Sports costing taxpayers billions
THURSDAY, 10 MARCH 2011 13:17
BY EVAN WEINER
NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM
THE BUSINESS AND POLITICS OF SPORTS
http://www.newjerseynewsroom.com/professional/sports-costing-taxpayers-billions
As National Football League Commissioner Roger Goodell and his owner team personnel continue bargaining with National Football League Players Association Executive Director DeMaurice Smith to reach a new agreement that covers players working conditions, New Jersey Governor Chris Christie wrestles with his state's budget and the possible layoffs of government workers and still has one budget item that will not go away. New Jersey still owes about one hundred million dollars on a facility that no longer exists — Giants Stadium.
More than 100 days from now, National Basketball Association Commissioner could announce that NBA owners have voted to lockout their employees — NBA players — because the owners and the players could not reach a new collective bargaining agreement. NBA owners claim they are losing copious amounts of money yet in Manhattan, the owner of Madison Square Garden (Cablevision's James Dolan) is pocketing money from his regional cable TV network and sellout crowds at Knicks games and not paying some $13-14 million annually in property taxes on a prime piece of real estate between 31st and 33rd Streets and Seventh and Eighth Avenue. Dolan is paying two players more than $20 million a year each (Amar'e Stoudemire and Carmelo Anthony) which suggests he has the means to pay the taxes.
In cash strapped New York City where Mayor Michael Bloomberg has declared war on teachers’ tenure and salaries and New York State where Governor Andrew Cuomo has promised that he will change the way Albany does business and cut expenses, there is no stomach to put the Garden back on the tax roll. Some of those Knicks fans who love STAT (Stoudemire) and Melo (Anthony) may be out of jobs but as long as the team gets tax breaks that seems to be okay with the fans. The more tax breaks, the more money that can be spend on a player.
New York has laid out hundreds of millions of dollars for infrastructure at the new Yankees and Mets stadiums as well as giving the two franchises many tax breaks and incentives. Former New Jersey Nets owner Bruce Ratner has gotten a slew of tax breaks and incentives to build a Brooklyn arena. New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani built the two most expensive minor league baseball stadiums ever in Brooklyn in Coney Island and on the Staten Island waterfront.
New York City Mayor Ed Koch and New York Governor Mario Cuomo in 1982 along with the state legislature removed Madison Square Garden from the city tax roll because then-Garden owner Gulf and Western claimed the Knicks and NHL Rangers could no longer compete with in the Knicks case, the Milwaukees and Portlands of the world and the Rangers were not in a position to spend the same type of money on players as Hartford and Winnipeg. If Koch and Cuomo refused to help, Gulf and Western would put the Knicks at the Nassau Coliseum and the Rangers in the new Meadowlands arena.
The gullible Koch, Cuomo and elected state officials bought the Gulf and Western line hook, line and sinker.
In 1995, New Jersey Governor Christie Whitman rewrote the lease between the state and Devils owner John McMullen even though McMullen had years remaining on the deal. McMullen ended up with a much more favorable Meadowlands arena lease and decided not to move his team to Nashville.
On Tuesday, National Hockey League Commissioner Gary Bettman lashed out at the conservative Goldwater Institute, an Arizona think tank that is questioning Glendale, Arizona's selling of municipal bonds to make a sale of the Phoenix Coyotes more palatable to a prospective owner. If Glendale and the NHL filed suit against the Goldwater Institute, one of the targets could be Randy P. Kendrick, the wife of Arizona Diamondbacks owner Ken Kendrick and a Goldwater board member. Goldwater doesn't like the idea of Glendale being so heavily involved in the saving of the Coyotes franchise. There is one problem that Mrs. Kendrick has that gets to the heart of her credibility with Goldwater. The Diamondbacks franchise operates in a facility that was built on the taxpayers’ dime.
Politicians look at the construction of sports facilities as an economic engine. In virtually every case, sports arena and construction building has been a failed policy. The construction jobs are temporary and aside from the players and owners not many jobs created by a team are substantial. On game day, there are quite a few per diem slots available such as parking lot attendants and vendors.
The Baltimore Inner Harbor project started without a baseball stadium or a football stadium and did well when the facility opened in the 1980s. Maryland residents are paying millions of dollars a year to pay off the debts on the Baltimore baseball and football stadium.
Just over the Bergen County line in Rockland County, the town of Ramapo is building a small baseball park for an independent minor league baseball team. Town residents said no to funding in a referendum last August but the town supervisor, Chris St. Lawrence, will have none of that. St. Lawrence decided to fund the project with private money but there is a problem. He hasn't found private money and the town residents keep getting stuck with the tab for construction costs.
St. Lawrence joins the likes of the Washington state legislature, elected officials in Pittsburgh, Charlotte and other areas who overturned referendums and built money losing facilities anyway.
There are far more non sports fans than sports fans if television ratings are accurate and the number of empty seats can be counted on in the thousands at various venues in the New York area on a nightly basis (Mets games, Devils games, Nets games, Islanders games) but non sports fans are paying and paying and paying for sports expenses.
What if there is an NFL lockout? What if there is an NBA lockout? How would that impact both the sports and non sports fans? The New York Giants and New York Jets football teams play sixteen home games during the regular season and an additional four pre-season games at the Meadowlands. That is just twenty days a year without playoffs and if the two teams play one another during the regular season, that is one less opening. Under the right circumstances there could be as many as 24 dates in a 365 day calendar. That means there are 341 other days where there is no NFL football at the East Rutherford facility.
In addition to owning about $100 million to pay off the debt on a stadium that is no longer standing, New Jersey sunk about $300 million for infrastructure for the East Rutherford stadium and the Giants/Jets venture isn't fully paying property taxes for the building. Instead they Giants/Jets real estate venture is paying a far lesser fee through a mechanism called payment in lieu of taxes (PILOT) and East Rutherford is getting a bit more than six million dollars annually through rent and the PILOT scheme. East Rutherford probably should get closer to $15 million annually.
It is hard to image that businesses near the stadium would lose significant money if there is an NFL lockout. The NFL is about tailgating not people wandering through an area to spend money before and after a game. In fact, unless NFL owners own a nearby retail facility (such as New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft's Patriot Place, which according to the Patriot Place website, "features more than 1.3 million square feet of shopping, dining, and entertainment. You will find major fashion retailers, live and interactive entertainment, eateries, a four-star hotel, state of the art theatre and much, much more."), the owners don't want fans to spend their money anywhere except at team-licensed or owned facilities.
One of the reasons Sacramento could not build a new basketball facility for the Maloof brothers Kings franchise was that the 2006 arena proposal took away parking lots and replaced them with businesses around the facility. The Maloofs refused to give up 8,000 parking spaces and the $3 million or so in revenue that was generated from the lots. The arena proposal was voted down by Sacramento residents in overwhelming numbers. The Maloofs never campaigned for the building as it was not in their best financial interest.
In Philadelphia, there is not much around the South Philadelphia sports complex which houses the Phillies, Eagles, 76ers and Flyers except for roads and parks. Eventually Comcast hopes to replace the old Spectrum arena with a retail, restaurant and entertainment district called Philly Live! which means that all business will be conducted inside the sports complex with monies going to Comcast and their partner the Cordish Company? (Cordish was the partner for the stalled St. Louis Cardinals stadium village concept). Comcast is hoping the center will be open by the start of the 2012 Philadelphia Phillies season.
Madison Square Garden is undergoing an $800 million renovation, all designed to extract more money from patrons. Sports does practice class segregation even though sports operators and some sports fans would beg to differ. Sports owners want customers not fans. Customers can spend money for very expensive personnel seat licenses, club seats, luxury boxes and dine in expensive stadium or arena eateries. Customers can also take off the cost of sports tickets as a business expense.
If the National Basketball Association players are locked out, just how much of a real economic impact will the lockout have on cities? Probably very little. There are 41 regular season games, a few pre-season games and some playoff games. Not many fans travel for an NBA game so most of the people in the stands are local and if there are no games they would spend their money elsewhere. Teams have traveling parties of member 30 people and there are just six games a month between November and April, so that isn’t much of an economic generator. Cities like New York and Philadelphia will lose one day of player salary taxes or six in a month or maximum 50 times over a year if the team advances to the playoffs. Cities should be able to get rent money from teams. In 1999, Golden State Warriors owner Chris Cohan tried to skip out on rent payments at the Oakland Coliseum Arena for missed games. An arbitrator ruled against Cohan and made him pay rent. It was an owners’ lockout after all, not a players strike in the 1998-99 NBA labor dispute.
The middle class has been priced out of attending a cluster of games. But there is always cable TV. Cable TV prices for ESPN and other sports channels are pretty reasonable on a monthly basis thanks to socialism. In 1984, Congress and President Ronald Reagan came up with the Cable TV Act which allowed multiple systems operators (MSO) to create a basic expanded tier and group together channels and sell it as one to a consumer. If you wanted ESPN back in 1984, you had to also take CNN and the Weather Channel if the MSO decided that is what was best for their customers. (Remember the "I want my MTV campaign?") Sports channels ended up on those tiers nationally which enabled sports to migrate from over-the-air TV to cable. Cable channels made more off of consumers whether they watched sports or not and some advertising.
Sports has made billions off of people who never watch a sports event on cable TV which is a significant majority of cable TV subscribers.
The segregation of fans started in 1965 with the opening of the Houston Astrodome when Astros owner Roy Hofheinz included "sky boxes" in the stadium.
Hofheinz was charging about $20,000 annually for the boxes, and that did not go unnoticed by his fellow owners. NFL Commissioner Pete Rozelle said in the 1980s that the sky box was a "bane to the business," and because of them, NFL owners needed stadium renovations or new stadiums with built-in luxury boxes. Rozelle was correct, and the 1980s and 1990s were a time of franchise shifts in the NFL because owners were looking for stadiums with luxury boxes. Hofheinz also influenced entertainment by using a scoreboard to entertain people during games. Hofheinz went after the non-sports fan who he felt would show up at an event and not be concerned with the action on the field. Hofheinz even put in a Dow Jones ticker in the original boxes.
McMullen once commented that sports is all about emotion and rational thinking goes out the door in sports. In Washington, DC Goodell and Smith are trying to slice up billions that flow into the industry. They are doing that obvious to what has made football — the 1961 Sports Broadcast Act which was signed into law by President John F. Kennedy after sailing through the House and Senate which enriched the football industry, the shifting of stadium costs from private ownership to municipalities (a trend that started in Milwaukee in 1950), the 1984 Cable TV Act and the real dagger in the back of the average fan, the 1986 tax code revision. By accident Congress and Ronald Reagan approved a bill that put a ceiling of eight cents on a dollar generated in a stadium that would go off to pay the municipal debt of taxpayers funded facilities. New arena and stadium building and renovations sprung up everywhere as owners wanted the latest shiny gadgets compete with luxury boxes, club seats and eateries along with other revenue generating sports in a building. Ticket prices exploded even on the minor league level.
Minor league baseball changed as well as the Major Leagues and Minor Leagues Player Development Contract mandated new or renovated parks be completed by 1994 or teams could move. That is how Sussex County ended up with a New York Penn League team as Glens Falls, New York refused to go along with the 1990 baseball agreement. Mario Cuomo approved more than $60 million for New York minor league park upgrades.
Everyone pays for sports in the United States whether it is through a hotel/motel tax, car rental tax, a "sin" tax (alcohol and cigarettes in Cleveland), a water tax (Nashville) or hikes in sales tax (Arlington, Texas). In a sense, both fans and non sports fans should have a seat at the bargaining table in the NFL dispute, the upcoming NBA contract dispute and the possible Major League Baseball and National Hockey League labor disagreements that could take place this winter and in the summer of 2012. Americans are also paying for the care of discarded football players who are in their 40s and 50s who are disabled from injuries suffered in games through social security insurance and Medicare.
The true cost of sports in the United States to taxpayers is in the billions in government spending.
Evan Weiner, the winner of the United States Sports Academy's 2010 Ronald Reagan Media Award, is an author, radio-TV commentator and speaker on "The Politics of Sports Business." His book, "The Business and Politics of Sports, Second Edition is available at www.bickley.com, Barnes and Noble or amazonkindle. He can be reached at evanjweiner@yahoo.com
Thursday, March 10, 2011
Monday, March 7, 2011
NFL labor talks: Understanding the negotiations
MONDAY, 07 MARCH 2011 14:19
BY EVAN WEINER
NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM
THE BUSINESS AND POLITICS OF SPORTS
http://www.newjerseynewsroom.com/professional/nfl-labor-talks-understanding-the-negotiations
As the representatives from the National Football League ownership group and the National Football League Players Association continue to try and bridge their differences and sign a new collective bargaining agreement (and yes Green Bay Packers players have collective bargaining rights in Wisconsin despite the best efforts of the state's governor to bust public employee unions as Governor Scott Walker told the fake David Koch), it might be useful to review 60 years of television money and players association activity and how closely linked television and the players really are.
NFL owners were planning to use some $ 4 billion in 2011 television rights fees to underwrite a lockout. Rupert Murdoch's News Corp (FOX), General Election (now Comcast)'s NBC, Summer Redstone's CBS, the Walt Disney Company's ESPN and DirecTV cozied up to the NFL owners because the owners' product is still a consistently watched fare in an increasing fragmented audience industry — TV.
Television is the “tiger blood” of the NFL. CBS, NBC and ABC were the “Goddesses” that brought the NFL to the masses during an explosive growth spurt between 1960 and 1970. Each one of the NFL owners was a “bi-winner.”
NFL owners and NFL players have been battling over issues since 1956. Today, NFL players get huge salaries but have short careers and unlike their counterparts in Major League Baseball, the National Basketball Association and the National Hockey League, a NFL players contract is not guaranteed. If a player gets fired, he keeps bonus money but he is terminated with just some severance pay. NFL players need four years to get a pension and five years of medical benefits following a career. The lack of will to fight the owners and just take money now has left some former players financially destitute and in some case contemplating suicide from injuries suffered on the field from Pop Warner through junior high school, high school, college and pro football.
As television contracts got bigger and bigger, so did players salaries but NFLPA negotiators never looked at the future.
“Money Now.”
In 1950, the three most popular sports in the United States were baseball, boxing and horse racing. National Football league owners were running mom and pop store operations that operated from July to December. Television, as the noted writer Frank Deford explained on a long forgotten TV show that featured this writer and Al Michaels (along with the "Scud Stud" Arthur Kent) on Histories Mysteries, an all inconclusive look at sports history in about 88 minutes on the History Channel in 2000, changed the sports world. By 1965, football was the most popular sport in the United States. The owners had more money than they ever could imagine but the owners still treated players like they did in the 1920s, 1930s, 1940s and 1950s.
The NFL owners and players had a contentious relationship for decades. The NFLPA formed in 1956 with help from Creighton Miller, the first General Manager of the Cleveland Browns. Unhappy players in Cleveland and Green Bay assembled a network of "player reps" on each team. The players included Don Shula (Colts), Frank Gifford (Giants), and Norm Van Brocklin (Rams) to represent their teams. The Chicago Bears did not have a players representative. The players first meeting was held in New York in the fall of 1956, after the owners ignored the players' attempts to discuss their requests. The players asked for minimum salaries of $5,000 per season, injury pay, uniform per diems, and for teams to supply their own equipment.
Nothing happened but the players got a big break in 1957 when, the first lawsuit involving professional football and antitrust was filed, Radovich v. NFL, which significantly altered player rights within the league. The case involved a player/coach, George Radovich, who sued the league because the NFL effectively prevented him from attaining employment in the NFL or affiliated leagues, such as the Pacific Coast League, which was in existence at the time. The case was dismissed on the grounds that the NFL was exempted from the antitrust laws, and was appealed to the Supreme Court, which reversed the decision of the trial court, holding professional football subject to the antitrust laws.
The Supreme Court of the United States decision changed life for NFL owners. The players could now sue the league on antitrust grounds which they threatened to do. The owners and players settled with the players receiving minimum salaries of $5,000, $50 payment for preseason games, medical coverage for injuries, and a pension.
But the players didn't get what they agreed to and spend the 1958 season chasing the owners to live up to the agreement. The deal was finally signed in 1959.
In 2011, as a fallback, the players will decertify their association and then sue the league on antitrust grounds if an agreement isn't reached soon. Nothing much has changed since 1957.
The truth was that football was a part time vocation and not a real job for either the owners of the players in the 1950s.
When the season ended in the 1950s, so did football as a main vocation. New York fans may have wildly cheered the New York Giants defensive lineman Andy Robustelli on six Sundays a season, but on the Monday after the final game, it was back to work in the civilian world.
"Each player the day that the season was over, you were free and you looked for a job. You wouldn't see each other until next year. I think, and with all respect to the modern ballplayer, I hope the modern ballplayer appreciates, not only the opportunity, but...football is a stepping stone it's not the end of life," said Robustelli , who became a successful businessman in Connecticut once his Giant days were through, in the 1990s.
Robustelli's generation of players didn't put up much of a fight with the owners for pensions and future health benefits. In fact, lots of generations of NFL players never put up much of a fight for pension and health benefits and according to one players agent, there was a reason for that.
"Their constituency is active players and when the crunch comes, no one with status is representing the retired players. So it relies on the good will of the current players, which has been subsumed to selfishness," said the agent. "Football players are the worst labor unit--short playing careers, spectre of injury, coaches kids, born-again Christians, all salary paid from September to January so each game check more impactful, (Joe) Montana and Howie Long and other stars crossed picket line last time (in 1987), no ability to sustain a strike."
