I don’t generally make a habit of passing on third-hand accounts from unnamed sources, but this source is so credible, the account so believable and the timing so impeccable that I just can’t resist.
My source, who travels in high circles within the sports/entertainment industry, was talking to an executive with an NBA team, when the subject of the Sonics came up. My source expressed the opinion that he couldn’t believe the owners would let the Sonics move from a market like Seattle to Oklahoma City, and the executive replied that the decision had already been made. (My source emailed me the news half a day before NBA commissioner David Stern made his recent public comments, so you understand why the timing strikes me as so impeccable.)
The executive went on to say that his own boss wasn’t too thrilled about the prospect of the Sonics moving to such a smaller market, but that Stern had insisted that Seattle “must be made an example of.” Essentially Stern had determined from the moment Clay Bennett bought the team that there wasn’t much chance of keeping the Sonics in Seattle, so he decided to use it as an opportunity to teach other cities a lesson that if they don’t play ball with NBA owners, the owners will take their ball and, um… go to a different home.
Yeah sure, it’s a little bit of whisper down the lane — Stern to an NBA owner to the executive to my source to me — but it sure does explain one of the most confusing aspects of this whole sorry affair: Stern’s absolute failure to intervene constructively in an effort to keep the Sonics in Seattle. From day one Stern’s manner has wavered between standoffish and heavy-handed, ignoring Seattle fans and their plight when he wasn’t issuing an ultimatum or a threat. Seattle’s business and media establishment been waiting patiently for Stern to put aside the tough guy act and finally broker a deal, but it’s never happened; indeed, the commissioner has seemed determined to scuttle the few hopeful developments that have occasionally popped up.
So Stern wants to “make an example” of Seattle, as a warning to uppity taxpayers in other cities. He tells us that if we let the Sonics go (as if it was ever up to us), we’ll never get another NBA team. Well I think it is time for the citizens of Seattle to tell Commissioner Stern that his product sucks, his business model is broken and quite frankly, he needs our market more than we need him. The NBA’s loss will be the Huskies and the Cougars and the Storm’s gain, not to mention the hundreds of other businesses that are happy to vie for our entertainment dollars. I think it is time to tell Stern that if he takes the Sonics away, we’ll never take the NBA back… at least not while he is still commissioner.
If Stern wants to make an example of Seattle, I say we happily oblige. Let’s make Key Arena the heart of a revitalized Seattle Center, and work to fill those 40-some dates of sorry-ass playground hoops with other events. Let’s show other cities that there is life after the NBA, and that our culture can flourish and our economy prosper without paying half a billion dollars of taxpayer money into the league’s arena ponzi scheme. Let’s shrug our shoulders and say goodbye, and wait for the league to come crawling back to what is, after all, one of the most dynamic, prosperous and trend-setting regions in the nation. It may take a decade or two before we see Seattle atop the NBA standings again (…hell, it may have taken that long regardless), but if Los Angeles could survive just fine without an NFL franchise, we can surely thrive without the Sonics.
David Stern is manipulating the press and the owners to screw Seattle – because the city and state did not give the Sonics a free ride. Now we have a legitimate offer to keep the sonics in Seattle – and Stern badmouths the Key arena – which is comparable to the Oklahoma city arena and will be better with renovations.
I think you are right Goldy – the fix is in. Bennett has a deal to go to OK. city no matter what and Stern is manipulating things that way. Seattle is being screwed over.
Goldy, I couldn’t have said it better myself.
http://homesteadbook.com/blog/?p=269
Slam dunk.
How long before folks around the country wake up to these extortion tactics employed by professional sports franchises and the leagues that back them?
Goldy, I disagree with your spin, friend. The loss of an NBA franchise is not good. No matter how it may help the Storm? Please.
I am angry with Stern on this, but to suggest we can fill the hole in a Sonic fan’s heart with a couple of decades of waiting and some motocross and WWF events (or whatever you think will fill the place) is misguided.
That league will be back, but it will not be until we build a new arena. We had our chance, but lack of political leadership cost us in the end.
David, I agee with you. Piss on the subsidy-seeking NBA.
I’m going to miss the T-Birds at Key Arena, however. They’re moving to Kent Events Center.
Actually, as someone who had season tickets for several years (back when the team did not suck – Stern did suck then, by the way, and always has), it’s been pretty obvious to me that Stern and NBA owners were out to make Seattle an example. And really, I think most of the team’s fans also were aware, when Clay Bennett bought the team, that the team was going to be moved, and that fans would have little say in the matter.
