Street, the Canadian version of Wall Street, nearby should be franchise seven. Number eight is a toss-up between Detroit and Cleveland, with possibly the Texas Rangers because of the Dallas-Fort Worth or the Minnesota Twins, representing Minneapolis-St. Paul.
Six teams would be banished to the Continental League. Kansas City, Oakland, Tampa Bay are keepers. Cleveland or Detroit or Minnesota or Texas would be the fourth, fifth or sixth franchises.
Retaining a position in the American League would require that a team finishes better than sixth with the last two teams in the standings dropping to the Continental League and two former American League teams joining the league by qualifying for the CL playoffs. The 14-team CL would be split into two divisions, the American Conference and the National Conference.
The National League would also house eight financially viable markets with the same set of qualifications stemming from government backing, cable TV support and corporate financing. The NL would have the New York Mets, Philadelphia, Los Angeles and the Chicago Cubs as permanent members. St. Louis would be the fifth team; San Francisco would the sixth club. It is extremely hard to find the seventh and eighth teams to fill out the league although cases could be made for Washington and perhaps Denver.
The National Conference of the Continental League could include Arizona, Cincinnati, Colorado, Florida, Milwaukee, Pittsburgh, San Diego and Washington. The same rules would apply; the two top finishers in the National Conference would replace the two bottom feeders in the National League.
The result would be better baseball. Even though all 30 teams would get the same amount of national and international TV monies, the Continental League teams would be competing against similar sized markets and there would be incentive to win for the owners, the chance to return to the American and National League and a chance to play in the World Series. For the eight teams in the American and National League, being banished to the Continental League would be embarrassing so there is more incentive to win to stay in the big market leagues because only American and National league teams can play in the World Series.
There would be a Continental League championship and that would give fans in cities like Kansas City and Pittsburgh some hope for their baseball teams. The Continental League idea is just an idea and perhaps as valid of teams trading divisions.
Selig wants changes but baseball history suggests there will be always bad teams with financial problems. It’s just the way it is.
Evan Weiner is a radio-TV commentator, author and a lecturer on “The Politics of Sports Business.”
Monday, January 18, 2010
Loria not McGwire Embarrasses Major League Baseball
http://www.examiner.com/examiner/x-3926-Business-of-Sports-Examiner~y2010m1d18-Loria-not-McGwire-embarrasses-Major-League-Baseball#
Loria not McGwire Embarrasses Major League Baseball
By Evan Weiner
January 18, 2010
(New York, N. Y.) -- The New Year is less than three weeks old but Major League Baseball has already endured one very embarrassing moment and it has nothing to do with Mark McGwire steroids usage admission or that a former Kansas City Royals errand boy and flunky named Rush Limbaugh again opened his mouth disgracefully after the earthquake in Haiti. Whether Limbaugh likes it or not, Major League Baseball is donating $1 million to relief efforts in Haiti.
The embarrassing moment came last week when the Major League Baseball Players Association, Major League Baseball and the Florida Marlins organization reached an understanding that the Marlins franchise will actually spend some of the revenue sharing revenues earmarked for them and other struggling franchises to pay players. Florida has been receiving stipends along with other teams but apparently has not been using the money to spend on talent.
The revenue sharing issue has been around for years and the 2002 Collective Bargaining Agreement was hatched to spread around baseball’s wealth from say George Steinbrenner’s baseball revenue generated pockets to lesser lights like the Montreal Expos franchise, Florida, Limbaugh’s old employer, the Royals, Pittsburgh and others. But there has always been a question as to whether the owners of the lesser lights were going to spend Steinbrenner’s money or pocket it or pay down the operating debt.
The players could have filed a grievance against the owners and try to prove that the lesser revenue generating teams were not spending on players salaries.
In a news release released by MLB, the MLBPA and Florida, the three parties said: “The Basic Agreement requires that each Club use its revenue sharing receipts in an effort to improve its performance on the field. This requirement is of obvious importance to all players, Clubs and fans of the game. In recent years, the Union has had concerns that certain Clubs have not lived up to this requirement, and has consulted regularly with the Commissioner’s Office about those concerns. The Florida Marlins are one of a number of Clubs that have been discussed.
“After extensive discussions, the three parties are pleased to announce that they have reached an agreement regarding the Florida Marlins’ continued compliance with Article XXIV(B)(5)(a) of the Basic Agreement.
“MLBPA Executive Director Michael Weiner said: In response to our concerns that revenue sharing proceeds have not been used as required, the Marlins have assured the Union and the Commissioner’s Office that they plan to use such proceeds to increase player payroll annually as they move toward the opening of their new ballpark. Today’s agreement, which covers the period 2010 through 2012, calls for ongoing communication among the Marlins, the Commissioner’s Office and the Union as the Marlins proceed with that plan. It also permits, after consultation among all parties, adjustments in the Marlins’ plan to respond to unforeseen developments, and calls for arbitral intervention if disagreements arise. We greatly appreciate the willingness of the Commissioner’s Office and the Marlins to engage with us and ensure that all terms of the Basic Agreement are met.”
“Marlins’ President David Samson said:
“The Marlins have consistently made every effort to put the best product on the field and our record supports the fact that we have been successful in that regard. Throughout the discussions, the Marlins maintained that there had been no violation of the Basic Agreement at any time. While we know that the Marlins will always comply with the Basic Agreement, we were happy to work cooperatively with the Union and the Commissioner’s Office on this matter.
“MLB Executive Vice President, Labor Relations Rob Manfred added:
“The Basic Agreement contains confidentiality provisions that preclude the parties from publicly discussing the specifics of the Marlins’ finances. There will, therefore, be no comment by any of these parties on any further specifics of this agreement. All three parties agree that the Basic Agreement provision on the proper use of revenue sharing dollars is an important part of our agreement. Today’s announcement is the product of a positive dialogue between the MLBPA, the Commissioner’s Office and the Club.”
Florida will be moving into a mostly taxpayers funded new stadium in 2012 at the site of Miami’s old Orange Bowl. Since Miami city officials are partnering with the Marlins franchise perhaps they should allow taxpayers to see Florida Marlins owner Jeffrey Loria’s books as taxpayers are paying the freight on a stadium that theoretically will make Loria more money on his investment.
The price tag on the new stadium is estimated to be $645 million with some of that picked up by unsuspecting snowbirds through hotel and motel taxes. Miami-Dade County officials approved $563 million worth of bonds, with $378 million coming from Dade County’s sports tax, another $130 million from tourist taxes (no one knows whether there will be enough tourists to fund that fund) and $55 million from a general obligation bond. Loria and the Marlins owners are putting up $120 million and will pay back a $35 million loan from Dade County.
Loria will get all of the revenue generated in the city-owned stadium. But Miami has come up with a big plum. Loria will rename the team the Miami Marlins. That certainly is a great reason to fund a stadium. One time Charlotte, North Carolina Mayor Pat McCrory once suggested that Charlotte needed a new team and a new arena after George Shinn took his National Basketball Association team to New Orleans because of arena issues in 2002 because of the many times Charlotte would be mentioned on ESPN SportsCenter in game highlights and how much free advertising the city would get from ESPN.
The fact that MLB and the MLBPA had to go public with dirty laundry and that Loria wasn’t spending money is quite embarrassing and that Loria agreed to spend more money on players has validated George Steinbrenner’s big fears that his Yankees money would be pocketed by other owners instead of paying for players.
McGwire did not embarrass baseball in anyway with his admission of steroids usage. Again the guardians of baseball’s gate, baseball sportswriters, are upset this time with the quality of McGwire’s announcement and his subsequent interview with Bob Costas. Too bad for the baseball scribes. In a public appearance in St. Louis on Sunday, McGwire was cheered by Cardinals fans which no doubt baffled the guardians.
People who attend or follow baseball games want to be entertained. They don’t care about steroids or off field behavior which is something the guardians don’t understand. There are fewer guardians these days as the newspaper industry retrenches but baseball writers still think they matter. After all they still judge who belongs in the Baseball Hall of Fame or who is not worthy of the Cooperstown, NY shrine even though it is a blatant conflict of interest to vote for any baseball awards or the Hall of Fame. True journalists should not vote on subjects they cover, particularly when their vote can conceivably put more money in an award winner or Hall of Fame inductee’s pocket. It is an ethical issue that no one really wants to take up although some newspapers did bar writers from voting.
The Baseball Writers Association of America (BBWAA) is one of the last vestiges of a bygone era, the writers are “real baseball men” or at least in the world of one of the newest Hall of Famers Whitey Herzog who preferred to talk to the “real baseball men” instead of radio or TV reporters. Perhaps it is fitting that Herzog and New York Daily News writer Bill Madden, one of the BBWAA dinosaurs (and strike breakers and why the Major League Baseball Players Association members still talk to Bill Madden is curious considering how the MLBPA dealt with players who were in training camps during the 1994-95 strike) will be honored as inductees later this summer.
The BBWAA is sort of like McSorley’s Old Ale House in Manhattan. McSorley’s was one of the last bars in Manhattan to allow women inside the premises in 1970 after being sued and losing. The BBWAA is an old boys club in a 21st century environment which no longer works. But baseball writers and newspapers have given the sport free advertising and publicity for well over a century and even though baseball and sports gets a lot of money from TV, newspapers and baseball writers still retain a special role in the industry.
Loria has promised to put more money into his payroll although that could change depending on how the stadium financing goes. Next up? Maybe Pittsburgh, another franchise that has a special relationship with taxpayers.
evanjweiner@yahoo.co
Loria not McGwire Embarrasses Major League Baseball
By Evan Weiner
January 18, 2010
(New York, N. Y.) -- The New Year is less than three weeks old but Major League Baseball has already endured one very embarrassing moment and it has nothing to do with Mark McGwire steroids usage admission or that a former Kansas City Royals errand boy and flunky named Rush Limbaugh again opened his mouth disgracefully after the earthquake in Haiti. Whether Limbaugh likes it or not, Major League Baseball is donating $1 million to relief efforts in Haiti.
The embarrassing moment came last week when the Major League Baseball Players Association, Major League Baseball and the Florida Marlins organization reached an understanding that the Marlins franchise will actually spend some of the revenue sharing revenues earmarked for them and other struggling franchises to pay players. Florida has been receiving stipends along with other teams but apparently has not been using the money to spend on talent.
The revenue sharing issue has been around for years and the 2002 Collective Bargaining Agreement was hatched to spread around baseball’s wealth from say George Steinbrenner’s baseball revenue generated pockets to lesser lights like the Montreal Expos franchise, Florida, Limbaugh’s old employer, the Royals, Pittsburgh and others. But there has always been a question as to whether the owners of the lesser lights were going to spend Steinbrenner’s money or pocket it or pay down the operating debt.
The players could have filed a grievance against the owners and try to prove that the lesser revenue generating teams were not spending on players salaries.
In a news release released by MLB, the MLBPA and Florida, the three parties said: “The Basic Agreement requires that each Club use its revenue sharing receipts in an effort to improve its performance on the field. This requirement is of obvious importance to all players, Clubs and fans of the game. In recent years, the Union has had concerns that certain Clubs have not lived up to this requirement, and has consulted regularly with the Commissioner’s Office about those concerns. The Florida Marlins are one of a number of Clubs that have been discussed.
“After extensive discussions, the three parties are pleased to announce that they have reached an agreement regarding the Florida Marlins’ continued compliance with Article XXIV(B)(5)(a) of the Basic Agreement.
“MLBPA Executive Director Michael Weiner said: In response to our concerns that revenue sharing proceeds have not been used as required, the Marlins have assured the Union and the Commissioner’s Office that they plan to use such proceeds to increase player payroll annually as they move toward the opening of their new ballpark. Today’s agreement, which covers the period 2010 through 2012, calls for ongoing communication among the Marlins, the Commissioner’s Office and the Union as the Marlins proceed with that plan. It also permits, after consultation among all parties, adjustments in the Marlins’ plan to respond to unforeseen developments, and calls for arbitral intervention if disagreements arise. We greatly appreciate the willingness of the Commissioner’s Office and the Marlins to engage with us and ensure that all terms of the Basic Agreement are met.”
“Marlins’ President David Samson said:
“The Marlins have consistently made every effort to put the best product on the field and our record supports the fact that we have been successful in that regard. Throughout the discussions, the Marlins maintained that there had been no violation of the Basic Agreement at any time. While we know that the Marlins will always comply with the Basic Agreement, we were happy to work cooperatively with the Union and the Commissioner’s Office on this matter.
“MLB Executive Vice President, Labor Relations Rob Manfred added:
“The Basic Agreement contains confidentiality provisions that preclude the parties from publicly discussing the specifics of the Marlins’ finances. There will, therefore, be no comment by any of these parties on any further specifics of this agreement. All three parties agree that the Basic Agreement provision on the proper use of revenue sharing dollars is an important part of our agreement. Today’s announcement is the product of a positive dialogue between the MLBPA, the Commissioner’s Office and the Club.”
Florida will be moving into a mostly taxpayers funded new stadium in 2012 at the site of Miami’s old Orange Bowl. Since Miami city officials are partnering with the Marlins franchise perhaps they should allow taxpayers to see Florida Marlins owner Jeffrey Loria’s books as taxpayers are paying the freight on a stadium that theoretically will make Loria more money on his investment.
The price tag on the new stadium is estimated to be $645 million with some of that picked up by unsuspecting snowbirds through hotel and motel taxes. Miami-Dade County officials approved $563 million worth of bonds, with $378 million coming from Dade County’s sports tax, another $130 million from tourist taxes (no one knows whether there will be enough tourists to fund that fund) and $55 million from a general obligation bond. Loria and the Marlins owners are putting up $120 million and will pay back a $35 million loan from Dade County.
Loria will get all of the revenue generated in the city-owned stadium. But Miami has come up with a big plum. Loria will rename the team the Miami Marlins. That certainly is a great reason to fund a stadium. One time Charlotte, North Carolina Mayor Pat McCrory once suggested that Charlotte needed a new team and a new arena after George Shinn took his National Basketball Association team to New Orleans because of arena issues in 2002 because of the many times Charlotte would be mentioned on ESPN SportsCenter in game highlights and how much free advertising the city would get from ESPN.