The NFLPA has always been weak and the owners knew that. The two leagues may have merged, but the player associations did not, as the players on the 16 NFL teams were NFLPA members and the players on the 10 AFL teams were American Football League Players Association members. This caused a major problem in subsequent negotiations as the NFLPA would come to a tentative agreement with the owners on certain collective bargaining issues (such as minimum salaries, retirement age) then the owners would bargain with the AFLPA, who accepted lower terms, which wasn't good for NFLPA members.
There was a brief lockout and a 20-day strike in 1970 that ended just before the 1970 All Star game and which did not result in the cancellation of regular or post-season games, the NFL and NFLPA signed a four-year contract, the first collective bargaining agreement in the history of the NFL, which raised player salary minimums to $12,500 for rookies and $13,000 for veterans, added dental insurance, improved the pension, gave players the right to have agents, gave players representation on the Retirement Board, and provided for impartial arbitration of injury grievances.
(Retired players from that era are still battling the NFL over injury grievances)
In 1974, the previous CBA was coming to an end. Players were demanding the elimination of the Rozelle Rule and the option clause which kept a player tied to his team in perpetuity unless another team was willing to give up number one draft picks or players to sign a free agent among other things. On July 1, the players went on strike, and were prepared to sit out until a new bargaining agreement was hammered out. The sit-out led to the cancellation of the New York Jets game at New Haven, the first game ever canceled due to a labor impasse. However, by the early part of August, about a quarter of the NFLPA crossed the picket lines, breaking down union solidarity. On August 11, Garvey sent his players back to work after a federal mediator suggested a 14-day cooling off period, instead pursuing the issue through the Mackey case. The 42-day strike ended that day with nothing gained.
On September 21, 1982, NFL players went on strike. It was the longest strike in professional sports in the U.S. at the time and lasted until November 17. The owners responded by locking the players out at the commencement of the strike. During the strike, only 126 of the 224 scheduled regular-season games were played, forcing the league to change the format of post-season play to include 16 teams instead of the usual 10 teams. The players held two "All-Star" games to raise some funding for players without a paycheck. The players got more money but two goals were not met, a form of free agency and more pension money.
NFL owners won the 1987 battle with the players but the two sides ended up in Judge David Doty's courtroom in 1993 after the association decertified. They came up with a deal because of pressure from Judge Doty. Eighteen years later, Judge Doty is still involved with the two sides. Apparently Judge Doty disagrees with the owners pocketing network, cable and satellite TV money in 2011 whether the league is locked out or not. There is a question of what happens with that $4 billion. Eventually Judge Doty will decide what to do.
Television and the NFL have had a long history. TV has helped and hurt the league. Today, it is all good but 62 years ago, it was a different story.
The Los Angeles Rams showed all 12 of the team's home and away games on local television in 1949 and saw a sharp decrease in attendance from 1948. In 1950, NFL Commissioner Bert Bell urged teams to blackout home games in an effort to keep the people in the stands for home games instead of in front of the television.
Some teams had TV contracts. The Dumont TV Network paid $75,000 to nationally televise the Los Angeles Rams-Cleveland Browns championship game on December 23, 1951. By 1953, the NFL was in the courtroom defending its blackout policy. Judge Allan K. Grim of the U. S. District Court in Philadelphia upheld the league's blackout policy and did not violate anti-trust laws.
The 1957 NFL Championship Game was blacked out in the host city, Detroit, despite being a sellout. The blackout policy was challenged again in 1962 when the Giants hosted Green Bay in the NFL Championship at Yankee Stadium Judge Edward Weinfeld of the U. S. District Court upheld the NFL position and denied an injunction, which would have forced CBS to televise the game in the New York City area.
“That was a big test case for us,” said Mara of the 1953 courtroom proceedings. “I think the big value of TV was the promotion that it should what a great event this was; what a great game this was. It made people want to come to the ball park, or go up to Stratford, Connecticut to see it on TV.”
New York Giant fans who could not get tickets to the sold out Yankee Stadium would travel to Fairfield County, Connecticut and either rent hotel rooms or go to bars and/or restaurants to watch blacked out home games on WTIC, Channel 3 out of Hartford. Blacked out games meant money six, seven or eight times a year to Connecticut businesses.
The blackout policy would remain in effect until 1973, when Congress passed experimental legislation (only valid until 1976) requiring any NFL game that was declared a sellout 72 hours prior to kickoff be made available for local TV.
Television would play a role in the Bidwill family's move of their Cardinals franchise in 1960. The NFL also permitted the Cardinals to relocate to St. Louis for the 1960 season, in an effort to eliminate the market-cannibalization taking place between the Cardinals and the Bears in Chicago, the second largest television market at the time. The Chicago CBS station, which was televising NFL games, needed a solution to the Bears-Cardinals two-market setup. Since the teams never played on television head to head unless they played one another, and the league was blacking out home games, CBS never showed games in Chicago.
On March 13, 1960 the Cardinals moved to St. Louis after receiving $500,000 for "improvements" at Soldier Field, some of the funding coming from CBS. In effect, the Cardinals were not just "allowed" to move to St. Louis, but rather were paid to do so by the Bears, the NFL, and CBS.
The American Football League formed in 1959. It was an eight-team league, which borrowed a business model from the stillborn Continental Baseball League, which was a brainchild of Branch Rickey. The CBL planned to pool TV revenue and divide the money among the league's 12-teams. Rickey's league was working under the assumption that it had an antitrust exemption like the American League and National League in baseball. Lamar Hunt's league must have felt the same way. The AFL had decided on November 23, 1959 to approve a cooperative television plan whereby the league office negotiates the television contract and which proceeds from which were equally divided among member clubs.
By June 9, 1960, the AFL had a TV deal with the American Broadcasting Company. It was a five-year contract with the eight teams sharing $1,785,000 in 1960 and graduated increases of the life of the agreement.
The NFL wanted the same type of network deal but the league had to live with the Sherman Antitrust Act hanging over the league's business practices. That changed on September 30, 1961 with President John F. Kennedy's signature on a bill that allowed the 14-team league to become one entity for television contract negotiation purposes.
In 1960, the New York Giants received $340,000 for their deal, but the Green Bay Packers received $105,000. Rozelle saw the changing playing field and knew the big market teams in New York, Chicago and Los Angeles could get enormous contracts as television grew leaving behind smaller markets such as Pittsburgh and Green Bay.
"My brother Jack (Giants), George Halas (Bears) and Daniel Reeves (Rams), we were the three teams that were most affected," said Giants owner Wellington Mara. "Now, Art Modell (Browns), he had has own deal made already and he surrendered that to go into it.
"He (Modell) was really the one who gave something away. We didn't know what we were giving up. That is what did it. They made the decision. Without that, why we wouldn't have the league we have today."
Rozelle was a genius. He was lucky that the times were favorable but he had to work at getting a diverse group of owners to think league instead of individual fiefdom and he did.
"I think he explained to everybody very cogently what was at stake and he knew it wasn't going to be much of a league with lopsided revenue" Rozelle is a guiding force in the formation of the modern NFL. "We used to laugh a little bit, but we used to say Pete was so smooth and so polished and he had a great sense of public relations, but we always thought in running a league meeting, the softest part about him were his teeth," said Mara with a laugh.
"He knew when to twist an arm, and when to massage an ego and he made great use of that knowledge. He stepped in and from the very first minute, from the very first meeting he ran, he was a leader. He took things over and organized us."
CBS would win rights to NFL games in 1962 with a $4.65 million bid, NC would gain the 1963 AFL Championship Game for $926,000 despite the fact that ABC was the AFL regular season TV right’s holder. CBS would keep the NFL for the 1964 and 1965 seasons as well as the NFL Championship Game by paying $14.1 million per season and $3.6 million for two championship games. Meanwhile NBC guaranteed the future of the AFL by signing a five-year, $36 million contract beginning in 1965.
CBS extended its relationship with Pete Rozelle and the NFL in 1965 through 1967 with a $39.6 million for the 1966 and 1967 regular seasons with an option for 1968. CBS bought the 1966 and 1967 NFL Championship Games for $2 million per game. After the June 8, 1966 merger, the rights to the first four AFL-NFL Championship Games, 1967-70 was sold to both CBS and NBC for $9.5 million. In 1969, CBS passed on Rozelle’s idea of Monday Night Football, ABC acquired the rights to 13 games annually between 1970-72. Monday Night Football would change the NFL as much as the June 8, 1966 merger between the AFL and NFL.
The players of the 1960s kept pushing to get the owners to give them more benefits. They always seem to lose except salaries increased as TV contracts increased.
Television is willing to pay sports teams lavishly because TV executives think 18-49 year old males and 25-54 year old males will tune in and support advertisers’ products. The NFL makes TV networks. Monday Night Football made ABC a legitimate network in 1970. NFL ratings were down significantly in 1999, and 2000 yet CBS was happy with its decision to return to the NFL after one time owner Lawrence Tisch passed on extending the network's NFC deal with the league in 1993.
Tisch's failure to extend NFL football on CBS caused a massive turnover in the TV industry. CBS lost local affiliates in Detroit and Milwaukee as stations defected to FOX to continue having NFL games and FOX became a network sports powerhouse, eventually securing the rights to Major League Baseball and the National Hockey League.
While CBS claimed to have broken even on its football expenditure in 1998, insiders knew that other areas of the company were cut back because of football. The company announced massive layoffs in 1998 and closed studios around the United States.
After the NFL was lost in 1993, CBS still had its billion dollar, seven-year deal to cover the NCAA Tournament in basketball, golf's Masters and college football. Cutbacks at CBS were nothing new. Tisch scaled back the news operations in the 1980s to pay for football and baseball. In fact, Tisch really started the pay escalation for TV rights by paying the enormous sum of $1.06 billion over four years for MLB television rights from 1990-93. CBS ended up losing millions on the deal, especially with poor Saturday Game of the Week ratings.
Without the NFL and John Madden, Rupert Murdoch's United States media empire may not be as imposing as it is today.
Before the NFL and Madden, Murdoch's FOX network, which is technically not a network but a syndication unit, was a weak collection of UHF stations with the exception of a few cities like New York, Washington, and Los Angeles. Before the NFL and Madden, FOX had a few shows that drew some attention, the It's Gary Shandling's Show, the Tracy Ullman Show and Married With Children. Out of the Ullman show came The Simpsons, Shandling's show originally ran on Showtime and then went to FOX. Ullman's show was canceled in 1990. FOX could not establish a late night talk show, the Joan Rivers experiment was a disaster and a 1993 Chevy Chase late night show as a bomb. Not much worked for Murdoch.
Neither Al Bundy nor Bart Simpson, as popular as the characters would become, could bolster FOX. Murdoch's team was buying TV stations and became the biggest owner of over-the-air stations in the United States but by 1993, it was still the fourth network in a three horse race for ratings behind CBS, NBC and ABC.
The NFL and Madden changed all of that. Actually, it was Jerry Jones, the owner of the Dallas Cowboys that put Murdoch on the map as Jones and Murdoch negotiated the TV deal that would change everything. The NFL had been prospering from TV rights fees since the 1961 Sports Broadcast Act which allowed the league commissioner, who is also the league's chief negotiator and lobbyist in all things NFL, to bundle the 14 member franchises into one entity in order to negotiate a TV deal. Three decades later, the NFL was a 30 franchise entity with four separate and distinct elements. CBS had the National Football Conference contests and paid slightly more money for the NFC than NBC did for American Football Conference games because the NFC had more major markets. ABC had Monday Night Football and ESPN and Turner Sports split a Sunday night package.
The NFL was being paid $3.6 million over a four year period between 1990 and 1993.
Murdoch's fourth place network was desperate for a game changer and the NFL provided him with an opening. The NFL and Jones were knocked over by Murdoch's bid for the NFC games. Murdoch was willing to fork over $1.58 billion over four years to get the NFC package along with the Super Bowl. Murdoch had a syndication arm but no news division, no sports division, none of the apparatus that CBS, ABC and NBC had. Murdoch knew that the NFL deals with an old philosophy, cash on the barrel head gets serious consideration and because he blew CBS out of the water with his bid, the NFL and Jones knew they would be getting a new partner with a patchwork of big city VHF and small area UHF stations and both sides would have to make it work.
In December 1993, The NFL took the money. In retrospect, it was the right decision but at the time it looked like just a money grab.
In early 1994, Murdoch started to prepare for the 1994 season by quickly established a sports department by giving Madden an enormous contact and hiring his sidekick Pat Summerall. Murdoch also took Madden's CBS support team and made John feel right at home. Madden would become the face of FOX sports and with the NFL in tow, Murdoch was able to steal VHF stations in Detroit and Milwaukee away from CBS. Murdoch had one of TV's crown jewels, the NFL, and FOX would now be in a position to become a serious player in American TV.
It can be suggested that the success of the NFL and Madden on FOX led to Murdoch to start the FOX News Channel. The over-the-air network, still technically a syndication arm, started producing hits like the X-Files along with Beverly Hills 90210, Melrose Place, In Living Color to go along with The Simpsons and Married With Children. Murdoch didn't have blockbuster ratings but the network was doing okay business and he already had a satellite news network in Europe, Murdoch turned to creating a United States cable TV news channel.
There are no what if questions. The NFL and Madden changed the fortunes of both Murdoch and Lawrence Tisch's CBS. In 1993, CBS completed the TV hat trick; it won daytime, prime time and late night ratings. David Letterman had just moved over to the network and things were looking good. But Tisch's CBS did not invest in cable TV, lost the NFL and Madden, football's top star both on and off the field, lost affiliates and would start a downward spiral. Murdoch's FOX Sports added the National Hockey League and Major League Baseball soon after the NFL deal. Eventually Murdoch would gain NASCAR and the Bowl Championship Series. On the cable TV side, Murdoch sort of has a national sports network, but that is not where Murdoch really has a sports foothold. Murdoch's regional sports cable networks are still strong despite being challenged by upstarts in the past few years. FOX either owns or has agreements with 23 regionals and there are college sports networks as well. There is also a partnership with The Big Ten Network
Madden's signing with FOX after CBS lost the NFL rights in 1993 cannot be dismissed. John Madden was a major part of the FOX promotion, so much so that at an NFL owners meeting at the Arizona Biltmore in Phoenix, John ended up by the master of ceremonies for the night's owners party after Murdoch departed. Madden left FOX after the February 2002 Super Bowl and joined ABC Monday Night Football's crew. John was no longer that valuable to Murdoch. Rupert built a viable network; he had built a strong regional sports cable network. He had his news channel and was finally an American citizen because non American citizens could not own TV networks. Murdoch, the Australian, should not have owned FOX but American President Bill Clinton's Federal Communication Commission in 1995 allowed Murdoch to run FOX because it was "in the best interest of the public."
NFL owners never knew what they had in the 1950s. Today billions flow into the owners pockets. The fight between the owners and players is all about money. It is “Money Now” for the players and the owners.
Evan Weiner, the winner of the United States Sports Academy's 2010 Ronald Reagan Media Award, is an author, radio-TV commentator and speaker on "The Politics of Sports Business." His book, "The Business and Politics of Sports, Second Edition is available at www.bickley.com, Barnes and Noble or amazonkindle. He can be reached at evanjweiner@yahoo.com
MONDAY, 07 MARCH 2011 14:19
BY EVAN WEINER
NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM
THE BUSINESS AND POLITICS OF SPORTS
http://www.newjerseynewsroom.com/professional/nfl-labor-talks-understanding-the-negotiations
As the representatives from the National Football League ownership group and the National Football League Players Association continue to try and bridge their differences and sign a new collective bargaining agreement (and yes Green Bay Packers players have collective bargaining rights in Wisconsin despite the best efforts of the state's governor to bust public employee unions as Governor Scott Walker told the fake David Koch), it might be useful to review 60 years of television money and players association activity and how closely linked television and the players really are.
NFL owners were planning to use some $ 4 billion in 2011 television rights fees to underwrite a lockout. Rupert Murdoch's News Corp (FOX), General Election (now Comcast)'s NBC, Summer Redstone's CBS, the Walt Disney Company's ESPN and DirecTV cozied up to the NFL owners because the owners' product is still a consistently watched fare in an increasing fragmented audience industry — TV.
Television is the “tiger blood” of the NFL. CBS, NBC and ABC were the “Goddesses” that brought the NFL to the masses during an explosive growth spurt between 1960 and 1970. Each one of the NFL owners was a “bi-winner.”
NFL owners and NFL players have been battling over issues since 1956. Today, NFL players get huge salaries but have short careers and unlike their counterparts in Major League Baseball, the National Basketball Association and the National Hockey League, a NFL players contract is not guaranteed. If a player gets fired, he keeps bonus money but he is terminated with just some severance pay. NFL players need four years to get a pension and five years of medical benefits following a career. The lack of will to fight the owners and just take money now has left some former players financially destitute and in some case contemplating suicide from injuries suffered on the field from Pop Warner through junior high school, high school, college and pro football.
As television contracts got bigger and bigger, so did players salaries but NFLPA negotiators never looked at the future.
“Money Now.”
In 1950, the three most popular sports in the United States were baseball, boxing and horse racing. National Football league owners were running mom and pop store operations that operated from July to December. Television, as the noted writer Frank Deford explained on a long forgotten TV show that featured this writer and Al Michaels (along with the "Scud Stud" Arthur Kent) on Histories Mysteries, an all inconclusive look at sports history in about 88 minutes on the History Channel in 2000, changed the sports world. By 1965, football was the most popular sport in the United States. The owners had more money than they ever could imagine but the owners still treated players like they did in the 1920s, 1930s, 1940s and 1950s.
