Hot Ptah Posted September 25, 2007 Report Share Posted September 25, 2007 (edited) Also, MG, in the U.S., the professional sports leagues share broadcast revenue among the teams, to a greater or lesser extent depending on the sport and league. That is where the huge money is. The local sales of tickets is a small part of the revenue of the sport. A team could be not that profitable from local spending and still do great financially due to the multi-millions of dollars of shared broadcast revenue. Also, each sport and league has differing rules on how much of the parking, concession, memorabilia and other non-ticket sales are shared among all of the teams in the league. This is also big money. This creates a type of fraternity of owners in each sport, who are linked together in their business ventures (with some day to day disputes among them to be sure). There is no loyalty to a specific city except to the extent that it can help the group of owners maximize their broadcast and other revenue, and provide a stable enough platform for the operation of the team so as not to be troublesome to the group. There are a few exceptions where an owner feels an emotional bond to the city in which his team is located, but those exceptions are seen as the quirky, warm and fuzzy human interest stories of the sport. So whether a franchise is in Seattle, Oklahoma City or Kansas City, matters not at all, as long as the location can maximize broadcast revenue to the league as a whole. The Kansas City Kings of the NBA were moved to Sacramento, California in the mid-1980s as a new owner wanted to make a basketball arena the center of his new shopping center development in Sacramento, and needed a team to play in the arena. The Kansas City fans were outraged and felt betrayed. The league didn't care, as the new city promised to make the league money. The new stadiums and arenas, for which the cities are shelling out huge taxpayer subsidies to the teams, are not just places for the teams to play. They are entertainment complexes, carefully designed to make it easier for the fans to part with greater chunks of money with each visit. These palaces have lots of expensive restaurants and shops. Some have hotels built in. Thus the team, and indirectly all of the other teams in the league who share in some of the facility's revenue, gets a ton of money every year unrelated to the games themselves. If an American sports team is not playing in one of these entertainment mega-complexes, in which the sport itself is just a small piece of the revenue puzzle, that team cannot compete any more in a financial sense, or in the sport itself. Also, the team without a mega-complex to play in is seen as a weak sister by the league, a "problem" franchise which is not pulling its weight. As other cities want the supposed prestige of being "major league", there are other cities willing to build a billion dollar + mega-complex for the team, if the current city is unwilling to do so with taxpayer dollars. Thus even Green Bay, Wisconsin, with a population of under 200,000, and a team owned by a publicly held local corporation, not by a wealthy owner (a vestige of the establishment of the Packers in 1919), was willing to pay much more than 100 million dollars to rebuild Lambeau Field into an entertainment super-complex, to generate much more revenue for the team, and thus the league. It was widely seen in Green Bay as necessary for the Green Bay Packers to continue as a team. Edited September 25, 2007 by Hot Ptah Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Big Al Posted September 25, 2007 Report Share Posted September 25, 2007 Anyone think that Jerry Jones, ten years after the completion of the JerryDome new Cowboys Stadium, won't start hitting up the city of Arlington for taxpayer-funded renovations? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Aggie87 Posted September 25, 2007 Report Share Posted September 25, 2007 JerryDome You mean the ExxonMobil JerryDome, right? Not enough cash income without a sponsor there. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GARussell Posted September 25, 2007 Report Share Posted September 25, 2007 I have read more than once the belief among economists (college professors who study such things) that a community without a major league sports team benefits from having one. The team puts the city on the map, so to speak. But they say that there is no evidence that the city benefits from having more than one. Seattle has the baseball Mariners and the football Seahawks. So the presence of the basketball SuperSonics means nothing to them. Oklahoma City, however, has no pro sports team. So the presence of the SuperSonics there will mean a great deal to the local economy. So the OKC city fathers are willing to spend taxpayers' money to entice a team to move there. That's the theory, anyway. However, Seattle is a much larger market than OKC, so relocation of a team from Seattle to OKC would be expected to reduce the appeal of the league to the television networks when the time comes to bid for the next exclusive contract to broadcast the games. And since television is where most of the money comes from, the league may step in to prevent the relocation. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The Magnificent Goldberg Posted September 26, 2007 Report Share Posted September 26, 2007 Thanks folks for those helpful explanations. It's actually not too different here, at least in terms of football and (to some extent) cricket. TV fees (the big money, of course) are shared; gate receipts are shared - particularly important for small clubs who do well in the FA Cup and may wind up playing a top club; sports complexes are also home to cinemas, and other entertainment facilities. What we don't have over here is the concept of sport franchises and I don't get that. Would someone mind explaining how that works, please? MG Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hot Ptah Posted September 26, 2007 Report Share Posted September 26, 2007 (edited) I am not exactly sure what you are asking, MG. However, I believe that the difference may be that in American professional sports leagues, the league is the central controlling body, and the member teams are franchises in the league. The league makes its own rules, through a commissioner elected by the franchise owners. There could be no such thing in American professional sports as a city's team going its own way. If a team does not follow the rules of the league, they are sanctioned and in extreme cases, could be thrown out of the league, or its owner forced to step aside in favor of new ownership which would run the franchise in accordance with league rules. The league grants franchises, in a limited particular number, to the teams it wants in the league. These franchises exist independently of the city they are in, or the owner who owns them at any particular time. If an owner dies and leaves no successor, for example, the league may step in and try to find an owner for the franchise. If an owner of a franchise wants to sell the franchise to someone else, the prospective new owner must be approved by the league, before the new owner can take over the franchise. If the owner of a franchise wants to move the team to another city, the owner must get permission from the league, which is more or less difficult to obtain depending on the sport and league. For example, there is a franchise in the National League of baseball with the nickname Braves. It has been based in Boston, Milwaukee, and since 1966, Atlanta. It has had a variety of owners over the years. The Montreal baseball franchise had a crisis of ownership in recent years, and the National Baseball League (and the Commissioner's office, which has authority over both major leagues), made decisions on what would happen to that franchise. In the end, the franchise was moved to Washington, D.C. by the Commissioner's office. The fans of Montreal had no say in the matter, and got screwed over. In the very early days of the National Football League, the late teens and early 1920s, the league was not nearly as centralized and was not organized in a regular franchise system. Town teams came and went out of business. Schedules were irregular. Teams scheduled opponents in a haphazard fashion. Some teams played more games than others, and some big city teams scheduled games with semi-pro or very small town teams, on an ad hoc basis. The league was pretty much chaotic. At some point in the 1920s or early 1930s the league settled into a franchise system with a set number of franchises, two conferences, a Commissioner to oversee all of it, and a centrally mandated schedule of games. It is thought that only then did the National Football League become a "real" league. Is this different in the United Kingdom? Edited September 26, 2007 by Hot Ptah Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JohnJ Posted September 27, 2007 Report Share Posted September 27, 2007 . What we don't have over here is the concept of sport franchises and I don't get that. Would someone mind explaining how that works, please? MG Not sure about that MG. It may be rare, but Wimbledon FC moved to Milton Keynes a couple of years ago right? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BeBop Posted July 3, 2008 Report Share Posted July 3, 2008 http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/loca...onitrial02.html Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tim McG Posted July 3, 2008 Report Share Posted July 3, 2008 (edited) Clay Bennett is a jackass. I sincerely hope Howard Schultz beats his brains out with that lawsuit. Another clear case of Screw the Fans....I want money. Edited July 3, 2008 by GoodSpeak Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chuck Nessa Posted July 3, 2008 Report Share Posted July 3, 2008 Yet another reasoned thought posted (and edited). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tim McG Posted July 3, 2008 Report Share Posted July 3, 2008 Yet another reasoned thought posted (and edited). Your point.... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GA Russell Posted July 3, 2008 Author Report Share Posted July 3, 2008 (edited) I like the fact that the city got the Cleveland Browns deal. I wish New Orleans had the same deal for its basketball team. Hornets is a North Carolina concept from the Revolutionary War. And the Utah Jazz? Or the Los Angeles Lakers? Or the Los Angeles Dodgers? edit for typo Edited July 3, 2008 by GA Russell Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GA Russell Posted August 20, 2008 Author Report Share Posted August 20, 2008 The team and Seattle finalized their settlement today. http://www.globesports.com/servlet/story/R...Basketball/home Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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