The fact that MLB and the MLBPA had to go public with dirty laundry and that Loria wasn’t spending money is quite embarrassing and that Loria agreed to spend more money on players has validated George Steinbrenner’s big fears that his Yankees money would be pocketed by other owners instead of paying for players.
McGwire did not embarrass baseball in anyway with his admission of steroids usage. Again the guardians of baseball’s gate, baseball sportswriters, are upset this time with the quality of McGwire’s announcement and his subsequent interview with Bob Costas. Too bad for the baseball scribes. In a public appearance in St. Louis on Sunday, McGwire was cheered by Cardinals fans which no doubt baffled the guardians.
People who attend or follow baseball games want to be entertained. They don’t care about steroids or off field behavior which is something the guardians don’t understand. There are fewer guardians these days as the newspaper industry retrenches but baseball writers still think they matter. After all they still judge who belongs in the Baseball Hall of Fame or who is not worthy of the Cooperstown, NY shrine even though it is a blatant conflict of interest to vote for any baseball awards or the Hall of Fame. True journalists should not vote on subjects they cover, particularly when their vote can conceivably put more money in an award winner or Hall of Fame inductee’s pocket. It is an ethical issue that no one really wants to take up although some newspapers did bar writers from voting.
The Baseball Writers Association of America (BBWAA) is one of the last vestiges of a bygone era, the writers are “real baseball men” or at least in the world of one of the newest Hall of Famers Whitey Herzog who preferred to talk to the “real baseball men” instead of radio or TV reporters. Perhaps it is fitting that Herzog and New York Daily News writer Bill Madden, one of the BBWAA dinosaurs (and strike breakers and why the Major League Baseball Players Association members still talk to Bill Madden is curious considering how the MLBPA dealt with players who were in training camps during the 1994-95 strike) will be honored as inductees later this summer.
The BBWAA is sort of like McSorley’s Old Ale House in Manhattan. McSorley’s was one of the last bars in Manhattan to allow women inside the premises in 1970 after being sued and losing. The BBWAA is an old boys club in a 21st century environment which no longer works. But baseball writers and newspapers have given the sport free advertising and publicity for well over a century and even though baseball and sports gets a lot of money from TV, newspapers and baseball writers still retain a special role in the industry.
Loria has promised to put more money into his payroll although that could change depending on how the stadium financing goes. Next up? Maybe Pittsburgh, another franchise that has a special relationship with taxpayers.
evanjweiner@yahoo.co
Saturday, January 9, 2010
American Needle, the NFL and the Supreme Court of the United States
http://www.examiner.com/examiner/x-3926-Business-of-Sports-Examiner~y2010m1d9-American-Needle-the-NFL-and-the-Supreme-Court-of-the-United-States
American Needle, the NFL and the Supreme Court of the United States
By Evan Weiner
January 9, 2010
(New York, N. Y.) -- The Supreme Court of the United States goes back to work this week and the nine justices have an interesting case on the docket.
American Needle Inc. v the NFL (Docket 08-661).
The Court is supposed to listen to arguments from American Needle attorneys and National Football League lawyers as to whether National Football League Properties, the National Football League and the 32 individual teams acted as one when the league awarded Reebok International an exclusive 10-year deal to produce hats and other headgear in 2001 in violation of Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890.
Reebok is now owned by Addidas AG.
National Football League Properties decided in 2000 that it would put the caps, hats and headgear license up for bid and would give the contract to one company. Prior to 2001, the league had an assortment of licensees for the manufacture of caps, hats and headgear with American Needle holding one of those licenses.
After Reebok won the bid, American Needle decided to file an antitrust lawsuit in Chicago against the NFL in December 2004. The NFL picked up victories on in lower level trial and appeals court but the small Buffalo Grove, Illinois-based American Needle Inc. decided to press on and take the case to the Supreme Court.
National Football League lawyers apparently have no problems arguing the case before the nine justices and basically told American Needle’s attorneys to bring it on.
The NFL has received support from the National Basketball Association and the National Hockey League. Major League Baseball, which received antitrust protection from the Supreme Court of the United States in the 1922 ruling against the Baltimore Terrapins because baseball was a game, not a business, is not involved with this particularly case.
This might be the case that the National Football League has been seeking for decades. A favorable decision by the SCOTUS would presumably give the league an antitrust blanket and allow the league to really act with monopoly powers although Congress in 1961 gave the league antitrust protection with the Sports Broadcast Act of 1961 which was signed into law by President John F. Kennedy. Congress gave football owners another gift by allowing the June 8, 1966 merger of the National Football League and the American Football League in the fall of that year which ended a bidding war for players.
President Lyndon B. Johnson gave his approval to the merger when the AFL-NFL legislation was tacked onto another bill. New Orleans ended up with a football team because of the political maneuvering by Louisiana Senator Russell Long and Representative Hale Boggs who traded a no vote on the merger in exchange for a guarantee that New Orleans would receive a team as part of political horse trading.
The fact that American Needle wants to do business with the NFL is pretty obvious. A NFL product license can bring in a sizeable check for any company. American Needle is arguing that it should be allowed to talk to each of the 32 teams not just the league and that companies like American Needle should have the opportunity to talk to say Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones about a deal where presumably they can offer him more money than he could get from his 1/32 share of the revenue.
The American Needle Inc. v NFL Supreme Court battle has apparently made an awful lot of people nervous and it does not appear from those who have SCOTUS anxiety are from the NFL owners camp. The National Football League Coaches Association filed a brief with the court saying that an NFL victory could mean a salary cap for head coaches and a salary scale for assistants because the NFL would gain monopoly power.
Additionally, some are arguing that the NFL would push a TV agenda that would include the scheduling of games against High School and College contests during the High School and College football season which is presently not allowed under the terms of the Sports Broadcast Act of 1961 which would have a direct impact on attendance at High School contests across America and cut down on the TV audience of Saturday college games.
The National Football League Players Association, which is preparing strategy in collective bargaining talks with the league owners with the Collective Bargaining Agreement schedule to expire after the 2010 season, is worried that an NFL SCOTUS victory would harm the players bargaining abilities since the association has used the courts to settle labor disputes.
The Major League Baseball Players Association, the National Basketball Players Association and the National Hockey League Players Association are supporting the National Football League Players Association by filing a brief which is supporting American Needle.
The National Federation of State High School Associations wants to keep Friday Night Lights going with no NFL interference.
The Federal Trade Commission has asked the nine justices to “vacate the judgment of the U. S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh District” because the FTC is of the opinion that the league is 32 separate entities and that the league violates section 1 and section 2 of the Sherman Act.
Legal experts from various law schools, other lawyers with opinions and media pumped up experts like the Chicago-based Marc Ganis are predicting doom for fans should the National Football League win the case. (Sportswriters should do some research instead of relying on "experts" like Ganis and law professors, lazy journalism on their part) The dire consequences include even higher costs for merchandise (the cost is extremely high now for those who have not shopped) to league wide higher league mandated ticket pricing (ticket prices are extraordinarily high and in some cases come with a personal seat licensing tab for those who have not noticed) to hiring cheaper players and putting an inferior brand of football on the field (guess the experts failed to watch any Detroit Lions games over the past five years or this year’s St. Louis Rams).
The NFL and other leagues are in a powerful position not necessarily because of consumer power. Congressional acts in 1961 and 1966 backed by the signatures of President Kennedy and Johnson made the NFL a juggernaut. The Supreme Court of the United States in 1922 cemented the National and American League of baseball position as the dominant baseball force. Congress would not take up a proposed American Basketball Association-National Basketball Association merger in the early 1970s which forced the NBA to find a Washington political insider to become the league’s commissioner. Former Kennedy and Johnson staffer Lawrence O’Brien became the NBA’s head man in 1975 and by 1976, the NBA absorbed four ABA teams, Denver, Indiana, New York and San Antonio with each team paying $3.2 million to join the new league. Additionally the Uniondale, N. Y.-based New York Nets had to pay the New York Knicks $4.8 million for invading Knicks territory.
The NBA dictated terms despite not having the type of monopoly powers that Major League Baseball was granted by the 1922 SCOTUS decision.
Sports leagues are powerful but are always mindful of Congress even though Pete Rozelle during the 1986 United States Football League v National Football League antitrust suit said leagues are natural monopolies in Judge Peter K. Leisure’s court room in lower Manhattan. Rozelle was regarded as a genius but that genius label came because of powers given to his league by Congress and two Presidents. Major League Baseball, despite a 1922 antitrust exemption, had to fend off the Continental Baseball League in 1960 and the American League was forced to expand to Los Angeles and Washington in 1960 after Calvin Griffith moved his Washington Senators to Bloomington, Minnesota for fear of what Congress would do. The Continental League failed but the National League put teams in New York and Houston in 1962 because of the league and Congressional pressure.
The 1969 American League expansion came about only after Charles Finley moved his Kansas City A’s to Oakland for the 1968 season. Missouri Senator Stuart Symington applied pressure on the American League to restore a Kansas City franchise as soon as possible or baseball’s antitrust exemption would be gone. Kansas City and Seattle were granted American League franchises. Not to be outdone, National League owners added San Diego and Montreal.
In 1976, faced with an antitrust lawsuit filed by King County, Seattle and Washington over the move of the Seattle Pilots to Milwaukee in March 1970 for breach of contract, the American League expanded to Seattle and then added Toronto.
The 1991 National League expansion to Miami and Denver came as a result of political pressure on baseball from Colorado Senator Tim Wirth and Florida’s Connie Mack III. The 1995 baseball expansion to St. Petersburg, Florida and Phoenix was the result of an expiring stadium funding plan in Phoenix. Had baseball not acted by April 1, 1995, public monies for a downtown Phoenix stadium would have disappeared.
Even monopolies can not run roughshod as Major League Baseball owners learned. An arbitrator, Peter Seitz, granted players free agency on December 23, 1975 even though baseball had an antitrust exemption.
There is a lot of noise surrounding the January 13 Supreme Court session. Some “experts” suggest that the American sports landscape could be changed should the majority agree with the NFL, others think it is a simple case where a small hat company is suing the NFL because it lost business and wants a crack at talking to individual teams. The court will rule sometime this spring but will the decision change the big business of American sports?
The NFL is betting that the court will reaffirm that it is a single entity which does business for 32 affiliates. American Needle apparently just wants to have a crack at getting a slice of the NFL’s business.
evanjweiner@yahoo.com
American Needle, the NFL and the Supreme Court of the United States
By Evan Weiner
January 9, 2010
(New York, N. Y.) -- The Supreme Court of the United States goes back to work this week and the nine justices have an interesting case on the docket.
American Needle Inc. v the NFL (Docket 08-661).
The Court is supposed to listen to arguments from American Needle attorneys and National Football League lawyers as to whether National Football League Properties, the National Football League and the 32 individual teams acted as one when the league awarded Reebok International an exclusive 10-year deal to produce hats and other headgear in 2001 in violation of Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890.
Reebok is now owned by Addidas AG.
National Football League Properties decided in 2000 that it would put the caps, hats and headgear license up for bid and would give the contract to one company. Prior to 2001, the league had an assortment of licensees for the manufacture of caps, hats and headgear with American Needle holding one of those licenses.
After Reebok won the bid, American Needle decided to file an antitrust lawsuit in Chicago against the NFL in December 2004. The NFL picked up victories on in lower level trial and appeals court but the small Buffalo Grove, Illinois-based American Needle Inc. decided to press on and take the case to the Supreme Court.
National Football League lawyers apparently have no problems arguing the case before the nine justices and basically told American Needle’s attorneys to bring it on.
The NFL has received support from the National Basketball Association and the National Hockey League. Major League Baseball, which received antitrust protection from the Supreme Court of the United States in the 1922 ruling against the Baltimore Terrapins because baseball was a game, not a business, is not involved with this particularly case.
This might be the case that the National Football League has been seeking for decades. A favorable decision by the SCOTUS would presumably give the league an antitrust blanket and allow the league to really act with monopoly powers although Congress in 1961 gave the league antitrust protection with the Sports Broadcast Act of 1961 which was signed into law by President John F. Kennedy. Congress gave football owners another gift by allowing the June 8, 1966 merger of the National Football League and the American Football League in the fall of that year which ended a bidding war for players.
President Lyndon B. Johnson gave his approval to the merger when the AFL-NFL legislation was tacked onto another bill. New Orleans ended up with a football team because of the political maneuvering by Louisiana Senator Russell Long and Representative Hale Boggs who traded a no vote on the merger in exchange for a guarantee that New Orleans would receive a team as part of political horse trading.
The fact that American Needle wants to do business with the NFL is pretty obvious. A NFL product license can bring in a sizeable check for any company. American Needle is arguing that it should be allowed to talk to each of the 32 teams not just the league and that companies like American Needle should have the opportunity to talk to say Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones about a deal where presumably they can offer him more money than he could get from his 1/32 share of the revenue.
The American Needle Inc. v NFL Supreme Court battle has apparently made an awful lot of people nervous and it does not appear from those who have SCOTUS anxiety are from the NFL owners camp. The National Football League Coaches Association filed a brief with the court saying that an NFL victory could mean a salary cap for head coaches and a salary scale for assistants because the NFL would gain monopoly power.
Additionally, some are arguing that the NFL would push a TV agenda that would include the scheduling of games against High School and College contests during the High School and College football season which is presently not allowed under the terms of the Sports Broadcast Act of 1961 which would have a direct impact on attendance at High School contests across America and cut down on the TV audience of Saturday college games.
The National Football League Players Association, which is preparing strategy in collective bargaining talks with the league owners with the Collective Bargaining Agreement schedule to expire after the 2010 season, is worried that an NFL SCOTUS victory would harm the players bargaining abilities since the association has used the courts to settle labor disputes.