The NFL owners and players had a contentious relationship for decades. The NFLPA formed in 1956 with help from Creighton Miller, the first General Manager of the Cleveland Browns. Unhappy players in Cleveland and Green Bay assembled a network of "player reps" on each team. The players included Don Shula (Colts), Frank Gifford (Giants), and Norm Van Brocklin (Rams) to represent their teams. The Chicago Bears did not have a players representative. The players first meeting was held in New York in the fall of 1956, after the owners ignored the players' attempts to discuss their requests. The players asked for minimum salaries of $5,000 per season, injury pay, uniform per diems, and for teams to supply their own equipment.
Nothing happened but the players got a big break in 1957 when, the first lawsuit involving professional football and antitrust was filed, Radovich v. NFL, which significantly altered player rights within the league. The case involved a player/coach, George Radovich, who sued the league because the NFL effectively prevented him from attaining employment in the NFL or affiliated leagues, such as the Pacific Coast League, which was in existence at the time. The case was dismissed on the grounds that the NFL was exempted from the antitrust laws, and was appealed to the Supreme Court, which reversed the decision of the trial court, holding professional football subject to the antitrust laws.
The Supreme Court of the United States decision changed life for NFL owners. The players could now sue the league on antitrust grounds which they threatened to do. The owners and players settled with the players receiving minimum salaries of $5,000, $50 payment for preseason games, medical coverage for injuries, and a pension.
But the players didn't get what they agreed to and spend the 1958 season chasing the owners to live up to the agreement. The deal was finally signed in 1959.
In 2011, as a fallback, the players will decertify their association and then sue the league on antitrust grounds if an agreement isn't reached soon. Nothing much has changed since 1957.
The truth was that football was a part time vocation and not a real job for either the owners of the players in the 1950s.
When the season ended in the 1950s, so did football as a main vocation. New York fans may have wildly cheered the New York Giants defensive lineman Andy Robustelli on six Sundays a season, but on the Monday after the final game, it was back to work in the civilian world.
"Each player the day that the season was over, you were free and you looked for a job. You wouldn't see each other until next year. I think, and with all respect to the modern ballplayer, I hope the modern ballplayer appreciates, not only the opportunity, but...football is a stepping stone it's not the end of life," said Robustelli , who became a successful businessman in Connecticut once his Giant days were through, in the 1990s.
Robustelli's generation of players didn't put up much of a fight with the owners for pensions and future health benefits. In fact, lots of generations of NFL players never put up much of a fight for pension and health benefits and according to one players agent, there was a reason for that.
"Their constituency is active players and when the crunch comes, no one with status is representing the retired players. So it relies on the good will of the current players, which has been subsumed to selfishness," said the agent. "Football players are the worst labor unit--short playing careers, spectre of injury, coaches kids, born-again Christians, all salary paid from September to January so each game check more impactful, (Joe) Montana and Howie Long and other stars crossed picket line last time (in 1987), no ability to sustain a strike."
The NFLPA has always been weak and the owners knew that. The two leagues may have merged, but the player associations did not, as the players on the 16 NFL teams were NFLPA members and the players on the 10 AFL teams were American Football League Players Association members. This caused a major problem in subsequent negotiations as the NFLPA would come to a tentative agreement with the owners on certain collective bargaining issues (such as minimum salaries, retirement age) then the owners would bargain with the AFLPA, who accepted lower terms, which wasn't good for NFLPA members.
There was a brief lockout and a 20-day strike in 1970 that ended just before the 1970 All Star game and which did not result in the cancellation of regular or post-season games, the NFL and NFLPA signed a four-year contract, the first collective bargaining agreement in the history of the NFL, which raised player salary minimums to $12,500 for rookies and $13,000 for veterans, added dental insurance, improved the pension, gave players the right to have agents, gave players representation on the Retirement Board, and provided for impartial arbitration of injury grievances.
(Retired players from that era are still battling the NFL over injury grievances)
In 1974, the previous CBA was coming to an end. Players were demanding the elimination of the Rozelle Rule and the option clause which kept a player tied to his team in perpetuity unless another team was willing to give up number one draft picks or players to sign a free agent among other things. On July 1, the players went on strike, and were prepared to sit out until a new bargaining agreement was hammered out. The sit-out led to the cancellation of the New York Jets game at New Haven, the first game ever canceled due to a labor impasse. However, by the early part of August, about a quarter of the NFLPA crossed the picket lines, breaking down union solidarity. On August 11, Garvey sent his players back to work after a federal mediator suggested a 14-day cooling off period, instead pursuing the issue through the Mackey case. The 42-day strike ended that day with nothing gained.
On September 21, 1982, NFL players went on strike. It was the longest strike in professional sports in the U.S. at the time and lasted until November 17. The owners responded by locking the players out at the commencement of the strike. During the strike, only 126 of the 224 scheduled regular-season games were played, forcing the league to change the format of post-season play to include 16 teams instead of the usual 10 teams. The players held two "All-Star" games to raise some funding for players without a paycheck. The players got more money but two goals were not met, a form of free agency and more pension money.
NFL owners won the 1987 battle with the players but the two sides ended up in Judge David Doty's courtroom in 1993 after the association decertified. They came up with a deal because of pressure from Judge Doty. Eighteen years later, Judge Doty is still involved with the two sides. Apparently Judge Doty disagrees with the owners pocketing network, cable and satellite TV money in 2011 whether the league is locked out or not. There is a question of what happens with that $4 billion. Eventually Judge Doty will decide what to do.
Television and the NFL have had a long history. TV has helped and hurt the league. Today, it is all good but 62 years ago, it was a different story.
The Los Angeles Rams showed all 12 of the team's home and away games on local television in 1949 and saw a sharp decrease in attendance from 1948. In 1950, NFL Commissioner Bert Bell urged teams to blackout home games in an effort to keep the people in the stands for home games instead of in front of the television.
Some teams had TV contracts. The Dumont TV Network paid $75,000 to nationally televise the Los Angeles Rams-Cleveland Browns championship game on December 23, 1951. By 1953, the NFL was in the courtroom defending its blackout policy. Judge Allan K. Grim of the U. S. District Court in Philadelphia upheld the league's blackout policy and did not violate anti-trust laws.
The 1957 NFL Championship Game was blacked out in the host city, Detroit, despite being a sellout. The blackout policy was challenged again in 1962 when the Giants hosted Green Bay in the NFL Championship at Yankee Stadium Judge Edward Weinfeld of the U. S. District Court upheld the NFL position and denied an injunction, which would have forced CBS to televise the game in the New York City area.
“That was a big test case for us,” said Mara of the 1953 courtroom proceedings. “I think the big value of TV was the promotion that it should what a great event this was; what a great game this was. It made people want to come to the ball park, or go up to Stratford, Connecticut to see it on TV.”
New York Giant fans who could not get tickets to the sold out Yankee Stadium would travel to Fairfield County, Connecticut and either rent hotel rooms or go to bars and/or restaurants to watch blacked out home games on WTIC, Channel 3 out of Hartford. Blacked out games meant money six, seven or eight times a year to Connecticut businesses.
The blackout policy would remain in effect until 1973, when Congress passed experimental legislation (only valid until 1976) requiring any NFL game that was declared a sellout 72 hours prior to kickoff be made available for local TV.
Television would play a role in the Bidwill family's move of their Cardinals franchise in 1960. The NFL also permitted the Cardinals to relocate to St. Louis for the 1960 season, in an effort to eliminate the market-cannibalization taking place between the Cardinals and the Bears in Chicago, the second largest television market at the time. The Chicago CBS station, which was televising NFL games, needed a solution to the Bears-Cardinals two-market setup. Since the teams never played on television head to head unless they played one another, and the league was blacking out home games, CBS never showed games in Chicago.
On March 13, 1960 the Cardinals moved to St. Louis after receiving $500,000 for "improvements" at Soldier Field, some of the funding coming from CBS. In effect, the Cardinals were not just "allowed" to move to St. Louis, but rather were paid to do so by the Bears, the NFL, and CBS.
The American Football League formed in 1959. It was an eight-team league, which borrowed a business model from the stillborn Continental Baseball League, which was a brainchild of Branch Rickey. The CBL planned to pool TV revenue and divide the money among the league's 12-teams. Rickey's league was working under the assumption that it had an antitrust exemption like the American League and National League in baseball. Lamar Hunt's league must have felt the same way. The AFL had decided on November 23, 1959 to approve a cooperative television plan whereby the league office negotiates the television contract and which proceeds from which were equally divided among member clubs.
By June 9, 1960, the AFL had a TV deal with the American Broadcasting Company. It was a five-year contract with the eight teams sharing $1,785,000 in 1960 and graduated increases of the life of the agreement.
The NFL wanted the same type of network deal but the league had to live with the Sherman Antitrust Act hanging over the league's business practices. That changed on September 30, 1961 with President John F. Kennedy's signature on a bill that allowed the 14-team league to become one entity for television contract negotiation purposes.
In 1960, the New York Giants received $340,000 for their deal, but the Green Bay Packers received $105,000. Rozelle saw the changing playing field and knew the big market teams in New York, Chicago and Los Angeles could get enormous contracts as television grew leaving behind smaller markets such as Pittsburgh and Green Bay.
"My brother Jack (Giants), George Halas (Bears) and Daniel Reeves (Rams), we were the three teams that were most affected," said Giants owner Wellington Mara. "Now, Art Modell (Browns), he had has own deal made already and he surrendered that to go into it.
"He (Modell) was really the one who gave something away. We didn't know what we were giving up. That is what did it. They made the decision. Without that, why we wouldn't have the league we have today."
Rozelle was a genius. He was lucky that the times were favorable but he had to work at getting a diverse group of owners to think league instead of individual fiefdom and he did.
"I think he explained to everybody very cogently what was at stake and he knew it wasn't going to be much of a league with lopsided revenue" Rozelle is a guiding force in the formation of the modern NFL. "We used to laugh a little bit, but we used to say Pete was so smooth and so polished and he had a great sense of public relations, but we always thought in running a league meeting, the softest part about him were his teeth," said Mara with a laugh.
"He knew when to twist an arm, and when to massage an ego and he made great use of that knowledge. He stepped in and from the very first minute, from the very first meeting he ran, he was a leader. He took things over and organized us."
CBS would win rights to NFL games in 1962 with a $4.65 million bid, NC would gain the 1963 AFL Championship Game for $926,000 despite the fact that ABC was the AFL regular season TV right’s holder. CBS would keep the NFL for the 1964 and 1965 seasons as well as the NFL Championship Game by paying $14.1 million per season and $3.6 million for two championship games. Meanwhile NBC guaranteed the future of the AFL by signing a five-year, $36 million contract beginning in 1965.
CBS extended its relationship with Pete Rozelle and the NFL in 1965 through 1967 with a $39.6 million for the 1966 and 1967 regular seasons with an option for 1968. CBS bought the 1966 and 1967 NFL Championship Games for $2 million per game. After the June 8, 1966 merger, the rights to the first four AFL-NFL Championship Games, 1967-70 was sold to both CBS and NBC for $9.5 million. In 1969, CBS passed on Rozelle’s idea of Monday Night Football, ABC acquired the rights to 13 games annually between 1970-72. Monday Night Football would change the NFL as much as the June 8, 1966 merger between the AFL and NFL.
The players of the 1960s kept pushing to get the owners to give them more benefits. They always seem to lose except salaries increased as TV contracts increased.
Television is willing to pay sports teams lavishly because TV executives think 18-49 year old males and 25-54 year old males will tune in and support advertisers’ products. The NFL makes TV networks. Monday Night Football made ABC a legitimate network in 1970. NFL ratings were down significantly in 1999, and 2000 yet CBS was happy with its decision to return to the NFL after one time owner Lawrence Tisch passed on extending the network's NFC deal with the league in 1993.
Tisch's failure to extend NFL football on CBS caused a massive turnover in the TV industry. CBS lost local affiliates in Detroit and Milwaukee as stations defected to FOX to continue having NFL games and FOX became a network sports powerhouse, eventually securing the rights to Major League Baseball and the National Hockey League.
While CBS claimed to have broken even on its football expenditure in 1998, insiders knew that other areas of the company were cut back because of football. The company announced massive layoffs in 1998 and closed studios around the United States.
After the NFL was lost in 1993, CBS still had its billion dollar, seven-year deal to cover the NCAA Tournament in basketball, golf's Masters and college football. Cutbacks at CBS were nothing new. Tisch scaled back the news operations in the 1980s to pay for football and baseball. In fact, Tisch really started the pay escalation for TV rights by paying the enormous sum of $1.06 billion over four years for MLB television rights from 1990-93. CBS ended up losing millions on the deal, especially with poor Saturday Game of the Week ratings.
Without the NFL and John Madden, Rupert Murdoch's United States media empire may not be as imposing as it is today.
Before the NFL and Madden, Murdoch's FOX network, which is technically not a network but a syndication unit, was a weak collection of UHF stations with the exception of a few cities like New York, Washington, and Los Angeles. Before the NFL and Madden, FOX had a few shows that drew some attention, the It's Gary Shandling's Show, the Tracy Ullman Show and Married With Children. Out of the Ullman show came The Simpsons, Shandling's show originally ran on Showtime and then went to FOX. Ullman's show was canceled in 1990. FOX could not establish a late night talk show, the Joan Rivers experiment was a disaster and a 1993 Chevy Chase late night show as a bomb. Not much worked for Murdoch.
Neither Al Bundy nor Bart Simpson, as popular as the characters would become, could bolster FOX. Murdoch's team was buying TV stations and became the biggest owner of over-the-air stations in the United States but by 1993, it was still the fourth network in a three horse race for ratings behind CBS, NBC and ABC.
The NFL and Madden changed all of that. Actually, it was Jerry Jones, the owner of the Dallas Cowboys that put Murdoch on the map as Jones and Murdoch negotiated the TV deal that would change everything. The NFL had been prospering from TV rights fees since the 1961 Sports Broadcast Act which allowed the league commissioner, who is also the league's chief negotiator and lobbyist in all things NFL, to bundle the 14 member franchises into one entity in order to negotiate a TV deal. Three decades later, the NFL was a 30 franchise entity with four separate and distinct elements. CBS had the National Football Conference contests and paid slightly more money for the NFC than NBC did for American Football Conference games because the NFC had more major markets. ABC had Monday Night Football and ESPN and Turner Sports split a Sunday night package.
The NFL was being paid $3.6 million over a four year period between 1990 and 1993.
Murdoch's fourth place network was desperate for a game changer and the NFL provided him with an opening. The NFL and Jones were knocked over by Murdoch's bid for the NFC games. Murdoch was willing to fork over $1.58 billion over four years to get the NFC package along with the Super Bowl. Murdoch had a syndication arm but no news division, no sports division, none of the apparatus that CBS, ABC and NBC had. Murdoch knew that the NFL deals with an old philosophy, cash on the barrel head gets serious consideration and because he blew CBS out of the water with his bid, the NFL and Jones knew they would be getting a new partner with a patchwork of big city VHF and small area UHF stations and both sides would have to make it work.
In December 1993, The NFL took the money. In retrospect, it was the right decision but at the time it looked like just a money grab.
In early 1994, Murdoch started to prepare for the 1994 season by quickly established a sports department by giving Madden an enormous contact and hiring his sidekick Pat Summerall. Murdoch also took Madden's CBS support team and made John feel right at home. Madden would become the face of FOX sports and with the NFL in tow, Murdoch was able to steal VHF stations in Detroit and Milwaukee away from CBS. Murdoch had one of TV's crown jewels, the NFL, and FOX would now be in a position to become a serious player in American TV.
It can be suggested that the success of the NFL and Madden on FOX led to Murdoch to start the FOX News Channel. The over-the-air network, still technically a syndication arm, started producing hits like the X-Files along with Beverly Hills 90210, Melrose Place, In Living Color to go along with The Simpsons and Married With Children. Murdoch didn't have blockbuster ratings but the network was doing okay business and he already had a satellite news network in Europe, Murdoch turned to creating a United States cable TV news channel.
There are no what if questions. The NFL and Madden changed the fortunes of both Murdoch and Lawrence Tisch's CBS. In 1993, CBS completed the TV hat trick; it won daytime, prime time and late night ratings. David Letterman had just moved over to the network and things were looking good. But Tisch's CBS did not invest in cable TV, lost the NFL and Madden, football's top star both on and off the field, lost affiliates and would start a downward spiral. Murdoch's FOX Sports added the National Hockey League and Major League Baseball soon after the NFL deal. Eventually Murdoch would gain NASCAR and the Bowl Championship Series. On the cable TV side, Murdoch sort of has a national sports network, but that is not where Murdoch really has a sports foothold. Murdoch's regional sports cable networks are still strong despite being challenged by upstarts in the past few years. FOX either owns or has agreements with 23 regionals and there are college sports networks as well. There is also a partnership with The Big Ten Network
Madden's signing with FOX after CBS lost the NFL rights in 1993 cannot be dismissed. John Madden was a major part of the FOX promotion, so much so that at an NFL owners meeting at the Arizona Biltmore in Phoenix, John ended up by the master of ceremonies for the night's owners party after Murdoch departed. Madden left FOX after the February 2002 Super Bowl and joined ABC Monday Night Football's crew. John was no longer that valuable to Murdoch. Rupert built a viable network; he had built a strong regional sports cable network. He had his news channel and was finally an American citizen because non American citizens could not own TV networks. Murdoch, the Australian, should not have owned FOX but American President Bill Clinton's Federal Communication Commission in 1995 allowed Murdoch to run FOX because it was "in the best interest of the public."