Really, the next time owners put a team somewhere up for sale, the fans and city ought to go Green Bay on their asses and buy the team themselves – sell shares, or whatever, and gain control over the marketing and revenues and everything else, and send a giant FU to Stern and the other owners. Maybe the idea would catch on, I think the Green Bay model is something that should be duplicated whenever possible.
@Tlazolteotl
Sorry, pal, but the league has to approve all sales. And the NBA isn’t going to let that idea in the door, why, that’s just the worst kind of socialism!
That was tried back in 1970 to save the Pilots (that’s the Brewers these days) from being sold to a sorry-ass used-car salesman named Selig, by a chap named Eddie Carlson. Carlson was a local airline exec who had a big hand in the 1962 World’s Fair that left Seattle with the Seattle Center, the Space Needle and the monorail. He put together just such a proposal for a publicly held team, and the American League took one look at it and said ‘no way’. Not only would having an ownship on those lines threaten their ponzi scheme for arenas and handouts, but it would open their books to the accounting schemes they use to plead poverty when needing additional handouts.
There will be no more Green Bay operations in North American professional sports.
Redundantly @5,
I think the point is that we didn’t have a chance, at least not once Bennett bought the team. It’s all been a charade since then. Bennett never negotiated, and he never proposed a reasonable arena deal.
The Renton proposal was designed to fail. The cost was prohibitive, and it makes absolutely no sense for Seattle taxpayers to finance an arena in Renton that would only take additional events away from Key Arena, thus costing taxpayers even more money. That’s why Stern/Bennett insist Key Arena renovation is a nonstarter… it’s the only proposal that could possibly make an economic sense.
By the way, we should also blame Howard Schultz for selling out the city. He knew the team was heading to OK when he handed the keys over to Bennett.
We didn’t give them $500 million. So when do they hold their breath until their faces turn blue?
@1 How is Seattle “screwed” by the departure of welfare bums?
@5 Take up a collection among your friends and relatives because I ain’t paying for your dream.
@5 P.S., why don’t you also take a walk in Brooklyn with a “rob me” sign taped to your back.
@5 It may have been passive leadership, if there is such a thing, but it was extortion to get another stadium paid for on the public’s dime. Let them go.
Our loss is Oklahoma City taxpayers’ loss.
Where else can a city get a 2% return on its investment and a contract that isn’t worth the paper it’s written on? Even bankers don’t offer deals that bad. To throw away taxpayers’ money like that, you need a pawnshop or a professional sports league.
@7 Ain’t gonna happen, my friend. Green Bay is COMMUNISM and we can’t allow that to happen right here in AMERICA can we! If they allowed the good citizens of Seattle to own a sports team, next thing you know those West Coast lefties will erect a statue of Lenin in Fremont! Oops, they already have, but never mind that. Trust me, the people who run America’s sports leagues recognize Green Bay for the threat that it is, and will NEVER allow THAT to happen again!! They’ll sell the team to gangsters first. Oops, they already have …
Goldy scores!
Doldy, can I add one idea? I understand the Storm is staying. Sreaatle has a unique contrarian, more-than tolerant tradition.
In that tradition why not tell the effin Soonersonics they can go to hell BUT invest resources in the Storm!
Seattle basically ignores the Soonersonics, not letting them go but also doing nothing to be helpful. A private campaign to boycott he Sooners would be fine by me.
I am also partial to stripping the name Supersonics from the team. One strategy might be to create a public sculpture in the style of Waiting for the Interurban, of a bedraggled 09-10 Sonics fialing to reach the basket. South Lake Union needs some sculpture and the humor might do us all some good! Can you imagine the irritation that would cause at the Oklahoma Soonersonics office?
Here is a “plan”.
Seattle OFFICIALLY embraces the Storm with the following:
1. We create a female themed winter festivall. Lets call it Tsonokwa (a Coastal Indian deity aka the wild woman of the woods). We invite all woman’s groups to participate in the festival. Civic institutions form the SAM to the theatres would be encouraged to celebrate Seattle’s feminine side. The Museum might feature ana annula show of female artists, the symphiny could do the same. The potential for ballet and other performances are obvious.
All of this centered arounf one big event …
2. Tsonokwa would run at Seattle Center through the winter holidays and would include the anual Storm Challenge. The Challenge would be held during the festivities at Seattle Center and would place the Storm Against the Washington State AllStars .. from women’s basketball teams around the state.
3. The Storm would be enlisted as ambassadors for the City … playing a prominent role throughout the year in Seafair, Bumbershoot etc.