The Major League Baseball Players Association, the National Basketball Players Association and the National Hockey League Players Association are supporting the National Football League Players Association by filing a brief which is supporting American Needle.
The National Federation of State High School Associations wants to keep Friday Night Lights going with no NFL interference.
The Federal Trade Commission has asked the nine justices to “vacate the judgment of the U. S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh District” because the FTC is of the opinion that the league is 32 separate entities and that the league violates section 1 and section 2 of the Sherman Act.
Legal experts from various law schools, other lawyers with opinions and media pumped up experts like the Chicago-based Marc Ganis are predicting doom for fans should the National Football League win the case. (Sportswriters should do some research instead of relying on "experts" like Ganis and law professors, lazy journalism on their part) The dire consequences include even higher costs for merchandise (the cost is extremely high now for those who have not shopped) to league wide higher league mandated ticket pricing (ticket prices are extraordinarily high and in some cases come with a personal seat licensing tab for those who have not noticed) to hiring cheaper players and putting an inferior brand of football on the field (guess the experts failed to watch any Detroit Lions games over the past five years or this year’s St. Louis Rams).
The NFL and other leagues are in a powerful position not necessarily because of consumer power. Congressional acts in 1961 and 1966 backed by the signatures of President Kennedy and Johnson made the NFL a juggernaut. The Supreme Court of the United States in 1922 cemented the National and American League of baseball position as the dominant baseball force. Congress would not take up a proposed American Basketball Association-National Basketball Association merger in the early 1970s which forced the NBA to find a Washington political insider to become the league’s commissioner. Former Kennedy and Johnson staffer Lawrence O’Brien became the NBA’s head man in 1975 and by 1976, the NBA absorbed four ABA teams, Denver, Indiana, New York and San Antonio with each team paying $3.2 million to join the new league. Additionally the Uniondale, N. Y.-based New York Nets had to pay the New York Knicks $4.8 million for invading Knicks territory.
The NBA dictated terms despite not having the type of monopoly powers that Major League Baseball was granted by the 1922 SCOTUS decision.
Sports leagues are powerful but are always mindful of Congress even though Pete Rozelle during the 1986 United States Football League v National Football League antitrust suit said leagues are natural monopolies in Judge Peter K. Leisure’s court room in lower Manhattan. Rozelle was regarded as a genius but that genius label came because of powers given to his league by Congress and two Presidents. Major League Baseball, despite a 1922 antitrust exemption, had to fend off the Continental Baseball League in 1960 and the American League was forced to expand to Los Angeles and Washington in 1960 after Calvin Griffith moved his Washington Senators to Bloomington, Minnesota for fear of what Congress would do. The Continental League failed but the National League put teams in New York and Houston in 1962 because of the league and Congressional pressure.
The 1969 American League expansion came about only after Charles Finley moved his Kansas City A’s to Oakland for the 1968 season. Missouri Senator Stuart Symington applied pressure on the American League to restore a Kansas City franchise as soon as possible or baseball’s antitrust exemption would be gone. Kansas City and Seattle were granted American League franchises. Not to be outdone, National League owners added San Diego and Montreal.
In 1976, faced with an antitrust lawsuit filed by King County, Seattle and Washington over the move of the Seattle Pilots to Milwaukee in March 1970 for breach of contract, the American League expanded to Seattle and then added Toronto.
The 1991 National League expansion to Miami and Denver came as a result of political pressure on baseball from Colorado Senator Tim Wirth and Florida’s Connie Mack III. The 1995 baseball expansion to St. Petersburg, Florida and Phoenix was the result of an expiring stadium funding plan in Phoenix. Had baseball not acted by April 1, 1995, public monies for a downtown Phoenix stadium would have disappeared.
Even monopolies can not run roughshod as Major League Baseball owners learned. An arbitrator, Peter Seitz, granted players free agency on December 23, 1975 even though baseball had an antitrust exemption.
There is a lot of noise surrounding the January 13 Supreme Court session. Some “experts” suggest that the American sports landscape could be changed should the majority agree with the NFL, others think it is a simple case where a small hat company is suing the NFL because it lost business and wants a crack at talking to individual teams. The court will rule sometime this spring but will the decision change the big business of American sports?
The NFL is betting that the court will reaffirm that it is a single entity which does business for 32 affiliates. American Needle apparently just wants to have a crack at getting a slice of the NFL’s business.
evanjweiner@yahoo.com
Friday, November 20, 2009
Is Detroit Still a Major League Sports Town?
http://www.mcnsports.com/en/node/7577
Is Detroit Still a Major League Sports Town?
By Evan Weiner
November 20, 2009
10:00 PM EST
Has Detroit ceased being a middle market franchise? There are three not so subtle clues that Detroit has slid into a small market city that has cropped up in just the last week. Mike Ilitch’s Detroit Tigers baseball franchise has a lot of money tied up in players and the rumors are that Ilitch is about ready to shave millions from his payroll and is looking to trade Curtis Granderson, a 28-year-old All-Star outfield, who has three years remaining on a five-year agreement with Ilitch that pays him more than six million dollars annually.
Granderson remains a member of the Detroit Tigers, but the 2009-10 hot stove league is far from over.
Granderson plays in a market that is going through more than just a bad recession. Detroit and the surrounding area lost been devastated by the retrenchment of the auto industry with both General Motors and Chrysler hanging on because of government bailouts from the United States and Canada. The only good news Ilitch has seen is that the American dollar has weakened while the Canadian dollar has flirted with par with the US greenback, which is a good development in the Detroit market as a good chunk of the metropolitan area is shared with Windsor and nearby Ontario cities. The bad part is that the automobile industry was a major part of the Windsor/Ontario economy as well.
Whether Granderson or Edwin Jackson is entirely up to Tigers management. But there is a question of just how much money that corporate Detroit can sink into two of Ilitch’s teams, the Tigers and the NHL Red Wings, William Ford’s Detroit Lions and the Auburn Hills-based Detroit Pistons.
The answer seems to be, not as much as the old days. In some aspects, it seems as if the Detroit Lions franchise has gone back 75 years. This Sunday’s home game against the Cleveland Browns will be blacked out in the Detroit metro region, an area that includes Toledo, Ohio, Lansing, Michigan and the Saginaw-Flint, Michigan market. Granted both the Lions and Browns are terrible football teams, both have won just one game and lost eight, but there would seem to be enough Cleveland Browns backers to make the relatively short trip up to Detroit.
This is the fourth time in six games that a Lions home contest has been blacked out in 2009. Detroit did sell out earlier this year against Pittsburgh and a lot of Steelers fans made the trip to Detroit but Ford’s team has had a lot of trouble selling 40,000 or more tickets per game. In 2008, as Detroit’s football team continued to lose and the auto companies were on the verge of failing, five of the Lions last six home games were not shown in the Detroit and secondary Detroit markets.
Of course, it cannot be said that a winning team in Detroit would do that much better considering the deteriorating economic conditions in Detroit and the surrounding area.
Detroit will be facing an old Thanksgiving Day rival this year on turkey day, the Green Bay Packers. More than likely, Detroit will fill up the stadium with help from Packers backers.
The Detroit Lions franchise was born in the Great Depression that started with the stock market crash in 1929 after the Portsmouth (Ohio) Spartans franchise was on the financial ropes in 1933. The owner of Detroit’s WJR radio, Gene Richards bought the Spartans and move the team to Detroit where the newly minted Lions franchise was looking to get people into Briggs Stadium.
Richards scheduled a Thanksgiving Day game in 1934 with the hopes that Thanksgiving Day parade goers in Detroit would wander over to the stadium and watch. There was significance to that game that is mostly lost today. The Chicago Bears-Detroit Lions contest was the first NFL game ever to be heard coast-to-coast and border-to-border in the United States. Detroit has hosted 69 Thanksgiving Day contests from 1934-38 and 1945-today. In 1939, United States President Franklin Roosevelt changed Thanksgiving and moved the holiday up a week to November 23 in an effort to spark Christmas sales and help the still struggling economy.
Political parties never change stripes and a silly battle ensued between Democrats and Republicans (this in the days prior to ersatz arguments on talk radio and cable TV news) and by 1940 there were states that “celebrated” the Democrats’ Thanksgiving a week earlier than the Republicans Thanksgiving. Pittsburgh and Philadelphia played each other in 1939 and 1940.
They were in the same state.
The municipally funded Pontiac Silverdome opened in 1975 with the Lions football team as the main tenant. The new facility cost $55.7 million. William Clay Ford’s Lions played football there from 1975-2001. The dome also played host to Detroit Pistons games from 1978-88. After Ford moved his Lions back to downtown Detroit, the then 27-year old football facility has virtually useless. The Jehovah’s Witnesses left the facility in 2004 after using it for years for an annual convention.
Between 2003 and 2006, the Pontiac Silverdome parking lot was the home for a Drive-In movie theater.
Two leagues that never got off the ground took a look at the facility. The World Hockey Association and the United States Football League. The reincarnation of the WHA was an ill-fated idea but there were plans to put a rink in the building in 2003 and the reincarnated USFL was looking to purchase the building and playing games there in 2010 along with hosting concerts,
The new USFL never got financial backing. On November 16, a Toronto-based company bought the old stadium for $583,000 at auction with the hope of placing a Major League Soccer team in the building.
The “new” USFL appears to be in the hands of another promoter with the hope of starting up in 2011 but that league will not be buying the old dome.
At least the building is still standing which is more than can be said for old stadiums in Seattle and Pittsburgh which were blown up after new facilities for major league sports teams were build with taxpayers money. Seattle (King County) and Pittsburgh (Allegheny County) taxpayers are still paying off the debt on the long departed Seattle Kingdome and Pittsburgh’s Three Rivers Stadium.
Some may suggest the cheap purchase price for the Silverdome is the result of a crashing Detroit real estate market and the weak economy. While that is a major factor, the real reason the price went so cheap is that once a stadium gets to a certain age, it becomes useless and has virtually no value because it lacks what sports owners want today, luxury boxes, club seats, wide alleyways for concessions, in-facility restaurants and shops.
What was state-of-the-art in 1975 is a dump in today’s sports marketplace.
Detroit was once a major market thanks to the auto companies a half century ago. Today, the city and the surrounding area are hurting economically and the population is shrinking. That has taken a toll on Detroit sports properties and raises the question, can Detroit remain a major sports town that can support big time pro and college sports or will Detroit become a city like Louisville, Kentucky, which was once major league town in a different century?
eweiner@mcn.tv
Is Detroit Still a Major League Sports Town?
By Evan Weiner
November 20, 2009
10:00 PM EST
Has Detroit ceased being a middle market franchise? There are three not so subtle clues that Detroit has slid into a small market city that has cropped up in just the last week. Mike Ilitch’s Detroit Tigers baseball franchise has a lot of money tied up in players and the rumors are that Ilitch is about ready to shave millions from his payroll and is looking to trade Curtis Granderson, a 28-year-old All-Star outfield, who has three years remaining on a five-year agreement with Ilitch that pays him more than six million dollars annually.
Granderson remains a member of the Detroit Tigers, but the 2009-10 hot stove league is far from over.
Granderson plays in a market that is going through more than just a bad recession. Detroit and the surrounding area lost been devastated by the retrenchment of the auto industry with both General Motors and Chrysler hanging on because of government bailouts from the United States and Canada. The only good news Ilitch has seen is that the American dollar has weakened while the Canadian dollar has flirted with par with the US greenback, which is a good development in the Detroit market as a good chunk of the metropolitan area is shared with Windsor and nearby Ontario cities. The bad part is that the automobile industry was a major part of the Windsor/Ontario economy as well.
Whether Granderson or Edwin Jackson is entirely up to Tigers management. But there is a question of just how much money that corporate Detroit can sink into two of Ilitch’s teams, the Tigers and the NHL Red Wings, William Ford’s Detroit Lions and the Auburn Hills-based Detroit Pistons.
The answer seems to be, not as much as the old days. In some aspects, it seems as if the Detroit Lions franchise has gone back 75 years. This Sunday’s home game against the Cleveland Browns will be blacked out in the Detroit metro region, an area that includes Toledo, Ohio, Lansing, Michigan and the Saginaw-Flint, Michigan market. Granted both the Lions and Browns are terrible football teams, both have won just one game and lost eight, but there would seem to be enough Cleveland Browns backers to make the relatively short trip up to Detroit.
This is the fourth time in six games that a Lions home contest has been blacked out in 2009. Detroit did sell out earlier this year against Pittsburgh and a lot of Steelers fans made the trip to Detroit but Ford’s team has had a lot of trouble selling 40,000 or more tickets per game. In 2008, as Detroit’s football team continued to lose and the auto companies were on the verge of failing, five of the Lions last six home games were not shown in the Detroit and secondary Detroit markets.
Of course, it cannot be said that a winning team in Detroit would do that much better considering the deteriorating economic conditions in Detroit and the surrounding area.
Detroit will be facing an old Thanksgiving Day rival this year on turkey day, the Green Bay Packers. More than likely, Detroit will fill up the stadium with help from Packers backers.
The Detroit Lions franchise was born in the Great Depression that started with the stock market crash in 1929 after the Portsmouth (Ohio) Spartans franchise was on the financial ropes in 1933. The owner of Detroit’s WJR radio, Gene Richards bought the Spartans and move the team to Detroit where the newly minted Lions franchise was looking to get people into Briggs Stadium.
Richards scheduled a Thanksgiving Day game in 1934 with the hopes that Thanksgiving Day parade goers in Detroit would wander over to the stadium and watch. There was significance to that game that is mostly lost today. The Chicago Bears-Detroit Lions contest was the first NFL game ever to be heard coast-to-coast and border-to-border in the United States. Detroit has hosted 69 Thanksgiving Day contests from 1934-38 and 1945-today. In 1939, United States President Franklin Roosevelt changed Thanksgiving and moved the holiday up a week to November 23 in an effort to spark Christmas sales and help the still struggling economy.