NFL owners never knew what they had in the 1950s. Today billions flow into the owners pockets. The fight between the owners and players is all about money. It is “Money Now” for the players and the owners.
Evan Weiner, the winner of the United States Sports Academy's 2010 Ronald Reagan Media Award, is an author, radio-TV commentator and speaker on "The Politics of Sports Business." His book, "The Business and Politics of Sports, Second Edition is available at www.bickley.com, Barnes and Noble or amazonkindle. He can be reached at evanjweiner@yahoo.com
Wednesday, March 2, 2011
A Sacramento Kings move to Anaheim could open door for new NBA franchise in Newark
WEDNESDAY, 02 MARCH 2011 14:38
BY EVAN WEINER
NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM
http://www.newjerseynewsroom.com/professional/a-sacramento-kings-move-to-anaheim-could-open-door-for-new-nba-franchise-in-newark
THE BUSINESS AND POLITICS OF SPORTS
If you listen to the sports radio talk shows, as painful as that can be at times, there seems to be a resentment that basketball players such as LeBron James, Chris Bosh, Dwayne Wade, Carmelo Anthony, Chris Paul and Dwight Howard are manipulating the system using impending free agency as leverage to force trades or collude to play with other big time players.
In the CNN-SI Truth and Rumors section, Howard is leaving Orlando for the Los Angeles Lakers as a free agent or maybe he will join the Brooklyn Nets.
The New York Knicks flagship radio station, WEPN which along with New York newspaper sports sections led the cheerleading for the Knicks pursuit of Anthony ran a promo pushing Chris Paul to the Knicks when Paul becomes a free agent after 2012. It seems the NBA's major market teams can somehow fit stars into big cities despite the presence of a salary cap just like Major League Baseball, which has no salary cap but significant revenue sharing.
But no one ever talks about the ultimate free agency — franchise relocation.
The prevailing thinking is that the NBA's big stars want to go to big markets. LeBron James and Chris Bosh didn't go to a big market; they went to Miami where they joined Wade. Anthony ended up with the Knicks. Will small market NBA owners look to big markets like Los Angeles, Chicago and New York (Newark) if they cannot make it in Sacramento, Indiana, New Orleans, Memphis and Charlotte to name a few struggling markets?
The National Basketball Association has approved a number of moves in the past decade. Michael Heisley left behind Vancouver, Canada for a new arena in Memphis in 2001. George Shinn took his Charlotte Hornets basketball team to New Orleans in 2002. Two years ago, Clayton Bennett failed at his attempt to get a new Seattle arena for his SuperSonics basketball franchise and literally went home — his home — to Oklahoma City.
Memphis, New Orleans and Oklahoma City are small markets and there seems to be a feeling that the small markets cannot work over the long haul in the NBA.
The Maloof brothers, the owners of the Sacramento Kings, apparently are very interested in moving their basketball business from California's capital to a very crowded professional and college market in Anaheim, California which is south of Los Angeles. The Maloofs have received permission from the NBA to pursue a transfer to the arena close to Disneyland and will tell league officials in mid April if they intend to move south.
Anaheim is a much wealthier market than Sacramento and potentially oozes TV money, which is extremely important.
The Maloofs are negotiating with Anaheim officials and could be speaking with the big bosses from Rupert Murdoch's FOX Sports West about the huge hole in programming at the regional cable network starting in the fall of 2012 when Jerry Buss's Los Angeles Lakers join forces with Time Warner and form a potentially high revenue English- language Lakers channel and a Spanish-language Lakers channel.
In the David Stern world of success, a franchise needs three components — strong government support (Anaheim is pushing to get the Maloofs to sign a deal with Henry Samueli and share the city owned arena with Samueli's NHL Anaheim Ducks franchise), a strong local cable TV contract (FOX Sports West will have an opening for programming) and strong corporate support.
Newark has an NBA franchise at the moment but the city's arena will have an opening, presumably in 2012-13 when the present NBA franchise moves to Brooklyn. New Jersey Governor Chris Christie has spoken to Stern about that opening, so presumably there is strong government support for a Newark NBA franchise. The Comcast-Time Warner and New York Mets owned SNY regional cable network has no professional (NHL-NBA) games during the winter and could use programming. New Jersey has not shown strong corporate support for the Nets or NHL Devils and that might be a problem. The New York market oozes TV money too despite two Major League Baseball teams, two NFL teams, three National Hockey League teams, two NBA teams and a few of Big East basketball teams.
That leads to this question. For an owner, is being a big fish in a small pond better than being third fiddle in a super market like New York or Los Angeles?
The Maloofs are exploring that question.
If the answer is yes, the Maloofs move could open the door for Christie to recruit a disgruntled NBA owner once Mikhail Prokhorov takes his Nets through the Holland Tunnel and the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel (or whatever it will soon be renamed) to Brooklyn in two years. There are some financially-challenged franchises in the NBA which may trigger an owners lockout starting July 1. The suspects include the NBA-owned New Orleans Hornets, Charlotte, Memphis and Indiana.
Sacramento and Charlotte were once model NBA franchises. Both businesses had phenomenal success complete with sellouts and rabid fans. But both cities didn’t have the proper facilities to maximize revenues complete with luxury boxes and club seats along with restaurants in the arena. Shinn never got a new arena and left. The city built a new arena for an expansion team and that team has not been embraced.
Sacramento has had a long history of flirtation with Anaheim.
For years various Kings ownership groups have sought public funding to replace the privately funded Arco Arena, which opened in 1988, and build a new arena for the city's NBA franchise. Now, Sacramento Mayor Kevin Johnson, a former NBA player, and city officials are scrambling to put together a proposal that pleases the Maloof brothers.
Johnson and city elected officials and business leaders have about six weeks to accomplish the nearly impossible. Get funding for a new arena and do it in an economically stressed climate in California.
A little background is necessary.
In 1996, the Kings owner at the time, Jim Thomas, proposed building both a Major League Baseball stadium and an NBA arena in the city, but by January 1997, the idea fell apart and Thomas began threatening to sell the team because the franchise was losing money. Sacramento city leaders, fearing that Thomas might move the team to Anaheim or some other city, loaned him $82 million to help ease his financial burden.
Thomas sold the franchise to the Maloof brothers in 1998.
In 2001, Sacramento's mayor, Heather Fargo, put together a task force to study whether Sacramento should green light an arena and entertainment center in the city's downtown area and, by November 2002, there was some sort of commitment to the plan. But the Maloof brothers pulled out of the proposed venture within a year, partly because they didn't want to get stuck with a debt service bill. When the issue was revisited in 2004, the Maloofs were unhappy that a city councilman offered a resolution that would cap spending at $175 million for the city and $175 million for the Maloofs.
Apparently a salary cap on NBA players' payroll is fine for the brothers, but a municipal spending cap for an arena is unacceptable.
In 2006, there was another arena proposal on the table and Sacramento officials appeared to have deliberately used language that made it unclear what voters are being asked to approve. The two-part referendum called for a quarter of a cent general tax hike for 15 years and then asked whether voters would like to see the estimated $1.2 billion in proceeds go to building an arena and other community projects.
Why didn't Sacramento politicians mention that the tax increase in question is in fact a sales tax hike?
The answer seemed to be that the arena referendum had to be worded in such a way because it was never going to get the two-thirds approval needed under California law to pass a sales tax increase. Officials need just a simple majority, a 50.1% plurality, to win a general tax hike.
The politics of sports is at its best extremely messy, and politicians generally go to great lengths to keep stadium and arena building proposals off the ballot. In 2006, Sacramento city officials seemed to have reached a new high — or low, depending on one's viewpoint — in making sure they do right by the Maloof brothers and the NBA. They were determined to build an arena despite the language in Proposition 218, which calls for a two-thirds majority on specific tax increases like arena and stadium projects.
If you looked at the details of the proposed lease between Sacramento and the Maloof brothers, it was clear that the Maloofs would be walking away with a windfall, but that's how the government–sports franchise partnership works and you can't fault the Maloofs in this deal. Sacramento was so desperate to hold on to its only major league team that it was willing to give away the store if voters say yes.
The city, through the general tax, would have put up at least $470 million for the arena and parking. Sacramento officials thought it would have cost as much as $542 million for both, and there also would have been a cost of between $35 and $51 million to pay off the debt service on the loans that will be taken out for the construction. The city would own the building, but all of the revenue generated for all events held inside the building would go to the Maloof brothers. Not only that: The siblings would keep all the money earned from selling the naming rights to the city owned arena.
The Maloofs would pay off Thomas' old loan, which they inherited after they purchased the team. Additionally, they would pay $4 million in annual rent, an amount that could easily come in 2006 from naming rights. The brothers would also have had to kick in $20 million for arena repairs. It was a sweet deal for the Maloofs and a rotten one for Sacramento.
The Maloof-Sacramento "agreement" fell apart because the Maloofs did not want an "arena-village" sprouting up around the arena and wanted lots and lots of parking.
The Maloofs and the city began fighting over development surrounding the arena, the city wanted commercial and residential building to ring the new facility to spur downtown development but the Maloofs, who would get just about every nickel of revenue inside the building, wanted the land for an 8,000 space parking lot. The Maloofs wanted the big parking lot because they would keep all of the money generated from the lot. The Maloofs wanted the same parking deal they have now at the old arena.
That might not seem like a deal breaker until you do the math. Assuming the Maloofs fill the lot and charge $10 a car, that would mean $80,000 a night multiplied by 41 and you get more than $3 million annually from parking alone just from Kings events. The Maloofs would also get parking money from non-Kings events at the building, so the parking lot issue has become significant and a deal breaker.
The two questions on the November 2006 ballot were sounded defeated but there is never surrender in the "arena-game." Stern took over the negotiations in 2007 and nothing happened. The NBA recently walked away from the bargaining table leaving the Maloofs to look elsewhere. Still Sacramento Mayor Kevin Johnson is looking to get an arena done and the NBA has a history of going back to failed cities. Charlotte, Memphis, New Orleans, Minneapolis, Salt Lake City and Toronto among others were failed basketball cities. Dallas, Houston, Philadelphia (the Warriors moved to San Francisco in 1962 abandoning the town. Syracuse moved to Philadelphia in 1963.) and Chicago failed to support NBA or ABA franchises.
In April 2005, NBA Commissioner David Stern threw a hissy fit when New Jersey officials would not commit to building an arena for Nets basketball in Newark.
"New Jersey blew it," Stern said before a Nets playoff game. "We practically begged them, and the New Jersey politicians did not step up." Stern was irate because New Jersey politicians said no to public funding for a Newark building.
Newark, Seattle, Louisville, Kansas City, Pittsburgh and Vancouver could be in the mix if an owner decides his present market does not work financially. The Maloof's decision to become a small fish in a large pond could have some major reverberations. Newark might be a free agent destination, not for Dwight Howard or Chris Paul, rather an NBA owner.
Evan Weiner, the winner of the United States Sports Academy's 2010 Ronald Reagan Media Award, is an author, radio-TV commentator and speaker on "The Politics of Sports Business." His book, "The Business and Politics of Sports, Second Edition is available at www.bickley.com, Barnes and Noble or amazonkindle. He can be reached at evanjweiner@yahoo.com
WEDNESDAY, 02 MARCH 2011 14:38
BY EVAN WEINER
NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM
http://www.newjerseynewsroom.com/professional/a-sacramento-kings-move-to-anaheim-could-open-door-for-new-nba-franchise-in-newark
THE BUSINESS AND POLITICS OF SPORTS
If you listen to the sports radio talk shows, as painful as that can be at times, there seems to be a resentment that basketball players such as LeBron James, Chris Bosh, Dwayne Wade, Carmelo Anthony, Chris Paul and Dwight Howard are manipulating the system using impending free agency as leverage to force trades or collude to play with other big time players.
In the CNN-SI Truth and Rumors section, Howard is leaving Orlando for the Los Angeles Lakers as a free agent or maybe he will join the Brooklyn Nets.
The New York Knicks flagship radio station, WEPN which along with New York newspaper sports sections led the cheerleading for the Knicks pursuit of Anthony ran a promo pushing Chris Paul to the Knicks when Paul becomes a free agent after 2012. It seems the NBA's major market teams can somehow fit stars into big cities despite the presence of a salary cap just like Major League Baseball, which has no salary cap but significant revenue sharing.
But no one ever talks about the ultimate free agency — franchise relocation.
The prevailing thinking is that the NBA's big stars want to go to big markets. LeBron James and Chris Bosh didn't go to a big market; they went to Miami where they joined Wade. Anthony ended up with the Knicks. Will small market NBA owners look to big markets like Los Angeles, Chicago and New York (Newark) if they cannot make it in Sacramento, Indiana, New Orleans, Memphis and Charlotte to name a few struggling markets?
The National Basketball Association has approved a number of moves in the past decade. Michael Heisley left behind Vancouver, Canada for a new arena in Memphis in 2001. George Shinn took his Charlotte Hornets basketball team to New Orleans in 2002. Two years ago, Clayton Bennett failed at his attempt to get a new Seattle arena for his SuperSonics basketball franchise and literally went home — his home — to Oklahoma City.
Memphis, New Orleans and Oklahoma City are small markets and there seems to be a feeling that the small markets cannot work over the long haul in the NBA.
The Maloof brothers, the owners of the Sacramento Kings, apparently are very interested in moving their basketball business from California's capital to a very crowded professional and college market in Anaheim, California which is south of Los Angeles. The Maloofs have received permission from the NBA to pursue a transfer to the arena close to Disneyland and will tell league officials in mid April if they intend to move south.
Anaheim is a much wealthier market than Sacramento and potentially oozes TV money, which is extremely important.
The Maloofs are negotiating with Anaheim officials and could be speaking with the big bosses from Rupert Murdoch's FOX Sports West about the huge hole in programming at the regional cable network starting in the fall of 2012 when Jerry Buss's Los Angeles Lakers join forces with Time Warner and form a potentially high revenue English- language Lakers channel and a Spanish-language Lakers channel.
In the David Stern world of success, a franchise needs three components — strong government support (Anaheim is pushing to get the Maloofs to sign a deal with Henry Samueli and share the city owned arena with Samueli's NHL Anaheim Ducks franchise), a strong local cable TV contract (FOX Sports West will have an opening for programming) and strong corporate support.
Newark has an NBA franchise at the moment but the city's arena will have an opening, presumably in 2012-13 when the present NBA franchise moves to Brooklyn. New Jersey Governor Chris Christie has spoken to Stern about that opening, so presumably there is strong government support for a Newark NBA franchise. The Comcast-Time Warner and New York Mets owned SNY regional cable network has no professional (NHL-NBA) games during the winter and could use programming. New Jersey has not shown strong corporate support for the Nets or NHL Devils and that might be a problem. The New York market oozes TV money too despite two Major League Baseball teams, two NFL teams, three National Hockey League teams, two NBA teams and a few of Big East basketball teams.
That leads to this question. For an owner, is being a big fish in a small pond better than being third fiddle in a super market like New York or Los Angeles?
The Maloofs are exploring that question.
If the answer is yes, the Maloofs move could open the door for Christie to recruit a disgruntled NBA owner once Mikhail Prokhorov takes his Nets through the Holland Tunnel and the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel (or whatever it will soon be renamed) to Brooklyn in two years. There are some financially-challenged franchises in the NBA which may trigger an owners lockout starting July 1. The suspects include the NBA-owned New Orleans Hornets, Charlotte, Memphis and Indiana.
Sacramento and Charlotte were once model NBA franchises. Both businesses had phenomenal success complete with sellouts and rabid fans. But both cities didn’t have the proper facilities to maximize revenues complete with luxury boxes and club seats along with restaurants in the arena. Shinn never got a new arena and left. The city built a new arena for an expansion team and that team has not been embraced.
Sacramento has had a long history of flirtation with Anaheim.
For years various Kings ownership groups have sought public funding to replace the privately funded Arco Arena, which opened in 1988, and build a new arena for the city's NBA franchise. Now, Sacramento Mayor Kevin Johnson, a former NBA player, and city officials are scrambling to put together a proposal that pleases the Maloof brothers.
Johnson and city elected officials and business leaders have about six weeks to accomplish the nearly impossible. Get funding for a new arena and do it in an economically stressed climate in California.
A little background is necessary.
In 1996, the Kings owner at the time, Jim Thomas, proposed building both a Major League Baseball stadium and an NBA arena in the city, but by January 1997, the idea fell apart and Thomas began threatening to sell the team because the franchise was losing money. Sacramento city leaders, fearing that Thomas might move the team to Anaheim or some other city, loaned him $82 million to help ease his financial burden.
Thomas sold the franchise to the Maloof brothers in 1998.
In 2001, Sacramento's mayor, Heather Fargo, put together a task force to study whether Sacramento should green light an arena and entertainment center in the city's downtown area and, by November 2002, there was some sort of commitment to the plan. But the Maloof brothers pulled out of the proposed venture within a year, partly because they didn't want to get stuck with a debt service bill. When the issue was revisited in 2004, the Maloofs were unhappy that a city councilman offered a resolution that would cap spending at $175 million for the city and $175 million for the Maloofs.
Apparently a salary cap on NBA players' payroll is fine for the brothers, but a municipal spending cap for an arena is unacceptable.
In 2006, there was another arena proposal on the table and Sacramento officials appeared to have deliberately used language that made it unclear what voters are being asked to approve. The two-part referendum called for a quarter of a cent general tax hike for 15 years and then asked whether voters would like to see the estimated $1.2 billion in proceeds go to building an arena and other community projects.
Why didn't Sacramento politicians mention that the tax increase in question is in fact a sales tax hike?
The answer seemed to be that the arena referendum had to be worded in such a way because it was never going to get the two-thirds approval needed under California law to pass a sales tax increase. Officials need just a simple majority, a 50.1% plurality, to win a general tax hike.
The politics of sports is at its best extremely messy, and politicians generally go to great lengths to keep stadium and arena building proposals off the ballot. In 2006, Sacramento city officials seemed to have reached a new high — or low, depending on one's viewpoint — in making sure they do right by the Maloof brothers and the NBA. They were determined to build an arena despite the language in Proposition 218, which calls for a two-thirds majority on specific tax increases like arena and stadium projects.
If you looked at the details of the proposed lease between Sacramento and the Maloof brothers, it was clear that the Maloofs would be walking away with a windfall, but that's how the government–sports franchise partnership works and you can't fault the Maloofs in this deal. Sacramento was so desperate to hold on to its only major league team that it was willing to give away the store if voters say yes.
The city, through the general tax, would have put up at least $470 million for the arena and parking. Sacramento officials thought it would have cost as much as $542 million for both, and there also would have been a cost of between $35 and $51 million to pay off the debt service on the loans that will be taken out for the construction. The city would own the building, but all of the revenue generated for all events held inside the building would go to the Maloof brothers. Not only that: The siblings would keep all the money earned from selling the naming rights to the city owned arena.
The Maloofs would pay off Thomas' old loan, which they inherited after they purchased the team. Additionally, they would pay $4 million in annual rent, an amount that could easily come in 2006 from naming rights. The brothers would also have had to kick in $20 million for arena repairs. It was a sweet deal for the Maloofs and a rotten one for Sacramento.
The Maloof-Sacramento "agreement" fell apart because the Maloofs did not want an "arena-village" sprouting up around the arena and wanted lots and lots of parking.
The Maloofs and the city began fighting over development surrounding the arena, the city wanted commercial and residential building to ring the new facility to spur downtown development but the Maloofs, who would get just about every nickel of revenue inside the building, wanted the land for an 8,000 space parking lot. The Maloofs wanted the big parking lot because they would keep all of the money generated from the lot. The Maloofs wanted the same parking deal they have now at the old arena.
That might not seem like a deal breaker until you do the math. Assuming the Maloofs fill the lot and charge $10 a car, that would mean $80,000 a night multiplied by 41 and you get more than $3 million annually from parking alone just from Kings events. The Maloofs would also get parking money from non-Kings events at the building, so the parking lot issue has become significant and a deal breaker.
The two questions on the November 2006 ballot were sounded defeated but there is never surrender in the "arena-game." Stern took over the negotiations in 2007 and nothing happened. The NBA recently walked away from the bargaining table leaving the Maloofs to look elsewhere. Still Sacramento Mayor Kevin Johnson is looking to get an arena done and the NBA has a history of going back to failed cities. Charlotte, Memphis, New Orleans, Minneapolis, Salt Lake City and Toronto among others were failed basketball cities. Dallas, Houston, Philadelphia (the Warriors moved to San Francisco in 1962 abandoning the town. Syracuse moved to Philadelphia in 1963.) and Chicago failed to support NBA or ABA franchises.
In April 2005, NBA Commissioner David Stern threw a hissy fit when New Jersey officials would not commit to building an arena for Nets basketball in Newark.
"New Jersey blew it," Stern said before a Nets playoff game. "We practically begged them, and the New Jersey politicians did not step up." Stern was irate because New Jersey politicians said no to public funding for a Newark building.
Newark, Seattle, Louisville, Kansas City, Pittsburgh and Vancouver could be in the mix if an owner decides his present market does not work financially. The Maloof's decision to become a small fish in a large pond could have some major reverberations. Newark might be a free agent destination, not for Dwight Howard or Chris Paul, rather an NBA owner.
Evan Weiner, the winner of the United States Sports Academy's 2010 Ronald Reagan Media Award, is an author, radio-TV commentator and speaker on "The Politics of Sports Business." His book, "The Business and Politics of Sports, Second Edition is available at www.bickley.com, Barnes and Noble or amazonkindle. He can be reached at evanjweiner@yahoo.com
Tuesday, March 1, 2011
Is Dave Duerson’s death just another football casualty?
MONDAY, 28 FEBRUARY 2011 21:19
http://www.newjerseynewsroom.com/professional/is-dave-duersons-death-just-another-football-casualty
BY EVAN WEINER
NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM
THE BUSINESS AND POLITICS OF SPORTS
As the clock ticks down to the March 3, 11:59 p.m. Eastern National Football League deadline for the players and owners to reach an agreement on a new Collective Bargaining Agreement or face a lockout, the suicide death of former Chicago Bears and New York Giants player Dave Duerson should be casting a pall over the talks.
“Should be” is the operative phrase here but other than some “shock” expressed in the media covering the talks, Duerson’s death seems to be stuff that local news TV news thrives on. The murder, mayhem, sports, entertainment and weather formula seems perfect for what passes as an attempt to inform people. Duerson’s death should be an “Around the Horn” episode on ESPN but that embarrassing program brings out the worst in sportswriters and hits every negative-Oscar Madison stereotype available.
Duerson will be forgotten soon enough except in rare cases such as Alan Schwarz’s New York Times reporting on head injuries.
The labor talks are following a script, neither side is budging, the NFL owners want to keep more industry revenue, the players want to keep status quo. The National Labor Relations Board is involved, there is a federal mediator, three United States Senators have weighed in and another Congressman, Lamar Smith wants no part of the talks. Duerson’s suicide seems to have been an inconvenience but it will not be a factor in the talks.
Duerson’s death at his own hands should be shaking the entire football industry but the most telling comments about Dave Duerson and football came from his former wife.
Duerson just seems to be a battlefield casualty like Mike Webster, Andre Waters and others.
A proud warrior.
“Discarded” NFL players apparently don’t have easy transitions into the “civilian” world because of the battering they took while playing the sport. It seems the issue of players safety was settled in 1905 after President Theodore Roosevelt pressured a few college presidents into cleaning up the game after the deaths of 18 players in college games and the maiming of others.
Players safety doesn’t seem to have been much of a priority on any level, whether it is high school, college or the National Football League. The NFL has been very slow to get into the players safety issue and the league is finally addressing head issues 105 years after President Roosevelt made the issue of player safety part of his presidency.
The NFL is now urging all 50 states to take a very close look at head injuries suffered in high school and other football programs for children. Whether it is lip service or not, NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell sent out 44 letters to states urging them to enforce strict surveillance of head injuries. The league is continuing to beef up head injury protocol but that is for future generations. But the league is not taking responsibility for past injuries.
The National Football League Players Association seems to be on the sideline in at least making players more aware of head injuries. Some players were upset when the NFL increased safety procedures last fall and threatened to fine players for hits.
Nor is college football although the NCAA owns Oscar Robertson’s basketball likeness from his days at the University of Cincinnati in perpetuity. Robertson last played for the University of Cincinnati 51 years ago. If the NCAA owns the Big O and every other college athletes' likeness, they should also own head injuries suffered by those who never played three years in the NFL. But the chances are the NCAA will ignore the perpetuity issue when it comes to health benefits.
Robertson has joined a class suit against the NCAA that was started by Ed O’Bannon in 2009 which states that the NCAA "has illegally deprived former student-athletes from "myriad revenue streams including "DVDs, video games, memorabilia, photographs, television rebroadcasts and use in advertising."
The NCAA contends it has the rights to the likenesses and the NCAA’s Collegiate Licensing Company will continue to use the likenesses.
The NFL (and probably the high school, college, minor league football, Arena Football League, All American Football Conference, American Football League, World Football League and United States Football League) battlefield is lined with casualties. There are too many stories involving Duerson, Webster, and others who died far too young. There are others who are around who tell of their problems like George Visger, Dave Pear and Brent Boyd. And there are many others who can’t or will not speak out.
The wives are talking though.
You need to go to Facebook to find out what they are saying and sportswriters whose main jobs are to glorify the macho men of fall — the Sunday gladiators — are missing a great story. The wives have become the caretakers and the United States government is providing money for players who are disabled through Social Security and Medicare.
There is a very sad irony in Duerson’s suicide that has not gone unnoticed by ex-players like Boyd.
Duerson was on the National Football League Players Association Retirement Board and was one of the people around the NFL who did not believe playing football and getting concussions had anything to do with problems in football’s afterlife. He was among the trustees who said no to players claims for disability.
Duerson shot himself in the chest and left his brain intact. He apparently left instructions that the brain should be donated for testing at the Center for the Study of Traumatic Encephalopathy at Boston University School of Medicine. The researchers will look for chronic traumatic encephalopathy in (CTE) in Duerson’s brain. CTE has been found in the brains of other deceased football players and other athletes by researchers.
Those with CTE can suffer from depression, aggression leading the person to drug usage and possibly suicide.
The NFL is giving the Center for the Study of Traumatic Encephalopathy at Boston University School of Medicine a million dollars to study the deceased players brains. The researchers are trying to find out if CTE is a result of one concussion or the cumulative effect of repeated blows to the head.
Duerson’s post NFL career downward spiral doesn’t seem to deviate from other former players. There were family problems, money problems, business failure and mental problems that seem to be in line with other tragedies.
Who should have taken care of these players who left it all on the field for football?
It would be very easy to blame National Football League owners. But the National Football League Players Association failed association members. The “Money Now” chant during the 1982 NFL strike in retrospect was stupid. The players should have been looking at their football afterlife and not worry about accumulating as much money as possible over a short time period. The Players Association heads like Ed Garvey and Gene Upshaw and the players business agents didn’t have the players best interest in mind in formulating the association’s working condition bargaining strategy.
Their mantra seemed to be “show me the money” and “damn the future.”
Even though Green Bay Packers CEO Mark Murphy, a former player with eight years in the league, said something totally inane to Freakonomics Radio and Stephen J. Dunbar, don’t place the onus on the owners entirely on the fate of the discarded players. The majority of the blame has to fall on the association negotiators who never took former players into account at the bargaining table and never explained to the mid-1970s group of players of the 1982 or 1987 grouping or even the 1993 association members that short term goal of getting the most money possible is great but we need to look at the long term.
Murphy comments were eye opening though because he was a former NFLPA member.
“You know, right now our current players if they’re vested, and you vest if you play three or more seasons, you get health insurance coverage for five years, which is great. But I look at it, too, and the transition for players from playing in the NFL to finding another career and establishing themselves is very difficult, and I really wonder, sometimes, if we do too much for the players. They’ve got severance pay and a 401(k) plan,” said Murphy in Dunbar’s podcast. “I guess what I’m saying is that sometimes it’s not all bad, and going back and talking to some of the players who played for Lombardi in the ‘60s — you know, they worked in the off-seasons, and they made a very smooth transition into their second careers because they had to. And so I’m a little worried that if we do too much for players in terms of compensation after their career’s end, and health insurance — it’s not all bad to have an incentive to get a job. And, so those are just some of the things we’re thinking through and talking through.”
Murphy should tell that to Boyd, to Visger (who never qualified for a pension or health benefits because he was not in the league long enough) Pear and the others who are broken down and the wives as well. But as a company CEO, it is not Murphy’s place to just give out benefits given the United States doesn’t have universal health care like other countries such as Canada and the UK to name two.
That is why collective bargaining is so important even though Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker (Murphy is in Green Bay, Wisconsin) doesn’t agree. The onus falls on negotiators in collective bargaining. There is a responsibility on both sides to cut the best deal possible.
Workers have to bargain for their health care and that is where the National Football League Players Association has suffered a totally failure of responsibility. Years ago, former New York Giants linebacker Harry Carson complained about the severance package and not much has been done to help former NFL players and it is not because the NFL doesn’t have money.
Here is where the football wives can come in and create havoc for everyone. They could start talking. There are shows like Oprah, maybe Anderson Cooper’s new daily program that starts where the 2011 season is supposed to begin and they need to start talking openly like Alicia Duerson.
Facebook conversations between the wives of former players also reveal something rather interesting.
The former players were the Big Men on Campus, the macho men, the men who could show no weakness and were proud individuals. That trait hasn’t disappeared. There seems to be shame associated with failing bodies and that may be a major hurdle for the former players. The men were supermen on the field and the injuries became kryptonite for them.
“We don't hear about them, because they quietly suffer, “said one football wife. “We'll keep looking for them, but in many if not most cases, I believe it will be a female who leads us to them.”
That much is true. Recently this reporter got an e-mail from a wife who said, “My husband played in the mid 70's to 80," said the wife whose name will not be revealed. "We just saw results of neck MRI yesterday. — Not good, but helps explain severe headaches. He remembers the game the injury took place and he could not move his legs and arms the next day. The teams reassuring remark to him was, get better because you have to play the next week!
"Five years ago he was diagnosed with brain damage. Trying to get NFL to agree there's physical, long-term injuries in past NFL players is nearly impossible. They just keep appointing another committee to look into matter."
Alicia Duerson told the NBC TV affiliate in Chicago that during her husband’s career that "multiple times she had to drive her husband home after games because he was dizzy, nauseous, or just not feeling quite right.
"It happened in New York (playing for the Giants) and Chicago (Bears) as well.”
But there was also something else that Alicia Duerson said that eerily sounded like it came from the mouth of other former players who will tell you things in confidence once you know the individual.
"He talked to me a lot about blurred vision, and he had to go somewhere in the city and he couldn't remember how to get there. It was frustrating for him that he couldn't remember how to get there,” she said.
That particular story has been repeated by others who are in their 50s and played in the NFL.
The Duersons divorced not long after Dave Duerson threw his wife against a wall at the University of Notre Dame in February 2005. Duerson was charged with misdemeanor battery and lost his seat as a Notre Dame trustee.
Duerson’s physical problems came out long after his career was done. His post career benefits were long gone. His case is not atypical in the football world. In many ways, Duerson is not a special case. In about six months, researchers will determine where Duerson suffered from CTE.
The NFLPA never took medical problems into account in 1982 when the cry was “Money Now.” DeMaurice Smith, when he was appointed Executive Director of the National Football League Players Association, said he would take care of the former players and they would be welcomed back to the association, that has not happened yet according to a number of former players.
It seems not much has changed since 1982 and “Money Now.”
Evan Weiner, the winner of the United States Sports Academy's 2010 Ronald Reagan Media Award, is an author, radio-TV commentator and speaker on "The Politics of Sports Business." His book, "The Business and Politics of Sports, Second Edition is available at www.bickley.com, Barnes and Noble or amazonkindle. He can be reached at evanjweiner@yahoo.com This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
MONDAY, 28 FEBRUARY 2011 21:19
http://www.newjerseynewsroom.com/professional/is-dave-duersons-death-just-another-football-casualty
BY EVAN WEINER
NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM
THE BUSINESS AND POLITICS OF SPORTS
As the clock ticks down to the March 3, 11:59 p.m. Eastern National Football League deadline for the players and owners to reach an agreement on a new Collective Bargaining Agreement or face a lockout, the suicide death of former Chicago Bears and New York Giants player Dave Duerson should be casting a pall over the talks.
“Should be” is the operative phrase here but other than some “shock” expressed in the media covering the talks, Duerson’s death seems to be stuff that local news TV news thrives on. The murder, mayhem, sports, entertainment and weather formula seems perfect for what passes as an attempt to inform people. Duerson’s death should be an “Around the Horn” episode on ESPN but that embarrassing program brings out the worst in sportswriters and hits every negative-Oscar Madison stereotype available.
Duerson will be forgotten soon enough except in rare cases such as Alan Schwarz’s New York Times reporting on head injuries.
The labor talks are following a script, neither side is budging, the NFL owners want to keep more industry revenue, the players want to keep status quo. The National Labor Relations Board is involved, there is a federal mediator, three United States Senators have weighed in and another Congressman, Lamar Smith wants no part of the talks. Duerson’s suicide seems to have been an inconvenience but it will not be a factor in the talks.
Duerson’s death at his own hands should be shaking the entire football industry but the most telling comments about Dave Duerson and football came from his former wife.
Duerson just seems to be a battlefield casualty like Mike Webster, Andre Waters and others.
A proud warrior.
“Discarded” NFL players apparently don’t have easy transitions into the “civilian” world because of the battering they took while playing the sport. It seems the issue of players safety was settled in 1905 after President Theodore Roosevelt pressured a few college presidents into cleaning up the game after the deaths of 18 players in college games and the maiming of others.
Players safety doesn’t seem to have been much of a priority on any level, whether it is high school, college or the National Football League. The NFL has been very slow to get into the players safety issue and the league is finally addressing head issues 105 years after President Roosevelt made the issue of player safety part of his presidency.
The NFL is now urging all 50 states to take a very close look at head injuries suffered in high school and other football programs for children. Whether it is lip service or not, NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell sent out 44 letters to states urging them to enforce strict surveillance of head injuries. The league is continuing to beef up head injury protocol but that is for future generations. But the league is not taking responsibility for past injuries.
The National Football League Players Association seems to be on the sideline in at least making players more aware of head injuries. Some players were upset when the NFL increased safety procedures last fall and threatened to fine players for hits.