4. In addition to the Storm Challenge, Tsonokwa would run a series of basketball games as a high school event for the Seattle area during the full season. The winning teams woudl have an award ceremony or perhaps a special game at Tsonokwa.
5. Seattle based industries would be asked to cosponsor Storm nights throughout the season.
Look, for FAr LESS DOLLARS then it is going to cost OK City to purchase the painfully pitiful players of the sooners, we could put on a PR effort that would make the WNBA locally historic AND set an example the NBA might acutally learn from!
From today’s fishwrapper:
“NBA commissioner David Stern says KeyArena renovation not an option for Sonics
“OKLAHOMA CITY — NBA commissioner David Stern on Tuesday shot down a proposal by a group of Seattle businessmen seeking to renovate KeyArena in order to keep the Sonics in the city. Stern said the NBA does not view a renovation as a solution ….
” … Stern said, ‘The reason that this journey began was because KeyArena was not an adequate arena going forward and there were a lot of recommendations made for another arena … but the tax revenues and the various contributions weren’t forthcoming….’
“A group including Microsoft Corp. Chief Executive Steve Ballmer has floated a proposal to buy the Sonics and pay half of a $300 million renovation plan, in the hope that the city of Seattle and state of Washington would split the remainder. …
“While a Sonics relocation would mean a move to a much smaller market, Stern said he was encouraged by … the revenue potential the team would have in a downtown arena being remodeled with $121 million in public funds approved by voters earlier this month.”
Quoted under fair use; for complete story and/or copyright info see http://seattletimes.nwsource.c.....okc26.html
Roger Rabbit Commentary: Why is a $121 million renovation in OC good enough when a $300 million renovation in Seattle it’s good enough? You can stop the charade now, boys. We Seattleites are not the rubes you rednecks take us for. We see through you like you’re made of glass.
Oklahoma is ‘OK’! That’s a benchmark the Sonics will need some time and work to even approach.
Excellent post. I have felt, but could not prove, that the fix was in for a long time. The proposed Bellevue site would have been perfect–access to 405 & 520, and centrally located for the few folks wealthy enough to attend Sonic games. Kemper Freeman even suggested private funding…win-win-win. That that proposal was quietly buried made me suspicious.
The sad thing is that many ‘Save our Sonics’ people invested so much time & energy in futility.
I also suspect that the Ballmer deal was a charade. Why wait till a few days before the end of the session to go public? I think it was just a ploy that was cooked up to give cover for the loss of the Sonics in an election year, and cheap PR for Microsoft.
Understand that this is all pure speculation, of course, but to echo Goldy, it explains a lot.
Interesting that our fascist friends, who are never at a loss for words when it comes to public education or universal health care, have so little to say about this example of corporate communism.
Good post, I agree. The NBA business model seems to be built on the owners gaining more ancillary revenue from non ticket items, like entertainment or non basketball events at a publicly built and paid for basketball arena, then the owners get the tax writeoffs of depreciating their “asset”, then the owners sell to someone else who repeats the process.
The model is backed by threats and fear. So the real audience for this negotiation is any city that dares stand up and say “no”.
Yes, LA does just fine without the NFL. I wonder what the NFL TV ratings are in LA? The drop may not be that great, so the NBA owners may figure they can afford not to have a local presence but still the TV revenues will keep coming.
There’s always a greater fool of a city. Kansas City and Vegas are the next suckers who will angle for a team.
Commentator–exactly, in fact R. Johnson, BET founder who bought the Charlotte NBA team said when he bought the team that a pro sports team was always a good investment due to the ‘bigger fool’ axiom.
Roger @21, if you check around at all you will find that this is one issue on which the far left and far right agree. Both Ralph Nader and Ron Paul have spoken strongly against the stadium subsidies. You need to get out more. You do know that Eyman got his start by campaigning against Safeco field, right?
Enough is Enough on the sports franchises. If they want a profitable stadium, they should pay for it themselves, or if public money is used, ticket prices should not be as high as they are. At least for now, Qwest Field will be good enough for Major League Soccer.
What pissed off Stern the worst? The fact that Seattle didn’t immediately produce $500 million for Howard Schutlz and Clay Bennett? Or was it the less than red carpet treatment he received in Olympia?
If the NBA thinks small markets are the answer to their business model, have at it. The big cities can survive without your product. Look how quickly NHL faded away.
18 Stephen, there’s a problem with your scenario if you expect most or all of the team members to participate in year-round activities.
Most WNBA players (at least the better ones) spend the “off-season” (meaning most of the year) playing in teams overseas. