Fascinating article by malcolm gladwell. Sorry if this has been mentioned on a basketball thread but the lack of a search function makes it tricky to check.
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Franchise Economics.
Yes, I think I put it up last week on one of the basketball threads. Glad it interested someone outside of the US, and someone (I presume) not interested in the NBA. -
Franchise Economics.
heh, I am a bit of a sucker for articles about the business of sport, and to be fair, it's more like something out of the andy Krawczk section of the wire written by david conn, than space jam. (that is the movie that basketball fans really love isn't it?)
Something that I don't quite understand though is how brooklyn managed to go so long without a professional sports team. Brooklyn has the population of greater manchester, which supports 8 professional football teams, two of which are among the richest in the world, another 3 are in the premiership, Two professional rugby league teams, a professional rugby union team, and Lancashire county cricket club.
Meanwhile the only thing I knew about brooklyn was that they lost a sporting team to los angeles. Why didn't they set up a new team in los angeles? (same for the giants) How can they justify closing down a sport in a major city just to start it up somewhere else?Comment
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Franchise Economics.
Berbaslug, how long do you have?
Very short answer. Baseball had operated on a fixed system of two eight team leagues for over half a century. The concept of "expansion" within an existing league was basically unknown (and associated with leagues whose membership rose and fell, like the NFL and NHL). It was (and still is) an owners' cartel, and the O'Malleys (who owned the Dodgers) didn't want to keep losing money in Bklyn; he wanted to make money in LA.
There was also the threat of a completely new baseball league (the Continental League) championed by Branch Rickey, the guy who had built the Dodgers (and signed Jackie Robinson). That league was going to have both Bklyn and LA franchises, but the move (and the expansion of the American League to 10 teams in 1961) essentially killed it.
As to why Brooklyn couldn't support a team, the short answer is that white flight hit Brooklyn harder than any other borough, and started in earnest exactly at the time the Dodgers left. Many of the people who would have supported a new Bklyn team moved to Long Island, where they became Mets and Jets fans.
I think that piece is the single best thing that Grantland has published so far, btw.Comment
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Franchise Economics.
We have taken the Dodgers, the Lakers, the Raiders (then lost), and it appears likely that we will get another NFL team from another city.
Berbaslug--something worth knowing about teams moving now is the extortionist tactics that team owners use against cities in order to get public financing and tax breaks for new stadiums. The Gladwell piece goes into that. It happens all the time in NFL, and the New York Times had a good article yesterday about cities starting to refuse to give into team owners' demands, because of fiscal tightening. I don't agree with Republicans all that often, but I'm glad to see that some are taking a stand:
Tom Ziller at SB Nation has been on fire lately in writing about the NBA lockout, and owner demands:But the Vikings’ pitch stands apart from other N.F.L. stadium deals because it is running headlong into a vastly different economic and political landscape. In a state whose financial hardships were so severe that the Legislature shut down state services for several weeks over the summer, a franchise in the $9 billion N.F.L. is asking the public to pay about 60 percent of the cost of a $1.1 billion stadium that would be built here, about 10 miles north of the Twin Cities.
The country’s most popular sport is colliding with the country’s emergent political philosophy: smaller government and lower taxes.
“We have to ask whether this is really a good use of the money,” said King Banaian, one of more than 30 Republicans to join Minnesota’s House of Representatives this year and a professor who teaches sports economics at St. Cloud State University. “Should we be supporting a new stadium over higher education? It’s simply not a priority. These deals are, by and large, giveaways to millionaires and billionaires.”
Out of the Vikings’ effort over several years to get a new stadium has come the latest in a series of proposals to build the team an indoor facility on the state’s largest Superfund site, an abandoned Army munitions plant opened during World War II. The team is offering to pay more than $400 million toward the cost of the stadium, as well as any overruns. It hopes also to get the potentially lucrative rights to develop an adjoining 170 acres, and revenue from any naming rights and personal seat licenses.
Ursus points out that the MLB is an owners' cartel. All American professional sports leagues are run that way. We've seen here with the NBA, and the NFL lockout earlier, that the commissioners of both leagues have acted as representatives of the team owners and their demands rather than a mediator between player and owner demands. Perhaps my perspective has been skewed because of how much information on the NBA lockout that I get from online sources like blogs and Twitter, which have great writers covering it who are more fans than neutral reporters, but there seems to be less anger at the players with the NBA situation, and the NFL situation earlier. Average fans are more fed up with owners than the players, I think. Which is a good thing.In the NBA, fans aren't just customers. We are investors. We bankroll the whole operation. Of the $2 billion spent on building and renovating NBA arenas since 2000, $1.75 billion of it has been public money. Without a public willing to play Stern's extortionist games -- ask Seattle what happens if you refuse to build a gym on the league's terms -- the NBA would be hosting its biggest games in rinky-dink arenas, or worse, on college campuses. Instead, the public plays along and bites on the threats, Stern's NBA rakes in $4 billion a year and owners have the luxury of demanding a bigger slice.