Nor is college football although the NCAA owns Oscar Robertson’s basketball likeness from his days at the University of Cincinnati in perpetuity. Robertson last played for the University of Cincinnati 51 years ago. If the NCAA owns the Big O and every other college athletes' likeness, they should also own head injuries suffered by those who never played three years in the NFL. But the chances are the NCAA will ignore the perpetuity issue when it comes to health benefits.
Robertson has joined a class suit against the NCAA that was started by Ed O’Bannon in 2009 which states that the NCAA "has illegally deprived former student-athletes from "myriad revenue streams including "DVDs, video games, memorabilia, photographs, television rebroadcasts and use in advertising."
The NCAA contends it has the rights to the likenesses and the NCAA’s Collegiate Licensing Company will continue to use the likenesses.
The NFL (and probably the high school, college, minor league football, Arena Football League, All American Football Conference, American Football League, World Football League and United States Football League) battlefield is lined with casualties. There are too many stories involving Duerson, Webster, and others who died far too young. There are others who are around who tell of their problems like George Visger, Dave Pear and Brent Boyd. And there are many others who can’t or will not speak out.
The wives are talking though.
You need to go to Facebook to find out what they are saying and sportswriters whose main jobs are to glorify the macho men of fall — the Sunday gladiators — are missing a great story. The wives have become the caretakers and the United States government is providing money for players who are disabled through Social Security and Medicare.
There is a very sad irony in Duerson’s suicide that has not gone unnoticed by ex-players like Boyd.
Duerson was on the National Football League Players Association Retirement Board and was one of the people around the NFL who did not believe playing football and getting concussions had anything to do with problems in football’s afterlife. He was among the trustees who said no to players claims for disability.
Duerson shot himself in the chest and left his brain intact. He apparently left instructions that the brain should be donated for testing at the Center for the Study of Traumatic Encephalopathy at Boston University School of Medicine. The researchers will look for chronic traumatic encephalopathy in (CTE) in Duerson’s brain. CTE has been found in the brains of other deceased football players and other athletes by researchers.
Those with CTE can suffer from depression, aggression leading the person to drug usage and possibly suicide.
The NFL is giving the Center for the Study of Traumatic Encephalopathy at Boston University School of Medicine a million dollars to study the deceased players brains. The researchers are trying to find out if CTE is a result of one concussion or the cumulative effect of repeated blows to the head.
Duerson’s post NFL career downward spiral doesn’t seem to deviate from other former players. There were family problems, money problems, business failure and mental problems that seem to be in line with other tragedies.
Who should have taken care of these players who left it all on the field for football?
It would be very easy to blame National Football League owners. But the National Football League Players Association failed association members. The “Money Now” chant during the 1982 NFL strike in retrospect was stupid. The players should have been looking at their football afterlife and not worry about accumulating as much money as possible over a short time period. The Players Association heads like Ed Garvey and Gene Upshaw and the players business agents didn’t have the players best interest in mind in formulating the association’s working condition bargaining strategy.
Their mantra seemed to be “show me the money” and “damn the future.”
Even though Green Bay Packers CEO Mark Murphy, a former player with eight years in the league, said something totally inane to Freakonomics Radio and Stephen J. Dunbar, don’t place the onus on the owners entirely on the fate of the discarded players. The majority of the blame has to fall on the association negotiators who never took former players into account at the bargaining table and never explained to the mid-1970s group of players of the 1982 or 1987 grouping or even the 1993 association members that short term goal of getting the most money possible is great but we need to look at the long term.
Murphy comments were eye opening though because he was a former NFLPA member.
“You know, right now our current players if they’re vested, and you vest if you play three or more seasons, you get health insurance coverage for five years, which is great. But I look at it, too, and the transition for players from playing in the NFL to finding another career and establishing themselves is very difficult, and I really wonder, sometimes, if we do too much for the players. They’ve got severance pay and a 401(k) plan,” said Murphy in Dunbar’s podcast. “I guess what I’m saying is that sometimes it’s not all bad, and going back and talking to some of the players who played for Lombardi in the ‘60s — you know, they worked in the off-seasons, and they made a very smooth transition into their second careers because they had to. And so I’m a little worried that if we do too much for players in terms of compensation after their career’s end, and health insurance — it’s not all bad to have an incentive to get a job. And, so those are just some of the things we’re thinking through and talking through.”
Murphy should tell that to Boyd, to Visger (who never qualified for a pension or health benefits because he was not in the league long enough) Pear and the others who are broken down and the wives as well. But as a company CEO, it is not Murphy’s place to just give out benefits given the United States doesn’t have universal health care like other countries such as Canada and the UK to name two.
That is why collective bargaining is so important even though Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker (Murphy is in Green Bay, Wisconsin) doesn’t agree. The onus falls on negotiators in collective bargaining. There is a responsibility on both sides to cut the best deal possible.
Workers have to bargain for their health care and that is where the National Football League Players Association has suffered a totally failure of responsibility. Years ago, former New York Giants linebacker Harry Carson complained about the severance package and not much has been done to help former NFL players and it is not because the NFL doesn’t have money.
Here is where the football wives can come in and create havoc for everyone. They could start talking. There are shows like Oprah, maybe Anderson Cooper’s new daily program that starts where the 2011 season is supposed to begin and they need to start talking openly like Alicia Duerson.
Facebook conversations between the wives of former players also reveal something rather interesting.
The former players were the Big Men on Campus, the macho men, the men who could show no weakness and were proud individuals. That trait hasn’t disappeared. There seems to be shame associated with failing bodies and that may be a major hurdle for the former players. The men were supermen on the field and the injuries became kryptonite for them.
“We don't hear about them, because they quietly suffer, “said one football wife. “We'll keep looking for them, but in many if not most cases, I believe it will be a female who leads us to them.”
That much is true. Recently this reporter got an e-mail from a wife who said, “My husband played in the mid 70's to 80," said the wife whose name will not be revealed. "We just saw results of neck MRI yesterday. — Not good, but helps explain severe headaches. He remembers the game the injury took place and he could not move his legs and arms the next day. The teams reassuring remark to him was, get better because you have to play the next week!
"Five years ago he was diagnosed with brain damage. Trying to get NFL to agree there's physical, long-term injuries in past NFL players is nearly impossible. They just keep appointing another committee to look into matter."
Alicia Duerson told the NBC TV affiliate in Chicago that during her husband’s career that "multiple times she had to drive her husband home after games because he was dizzy, nauseous, or just not feeling quite right.
"It happened in New York (playing for the Giants) and Chicago (Bears) as well.”
But there was also something else that Alicia Duerson said that eerily sounded like it came from the mouth of other former players who will tell you things in confidence once you know the individual.
"He talked to me a lot about blurred vision, and he had to go somewhere in the city and he couldn't remember how to get there. It was frustrating for him that he couldn't remember how to get there,” she said.
That particular story has been repeated by others who are in their 50s and played in the NFL.
The Duersons divorced not long after Dave Duerson threw his wife against a wall at the University of Notre Dame in February 2005. Duerson was charged with misdemeanor battery and lost his seat as a Notre Dame trustee.
Duerson’s physical problems came out long after his career was done. His post career benefits were long gone. His case is not atypical in the football world. In many ways, Duerson is not a special case. In about six months, researchers will determine where Duerson suffered from CTE.
The NFLPA never took medical problems into account in 1982 when the cry was “Money Now.” DeMaurice Smith, when he was appointed Executive Director of the National Football League Players Association, said he would take care of the former players and they would be welcomed back to the association, that has not happened yet according to a number of former players.
It seems not much has changed since 1982 and “Money Now.”
Evan Weiner, the winner of the United States Sports Academy's 2010 Ronald Reagan Media Award, is an author, radio-TV commentator and speaker on "The Politics of Sports Business." His book, "The Business and Politics of Sports, Second Edition is available at www.bickley.com, Barnes and Noble or amazonkindle. He can be reached at evanjweiner@yahoo.com This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Friday, February 25, 2011
Labor, the NFL lockout and American network TV
By Evan Weiner
February 25, 2011
http://www.examiner.com/business-of-sports-in-national/labor-the-nfl-lockout-and-american-network-tv
(New York, N. Y.) -- American television networks such as CBS, NBC, ABC and FOX have been called to task by union officials for not including labor leaders in their banal and hackneyed Sunday morning "public affairs" programming. The Sunday morning network shows feature the same old politicians, the same old guests hosted by Washington insiders who cover no new ground.
The shows are a waste of time except they give local TV affiliates public service brownie points when it comes to license renewals.
But there is more to the story of shutting out union officials. NBC's Meet the Press has booked AFL-CIO head Richard Trumka for Sunday's show which will include media darling Senator John McCain of Arizona and Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker, who presumably will be asked about taking a phone call from David Koch.
The more to the story angle could prove to be quite embarrassing to NBC's co-owners Comcast and the other networks if Trumka asks why are the networks providing money to National Football League owners for transmission fees if the owners go ahead next week and lock out the employees, the players, in a labor dispute.
The networks have taken sides in the National Football League labor dispute and that should be troubling for everyone. Rupert Murdoch's News Corp (FOX), Comcast-GE's NBC, the Walt Disney Company's ESPN (ABC is a division of the company) and Sumner Redstone's CBS along with DirecTV will pay the NFL owners a full rights fee, worth billions of dollars to the owners, whether there are games played or missed because of the owners decision to lockout players.
Allegedly, the NFL owners will reimburse the networks if games are not shown. However that might be just nomenclature. Somehow, the NFL owners will get their money, maybe on the next TV contract renewal. NFL games get eyeballs in front of the TV or whatever platform is showing a game. It is consistent TV programming which draws eyeballs and advertisers and those advertisers are willing to pay top dollar to reach those eyeballs.
Four of the NFL's five TV partners produce public affairs programming and if Trumka wants to get to the heart of how TV practices journalism, he should ask if the network news shows can indeed show impartiality knowing that the corporate bosses have given the go ahead to their NFL partners to trigger a lockout and support that lockout with TV rights fees.
It would be a very sticky question for NBC's Meet the Press moderator David Gregory to handle. It could also cause problems for FOX's Chris Wallace who recently boasted on a radio talk show that he knows "how to satisfy a woman" and told the "lonely" radio host to look up "advertisements for, like, gentlemen's clubs and escort services."
Neither Gregory nor Wallace nor any of the hosts seem to be equipped to have an answer if Trumka decided to go into that line of questioning. Instead there will be a vacuous round table discussion about nothing which is normal for the TV news talk show.
Trumka's question should be why are the networks underwriting the lockout and if there is a conflict of interest supporting business owners in labor disputes that are collectively bargained with employees. Trumka could then turn to Governor Walker and pose this question to him face to face.
"Why are you so against collective bargaining?"
Trumka could turn the mundane news talk genre into something compelling and in turn force the networks to explain their NFL TV lockout policies publicly.
The networks TV lockout policy is an important issue for consumers, particularly those basic-expanded cable TV subscribers who never watch the NFL on ESPN. They are paying for a product they never watch because of an American cable TV law that allows multiple system operators to bundle cable TV channels onto a tier and sell the channels as one entity which would normally be a violation of the Sherman Antitrust Act. ESPN and other cable TV networks get most of their monies from subscribers although a small percentage of their revenues come from advertisers. Those subscribers who were forced to take ESPN on the basic tier will help underwrite the NFL lockout. The networks are using public airwaves to support a labor action and that begs the question.
Are the networks affiliates engaged in the proper use of their TV licenses? Affiliated stations are paying their network partners a fee for the right to have NFL games on their stations. The stations are supporting the NFL owners actions.
The owners are collecting money from the public to support the lockout through a third party, whether it is Murdoch's FOX syndication, Comcast-GE's NBC, Redstone's CBS or Disney's ESPN.
Don't look for this type of breakdown from CNN. Time Warner, CNN's parent company, has some conflicts as well. Time Warner will be supplying the National Basketball Association owners with cable TV rights fees (along with ESPN) should the National Basketball Association owners lockout their players in a labor dispute starting on July 1. Time Warner also is starting a Los Angeles regional sports cable TV network featuring the Los Angeles Lakers. The company is in bed with Lakers owner Jerry Buss.
Cable TV subscribers have not been reimbursed for labor actions, whether it was a strike or a lockout, in 1994, 1995, 1998, 1999, 2004 and 2005 in Major League Baseball, the National Hockey League and the National Basketball Association. Apparently nobody has really noticed that owners kept monies from ESPN, TNT and regional sports cable TV networks during the work stoppages.
The National Football League Players Association lawyers are well aware of the cable TV issue. The Players Association was in Judge David Doty's courtroom in Minneapolis on Thursday asking Judge Doty to place what is about $4 billion in revenues from various broadcast platforms in escrow so that the owners cannot use the money to fund a lockout. It was Judge Doty's courtroom that the last labor fight was settled in 1993.
The players lost a bid to place the $4 billion or so in escrow earlier this year when Special Master Stephen Burbank ruled in favor of the owners.
Trumka should put Gregory and the Meet the Press regular Washington D. C. insiders on the defensive and force them to explain the network's football policy. Chances are the Meet the Press regulars will punt and give up the ball.
The Sunday morning shows rarely make any news and are a waste. They are predictable and boring.
Evan Weiner, the winner of the United States Sports Academy's 2010 Ronald Reagan Media Award, is an author, radio-TV commentator and speaker on "The Politics of Sports Business." His book, "The Business and Politics of Sports, Second Edition is available at www.bickley.com, Barnes and Noble 's xplana.com, kobo's literati or amazonkindle. He can be reached at evanjweiner@yahoo.com
By Evan Weiner
February 25, 2011
http://www.examiner.com/business-of-sports-in-national/labor-the-nfl-lockout-and-american-network-tv
(New York, N. Y.) -- American television networks such as CBS, NBC, ABC and FOX have been called to task by union officials for not including labor leaders in their banal and hackneyed Sunday morning "public affairs" programming. The Sunday morning network shows feature the same old politicians, the same old guests hosted by Washington insiders who cover no new ground.
The shows are a waste of time except they give local TV affiliates public service brownie points when it comes to license renewals.
But there is more to the story of shutting out union officials. NBC's Meet the Press has booked AFL-CIO head Richard Trumka for Sunday's show which will include media darling Senator John McCain of Arizona and Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker, who presumably will be asked about taking a phone call from David Koch.
The more to the story angle could prove to be quite embarrassing to NBC's co-owners Comcast and the other networks if Trumka asks why are the networks providing money to National Football League owners for transmission fees if the owners go ahead next week and lock out the employees, the players, in a labor dispute.
The networks have taken sides in the National Football League labor dispute and that should be troubling for everyone. Rupert Murdoch's News Corp (FOX), Comcast-GE's NBC, the Walt Disney Company's ESPN (ABC is a division of the company) and Sumner Redstone's CBS along with DirecTV will pay the NFL owners a full rights fee, worth billions of dollars to the owners, whether there are games played or missed because of the owners decision to lockout players.
Allegedly, the NFL owners will reimburse the networks if games are not shown. However that might be just nomenclature. Somehow, the NFL owners will get their money, maybe on the next TV contract renewal. NFL games get eyeballs in front of the TV or whatever platform is showing a game. It is consistent TV programming which draws eyeballs and advertisers and those advertisers are willing to pay top dollar to reach those eyeballs.
Four of the NFL's five TV partners produce public affairs programming and if Trumka wants to get to the heart of how TV practices journalism, he should ask if the network news shows can indeed show impartiality knowing that the corporate bosses have given the go ahead to their NFL partners to trigger a lockout and support that lockout with TV rights fees.
It would be a very sticky question for NBC's Meet the Press moderator David Gregory to handle. It could also cause problems for FOX's Chris Wallace who recently boasted on a radio talk show that he knows "how to satisfy a woman" and told the "lonely" radio host to look up "advertisements for, like, gentlemen's clubs and escort services."
Neither Gregory nor Wallace nor any of the hosts seem to be equipped to have an answer if Trumka decided to go into that line of questioning. Instead there will be a vacuous round table discussion about nothing which is normal for the TV news talk show.
Trumka's question should be why are the networks underwriting the lockout and if there is a conflict of interest supporting business owners in labor disputes that are collectively bargained with employees. Trumka could then turn to Governor Walker and pose this question to him face to face.
"Why are you so against collective bargaining?"
Trumka could turn the mundane news talk genre into something compelling and in turn force the networks to explain their NFL TV lockout policies publicly.
The networks TV lockout policy is an important issue for consumers, particularly those basic-expanded cable TV subscribers who never watch the NFL on ESPN. They are paying for a product they never watch because of an American cable TV law that allows multiple system operators to bundle cable TV channels onto a tier and sell the channels as one entity which would normally be a violation of the Sherman Antitrust Act. ESPN and other cable TV networks get most of their monies from subscribers although a small percentage of their revenues come from advertisers. Those subscribers who were forced to take ESPN on the basic tier will help underwrite the NFL lockout. The networks are using public airwaves to support a labor action and that begs the question.
Are the networks affiliates engaged in the proper use of their TV licenses? Affiliated stations are paying their network partners a fee for the right to have NFL games on their stations. The stations are supporting the NFL owners actions.
The owners are collecting money from the public to support the lockout through a third party, whether it is Murdoch's FOX syndication, Comcast-GE's NBC, Redstone's CBS or Disney's ESPN.
Don't look for this type of breakdown from CNN. Time Warner, CNN's parent company, has some conflicts as well. Time Warner will be supplying the National Basketball Association owners with cable TV rights fees (along with ESPN) should the National Basketball Association owners lockout their players in a labor dispute starting on July 1. Time Warner also is starting a Los Angeles regional sports cable TV network featuring the Los Angeles Lakers. The company is in bed with Lakers owner Jerry Buss.