Political parties never change stripes and a silly battle ensued between Democrats and Republicans (this in the days prior to ersatz arguments on talk radio and cable TV news) and by 1940 there were states that “celebrated” the Democrats’ Thanksgiving a week earlier than the Republicans Thanksgiving. Pittsburgh and Philadelphia played each other in 1939 and 1940.
They were in the same state.
The municipally funded Pontiac Silverdome opened in 1975 with the Lions football team as the main tenant. The new facility cost $55.7 million. William Clay Ford’s Lions played football there from 1975-2001. The dome also played host to Detroit Pistons games from 1978-88. After Ford moved his Lions back to downtown Detroit, the then 27-year old football facility has virtually useless. The Jehovah’s Witnesses left the facility in 2004 after using it for years for an annual convention.
Between 2003 and 2006, the Pontiac Silverdome parking lot was the home for a Drive-In movie theater.
Two leagues that never got off the ground took a look at the facility. The World Hockey Association and the United States Football League. The reincarnation of the WHA was an ill-fated idea but there were plans to put a rink in the building in 2003 and the reincarnated USFL was looking to purchase the building and playing games there in 2010 along with hosting concerts,
The new USFL never got financial backing. On November 16, a Toronto-based company bought the old stadium for $583,000 at auction with the hope of placing a Major League Soccer team in the building.
The “new” USFL appears to be in the hands of another promoter with the hope of starting up in 2011 but that league will not be buying the old dome.
At least the building is still standing which is more than can be said for old stadiums in Seattle and Pittsburgh which were blown up after new facilities for major league sports teams were build with taxpayers money. Seattle (King County) and Pittsburgh (Allegheny County) taxpayers are still paying off the debt on the long departed Seattle Kingdome and Pittsburgh’s Three Rivers Stadium.
Some may suggest the cheap purchase price for the Silverdome is the result of a crashing Detroit real estate market and the weak economy. While that is a major factor, the real reason the price went so cheap is that once a stadium gets to a certain age, it becomes useless and has virtually no value because it lacks what sports owners want today, luxury boxes, club seats, wide alleyways for concessions, in-facility restaurants and shops.
What was state-of-the-art in 1975 is a dump in today’s sports marketplace.
Detroit was once a major market thanks to the auto companies a half century ago. Today, the city and the surrounding area are hurting economically and the population is shrinking. That has taken a toll on Detroit sports properties and raises the question, can Detroit remain a major sports town that can support big time pro and college sports or will Detroit become a city like Louisville, Kentucky, which was once major league town in a different century?
eweiner@mcn.tv
Saturday, October 24, 2009
NHL Loonie for Hockey in Quebec City or Winnipeg?
http://www.mcnsports.com/en/node/7560
NHL Loonie for Hockey in Quebec City or Winnipeg?
By Evan Weiner
October 19, 2009
5:00 PM (ADT)
(Saint John, New Brunswick) – Saint John, New Brunswick is not anyone’s idea of the first stop of any major league sports tour, but walking through the downtown area of Saint John gives you a quick idea why it is possible that Canada is once again high on the list of possible destinations for financially failing NHL teams. A Saint John’s visitor does see an alarmingly high number of empty storefronts while walking through the downtown but a visitor armed with American dollars and ready to buy items gives you a quick answer as to why the National Hockey League is at least entertaining thoughts of putting franchises in either Winnipeg or Quebec City again.
The Canadian dollar is nearly on par with the American dollar for the first time in two years. That is not necessarily good news for Canadian companies hoping for American investors because the US dollar is worth on the other side of the 49th parallel has evaporated nor is it good news for businesses along with US-Canadian border as Canadians shop in American stores as American prices for items are cheaper. Eventually that can hurt Canadians as fewer US dollars flow into the country. Canadians have a major balancing act always. But the fact is that the loonie is getting stronger while the greenback has weakened.
All of this is good news for the six existing NHL franchises along with the National Basketball Association’s Toronto Raptors and the Toronto Blue Jays of Major League Baseball. Every time the Canadian dollar goes up against the American dollar, the franchises have more disposable income. The inverse holds true while the loonie backs off. The strengthening loonie is also helpful to Major League Soccer’s Toronto team and probably is good for the National Football League’s Seattle Seahawks, Detroit Lions and the Buffalo Bills as those border three teams draw from the British Columbia and Ontario parts of their markets. It also helps Mike Ilitch’s Detroit Tigers baseball team and his NHL Red Wings.
The road back to Winnipeg or Quebec City in the NHL, Vancouver in the NBA and Montreal in Major League Baseball will be long and there is no guarantee that the loonie will maintain it’s present value. The NHL left Winnipeg and Quebec City when the loonie was heading to a low of 62 cents back in the late 1990s.
The situation in Quebec City has not changed much since Marcel Aubut sold his Quebec Nordiques to Charlie Lyons and Ascent back in 1995. Aubut was looking for a publicly backed new Quebec City arena and was told no by both Quebec City and the province of Quebec. Lyons moved the team to Denver. Recently Quebec City’ Mayor Regis Labeaume talked with NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman about his plans to build a new, taxpayers funded arena. Labeaume figures it will cost $400 million (Cn) to construct the building with $175 million coming from Canada, $175 million from the province and $50 million from Quebec City coffers.
There is no doubt that Quebec City has passionate fans but the financially the NHL of 2009-10 differs from the final days of the Nordiques franchise. Ticket prices have skyrocketed along with player’s salaries. There also might be some English-speaking Canadian players who might refuse to play in the French-speaking city as well although only player, Eric Lindros back in 1991, flat out turned his back in the city. Quebec City had a long history of having fine non-French players who wanted to play there including the Statsny Brothers and Joe Sakic.
The founder of the Kontinental Hockey League and the CEO of Russia’s Gazprom, Alexander Medvedev, suggested last spring that he thought Quebec City would be a great hockey market.
But the market still lacks an arena and there is no suggestion that either the city or the province is ready to spend hundreds of millions of loonies on a building and then give 85 or 90 percent of the revenues generated in the building to the owner of a hockey team. Arena costs have risen from the $70 million dollar (US) range in the late 1980s to the more than a billion dollars (US) for places like the new Yankee Stadium in New York, the new Dallas Cowboys stadium in Arlington, Texas and the new New Jersey football stadium in the Meadowlands. It was far cheaper to build in 1995.
If the province or city doesn’t come up with loonies, then a prospective owner will have to put up cash in the building process and will have to pass along building costs to the fans or customers and it would have to be customers because ticket prices for regular seats and for the higher end items like luxury boxes and club seats will be astronomical.
Quebec City hockey proponents need to only look south of the border to New York where Major League Baseball’s New York Yankees and New York Mets had trouble filling up the high end tickets and where the National Football League’s New York Giants and New York Jets are having problems getting people to reach into their pockets to pony up thousands of dollars for personal seat licenses for the right to own a seat and then buying a ticket for that seat.
No matter how rabid an area’s fan base might be, the harsh realty is that fans don’t have the wherewithal to spend a small fortune to attend a game. National Basketball Association Commissioner David Stern claims that the NBA might sell more tickets in 2009-10 but that owners’ revenues will be down because they are discounting tickets.
Stern though is also positioning the owners in the upcoming collective bargaining talks with the players. The present owners-players agreement ends in 2011.
Quebec City remains a small market with limited corporate and TV money although that could change depending on the definition of the marketplace. If Quebec becomes a provincial team, perhaps a local cable TV entity will offer New York or Toronto like prices for rights fees. A $250 million contract over 10 years would certainly make a Quebec City franchise more viable. The roughly six million people in the Province of Quebec (along with nearby New Brunswick) is certainly large enough to handle an NHL team if the franchise can position itself as the province’s team but there is another factor here that will present a significant obstacle, Quebec already has a provincial team -- the Montreal Canadiens.
Will the Molsons, the Canadiens owners, want to see another team in Quebec City? Thirty years ago, the NHL rejected overtures from World Hockey Association members Quebec City, Edmonton, Winnipeg and Hartford to join the league. Hockey fans in the three Canadian cities threatened a boycott and would not purchase Molson beer if Quebec City, Edmonton and Winnipeg were denied NHL entry.
Eventually the four WHA teams entered the league for the 1979-80 season after some NHL owners relented and took WHA owners money to enter the league. But throughout the years there have been suggestions that the NHL never shed any tears when Quebec City, Winnipeg and Hartford departed although Bettman did work feverishly with Edmonton officials and businesses to prevent the franchise from moving to Houston in 1998.
Bettman, who gets bad reviews from what appears to be very provincially minded Canadian sportswriters for various reasons that don’t always seem to stem from his policies, has been in the forefront of preserving Canadian franchises in Edmonton and Ottawa. Bettman’s lobbying efforts did get Alberta officials to throw some money into Edmonton and Calgary’s coffers from the province’s hockey lottery and Bettman worked the Ottawa business community along with Ontario leaders to make sure the Senators remained in the Canadian capital after the team’s financial problems in the 1990s surfaced and through the team’s bankruptcy in 2003.
The NHL does have a Canadian commitment despite the writings of Canadian scribes although those writers seemed to suffer from memory loss during this year’s Phoenix Coyotes saga when Jim Balsillie attempted to buy the team and move the franchise to Hamilton, Ontario. Bettman showed the same tenacity in the Phoenix situation as he did in Edmonton and Pittsburgh and in Buffalo after the both the Sabres ownership declared bankruptcy in 2003 and in New Jersey in 1995 to keep the franchises in their home cities.
The Winnipeg situation has changed somewhat since Barry Shenkerow sold his Winnipeg Jets to Richard Burke and Steven Gluckstern in 1996. The team moved to Phoenix that fall. Shenkerow was looking for a municipally funded arena with all the gadgets that were state of the art in 1995 including luxury boxes and club seats. He never got the building but there is a new structure in Winnipeg today that probably would be considered state of the art. The problem with Winnipeg in 1995 remains the same today; there is a limited population, which means a limited cable TV market and limited corporate support. In other words despite a high interest from a local fan base, there are too few people to make it worthwhile. A potential owner would have to get virtually every penny spent in the new arena and have a cable TV operator willing to spent New York or Toronto money for TV that would include the entire province of Manitoba along with western Ontario and Saskatchewan and possibly make the games available in northern Minnesota and North Dakota to make it worthwhile.
In both cases, Quebec City and Winnipeg, the local market may be hockey fertile but is it financially fertile? That is why the teams left in the first place. Aubut decried the 1995 Collective Bargaining Agreement and predicted his Quebec Nordiques would not survive because he could not compete financially with the terms of that agreement. Despite the 2004-05 NHL lockout and the implementation of a salary cap, the business of the NHL remains very expensive.
Two years ago when the Canadian dollar overtook the US dollar in value, NBA Commissioner David Stern lamented that there was no interest parties in British Columbia who wanted any information on the finances of an NBA team. Vancouver was an NBA failure between 1995-2001 because the owner of the Vancouver Canucks Arthur Griffiths got into financial trouble by spending his own money to build an arena and then bought an NBA franchise for about $140 million Canadian. Eventually Griffiths sold the NBA Grizzlies to Michael Heisley who was so desperate to own an NBA team that he accepted Griffiths lease in the building which gave him virtually no luxury suite, club seat or concessions money. Heisley move his team to Memphis where it has struggled financially since day one in the new city.
There seems to be no interest in returning a team to Vancouver but if the loonie remains hot, there might be someone who might want to kick the tires in Vancouver.
There is no information suggesting that Major League Baseball wants to return to Montreal or that Montreal city officials want MLB back. Montreal Expos owner Jeffrey Loria was unable to build a stadium in the city in the early 1990s and ended up owning the Florida Marlins in a swap of franchises that saw MLB take over the Expos and Marlins owner John Henry end up with the Boston Red Sox. The deal was 10-strike for Henry’s portfolio, some much so that wife is now buying up property near the Garden in Boston as the family continues to gobble up properties near Fenway Park and now the Garden and Loria is getting a ballpark at the old Orange Bowl site in Miami. Montreal had changed throughout the years since MLB expanded there in 1968 but the end of the Loria years, no English-speaking Montreal radio station even bothered to bid for the team’s play-by-play rights.
The best area in good or bad economic times for an NHL team is probably the Kitchener-Waterloo area, which is just outside Toronto’s territorial rights. Hamilton lacks a suitable arena. If any Major League sport returns to Canada, it will be the NHL with the NFL keeping a close on Toronto.
The NFL-Toronto situation is difficult because of the presence of the Canadian Football League in the city. The Toronto Argonauts used to be a big deal in the city which had just one big league sport franchise---the Maple Leafs—but that was before 1977 when the American League put a baseball team in the city. Toronto is big league in every sense of the way and the CFL isn’t but the CFL is uniquely Canadian and in 1974, Parliament wanted to protect the league by imposing laws making it very difficult for any American football entity to operate in the country.
Buffalo Bills owner Ralph Wilson is selling one home game a year to Toronto sports operators through 2012. Wilson, who is 90 years old, has a deal with New York to keep his Bills playing in Orchard Park through the 2012 season. Wilson has been regionalizing the team in the past few years in order to broaden his fan/customer/corporate base and part of his market is the Niagara Frontier of Ontario. Toronto would probably be a strong NFL franchise even though 12-man football is played in Ontario high schools and there are no football factories in Canadian colleges. Still, Toronto offers a football owner something that no other non-NFL city can – Bay Street – the financial capital of Canada. Toronto has corporate dollars that Buffalo (and Jacksonville) does not have. Toronto and Los Angeles are the best football markets available in North America and neither has a team.
Because of politics, the best solution for the NFL might be a split of the Buffalo-Toronto franchise like the Green Bay-Milwaukee situation that existed until 1994 when the Packers played home games in both Wisconsin cities.
The hot loonie has attracted Bettman’s interest but whether it is a passing fancy or the real McCoy will be answered by financial markets and politics because at the end of the day, it is not about the game that is played, rather the factors that fans never think about like currency rates, availability of credit and political sensibilities.
eweiner@mcn.tv
NHL Loonie for Hockey in Quebec City or Winnipeg?