We deserve answers. When Robert Sarver sits across from a collection of players and says that he hasn't gotten the return he wanted on the Suns, and that's why he and his buddies are demanding massive concessions before he'll sign their paychecks, the fans left in the cold deserve answers. Those fans built U.S. Airways Center in the '90s and paid for its renovation just before Sarver took over. They ought to hear directly from Sarver's mouth why they are being deprived the product their investment in the arena guaranteed. Season ticket holders deserve the opportunity to ask Sarver why bringing the mid-level exception home to his wife in a designer handbag is more important than providing the product they have already paid for.
Sarver bought the Suns for a then-record $400 million in 2004. The market was about to peak, and Sarver -- a banker -- was rolling in dough. When the housing market and economy crashed, Sarver's investment didn't look so great. He bought high, and would be forced to pay for his mistake.
Except that he's refusing to pay for his mistake. He didn't pay for the mistakes his bank, Western Alliance, made: he took $140 million in taxpayer bailout funds in 2008. Now, a year after signing Hakim Warrick, Channing Frye and Josh Childress to a combined $15 million a year, a year after trading for Hedo Turkoglu's awful contract and months after being forced to flip that for more bad contracts, Sarver is refusing to pay for his mistakes. He wants the players to bear the burden. Sarver will certainly take the fans' money, just as his bank took its customers' money. But he's sure as Hades not going to take responsibility for what happened to it.
Sarver is dead weight. As Adrian Wojnarowski wrote on Tuesday, he brings no value to the NBA. None. People bitch about Eddy Curry, but Eddy Curry isn't holding the league hostage. You want to blame Eddy Curry for the lockout? Robert Sarver is Eddy Curry, a man who spoiled the trust of those who paid him and does absolutely nothing to improve the game. People joke about NBA players who buy Maybachs they don't need, jewelry instead of bonds. Let me tell you this: no player in NBA history has squandered as much money as Robert Sarver has just on the Suns since he bought in. You wonder how a player like Antoine Walker can go broke after making $108 million in the NBA? Ask how Sarver can do the same thing on a much grander (if less stylish) scale. Ask how the mighty Maloof brothers can crush their family's empire and take a whole city's sports identity down with it. Ask how Bruce Ratner can burn through stacks of money like firewood without even one eye on the product on the court. But the biggest difference is that when Antoine Walker burns his loot, the guy has to shimmy down to Puerto Rico and to the D-League to making a living. He has get back on his feet on hustle. Sarver? He gets a bailout. The Maloofs? They pawn off one of their dad's businesses. Ratner? He remembers that the Nets he lost so much money on were simply Vaseline for a real estate project in Brooklyn that will make his company billions more than an NBA team could ever be worth.Comment
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Franchise Economics.
"sure as Hades"? What the fuck?
Sorry, carry on.Comment
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Franchise Economics.
“We have to ask whether this is really a good use of the money,” said King Banaian, one of more than 30 Republicans to join Minnesota’s House of Representatives this year and a professor who teaches sports economics at St. Cloud State University. “Should we be supporting a new stadium over higher education? It’s simply not a priority. These deals are, by and large, giveaways to millionaires and billionaires.”
The first stumbling steps to self awareness perhaps?Comment
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Franchise Economics.
He'll probably lose his seat over that quote.Comment
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Franchise Economics.
It's odd that they are prepared to spot that exception though. Particularly since the republicans used to cite a stunt at this as evidence of GW's business genius.
The Whole idea of clubs forcing the local govt to build them a new stadium, or else they will move the entire club just makes me a little sick in my mouth, and the entire concept of franchising is just so alien to Irish people.Comment
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Franchise Economics.
The proposed new NFL stadium in LA will be paid for by AEG, which is good, but they've gotten a lot of special treatment, such as an exemption from full review of legal challenges to the development on environmental grounds, and would allow for quick review of the claims.Comment
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Franchise Economics.
This is surprising to me.the entire concept of franchising is just so alien to Irish people
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Franchise Economics.
Was that picture taken in Dublin, UA?Comment
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Franchise Economics.
San Francisco, I think.Comment
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Franchise Economics.
The Awesome Berbaslug!!! wrote:
A Republican teaching at a University? But we were told there were no such things!!!“We have to ask whether this is really a good use of the money,” said King Banaian, one of more than 30 Republicans to join Minnesota’s House of Representatives this year and a professor who teaches sports economics at St. Cloud State University. “Should we be supporting a new stadium over higher education? It’s simply not a priority. These deals are, by and large, giveaways to millionaires and billionaires.”
The first stumbling steps to self awareness perhaps?Comment
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