Cable TV subscribers have not been reimbursed for labor actions, whether it was a strike or a lockout, in 1994, 1995, 1998, 1999, 2004 and 2005 in Major League Baseball, the National Hockey League and the National Basketball Association. Apparently nobody has really noticed that owners kept monies from ESPN, TNT and regional sports cable TV networks during the work stoppages.
The National Football League Players Association lawyers are well aware of the cable TV issue. The Players Association was in Judge David Doty's courtroom in Minneapolis on Thursday asking Judge Doty to place what is about $4 billion in revenues from various broadcast platforms in escrow so that the owners cannot use the money to fund a lockout. It was Judge Doty's courtroom that the last labor fight was settled in 1993.
The players lost a bid to place the $4 billion or so in escrow earlier this year when Special Master Stephen Burbank ruled in favor of the owners.
Trumka should put Gregory and the Meet the Press regular Washington D. C. insiders on the defensive and force them to explain the network's football policy. Chances are the Meet the Press regulars will punt and give up the ball.
The Sunday morning shows rarely make any news and are a waste. They are predictable and boring.
Evan Weiner, the winner of the United States Sports Academy's 2010 Ronald Reagan Media Award, is an author, radio-TV commentator and speaker on "The Politics of Sports Business." His book, "The Business and Politics of Sports, Second Edition is available at www.bickley.com, Barnes and Noble 's xplana.com, kobo's literati or amazonkindle. He can be reached at evanjweiner@yahoo.com
Wednesday, February 23, 2011
Carmelo Anthony in New York is unlikely to make NBA owners melo
WEDNESDAY, 23 FEBRUARY 2011 13:47
BY EVAN WEINER
NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM
THE BUSINESS AND POLITICS OF SPORTS
http://www.newjerseynewsroom.com/professional/carmelo-anthony-in-new-york-is-unlikely-to-make-nba-owners-melo
When George Young was running the New York Giants in the General Manager's chair back in the late 1970s into the 1990s, he used to say that "a general manager has to general manage, an owner has to own, a player has to play and a coach has to coach" in order to be successful George Young's formula worked for his team as he put together two Super Bowl championship squads in 1986 and in 1990.
George Young probably would not enjoy being a general manager in the National Basketball Association these days. Owners general manage, players general manage and the industry is on the verge of a labor shutdown on July 1, 2011. The Carmelo Anthony trade from the Denver Nuggets to the New York Knicks probably put the NBA a step closer to a lockout and probably will push another owner, Denver's Stan Kroenke (whose wife Ann is the daughter of Wal-Mart co-founder Bud Walton — Wal-Mart is notorious for hiring cheap labor and preventing unionization among the company's employees) probably can now be counted among the NBA owners hard line faction that wants to reduce players salaries.
Kroenke is also the owner of the St. Louis Rams franchise in the National Football League. You might have heard that the football owners are thinking about locking out their employees — the players — on March 4. National Football League owners also want to reduce employee's salaries.
Carmelo Anthony seemingly called all the shots in the trade that ultimately brought him to the building that sits between 31st and 33rd Street between 7th and 8th Avenue in Manhattan (a building that is not on the New York City property tax roll since 1982 which means that New York City is losing about $14 million annually in taxes). Anthony has joined LeBron James and Chris Bosh as big name talent who have switched teams. The difference between Anthony and the other two is simple. James and Bosh fulfilled their contractual obligations, James in Cleveland and Bosh in Toronto and the two could legally shop around their talents.
Anthony still had a few months left on his Denver Nuggets deal before he could legally shop around his talent. Carmelo Anthony usurped his Denver general manager Masai Ujiri's power last summer by accident at his wedding when New Orleans Hornets star Chris Paul toasted Anthony and his new wife Lala Vasquez, "We will form our own Big 3" referring to the Miami Heat's signing of James, Bosh and reupping Dwayne Wade and the Knicks signing of Amar'e Stoudemire. Stoudemire, Anthony and Paul would team up with the Knicks by 2012.
New York now has two-thirds of Paul's "own Big 3."
The NBA's collective bargaining agreement with the players ends on June 30 and NBA Commissioner David Stern wants to cut salaries and the players want to keep status quo. There was pressure on Anthony to get his situation squared away before June 30. No one knows what the outcome of the agreement will be, but if Stern and the 30 NBA owners want to cut expenses, it is a good bet that Anthony was putting millions at risk if he played out his Denver contract.
Last summer, Stern said something about the league needing to cut player costs somewhere around $700 to $800 million and that the league's 30 teams combined would lose $340-350 million in 2010-11 and something has to be done and that would start by players giving back items earned in collective bargaining.
The NBA no longer wants to give the players 57 percent of the revenues.
Of course not every team is going to lose an average of ten million dollars a season. The New York Knickerbockers franchise, despite putting a poor product on the court (until this season, the team is now a notch above mediocre), sells out every game and the Dolan family owns the franchise, the building and, of course, the Dolans have the Madison Square Garden TV network and Cablevision. There is no way without creative accounting the Knicks franchise is losing money given the team's revenue stream availability.
Also on the table is a threat by Stern aimed right across the bow of the National Basketball Players Association Executive Director Billy Hunter's ship. The elimination of financially wobbly franchises. The best guess is that those markets could be New Orleans or Sacramento or maybe Charlotte or Memphis. The contraction of the league would mean fewer jobs for players. Left unsaid in the possibility of lopping off teams is what happens with the leases between the franchises that didn't make it into the future and the municipalities which built the arenas and gave away the house to the owner of the local franchise that was set adrift along with compensating the owner whose team has been put out to pasture.
Chris Paul is under contract to the New Orleans Hornets through June 30, 2012. Stern is Paul's boss these days. The NBA took over the ownership of the Hornets franchise. Stern has on one hand said the franchise could be disbanded but the NBA wants to make the team attractive for local Louisiana investors to keep the team in the Crescent City. But Stern has contradicted himself saying potential investors are interesting in buying the team and moving the franchise to another city. Based on the last NBA franchise sale, the Golden State Warriors franchise of Oakland, California (the nation's fifth biggest market), the Hornets franchise should fetch at least $300 million (depending on the market) which means each NBA owner would get $10 million or more dollars in a sale. The NBA is not going to get rid of the New Orleans franchise but that doesn't mean that Louisiana will keep the team. The franchise could end up elsewhere.
The NBA has some financial problems. According to one of Herb Simon's friends, the mall developer and owner of the Indiana Pacers, Simon is losing money on the basketball team even though the team is getting big money from Indianapolis to help pay the maintenance at the Pacers home arena. Simon is committed to keep his team in Indianapolis until 2013 as part of a deal. The Indianapolis' Capital Improvement Board gave the Simon $30 million for the 2010-11, 2011-12 and 2012-13 seasons in $10 million annual payments. The board will pay for a minimum of $3.5 million in arena improvements. If Simon moves the team in 2013, he has to repay the $30 million. If he stays in Indianapolis until the lease ends in 2019, he can leave without paying back any money.
Simon gets revenues from every event held in the building.
Next Tuesday is the NBA's deadline for an owner to move his franchise. The Sacramento Kings ownership group, the Maloof brothers, have been unable to secure public funding for a new arena and according to Stern, the Maloofs have checked out Henry Samueli's arena in Anaheim as a possible relocation site. Samueli owns the National Hockey League's Anaheim Ducks and it is hard to imagine Samueli would cut a deal with the Maloofs which would give them a significant revenue stream in the building. There would also be the question of whether the Maloofs would have to pay off Jerry Buss (Los Angeles Lakers) and Donald Sterling (Los Angeles Clippers) for invading the LA market.
Sacramento mayor and former NBA player Kevin Johnson is continuing his efforts to get a Sacramento arena built.
Milwaukee owner (United States Senator) Herb Kohl is seeking a new arena. Senator Kohl (D- WI) is limited in his ability to threat a franchise move as they would signal that in his opinion Milwaukee and Wisconsin are not good places to do business.
Washington Wizards owner Ted Leonsis is a fan of the National Hockey League's hard salary cap. Leonsis is also the owner of the NHL's Washington Capitals and was in the NHL in 2004-05 when the owners locked out the players in a labor dispute.
Small market NBA owners have been after Stern for years to find a way to increase revenue sharing between the big money teams (the Knicks and Lakers) and the small market franchises (Memphis, Charlotte, Indiana, Milwaukee, Portland and Sacramento).
Paul's toast at Carmelo Anthony's wedding, the LeBron James "Decision" last July and the rumors that another small market star Dwight Howard might not stick around Orlando when his contract ends has to be catching the attention of the owners. The big name stars are dictating moves but that isn't all that unusual for NBA. Kareem Abdul Jabber forced his way out of Milwaukee and ended up in LA with the Lakers, Julius Erving didn't; get a bonus after Roy Boe and his New York Nets joined the NBA in 1976. Erving went to Philadelphia. Shaquille O'Neal left Orlando for the Lakers.
The NBA owners will lockout the players on July 1 unless something unanticipated suddenly appears. The star players have too much power and the owners will correct the imbalance. Chris Paul's toast and LeBron James' decision will come back to haunt the players.
Evan Weiner, the winner of the United States Sports Academy's 2010 Ronald Reagan Media Award, is an author, radio-TV commentator and speaker on "The Politics of Sports Business." His book, "The Business and Politics of Sports, Second Edition is available at www.bickley.com, Barnes and Noble or amazonkindle. He can be reached at evanjweiner@yahoo.com
WEDNESDAY, 23 FEBRUARY 2011 13:47
BY EVAN WEINER
NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM
THE BUSINESS AND POLITICS OF SPORTS
http://www.newjerseynewsroom.com/professional/carmelo-anthony-in-new-york-is-unlikely-to-make-nba-owners-melo
When George Young was running the New York Giants in the General Manager's chair back in the late 1970s into the 1990s, he used to say that "a general manager has to general manage, an owner has to own, a player has to play and a coach has to coach" in order to be successful George Young's formula worked for his team as he put together two Super Bowl championship squads in 1986 and in 1990.
George Young probably would not enjoy being a general manager in the National Basketball Association these days. Owners general manage, players general manage and the industry is on the verge of a labor shutdown on July 1, 2011. The Carmelo Anthony trade from the Denver Nuggets to the New York Knicks probably put the NBA a step closer to a lockout and probably will push another owner, Denver's Stan Kroenke (whose wife Ann is the daughter of Wal-Mart co-founder Bud Walton — Wal-Mart is notorious for hiring cheap labor and preventing unionization among the company's employees) probably can now be counted among the NBA owners hard line faction that wants to reduce players salaries.
Kroenke is also the owner of the St. Louis Rams franchise in the National Football League. You might have heard that the football owners are thinking about locking out their employees — the players — on March 4. National Football League owners also want to reduce employee's salaries.
Carmelo Anthony seemingly called all the shots in the trade that ultimately brought him to the building that sits between 31st and 33rd Street between 7th and 8th Avenue in Manhattan (a building that is not on the New York City property tax roll since 1982 which means that New York City is losing about $14 million annually in taxes). Anthony has joined LeBron James and Chris Bosh as big name talent who have switched teams. The difference between Anthony and the other two is simple. James and Bosh fulfilled their contractual obligations, James in Cleveland and Bosh in Toronto and the two could legally shop around their talents.
Anthony still had a few months left on his Denver Nuggets deal before he could legally shop around his talent. Carmelo Anthony usurped his Denver general manager Masai Ujiri's power last summer by accident at his wedding when New Orleans Hornets star Chris Paul toasted Anthony and his new wife Lala Vasquez, "We will form our own Big 3" referring to the Miami Heat's signing of James, Bosh and reupping Dwayne Wade and the Knicks signing of Amar'e Stoudemire. Stoudemire, Anthony and Paul would team up with the Knicks by 2012.
New York now has two-thirds of Paul's "own Big 3."
The NBA's collective bargaining agreement with the players ends on June 30 and NBA Commissioner David Stern wants to cut salaries and the players want to keep status quo. There was pressure on Anthony to get his situation squared away before June 30. No one knows what the outcome of the agreement will be, but if Stern and the 30 NBA owners want to cut expenses, it is a good bet that Anthony was putting millions at risk if he played out his Denver contract.
Last summer, Stern said something about the league needing to cut player costs somewhere around $700 to $800 million and that the league's 30 teams combined would lose $340-350 million in 2010-11 and something has to be done and that would start by players giving back items earned in collective bargaining.
The NBA no longer wants to give the players 57 percent of the revenues.
Of course not every team is going to lose an average of ten million dollars a season. The New York Knickerbockers franchise, despite putting a poor product on the court (until this season, the team is now a notch above mediocre), sells out every game and the Dolan family owns the franchise, the building and, of course, the Dolans have the Madison Square Garden TV network and Cablevision. There is no way without creative accounting the Knicks franchise is losing money given the team's revenue stream availability.
Also on the table is a threat by Stern aimed right across the bow of the National Basketball Players Association Executive Director Billy Hunter's ship. The elimination of financially wobbly franchises. The best guess is that those markets could be New Orleans or Sacramento or maybe Charlotte or Memphis. The contraction of the league would mean fewer jobs for players. Left unsaid in the possibility of lopping off teams is what happens with the leases between the franchises that didn't make it into the future and the municipalities which built the arenas and gave away the house to the owner of the local franchise that was set adrift along with compensating the owner whose team has been put out to pasture.
Chris Paul is under contract to the New Orleans Hornets through June 30, 2012. Stern is Paul's boss these days. The NBA took over the ownership of the Hornets franchise. Stern has on one hand said the franchise could be disbanded but the NBA wants to make the team attractive for local Louisiana investors to keep the team in the Crescent City. But Stern has contradicted himself saying potential investors are interesting in buying the team and moving the franchise to another city. Based on the last NBA franchise sale, the Golden State Warriors franchise of Oakland, California (the nation's fifth biggest market), the Hornets franchise should fetch at least $300 million (depending on the market) which means each NBA owner would get $10 million or more dollars in a sale. The NBA is not going to get rid of the New Orleans franchise but that doesn't mean that Louisiana will keep the team. The franchise could end up elsewhere.
The NBA has some financial problems. According to one of Herb Simon's friends, the mall developer and owner of the Indiana Pacers, Simon is losing money on the basketball team even though the team is getting big money from Indianapolis to help pay the maintenance at the Pacers home arena. Simon is committed to keep his team in Indianapolis until 2013 as part of a deal. The Indianapolis' Capital Improvement Board gave the Simon $30 million for the 2010-11, 2011-12 and 2012-13 seasons in $10 million annual payments. The board will pay for a minimum of $3.5 million in arena improvements. If Simon moves the team in 2013, he has to repay the $30 million. If he stays in Indianapolis until the lease ends in 2019, he can leave without paying back any money.
Simon gets revenues from every event held in the building.
Next Tuesday is the NBA's deadline for an owner to move his franchise. The Sacramento Kings ownership group, the Maloof brothers, have been unable to secure public funding for a new arena and according to Stern, the Maloofs have checked out Henry Samueli's arena in Anaheim as a possible relocation site. Samueli owns the National Hockey League's Anaheim Ducks and it is hard to imagine Samueli would cut a deal with the Maloofs which would give them a significant revenue stream in the building. There would also be the question of whether the Maloofs would have to pay off Jerry Buss (Los Angeles Lakers) and Donald Sterling (Los Angeles Clippers) for invading the LA market.
Sacramento mayor and former NBA player Kevin Johnson is continuing his efforts to get a Sacramento arena built.
Milwaukee owner (United States Senator) Herb Kohl is seeking a new arena. Senator Kohl (D- WI) is limited in his ability to threat a franchise move as they would signal that in his opinion Milwaukee and Wisconsin are not good places to do business.
Washington Wizards owner Ted Leonsis is a fan of the National Hockey League's hard salary cap. Leonsis is also the owner of the NHL's Washington Capitals and was in the NHL in 2004-05 when the owners locked out the players in a labor dispute.
Small market NBA owners have been after Stern for years to find a way to increase revenue sharing between the big money teams (the Knicks and Lakers) and the small market franchises (Memphis, Charlotte, Indiana, Milwaukee, Portland and Sacramento).
Paul's toast at Carmelo Anthony's wedding, the LeBron James "Decision" last July and the rumors that another small market star Dwight Howard might not stick around Orlando when his contract ends has to be catching the attention of the owners. The big name stars are dictating moves but that isn't all that unusual for NBA. Kareem Abdul Jabber forced his way out of Milwaukee and ended up in LA with the Lakers, Julius Erving didn't; get a bonus after Roy Boe and his New York Nets joined the NBA in 1976. Erving went to Philadelphia. Shaquille O'Neal left Orlando for the Lakers.
The NBA owners will lockout the players on July 1 unless something unanticipated suddenly appears. The star players have too much power and the owners will correct the imbalance. Chris Paul's toast and LeBron James' decision will come back to haunt the players.