By Evan Weiner
October 19, 2009
5:00 PM (ADT)
(Saint John, New Brunswick) – Saint John, New Brunswick is not anyone’s idea of the first stop of any major league sports tour, but walking through the downtown area of Saint John gives you a quick idea why it is possible that Canada is once again high on the list of possible destinations for financially failing NHL teams. A Saint John’s visitor does see an alarmingly high number of empty storefronts while walking through the downtown but a visitor armed with American dollars and ready to buy items gives you a quick answer as to why the National Hockey League is at least entertaining thoughts of putting franchises in either Winnipeg or Quebec City again.
The Canadian dollar is nearly on par with the American dollar for the first time in two years. That is not necessarily good news for Canadian companies hoping for American investors because the US dollar is worth on the other side of the 49th parallel has evaporated nor is it good news for businesses along with US-Canadian border as Canadians shop in American stores as American prices for items are cheaper. Eventually that can hurt Canadians as fewer US dollars flow into the country. Canadians have a major balancing act always. But the fact is that the loonie is getting stronger while the greenback has weakened.
All of this is good news for the six existing NHL franchises along with the National Basketball Association’s Toronto Raptors and the Toronto Blue Jays of Major League Baseball. Every time the Canadian dollar goes up against the American dollar, the franchises have more disposable income. The inverse holds true while the loonie backs off. The strengthening loonie is also helpful to Major League Soccer’s Toronto team and probably is good for the National Football League’s Seattle Seahawks, Detroit Lions and the Buffalo Bills as those border three teams draw from the British Columbia and Ontario parts of their markets. It also helps Mike Ilitch’s Detroit Tigers baseball team and his NHL Red Wings.
The road back to Winnipeg or Quebec City in the NHL, Vancouver in the NBA and Montreal in Major League Baseball will be long and there is no guarantee that the loonie will maintain it’s present value. The NHL left Winnipeg and Quebec City when the loonie was heading to a low of 62 cents back in the late 1990s.
The situation in Quebec City has not changed much since Marcel Aubut sold his Quebec Nordiques to Charlie Lyons and Ascent back in 1995. Aubut was looking for a publicly backed new Quebec City arena and was told no by both Quebec City and the province of Quebec. Lyons moved the team to Denver. Recently Quebec City’ Mayor Regis Labeaume talked with NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman about his plans to build a new, taxpayers funded arena. Labeaume figures it will cost $400 million (Cn) to construct the building with $175 million coming from Canada, $175 million from the province and $50 million from Quebec City coffers.
There is no doubt that Quebec City has passionate fans but the financially the NHL of 2009-10 differs from the final days of the Nordiques franchise. Ticket prices have skyrocketed along with player’s salaries. There also might be some English-speaking Canadian players who might refuse to play in the French-speaking city as well although only player, Eric Lindros back in 1991, flat out turned his back in the city. Quebec City had a long history of having fine non-French players who wanted to play there including the Statsny Brothers and Joe Sakic.
The founder of the Kontinental Hockey League and the CEO of Russia’s Gazprom, Alexander Medvedev, suggested last spring that he thought Quebec City would be a great hockey market.
But the market still lacks an arena and there is no suggestion that either the city or the province is ready to spend hundreds of millions of loonies on a building and then give 85 or 90 percent of the revenues generated in the building to the owner of a hockey team. Arena costs have risen from the $70 million dollar (US) range in the late 1980s to the more than a billion dollars (US) for places like the new Yankee Stadium in New York, the new Dallas Cowboys stadium in Arlington, Texas and the new New Jersey football stadium in the Meadowlands. It was far cheaper to build in 1995.
If the province or city doesn’t come up with loonies, then a prospective owner will have to put up cash in the building process and will have to pass along building costs to the fans or customers and it would have to be customers because ticket prices for regular seats and for the higher end items like luxury boxes and club seats will be astronomical.
Quebec City hockey proponents need to only look south of the border to New York where Major League Baseball’s New York Yankees and New York Mets had trouble filling up the high end tickets and where the National Football League’s New York Giants and New York Jets are having problems getting people to reach into their pockets to pony up thousands of dollars for personal seat licenses for the right to own a seat and then buying a ticket for that seat.
No matter how rabid an area’s fan base might be, the harsh realty is that fans don’t have the wherewithal to spend a small fortune to attend a game. National Basketball Association Commissioner David Stern claims that the NBA might sell more tickets in 2009-10 but that owners’ revenues will be down because they are discounting tickets.
Stern though is also positioning the owners in the upcoming collective bargaining talks with the players. The present owners-players agreement ends in 2011.
Quebec City remains a small market with limited corporate and TV money although that could change depending on the definition of the marketplace. If Quebec becomes a provincial team, perhaps a local cable TV entity will offer New York or Toronto like prices for rights fees. A $250 million contract over 10 years would certainly make a Quebec City franchise more viable. The roughly six million people in the Province of Quebec (along with nearby New Brunswick) is certainly large enough to handle an NHL team if the franchise can position itself as the province’s team but there is another factor here that will present a significant obstacle, Quebec already has a provincial team -- the Montreal Canadiens.
Will the Molsons, the Canadiens owners, want to see another team in Quebec City? Thirty years ago, the NHL rejected overtures from World Hockey Association members Quebec City, Edmonton, Winnipeg and Hartford to join the league. Hockey fans in the three Canadian cities threatened a boycott and would not purchase Molson beer if Quebec City, Edmonton and Winnipeg were denied NHL entry.
Eventually the four WHA teams entered the league for the 1979-80 season after some NHL owners relented and took WHA owners money to enter the league. But throughout the years there have been suggestions that the NHL never shed any tears when Quebec City, Winnipeg and Hartford departed although Bettman did work feverishly with Edmonton officials and businesses to prevent the franchise from moving to Houston in 1998.
Bettman, who gets bad reviews from what appears to be very provincially minded Canadian sportswriters for various reasons that don’t always seem to stem from his policies, has been in the forefront of preserving Canadian franchises in Edmonton and Ottawa. Bettman’s lobbying efforts did get Alberta officials to throw some money into Edmonton and Calgary’s coffers from the province’s hockey lottery and Bettman worked the Ottawa business community along with Ontario leaders to make sure the Senators remained in the Canadian capital after the team’s financial problems in the 1990s surfaced and through the team’s bankruptcy in 2003.
The NHL does have a Canadian commitment despite the writings of Canadian scribes although those writers seemed to suffer from memory loss during this year’s Phoenix Coyotes saga when Jim Balsillie attempted to buy the team and move the franchise to Hamilton, Ontario. Bettman showed the same tenacity in the Phoenix situation as he did in Edmonton and Pittsburgh and in Buffalo after the both the Sabres ownership declared bankruptcy in 2003 and in New Jersey in 1995 to keep the franchises in their home cities.
The Winnipeg situation has changed somewhat since Barry Shenkerow sold his Winnipeg Jets to Richard Burke and Steven Gluckstern in 1996. The team moved to Phoenix that fall. Shenkerow was looking for a municipally funded arena with all the gadgets that were state of the art in 1995 including luxury boxes and club seats. He never got the building but there is a new structure in Winnipeg today that probably would be considered state of the art. The problem with Winnipeg in 1995 remains the same today; there is a limited population, which means a limited cable TV market and limited corporate support. In other words despite a high interest from a local fan base, there are too few people to make it worthwhile. A potential owner would have to get virtually every penny spent in the new arena and have a cable TV operator willing to spent New York or Toronto money for TV that would include the entire province of Manitoba along with western Ontario and Saskatchewan and possibly make the games available in northern Minnesota and North Dakota to make it worthwhile.
In both cases, Quebec City and Winnipeg, the local market may be hockey fertile but is it financially fertile? That is why the teams left in the first place. Aubut decried the 1995 Collective Bargaining Agreement and predicted his Quebec Nordiques would not survive because he could not compete financially with the terms of that agreement. Despite the 2004-05 NHL lockout and the implementation of a salary cap, the business of the NHL remains very expensive.
Two years ago when the Canadian dollar overtook the US dollar in value, NBA Commissioner David Stern lamented that there was no interest parties in British Columbia who wanted any information on the finances of an NBA team. Vancouver was an NBA failure between 1995-2001 because the owner of the Vancouver Canucks Arthur Griffiths got into financial trouble by spending his own money to build an arena and then bought an NBA franchise for about $140 million Canadian. Eventually Griffiths sold the NBA Grizzlies to Michael Heisley who was so desperate to own an NBA team that he accepted Griffiths lease in the building which gave him virtually no luxury suite, club seat or concessions money. Heisley move his team to Memphis where it has struggled financially since day one in the new city.
There seems to be no interest in returning a team to Vancouver but if the loonie remains hot, there might be someone who might want to kick the tires in Vancouver.
There is no information suggesting that Major League Baseball wants to return to Montreal or that Montreal city officials want MLB back. Montreal Expos owner Jeffrey Loria was unable to build a stadium in the city in the early 1990s and ended up owning the Florida Marlins in a swap of franchises that saw MLB take over the Expos and Marlins owner John Henry end up with the Boston Red Sox. The deal was 10-strike for Henry’s portfolio, some much so that wife is now buying up property near the Garden in Boston as the family continues to gobble up properties near Fenway Park and now the Garden and Loria is getting a ballpark at the old Orange Bowl site in Miami. Montreal had changed throughout the years since MLB expanded there in 1968 but the end of the Loria years, no English-speaking Montreal radio station even bothered to bid for the team’s play-by-play rights.
The best area in good or bad economic times for an NHL team is probably the Kitchener-Waterloo area, which is just outside Toronto’s territorial rights. Hamilton lacks a suitable arena. If any Major League sport returns to Canada, it will be the NHL with the NFL keeping a close on Toronto.
The NFL-Toronto situation is difficult because of the presence of the Canadian Football League in the city. The Toronto Argonauts used to be a big deal in the city which had just one big league sport franchise---the Maple Leafs—but that was before 1977 when the American League put a baseball team in the city. Toronto is big league in every sense of the way and the CFL isn’t but the CFL is uniquely Canadian and in 1974, Parliament wanted to protect the league by imposing laws making it very difficult for any American football entity to operate in the country.
Buffalo Bills owner Ralph Wilson is selling one home game a year to Toronto sports operators through 2012. Wilson, who is 90 years old, has a deal with New York to keep his Bills playing in Orchard Park through the 2012 season. Wilson has been regionalizing the team in the past few years in order to broaden his fan/customer/corporate base and part of his market is the Niagara Frontier of Ontario. Toronto would probably be a strong NFL franchise even though 12-man football is played in Ontario high schools and there are no football factories in Canadian colleges. Still, Toronto offers a football owner something that no other non-NFL city can – Bay Street – the financial capital of Canada. Toronto has corporate dollars that Buffalo (and Jacksonville) does not have. Toronto and Los Angeles are the best football markets available in North America and neither has a team.
Because of politics, the best solution for the NFL might be a split of the Buffalo-Toronto franchise like the Green Bay-Milwaukee situation that existed until 1994 when the Packers played home games in both Wisconsin cities.
The hot loonie has attracted Bettman’s interest but whether it is a passing fancy or the real McCoy will be answered by financial markets and politics because at the end of the day, it is not about the game that is played, rather the factors that fans never think about like currency rates, availability of credit and political sensibilities.
eweiner@mcn.tv
Wednesday, September 30, 2009
NHL, MLB, NFL, NBA Win, Hamilton and Balsillie Lose
http://www.mcnsports.com/en/node/7547
NHL, MLB, NFL, NBA Win, Hamilton and Balsillie Lose
By Evan Weiner
September 30, 2009
10:30 PM EDT
(New York, N. Y.) -- So Jim Balsillie has dropped out of the bidding for the bankrupt Phoenix Coyotes National Hockey League franchise after a bankruptcy judge in Phoenix, Arizona decided that sports leagues are a private entity and that sports owners have a right to pick owners and territories. The judge, Redfield T. Baum, turned down Balsillie's bid and an offer by the NHL to buy the financially ailing franchise that sits in Glendale, Arizona not in downtown Phoenix because of a terrible decision by the sitting city council in the late 1980s when they buckled to Phoenix Suns CEO Jerry Coangelo's want for the perfect basketball arena with perfect seating for HIS customers and not approve an all purpose use for the building.
The saga of the Phoenix Coyotes should be studied by urban planners and sports business management professors, experts and students as soon as possible because of the action of the elected officials of Phoenix who made a badly flawed decision which resulted in an arena that could only sell 75 percent of the available seating because of obstructed views. Coangelo wanted a hockey team in the building but not own it. He wanted money off of the team as he got the lion’s share of the revenues of any activity in the building because of the lease he demanded and got from the Phoenix officials. Coangelo knew an NHL franchise could not succeed in that building and various Coyotes owners reached the same conclusion very quickly.
The Coyotes franchise became a piece of real estate with a subsequent owner coming up with a plan to try and build an arena in Scottsdale less than five years after Richard Burke and Steven Gluckstern purchased the Winnipeg Jets and moved the franchise to the Valley of the Sun in 1996. Gluckstern quickly cashed in and bought the New York Islanders in what was a real estate grab that did not work out for him in Nassau County, N. Y.
Burke sold the Coyotes to real estate developer Steve Ellman in 2001.
Eventually, after no arena materialized in Scottsdale, Ellman found a willing partner in Glendale and built the arena as part of a real estate development deal.
In 2006, Ellman sold the majority stake of the Coyotes to one of his real estate partners Jerry Moyes in a deal that gave Moyes the hockey team and allowed Ellman to take over the development of the real estate parcel in Glendale. Within two years, Moyes threw his hands up and walked away leaving the NHL apparently to pay off the bills. In May 2009, Moyes decided bankruptcy was a good option and found a willing individual to buy the franchise in Balsillie in a bankruptcy proceeding. The NHL apparently was trying to sell the team to Chicago White Sox and Bulls owner Jerry Reinsdorf as Moyes walked into Judge Baum's court.