Evan Weiner, the winner of the United States Sports Academy's 2010 Ronald Reagan Media Award, is an author, radio-TV commentator and speaker on "The Politics of Sports Business." His book, "The Business and Politics of Sports, Second Edition is available at www.bickley.com, Barnes and Noble or amazonkindle. He can be reached at evanjweiner@yahoo.com
Monday, February 21, 2011
American people deserve answer to NFL’s billion dollar healthcare question
Monday, 21 February 2011 11:49
BY EVAN WEINER
NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM
THE BUSINESS AND POLITICS OF SPORTS
http://www.newjerseynewsroom.com/professional/american-people-deserve-answer-to-nfls-billion-dollar-healthcare-question
There is a major question that the "American People" should be asking in the ongoing labor dispute between National Football League owners and the National Football League Players Association as the two sides head to a March 4th lockout. Are the players association's negotiators asking for a change in post career health benefits or are the reps asking for status quo? Status quo means that qualified former pros get health care for just five years following their last game. That is important for the "American People" to know because the "American People" are picking up the cost of taking care of broken down former pros that cannot get health insurance and instead are living on social security disability and Medicare.
The cost to the American taxpayer? Higher than a billion dollars.
Working conditions in the National Football League, whether Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker and other like minded people and politicians care for it or not, is collectively bargained. Players can bargain for rights with owners like other workers in many other businesses. NFL owners need help with their businesses from the players for antitrust reasons as well and know it.
The only reason there is a National Football League Draft of college players is due to an agreement between the owners and players to hold the draft which is essentially an illegal restraint of trade. Salaries are just part of the agreement and because there has always been a let's get the most money available at one time possible attitude that trumps any thought of what life is like in the post football career life of an NFL player. It is just an afterthought somewhere down the road.
The players association has done a very poor job of taking care of members in the football after life. Players now get five years medical benefits after their playing careers and then they are out on their own. There are countless stories of broken down football players on the public dole after the cheering stops.
Because of pre-existing conditions — which were more than likely caused by their job playing football — a majority of players are uninsurable and go on the public dole.
There has been some buzz that the players may be asking for 10 years worth of post career health benefits but that is probably too little a time period as the real health problems seem really hit when a player is in his 40s. But the players have not discussed what they want from the owners publicly.
Perhaps it is time for Congress to really hold legitimate hearings, whether it is either the House or Senate Oversight and Government Reform Committee or the House or Senate Judiciary Committee and find out why players leaving an industry that brings in billions upon billions of dollars worth of revenue without a real post career benefit package.
Politicians love talking about what the "American People" want or hearing from the "American People" but rarely do they really listen or take care of the real needs of the "American People." To those on both sides of the aisle, the "American People" would like to know why the responsibility of taking care of the former employees or the players of America's sports popular spectator sport in pro football's afterlife.
Not every player gets a multimillion dollar contract and the average career doesn't even last three seasons. But the medical needs of both average players and the superstars start not long after a career is done. The players joke that the initials NFL mean "Not For Long" and it appears they are right.
The present talks between the owners and players are following a natural progression. The owners want to reduce the players take of the gross revenue and knock down salaries by 18 percent on average. The owners would like to increase the regular season by two games to 18 and also have a rookie wage scale. The players want to keep status quo. They are disagreeing and both sides are saber rattling.
It is the status quo that is a problem for American taxpayers. It is a problem that House member Lamar Smith (R-TX) doesn't think needs governmental intervention.
Representative Smith is incorrect.
NFL owners (along with those of the American Football League, the National Basketball Association, the National Hockey League and the American Basketball League) were given an antirust exemption on September 30, 1961 that put a lot of money into the then 14 owners pocket. The Sports Broadcast Act of 1961 allowed the National Football League to sell the television rights of all 14 members to a television network. Within a year, NFL Commissioner Pete Rozelle cut the league's first national TV deal and that opened the floodgates of money into what was nothing more than a mom and pop store operation.
The then two-year old American Football League had a national TV deal with the struggling American Broadcasting Company. The new league flew under the radar and inked the deal with ABC selling all eight of the league's franchises as one. AFL founder Lamar Hunt "borrowed" bundling his league's franchise as one and selling the TV rights to one company from Branch Rickey's Continental Baseball League.
Rickey's league never got off the ground, but there was an assumption that the Continental League would get the same rights as the American League and the National League and could sell the 12-team TV package as one entity because of the 1922 decision by the United States Supreme Court which ruled that baseball was a game in the Baltimore Terrapins (of the Federal League) suit against the National League.
The NFL's 1964 deal with CBS' William Paley spurred NBC's David Sarnoff to underwrite a lot of the costs of Hunt's AFL after Sarnoff lost the bidding for NFL TV rights to Paley. Sarnoff gave the AFL money to compete with the NFL. By 1966, owners in both leagues decided that a bidding war for players' services was becoming too cost and agreed to merge.
The NFL and AFL announced an intention to merge on June 8, 1966. Congress had to sign off on the merger (which was an anti-competition truce). Senator Russell Long and Representative Hale Boggs, both of Louisiana, traded their no votes to yes after Rozelle assured them New Orleans would get an expansion team. Congress passed the legislation as a rider on an anti-inflation bill and it was signed into law by President Lyndon B. Johnson in October, 1966.
The Sports Broadcast Act of 1961 and the merger go ahead built the National Football League into a multi billion dollar enterprise. (The same act didn't help the other entities — The NBA could not get a TV deal after the 1961-62 season when the NBC deal ended. In 1964, ABC picked up NBA telecasts following a two-year absence from national TV. The NBA flew under the radar screen as well and was considered a mom and pop operation. The American Basketball League lasted for just one full year, 1961-62 and folded on December 31, 1962. The National Hockey League didn't have a TV deal at the time of the passage of the 1961 Broadcast Act. There was a story in Sports Illustrated which claimed NHL owners ended a deal that was in place with CBS from 1956-60 because the league owners decided they didn't want to give the players a share of the television revenues. The NHL returned to network TV in 1966.)
Congress needs to get involved with the NFL-NFLPA talks for a myriad of reasons. The discarded player post career health benefit issue and its cost to the "American People" is enormous and demands attention.
"There is more to come on the NFL shifting of health costs to the public, especially to State and Federal Disability programs, namely Social Security," said Mel Owens, a former linebacker with the Los Angeles Rams from 1981-89 and now a practicing disability lawyer. "This will be the next big issue.
Remember, these players, as a group, are the most injured in society. They all have major orthopedic, internal and neurological injuries, and the most significant part of this is their age — they are all under 40-years of age when they leave the game. This puts the burden and cost on the government for many years, having to deal with the results of their injuries, such as multiple joint replacements, diabetes, high blood pressure, cardiovascular diseases, dementia and early onset of Alzheimer's.
By the insurance companies own cost estimate relative to the players injuries is over a billion dollars. This is their number not anyone else's. The NFL is circumventing their responsibility and liability by shifting the long term disability cost to the State and Federal Government, thus driving up the cost of insurance for every person in America.
It's time to call on Congress to act."
Senator Al Franken (D-Minn.) is a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee and he is beginning to snoop around which means there could be some Senate hearings on the issue down the road.
Why the players association has never taken care of former members in the football afterlife is open to some conjecture. There are two theories as to why that happened. 1) Player agents wanted to make a quick buck and pushed for money over long term issues such as pensions and health benefits and wanted to get as much money as possible in representing a player fearing that players taking less money and leaving money for future health care would result in less commission for them because there would be less money available for salaries. 2) The late Gene Upshaw, who was the Executive Director of the NFLPA, always made it a point to please players who were paying his salary and his responsibility was to that pool of players from year to year. Upshaw seemed to distance himself from the retired players until push came to shove when it came to light that former association president John Mackey was suffering from a brain injury and needed assistance. Retired or discarded players have used Upshaw quotes such as "what are we supposed to do, fix every injury of every player?" to support their contention that the association didn't care about the retired guys.
Both the NFL and NFLPA were shamed into creating the "88 Plan", named after Mackey's uniform number, in 2005 which provides up to $88,000 for institutional care and up to $50,000 in custodial care for players who are suffering from serious illnesses which may have been caused by football injuries. As of last October, the two sides had given a little less than $10 million to 132 former players. That $10 million figure is about one-one hundredth short of what Owens says is needed to take care of the former players.
Congress needs to haul in owners, members of the players association and agents and get everyone to testify under oath just exactly has happened over the decades of labor negotiations and collective bargaining agreements that has caused the "American people" to be so involved with the football afterlife.
Representative Lamar Smith was not correct in stating that the NFL and the NFLPA should be left to settle their differences. Both sides have agreed to outside help, mediation, and the NFL filed an unfair labor practice grievance at the NFLPA with the National Labor Relations Board. The "American People", the people that Representative Smith and 434 other members of the House along with the 100 members of the Senate who do "the people's business", deserve to know why former football players are not being covered by the industry that is flowing in money that those disabled former players helped build.
Evan Weiner, the winner of the United States Sports Academy's 2010 Ronald Reagan Media Award, is an author, radio-TV commentator and speaker on "The Politics of Sports Business." His book, "The Business and Politics of Sports, Second Edition is available at www.bickley.com, Barnes and Noble or amazonkindle. He can be reached at evanjweiner@yahoo.com
Monday, 21 February 2011 11:49
BY EVAN WEINER
NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM
THE BUSINESS AND POLITICS OF SPORTS
http://www.newjerseynewsroom.com/professional/american-people-deserve-answer-to-nfls-billion-dollar-healthcare-question
There is a major question that the "American People" should be asking in the ongoing labor dispute between National Football League owners and the National Football League Players Association as the two sides head to a March 4th lockout. Are the players association's negotiators asking for a change in post career health benefits or are the reps asking for status quo? Status quo means that qualified former pros get health care for just five years following their last game. That is important for the "American People" to know because the "American People" are picking up the cost of taking care of broken down former pros that cannot get health insurance and instead are living on social security disability and Medicare.
The cost to the American taxpayer? Higher than a billion dollars.
Working conditions in the National Football League, whether Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker and other like minded people and politicians care for it or not, is collectively bargained. Players can bargain for rights with owners like other workers in many other businesses. NFL owners need help with their businesses from the players for antitrust reasons as well and know it.
The only reason there is a National Football League Draft of college players is due to an agreement between the owners and players to hold the draft which is essentially an illegal restraint of trade. Salaries are just part of the agreement and because there has always been a let's get the most money available at one time possible attitude that trumps any thought of what life is like in the post football career life of an NFL player. It is just an afterthought somewhere down the road.
The players association has done a very poor job of taking care of members in the football after life. Players now get five years medical benefits after their playing careers and then they are out on their own. There are countless stories of broken down football players on the public dole after the cheering stops.
Because of pre-existing conditions — which were more than likely caused by their job playing football — a majority of players are uninsurable and go on the public dole.
There has been some buzz that the players may be asking for 10 years worth of post career health benefits but that is probably too little a time period as the real health problems seem really hit when a player is in his 40s. But the players have not discussed what they want from the owners publicly.
Perhaps it is time for Congress to really hold legitimate hearings, whether it is either the House or Senate Oversight and Government Reform Committee or the House or Senate Judiciary Committee and find out why players leaving an industry that brings in billions upon billions of dollars worth of revenue without a real post career benefit package.
Politicians love talking about what the "American People" want or hearing from the "American People" but rarely do they really listen or take care of the real needs of the "American People." To those on both sides of the aisle, the "American People" would like to know why the responsibility of taking care of the former employees or the players of America's sports popular spectator sport in pro football's afterlife.
Not every player gets a multimillion dollar contract and the average career doesn't even last three seasons. But the medical needs of both average players and the superstars start not long after a career is done. The players joke that the initials NFL mean "Not For Long" and it appears they are right.
The present talks between the owners and players are following a natural progression. The owners want to reduce the players take of the gross revenue and knock down salaries by 18 percent on average. The owners would like to increase the regular season by two games to 18 and also have a rookie wage scale. The players want to keep status quo. They are disagreeing and both sides are saber rattling.
It is the status quo that is a problem for American taxpayers. It is a problem that House member Lamar Smith (R-TX) doesn't think needs governmental intervention.
Representative Smith is incorrect.
NFL owners (along with those of the American Football League, the National Basketball Association, the National Hockey League and the American Basketball League) were given an antirust exemption on September 30, 1961 that put a lot of money into the then 14 owners pocket. The Sports Broadcast Act of 1961 allowed the National Football League to sell the television rights of all 14 members to a television network. Within a year, NFL Commissioner Pete Rozelle cut the league's first national TV deal and that opened the floodgates of money into what was nothing more than a mom and pop store operation.
The then two-year old American Football League had a national TV deal with the struggling American Broadcasting Company. The new league flew under the radar and inked the deal with ABC selling all eight of the league's franchises as one. AFL founder Lamar Hunt "borrowed" bundling his league's franchise as one and selling the TV rights to one company from Branch Rickey's Continental Baseball League.
Rickey's league never got off the ground, but there was an assumption that the Continental League would get the same rights as the American League and the National League and could sell the 12-team TV package as one entity because of the 1922 decision by the United States Supreme Court which ruled that baseball was a game in the Baltimore Terrapins (of the Federal League) suit against the National League.
The NFL's 1964 deal with CBS' William Paley spurred NBC's David Sarnoff to underwrite a lot of the costs of Hunt's AFL after Sarnoff lost the bidding for NFL TV rights to Paley. Sarnoff gave the AFL money to compete with the NFL. By 1966, owners in both leagues decided that a bidding war for players' services was becoming too cost and agreed to merge.
The NFL and AFL announced an intention to merge on June 8, 1966. Congress had to sign off on the merger (which was an anti-competition truce). Senator Russell Long and Representative Hale Boggs, both of Louisiana, traded their no votes to yes after Rozelle assured them New Orleans would get an expansion team. Congress passed the legislation as a rider on an anti-inflation bill and it was signed into law by President Lyndon B. Johnson in October, 1966.
The Sports Broadcast Act of 1961 and the merger go ahead built the National Football League into a multi billion dollar enterprise. (The same act didn't help the other entities — The NBA could not get a TV deal after the 1961-62 season when the NBC deal ended. In 1964, ABC picked up NBA telecasts following a two-year absence from national TV. The NBA flew under the radar screen as well and was considered a mom and pop operation. The American Basketball League lasted for just one full year, 1961-62 and folded on December 31, 1962. The National Hockey League didn't have a TV deal at the time of the passage of the 1961 Broadcast Act. There was a story in Sports Illustrated which claimed NHL owners ended a deal that was in place with CBS from 1956-60 because the league owners decided they didn't want to give the players a share of the television revenues. The NHL returned to network TV in 1966.)
Congress needs to get involved with the NFL-NFLPA talks for a myriad of reasons. The discarded player post career health benefit issue and its cost to the "American People" is enormous and demands attention.
"There is more to come on the NFL shifting of health costs to the public, especially to State and Federal Disability programs, namely Social Security," said Mel Owens, a former linebacker with the Los Angeles Rams from 1981-89 and now a practicing disability lawyer. "This will be the next big issue.
Remember, these players, as a group, are the most injured in society. They all have major orthopedic, internal and neurological injuries, and the most significant part of this is their age — they are all under 40-years of age when they leave the game. This puts the burden and cost on the government for many years, having to deal with the results of their injuries, such as multiple joint replacements, diabetes, high blood pressure, cardiovascular diseases, dementia and early onset of Alzheimer's.
By the insurance companies own cost estimate relative to the players injuries is over a billion dollars. This is their number not anyone else's. The NFL is circumventing their responsibility and liability by shifting the long term disability cost to the State and Federal Government, thus driving up the cost of insurance for every person in America.
It's time to call on Congress to act."
Senator Al Franken (D-Minn.) is a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee and he is beginning to snoop around which means there could be some Senate hearings on the issue down the road.
Why the players association has never taken care of former members in the football afterlife is open to some conjecture. There are two theories as to why that happened. 1) Player agents wanted to make a quick buck and pushed for money over long term issues such as pensions and health benefits and wanted to get as much money as possible in representing a player fearing that players taking less money and leaving money for future health care would result in less commission for them because there would be less money available for salaries. 2) The late Gene Upshaw, who was the Executive Director of the NFLPA, always made it a point to please players who were paying his salary and his responsibility was to that pool of players from year to year. Upshaw seemed to distance himself from the retired players until push came to shove when it came to light that former association president John Mackey was suffering from a brain injury and needed assistance. Retired or discarded players have used Upshaw quotes such as "what are we supposed to do, fix every injury of every player?" to support their contention that the association didn't care about the retired guys.
Both the NFL and NFLPA were shamed into creating the "88 Plan", named after Mackey's uniform number, in 2005 which provides up to $88,000 for institutional care and up to $50,000 in custodial care for players who are suffering from serious illnesses which may have been caused by football injuries. As of last October, the two sides had given a little less than $10 million to 132 former players. That $10 million figure is about one-one hundredth short of what Owens says is needed to take care of the former players.
Congress needs to haul in owners, members of the players association and agents and get everyone to testify under oath just exactly has happened over the decades of labor negotiations and collective bargaining agreements that has caused the "American people" to be so involved with the football afterlife.
Representative Lamar Smith was not correct in stating that the NFL and the NFLPA should be left to settle their differences. Both sides have agreed to outside help, mediation, and the NFL filed an unfair labor practice grievance at the NFLPA with the National Labor Relations Board. The "American People", the people that Representative Smith and 434 other members of the House along with the 100 members of the Senate who do "the people's business", deserve to know why former football players are not being covered by the industry that is flowing in money that those disabled former players helped build.
Evan Weiner, the winner of the United States Sports Academy's 2010 Ronald Reagan Media Award, is an author, radio-TV commentator and speaker on "The Politics of Sports Business." His book, "The Business and Politics of Sports, Second Edition is available at www.bickley.com, Barnes and Noble or amazonkindle. He can be reached at evanjweiner@yahoo.com
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