Reinsdorf's Major League White Sox franchise was already doing business in Glendale as Reinsdorf moved his spring training headquarters from Tucson, Arizona to Glendale in the winter/spring of 2009.
Balsillie had twice before gone after an NHL team. He had an agreement to buy the Pittsburgh Penguins in 2006 and dropped out after to agree to some NHL stipulations. In June 2007 he made his biggest mistake in his dealing with NHL owners and NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman. Not too long after he signed an agreement to buy the Nashville Predators from Craig Leipold, he announced that he planned to relocate the team to Hamilton, Ontario in 2008-09. Soon after his plans became public, the deal was called off.
Balsillie is obvious a smart guy given his success with Research in Motion and BlackBerry but he actions in the Nashville matter and subsequent behavior in the Phoenix dealings were silly. Prospective sports owners have to understand that becoming a major league sports owner is not a right but a privilege. You have to prove that you a worthy to join their private club, Balsillie might be raking in the cash with BlackBerry but that does not mean that he will be allowed in the brotherhood of owners.
There must have been a huge sigh of relief from the law offices of Major League Baseball, the National Football League, and the National Basketball Association when they found out that Judge Baum in his decision wrote.
"In the final analysis, the court cannot find or conclude that the interests of the NHL can be adequately protected if the Coyotes are moved to Hamilton without first having a final decision regarding the claimed rights of the NHL."
Judge Baum understood from day one that the NHL is a private entity that has its own rules not too much different than a golf course which can allow or reject prospective members. Oakland Raiders owner Al Davis was able to move his team to Los Angeles after the National Football League blocked his planned relocation in 1981 by a 22-0 vote with five abstentions by joining with the Los Angeles Coliseum Commission's lawsuit which charged that the NFL violated antitrust laws by not allowing the move. Davis and the Coliseum Commission won the case, Davis moved the team to LA and the NFL was forced to tighten up its relocation rules. The NFL has not stopped any moves since the Davis case as Robert Irsay took his Baltimore Colts to Indianapolis in 1984, Bill Bidwill took an offer from Tempe, Arizona in 1988, Davis moved back to Oakland in 1995, Georgia Frontiere moved her Rams from Anaheim to St. Louis in 1995, Art Modell accepted an offer from Maryland and pulled his Cleveland Browns out of the Ohio city in 1995 with the team landing in Baltimore in 1996. Bud Adams finally made good on his threat to move the Houston Oilers in 1996 and took them to Nashville in 1998 with a stop over in Memphis in 1997.
The National Basketball Association blocked the sale of the Minnesota Timberwolves to a group led by boxing promoter Bob Arum in 1994. Arum and his partners wanted to put the team in New Orleans. The NBA led by Commissioner David Stern wanted to keep the team in Minneapolis and found a local owner who bought the team. But Stern did not block Donald Sterling's relocation of the San Diego Clippers to LA in 1985 even though he was against the move. Under Stern's watch, the Kansas City Kings franchise moved to Sacramento, George Shinn left Charlotte for New Orleans; Michael Heisley moved his Vancouver Grizzlies to Memphis and Clayton Bennett has a basketball team in Oklahoma City after leaving Seattle. All of those moves got the approval from NBA owners.
Major League Baseball has an antitrust exemption. They could act without worry but the owners and the Commissioner's office got sloppy and were sued in 1992 by Frank Morsani and his Tampa Bay Baseball Group. Morsani and his investors accused Major League Baseball of reneging on its promise to grant the group an expansion team for the Tampa Bay area. In 2003, Morsani and Major League Baseball reached a settlement in the case.
There are many people who are pointing the finger at Gary Bettman for the Phoenix situation and for what people see as a flawed plan to expand hockey into the southern and southwestern part of the United States. Never let facts get in the way of a good story. Bettman was still in the NBA when the 21 NHL owners in 1990 decided that they needed to expand their league footprint.
Bettman was not the NHL Commissioner when the league split the Minnesota North Star franchise and moved a piece of the team to Daly City, California and the Cow Palace then to San Jose in 1991. Bettman was not there when the league added Tampa Bay and Ottawa in 1992-93 or when Wayne Huizenga's Miami-based Florida Panthers and the Disney-owned Mighty Ducks of Anaheim joined the league or when Norman Green decided to move his Minnesota North Stars to Dallas. All three moves were orchestrated for 1993-94 and even though Bettman joined the league on February 1, 1993, he inherited the business moves.
Bettman's so-called southern strategy wasn't so southern when the league expanded in 1997. Nashville joined in 1998, Atlanta in 1999 but two northern cities, Columbus and St. Paul, Minnesota started play in 2000. The Hartford Whalers owner Peter Karmanos apparently was enticed by Raleigh, North Carolina's plan to build an arena for an NHL expansion team and decided to relocate his team to the Research Triangle area but Karmanos had some good reasons to move. Connecticut Governor John Rowland seemed uninterested in building a new Hartford arena and put turned his attention to building a Hartford football stadium for New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft. Karmanos got a number of perks for his hockey team and his Compuware business with the move.
Bettman and the NHL owners did not stop the sale of the Quebec Nordiques by owner Marcel Aubut to Ascent Entertainment and Charlie Lyons in 1995 after Aubut could not get a new arena in Quebec City.
A sports commissioner can make suggestions to owners but at the end of the day, a commissioner works for the owners, a notion that certain sportswriters, fans and apparently some "experts" who teach sports business classes cannot grasp. Just ask former Major League Baseball Commissioner about autonomy. A Commissioner has some rope but not much. A Commissioner is a lobbyist, in Bettman's case, a negotiator when a collective bargaining agreement with the players is done, and gets TV and marketing deals done. Someone in the NHL decided that Phoenix was an important market and was worth keeping.
The NHL is the only buyer left standing with Balsillie gone. Judge Baum wants the NHL to be kinder to Moyes and Wayne Gretzky in making them whole. The Phoenix area has been hard hit by the recession and the real estate bust but demographers think there could be as many as eight million people in the Valley of the Sun metropolitan area by 2050. Phoenix and the surrounding area was one of the fastest growing United States markets in the 1990s and into the 21st century. But that is in the future. Phoenix has a lot of western Canadian snowbirds along with American Midwesterners who winter in the Valley. Those people are potential customers, the Phoenix business community needs to step up as well to keep the team there. The Coyotes franchise also needs an owner who understands that hockey has to be sold not only on the NHL level but on the youth level.
The Dallas Stars franchise resides in a major Sun Belt market with months of very hot weather yet the Metroplex has embraced youth hockey and Texas has more professional hockey teams than any other state in America.
Balsillie will probably be back but he needs to be rehabilitated if he wants an NHL franchise. He needs to understand that the NHL has rules and regulations and until he gets into the club, he needs to abide by the owners and the Commissioner's wishes.
As far as Hamilton, the city officials of the 1980s were not much smarter than those in Phoenix who knuckled under and gave into Coangelo's demands. The city's arena was built without a thought of the future and lacks sufficient luxury boxes and club seats. The Hamilton building is not up to NHL standards and it will cost taxpayers in an economically depressed city hundreds of millions of dollars to get the building up to snuff. Then there is the question of how much money that a potential Hamilton owner has to pay Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment for invading the Toronto territory and how much money that owner has to give Buffalo Sabres owner Tom Galisano for encroaching the Sabres northern territory not to mention worrying about the United States Senate and New York Senators Charles Schumer and Kristen Gillibrand. The two New York lawmakers were not happy with the thought of a Hamilton team because it might take business away from Buffalo.
For those who think the game is the most important part of sports, think again. Or read Judge Baum's decision.
eweiner@mcn.tv
NHL, MLB, NFL, NBA Win, Hamilton and Balsillie Lose
By Evan Weiner
September 30, 2009
10:30 PM EDT
(New York, N. Y.) -- So Jim Balsillie has dropped out of the bidding for the bankrupt Phoenix Coyotes National Hockey League franchise after a bankruptcy judge in Phoenix, Arizona decided that sports leagues are a private entity and that sports owners have a right to pick owners and territories. The judge, Redfield T. Baum, turned down Balsillie's bid and an offer by the NHL to buy the financially ailing franchise that sits in Glendale, Arizona not in downtown Phoenix because of a terrible decision by the sitting city council in the late 1980s when they buckled to Phoenix Suns CEO Jerry Coangelo's want for the perfect basketball arena with perfect seating for HIS customers and not approve an all purpose use for the building.
The saga of the Phoenix Coyotes should be studied by urban planners and sports business management professors, experts and students as soon as possible because of the action of the elected officials of Phoenix who made a badly flawed decision which resulted in an arena that could only sell 75 percent of the available seating because of obstructed views. Coangelo wanted a hockey team in the building but not own it. He wanted money off of the team as he got the lion’s share of the revenues of any activity in the building because of the lease he demanded and got from the Phoenix officials. Coangelo knew an NHL franchise could not succeed in that building and various Coyotes owners reached the same conclusion very quickly.
The Coyotes franchise became a piece of real estate with a subsequent owner coming up with a plan to try and build an arena in Scottsdale less than five years after Richard Burke and Steven Gluckstern purchased the Winnipeg Jets and moved the franchise to the Valley of the Sun in 1996. Gluckstern quickly cashed in and bought the New York Islanders in what was a real estate grab that did not work out for him in Nassau County, N. Y.
Burke sold the Coyotes to real estate developer Steve Ellman in 2001.
Eventually, after no arena materialized in Scottsdale, Ellman found a willing partner in Glendale and built the arena as part of a real estate development deal.
In 2006, Ellman sold the majority stake of the Coyotes to one of his real estate partners Jerry Moyes in a deal that gave Moyes the hockey team and allowed Ellman to take over the development of the real estate parcel in Glendale. Within two years, Moyes threw his hands up and walked away leaving the NHL apparently to pay off the bills. In May 2009, Moyes decided bankruptcy was a good option and found a willing individual to buy the franchise in Balsillie in a bankruptcy proceeding. The NHL apparently was trying to sell the team to Chicago White Sox and Bulls owner Jerry Reinsdorf as Moyes walked into Judge Baum's court.
Reinsdorf's Major League White Sox franchise was already doing business in Glendale as Reinsdorf moved his spring training headquarters from Tucson, Arizona to Glendale in the winter/spring of 2009.
Balsillie had twice before gone after an NHL team. He had an agreement to buy the Pittsburgh Penguins in 2006 and dropped out after to agree to some NHL stipulations. In June 2007 he made his biggest mistake in his dealing with NHL owners and NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman. Not too long after he signed an agreement to buy the Nashville Predators from Craig Leipold, he announced that he planned to relocate the team to Hamilton, Ontario in 2008-09. Soon after his plans became public, the deal was called off.
Balsillie is obvious a smart guy given his success with Research in Motion and BlackBerry but he actions in the Nashville matter and subsequent behavior in the Phoenix dealings were silly. Prospective sports owners have to understand that becoming a major league sports owner is not a right but a privilege. You have to prove that you a worthy to join their private club, Balsillie might be raking in the cash with BlackBerry but that does not mean that he will be allowed in the brotherhood of owners.
There must have been a huge sigh of relief from the law offices of Major League Baseball, the National Football League, and the National Basketball Association when they found out that Judge Baum in his decision wrote.
"In the final analysis, the court cannot find or conclude that the interests of the NHL can be adequately protected if the Coyotes are moved to Hamilton without first having a final decision regarding the claimed rights of the NHL."
Judge Baum understood from day one that the NHL is a private entity that has its own rules not too much different than a golf course which can allow or reject prospective members. Oakland Raiders owner Al Davis was able to move his team to Los Angeles after the National Football League blocked his planned relocation in 1981 by a 22-0 vote with five abstentions by joining with the Los Angeles Coliseum Commission's lawsuit which charged that the NFL violated antitrust laws by not allowing the move. Davis and the Coliseum Commission won the case, Davis moved the team to LA and the NFL was forced to tighten up its relocation rules. The NFL has not stopped any moves since the Davis case as Robert Irsay took his Baltimore Colts to Indianapolis in 1984, Bill Bidwill took an offer from Tempe, Arizona in 1988, Davis moved back to Oakland in 1995, Georgia Frontiere moved her Rams from Anaheim to St. Louis in 1995, Art Modell accepted an offer from Maryland and pulled his Cleveland Browns out of the Ohio city in 1995 with the team landing in Baltimore in 1996. Bud Adams finally made good on his threat to move the Houston Oilers in 1996 and took them to Nashville in 1998 with a stop over in Memphis in 1997.
The National Basketball Association blocked the sale of the Minnesota Timberwolves to a group led by boxing promoter Bob Arum in 1994. Arum and his partners wanted to put the team in New Orleans. The NBA led by Commissioner David Stern wanted to keep the team in Minneapolis and found a local owner who bought the team. But Stern did not block Donald Sterling's relocation of the San Diego Clippers to LA in 1985 even though he was against the move. Under Stern's watch, the Kansas City Kings franchise moved to Sacramento, George Shinn left Charlotte for New Orleans; Michael Heisley moved his Vancouver Grizzlies to Memphis and Clayton Bennett has a basketball team in Oklahoma City after leaving Seattle. All of those moves got the approval from NBA owners.
Major League Baseball has an antitrust exemption. They could act without worry but the owners and the Commissioner's office got sloppy and were sued in 1992 by Frank Morsani and his Tampa Bay Baseball Group. Morsani and his investors accused Major League Baseball of reneging on its promise to grant the group an expansion team for the Tampa Bay area. In 2003, Morsani and Major League Baseball reached a settlement in the case.
There are many people who are pointing the finger at Gary Bettman for the Phoenix situation and for what people see as a flawed plan to expand hockey into the southern and southwestern part of the United States. Never let facts get in the way of a good story. Bettman was still in the NBA when the 21 NHL owners in 1990 decided that they needed to expand their league footprint.
Bettman was not the NHL Commissioner when the league split the Minnesota North Star franchise and moved a piece of the team to Daly City, California and the Cow Palace then to San Jose in 1991. Bettman was not there when the league added Tampa Bay and Ottawa in 1992-93 or when Wayne Huizenga's Miami-based Florida Panthers and the Disney-owned Mighty Ducks of Anaheim joined the league or when Norman Green decided to move his Minnesota North Stars to Dallas. All three moves were orchestrated for 1993-94 and even though Bettman joined the league on February 1, 1993, he inherited the business moves.
Bettman's so-called southern strategy wasn't so southern when the league expanded in 1997. Nashville joined in 1998, Atlanta in 1999 but two northern cities, Columbus and St. Paul, Minnesota started play in 2000. The Hartford Whalers owner Peter Karmanos apparently was enticed by Raleigh, North Carolina's plan to build an arena for an NHL expansion team and decided to relocate his team to the Research Triangle area but Karmanos had some good reasons to move. Connecticut Governor John Rowland seemed uninterested in building a new Hartford arena and put turned his attention to building a Hartford football stadium for New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft. Karmanos got a number of perks for his hockey team and his Compuware business with the move.
Bettman and the NHL owners did not stop the sale of the Quebec Nordiques by owner Marcel Aubut to Ascent Entertainment and Charlie Lyons in 1995 after Aubut could not get a new arena in Quebec City.
A sports commissioner can make suggestions to owners but at the end of the day, a commissioner works for the owners, a notion that certain sportswriters, fans and apparently some "experts" who teach sports business classes cannot grasp. Just ask former Major League Baseball Commissioner about autonomy. A Commissioner has some rope but not much. A Commissioner is a lobbyist, in Bettman's case, a negotiator when a collective bargaining agreement with the players is done, and gets TV and marketing deals done. Someone in the NHL decided that Phoenix was an important market and was worth keeping.
The NHL is the only buyer left standing with Balsillie gone. Judge Baum wants the NHL to be kinder to Moyes and Wayne Gretzky in making them whole. The Phoenix area has been hard hit by the recession and the real estate bust but demographers think there could be as many as eight million people in the Valley of the Sun metropolitan area by 2050. Phoenix and the surrounding area was one of the fastest growing United States markets in the 1990s and into the 21st century. But that is in the future. Phoenix has a lot of western Canadian snowbirds along with American Midwesterners who winter in the Valley. Those people are potential customers, the Phoenix business community needs to step up as well to keep the team there. The Coyotes franchise also needs an owner who understands that hockey has to be sold not only on the NHL level but on the youth level.
The Dallas Stars franchise resides in a major Sun Belt market with months of very hot weather yet the Metroplex has embraced youth hockey and Texas has more professional hockey teams than any other state in America.
Balsillie will probably be back but he needs to be rehabilitated if he wants an NHL franchise. He needs to understand that the NHL has rules and regulations and until he gets into the club, he needs to abide by the owners and the Commissioner's wishes.
As far as Hamilton, the city officials of the 1980s were not much smarter than those in Phoenix who knuckled under and gave into Coangelo's demands. The city's arena was built without a thought of the future and lacks sufficient luxury boxes and club seats. The Hamilton building is not up to NHL standards and it will cost taxpayers in an economically depressed city hundreds of millions of dollars to get the building up to snuff. Then there is the question of how much money that a potential Hamilton owner has to pay Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment for invading the Toronto territory and how much money that owner has to give Buffalo Sabres owner Tom Galisano for encroaching the Sabres northern territory not to mention worrying about the United States Senate and New York Senators Charles Schumer and Kristen Gillibrand. The two New York lawmakers were not happy with the thought of a Hamilton team because it might take business away from Buffalo.
For those who think the game is the most important part of sports, think again. Or read Judge Baum's decision.
eweiner@mcn.tv
Sunday, September 13, 2009
The European and North American Sports Cultural Divide
http://www.mcnsports.com/en/node/7531
The European and North American Sports Cultural Divide
By Evan Weiner
September 13, 2009
10:00 PM EDT
(Copenhagen, Denmark) -- On September 1st, the wife and I were walking down Strøget, the main shopping area in Copenhagen when she spotted a fellow in a red shirt with the letters AIG emblazoned on the front. She wondered why anyone would want to wear the insignia of a disgraced financial company that is being bailed out by America taxpayers on a shirt until she realized that the shirt was actually part of the Manchester United football kit.
In Europe, no one thinks twice about seeing a corporate logo on a sports uniform. It is part of the game unlike the practice in North America where advertising on Major League Baseball or National Football League or National Basketball Association or National Hockey League shirt is akin to drawing a moustache on the Mona Lisa.
The European football kit is not much different than a rugby shirt. The team's major sponsor has a big logo which captures the eye while a much smaller team logo resides in the upper left hand side of the shirt. The shirt or kit manufacturer has a small logo on the upper right side of the shirt. The logo is clearly visible on TV screens, from the stands or in newspaper/magazine pictures.
That is the reason the sponsorship is so attractive.
AIG's logo has been plastered on Manchester United's shirts since 2006 as part of a four-year, $100 million (US) deal. AIG is not the only taxpayer bailout English Premier League team marketing partner. The U. K. has nationalized the Northern Rock bank. Northern Rock's logo appears on Newcastle United's shirt. Northern Rock also is a major sponsor of Newcastle's rugby team.
Financial institutes have been sports marketing partners for a long, long time and it seems that people in the United States have no problem with stadium naming rights except possibly Citibank's marketing deal with Fred Wilpon's New York Mets. In the United States, journalists and editors who should know better and avoid corporate names in articles, columns, radio updates and talk shows along with TV talking heads embrace the corporate names. The fourth estate has accepted corporate marketing partnership and so have sports fans.
Naming rights, presumably, for a stadium do not interfere with a game nor does the NBA's marketing deals with a car company to sponsor league trophies for the Most Valuable Player Award, Defensive Player of the Year, Sixth Man Award and Most Improved Player.
The English Premier League is sponsored by Barclay's bank.
But there is a great sports cultural divide between Europe and North America. In Europe, sports teams whether it is in football, cycling, rugby or cricket have advertising on their shirts, in North America there is still a thought that advertising on baseball uniforms, football, hockey and basketball shirts is something of a violation that might even supersede the separation of church and state although it is rather unclear just what is so sacred about a jersey in those sports even though there is subtle advertising on those shirts as the companies that make the shirts have clearly visible logos on the clothing.
In North America, it is accepted practice for race drivers to have their uniforms plastered with sponsor logos and Major League Soccer follows European tradition and places advertising logos on soccer shirts.
Does a sponsor’s logo ruin a game? The answer is no.
In Europe, the inclusion of a sponsor logo is no big deal. But to some like Ralph Nader, a sponsor's logo on a sports shirt is absolutely wrong and breaks the covenant between the fans sports owners. There are others who feel the same way.
On May 4, 2004, Nader sent a letter to Major League Baseball Commissioner Bud Selig condemning Selig and Major League Baseball owners for putting advertising logos on New York Yankees and Tampa Bay Devil Rays uniforms for the opening series of the 2004 MLB season in Tokyo, Japan.
Nader didn't hide his feelings in his salvo to Selig.
"The great lengths of selfishness with which you are willing to go to desecrate baseball and alienate fans of the game should no longer surprise us. Still, your placement of advertisements on the New York Yankees and Tampa Bay Devil Rays uniforms for Major League Baseball's opener on March 30 in Tokyo ambushed fans across the country and left them shaking their heads at this obscene embarrassment," Nader wrote in his opening paragraph.
"We urge that you immediately put this issue to rest once and for all and eliminate any current or future possibility that Major League Baseball will accept advertisements on uniforms.
"You are suffocating Baseball's fan base. It's not enough for fans who want to enjoy a game to be forced to watch this pitch sponsored by that company or that home run sponsored by this corporation. In addition, they go to a stadium paid for by the fans and taxpayers, yet almost every available space is filled with ads and named after some multinational corporation with no ties to the community.
"Over the last several years, fans have been made to watch 'virtual advertising' infiltrate television broadcasts, and T.V. commentators using the broadcast booth to hawk cell phones during the playoffs and World Series. This over-commercialization is sapping the fun out of being a fan of Major League Baseball.
"Now, you have sunk to a greedy new low. Bending Baseball to the demands of advertisers and accepting more than $10 million (according to Advertising Age) for a corporation to plaster ads on the uniforms for the two-game series in Tokyo. It's supposedly a one-time deal, but conventional wisdom says otherwise -- that permanent advertising on uniforms isn't a question of 'if,' but 'when.'
"MLB executive vice president for business Tim Brosnan, told reporters in Japan 'Are there any definitive plans to put logos on uniforms? No. I don't see that happening. But on the other side of the coin, never say never.'
"'We're mindful of the fans, but I don't think [advertising on uniforms] is unreasonable,' Brosnan later told the New York Post. 'We're always looking for new ways to advance our business.'
"That must sound reassuring to fans. The public tolerates a certain amount of commercialism, but why do you insist on trying the patience of loyal baseball fans across the country? We already have NASCAR, with drivers doubling as walking commercial billboards. Is that really what you want for the national pastime?
"Commissioner Selig, no one is trying to get in the way of your ability to make money, but you need to look beyond the immediate bottom line to make Major League Baseball sustainable. As primary caretaker, this means your job is to respect cities and fans, ensure the integrity of the game, and eliminate self-interested and destructive tendencies. Advertising on uniforms runs counter to each of these critical principles.
"If you allow such an explicit interference of baseball with another greedy vehicle for corporate marketing -- using player uniforms as product placement surfaces -- apathy is not what you should expect from fans and sportswriters. There will be considerable resentment, and fans will drift away. A matter of taste can sour more quickly than you think."
Major League Baseball has not added logos to the front of team shirts yet. Nor as the NFL, NBA or the NHL. But the way North American sports is structured today, there is no reason to keep logos off of shirts except for tradition. The National Hockey League a few years back wiped off the names of the companies that supply equipment to players unless the league received a stipend from the companies. Putting a logo on a Major League Baseball, National Football League, National Hockey League, and National Basketball Association uniform would not compromise any games. Logos on shirts in Europe or Asia are commonplace. There is nothing scared about sports uniforms.
eweiner@mcn.tv
The European and North American Sports Cultural Divide
By Evan Weiner
September 13, 2009
10:00 PM EDT
(Copenhagen, Denmark) -- On September 1st, the wife and I were walking down Strøget, the main shopping area in Copenhagen when she spotted a fellow in a red shirt with the letters AIG emblazoned on the front. She wondered why anyone would want to wear the insignia of a disgraced financial company that is being bailed out by America taxpayers on a shirt until she realized that the shirt was actually part of the Manchester United football kit.
In Europe, no one thinks twice about seeing a corporate logo on a sports uniform. It is part of the game unlike the practice in North America where advertising on Major League Baseball or National Football League or National Basketball Association or National Hockey League shirt is akin to drawing a moustache on the Mona Lisa.
The European football kit is not much different than a rugby shirt. The team's major sponsor has a big logo which captures the eye while a much smaller team logo resides in the upper left hand side of the shirt. The shirt or kit manufacturer has a small logo on the upper right side of the shirt. The logo is clearly visible on TV screens, from the stands or in newspaper/magazine pictures.
That is the reason the sponsorship is so attractive.
AIG's logo has been plastered on Manchester United's shirts since 2006 as part of a four-year, $100 million (US) deal. AIG is not the only taxpayer bailout English Premier League team marketing partner. The U. K. has nationalized the Northern Rock bank. Northern Rock's logo appears on Newcastle United's shirt. Northern Rock also is a major sponsor of Newcastle's rugby team.
Financial institutes have been sports marketing partners for a long, long time and it seems that people in the United States have no problem with stadium naming rights except possibly Citibank's marketing deal with Fred Wilpon's New York Mets. In the United States, journalists and editors who should know better and avoid corporate names in articles, columns, radio updates and talk shows along with TV talking heads embrace the corporate names. The fourth estate has accepted corporate marketing partnership and so have sports fans.
Naming rights, presumably, for a stadium do not interfere with a game nor does the NBA's marketing deals with a car company to sponsor league trophies for the Most Valuable Player Award, Defensive Player of the Year, Sixth Man Award and Most Improved Player.
The English Premier League is sponsored by Barclay's bank.
But there is a great sports cultural divide between Europe and North America. In Europe, sports teams whether it is in football, cycling, rugby or cricket have advertising on their shirts, in North America there is still a thought that advertising on baseball uniforms, football, hockey and basketball shirts is something of a violation that might even supersede the separation of church and state although it is rather unclear just what is so sacred about a jersey in those sports even though there is subtle advertising on those shirts as the companies that make the shirts have clearly visible logos on the clothing.
In North America, it is accepted practice for race drivers to have their uniforms plastered with sponsor logos and Major League Soccer follows European tradition and places advertising logos on soccer shirts.
Does a sponsor’s logo ruin a game? The answer is no.
In Europe, the inclusion of a sponsor logo is no big deal. But to some like Ralph Nader, a sponsor's logo on a sports shirt is absolutely wrong and breaks the covenant between the fans sports owners. There are others who feel the same way.
On May 4, 2004, Nader sent a letter to Major League Baseball Commissioner Bud Selig condemning Selig and Major League Baseball owners for putting advertising logos on New York Yankees and Tampa Bay Devil Rays uniforms for the opening series of the 2004 MLB season in Tokyo, Japan.
Nader didn't hide his feelings in his salvo to Selig.
"The great lengths of selfishness with which you are willing to go to desecrate baseball and alienate fans of the game should no longer surprise us. Still, your placement of advertisements on the New York Yankees and Tampa Bay Devil Rays uniforms for Major League Baseball's opener on March 30 in Tokyo ambushed fans across the country and left them shaking their heads at this obscene embarrassment," Nader wrote in his opening paragraph.
"We urge that you immediately put this issue to rest once and for all and eliminate any current or future possibility that Major League Baseball will accept advertisements on uniforms.
"You are suffocating Baseball's fan base. It's not enough for fans who want to enjoy a game to be forced to watch this pitch sponsored by that company or that home run sponsored by this corporation. In addition, they go to a stadium paid for by the fans and taxpayers, yet almost every available space is filled with ads and named after some multinational corporation with no ties to the community.
"Over the last several years, fans have been made to watch 'virtual advertising' infiltrate television broadcasts, and T.V. commentators using the broadcast booth to hawk cell phones during the playoffs and World Series. This over-commercialization is sapping the fun out of being a fan of Major League Baseball.
"Now, you have sunk to a greedy new low. Bending Baseball to the demands of advertisers and accepting more than $10 million (according to Advertising Age) for a corporation to plaster ads on the uniforms for the two-game series in Tokyo. It's supposedly a one-time deal, but conventional wisdom says otherwise -- that permanent advertising on uniforms isn't a question of 'if,' but 'when.'
"MLB executive vice president for business Tim Brosnan, told reporters in Japan 'Are there any definitive plans to put logos on uniforms? No. I don't see that happening. But on the other side of the coin, never say never.'
"'We're mindful of the fans, but I don't think [advertising on uniforms] is unreasonable,' Brosnan later told the New York Post. 'We're always looking for new ways to advance our business.'
"That must sound reassuring to fans. The public tolerates a certain amount of commercialism, but why do you insist on trying the patience of loyal baseball fans across the country? We already have NASCAR, with drivers doubling as walking commercial billboards. Is that really what you want for the national pastime?
"Commissioner Selig, no one is trying to get in the way of your ability to make money, but you need to look beyond the immediate bottom line to make Major League Baseball sustainable. As primary caretaker, this means your job is to respect cities and fans, ensure the integrity of the game, and eliminate self-interested and destructive tendencies. Advertising on uniforms runs counter to each of these critical principles.
"If you allow such an explicit interference of baseball with another greedy vehicle for corporate marketing -- using player uniforms as product placement surfaces -- apathy is not what you should expect from fans and sportswriters. There will be considerable resentment, and fans will drift away. A matter of taste can sour more quickly than you think."
Major League Baseball has not added logos to the front of team shirts yet. Nor as the NFL, NBA or the NHL. But the way North American sports is structured today, there is no reason to keep logos off of shirts except for tradition. The National Hockey League a few years back wiped off the names of the companies that supply equipment to players unless the league received a stipend from the companies. Putting a logo on a Major League Baseball, National Football League, National Hockey League, and National Basketball Association uniform would not compromise any games. Logos on shirts in Europe or Asia are commonplace. There is nothing scared about sports uniforms.
eweiner@mcn.tv
Wednesday, September 9, 2009
Is International Football Just Like Major League Baseball?
http://www.mcnsports.com/en/node/7527
Is International Football Just Like Major League Baseball?
By Evan Weiner
September 5, 2009
16:00 GMT
(London, U. K.) – Over the past few months, United States banks and financial institutes that have accepted taxpayer’s money have been warning that they need to pay big bonuses to employees because they could lose talented people elsewhere if they didn't cough the stipends. Where would these people, who helped break the economic system, go?
Maybe Spain.
They might follow the lead of international football players headed to Barcelona or Madrid because of new and very favorable tax laws that were designed to attract foreign nationals to the country in good paying jobs. It is not much different from Florida or Texas having no state income tax. The tax laws where it is in Spain, the US, Canada or the UK have definite consequences in sports.
It doesn’t seem to matter when you are in the world, sports leagues and organizations seems to have become very money conscience all linked through government policies. Football, the kind played on a global basis not the American version of the game, has a lot in common with the North American big four sports, baseball, basketball, football and hockey.
Major League Baseball’s rich and poor divide among the 30 clubs was caused by big television money and government regulations. The New York Yankees can out spend the Kansas City Royals, Oakland A’s, the Pittsburgh Pirates and virtually any other baseball team to get free agents and the same can be said of the Barcelona club of La Liga in football. Because of television money and Spain’s tax laws, Barca or Real Madrid can ante up huge contracts and pay large transfer fees for top of the line players. In the English Premier League, one London newspaper pointed out the difference in payrolls in the Manchester City-Portsmouth match, it seemed Manchester City had a Boston Red Sox-like payroll while Portsmouth resembled the Florida Marlins. Some Premiership teams print money because of their brand name.
Manchester United's red kit or shirt is adorned with a big AIG logo which is costing United States taxpayers about $25 million annually in licensing fees. That deal ends in 2010. ManU is one of the biggest sports brand names internationally.
Spain’s tax laws were not necessarily passed to strengthen Barca or Real Madrid but foreign players can sign with Spain-based teams and pay just 24 percent tax on their earnings for the first five years they are in Spain. The tax rate in England for top paid players will be 50 percent starting in 2010. Real Madrid’s gets far more money from TV than other teams, which sort of mirror’s Major League Baseball’s problems with the New York Yankees. Real Madrid is in the middle of a seven year, 1.1 billion euro deal with the Spain's Mediapro and gets about 150 million euros a year to spend like is more than the New York Yankees local cable TV deal. Real Madrid gets a bit more of a third of operating revenue from TV deals, another third from licensing deals from marketing partners and less than a third of the 290 million euros in revenues the team earned in 2008 from fans in the stands. Real Madrid has a North American business model, use government laws to the team's advantage, get huge TV money and have big spending corporate partners and marketing partners. Fans come in fourth in the economics of the team which is the New York Yankees business model.
Real Madrid may be heavily in debt, but Spain’s bankers have no problem giving the club a large line of credit. Barca also enjoys a good relationship with banks in Spain.
Real Madrid spent 258 million euros to improve its roster for the 2009-10 season. The TV and corporate partners will cover the costs of the salaries. Barca parted with about 40 euros to get Zhatan Ibrahimovic which sounds like the New York Yankees business model again. Spend top money for top players and hope that translates to wins and revenue.
Both La Liga and the English Premier League have a global presence and that means more eyeballs in front of TV screens watching them and buying merchandise. La Liga and the Premiership beam games into Asia.
La Liga and the English Premier League seem to be on a collision course when it comes to spending but the Premier League’s top teams, Manchester United and Arsenal, are crying foul and that they cannot keep with them the spending. Another Premier League, Chelsea, was part of the arms game when the team signed Gael Kakuta of Lens but football’s governing body, FIFA, found that Chelsea illegally signed the player and has barred Chelsea from acquiring players during two transfer periods in 2010. Chelsea is appealing the ruling but the London-based team might use European Union laws which allow youngsters the right to work anywhere in Europe as a basis for the defense.
The English Premier League clubs, particularly Manchester United, Chelsea and Arsenal, have been going after players under the age of 18 from France, Italy and Spain. La Liga is fighting back by signing some of England’s top players. Some Americans are also looking for contracts in Europe as Major League Soccer has all sorts of salary restrictions and Americans can make more money elsewhere. The MLS is not considered even a middle tier league.
There will be no owners-players labor unrest in football although some club owners are pushing for some sort of cap on the player transfer fees which have been skyrocketing.
Only the National Hockey League in North America has a transfer fee as the league has some deals in place to purchase the contract of some players in Europe. The NHL does not have a transfer fee deal in place with the Russians. The NHL also has a transfer fee agreement with Canada’s Junior A teams. Major League Baseball, the National Basketball Association and the National Football League have no transfer fees. Europeans and South Americans can join NBA teams once their contracts with local teams expire.
Major League Baseball can bid on Japanese players if a player is posted and the winning bidder.
Sports, no matter which side of the Atlantic, seem to follow the same rules, use government to get ahead, hope for big local TV contracts and sell tickets to customers, not fans. There is also something else that North American major league franchises and European football teams have in common. Both entities feature clubs that have huge debt services. North Americans sports followers and their European counterparts probably don’t feel that baseball, football, basketball, hockey, global football, rugby and other sports have a relationship, but they do. The games may differ but it is business except maybe in Glasgow where the two local football teams, the Celtic and Rangers, are still engaged in a blood feud that is rooted in sectarianism between the Rangers Protestant fan base and the Celtic Catholic supporters. The Celtic-Rangers rivalry is rooted in Glasgow's religion sectarian past although business interests along with other pressures. The Celtic-Rangers matches are the real deal and may be the last rivals in sports where fan interest comes before business although that is changing as business and social pressured build in Glasgow.
The trinity of government, TV and corporate support is the lifeblood of big time sports in the North America, the same holds true in Europe.
eweiner@mcn.tv
Is International Football Just Like Major League Baseball?
By Evan Weiner
September 5, 2009
16:00 GMT
(London, U. K.) – Over the past few months, United States banks and financial institutes that have accepted taxpayer’s money have been warning that they need to pay big bonuses to employees because they could lose talented people elsewhere if they didn't cough the stipends. Where would these people, who helped break the economic system, go?
Maybe Spain.
They might follow the lead of international football players headed to Barcelona or Madrid because of new and very favorable tax laws that were designed to attract foreign nationals to the country in good paying jobs. It is not much different from Florida or Texas having no state income tax. The tax laws where it is in Spain, the US, Canada or the UK have definite consequences in sports.
It doesn’t seem to matter when you are in the world, sports leagues and organizations seems to have become very money conscience all linked through government policies. Football, the kind played on a global basis not the American version of the game, has a lot in common with the North American big four sports, baseball, basketball, football and hockey.
Major League Baseball’s rich and poor divide among the 30 clubs was caused by big television money and government regulations. The New York Yankees can out spend the Kansas City Royals, Oakland A’s, the Pittsburgh Pirates and virtually any other baseball team to get free agents and the same can be said of the Barcelona club of La Liga in football. Because of television money and Spain’s tax laws, Barca or Real Madrid can ante up huge contracts and pay large transfer fees for top of the line players. In the English Premier League, one London newspaper pointed out the difference in payrolls in the Manchester City-Portsmouth match, it seemed Manchester City had a Boston Red Sox-like payroll while Portsmouth resembled the Florida Marlins. Some Premiership teams print money because of their brand name.
Manchester United's red kit or shirt is adorned with a big AIG logo which is costing United States taxpayers about $25 million annually in licensing fees. That deal ends in 2010. ManU is one of the biggest sports brand names internationally.
Spain’s tax laws were not necessarily passed to strengthen Barca or Real Madrid but foreign players can sign with Spain-based teams and pay just 24 percent tax on their earnings for the first five years they are in Spain. The tax rate in England for top paid players will be 50 percent starting in 2010. Real Madrid’s gets far more money from TV than other teams, which sort of mirror’s Major League Baseball’s problems with the New York Yankees. Real Madrid is in the middle of a seven year, 1.1 billion euro deal with the Spain's Mediapro and gets about 150 million euros a year to spend like is more than the New York Yankees local cable TV deal. Real Madrid gets a bit more of a third of operating revenue from TV deals, another third from licensing deals from marketing partners and less than a third of the 290 million euros in revenues the team earned in 2008 from fans in the stands. Real Madrid has a North American business model, use government laws to the team's advantage, get huge TV money and have big spending corporate partners and marketing partners. Fans come in fourth in the economics of the team which is the New York Yankees business model.
Real Madrid may be heavily in debt, but Spain’s bankers have no problem giving the club a large line of credit. Barca also enjoys a good relationship with banks in Spain.
Real Madrid spent 258 million euros to improve its roster for the 2009-10 season. The TV and corporate partners will cover the costs of the salaries. Barca parted with about 40 euros to get Zhatan Ibrahimovic which sounds like the New York Yankees business model again. Spend top money for top players and hope that translates to wins and revenue.
Both La Liga and the English Premier League have a global presence and that means more eyeballs in front of TV screens watching them and buying merchandise. La Liga and the Premiership beam games into Asia.
La Liga and the English Premier League seem to be on a collision course when it comes to spending but the Premier League’s top teams, Manchester United and Arsenal, are crying foul and that they cannot keep with them the spending. Another Premier League, Chelsea, was part of the arms game when the team signed Gael Kakuta of Lens but football’s governing body, FIFA, found that Chelsea illegally signed the player and has barred Chelsea from acquiring players during two transfer periods in 2010. Chelsea is appealing the ruling but the London-based team might use European Union laws which allow youngsters the right to work anywhere in Europe as a basis for the defense.
The English Premier League clubs, particularly Manchester United, Chelsea and Arsenal, have been going after players under the age of 18 from France, Italy and Spain. La Liga is fighting back by signing some of England’s top players. Some Americans are also looking for contracts in Europe as Major League Soccer has all sorts of salary restrictions and Americans can make more money elsewhere. The MLS is not considered even a middle tier league.
There will be no owners-players labor unrest in football although some club owners are pushing for some sort of cap on the player transfer fees which have been skyrocketing.
Only the National Hockey League in North America has a transfer fee as the league has some deals in place to purchase the contract of some players in Europe. The NHL does not have a transfer fee deal in place with the Russians. The NHL also has a transfer fee agreement with Canada’s Junior A teams. Major League Baseball, the National Basketball Association and the National Football League have no transfer fees. Europeans and South Americans can join NBA teams once their contracts with local teams expire.
Major League Baseball can bid on Japanese players if a player is posted and the winning bidder.
Sports, no matter which side of the Atlantic, seem to follow the same rules, use government to get ahead, hope for big local TV contracts and sell tickets to customers, not fans. There is also something else that North American major league franchises and European football teams have in common. Both entities feature clubs that have huge debt services. North Americans sports followers and their European counterparts probably don’t feel that baseball, football, basketball, hockey, global football, rugby and other sports have a relationship, but they do. The games may differ but it is business except maybe in Glasgow where the two local football teams, the Celtic and Rangers, are still engaged in a blood feud that is rooted in sectarianism between the Rangers Protestant fan base and the Celtic Catholic supporters. The Celtic-Rangers rivalry is rooted in Glasgow's religion sectarian past although business interests along with other pressures. The Celtic-Rangers matches are the real deal and may be the last rivals in sports where fan interest comes before business although that is changing as business and social pressured build in Glasgow.
The trinity of government, TV and corporate support is the lifeblood of big time sports in the North America, the same holds true in Europe.
eweiner@mcn.tv
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)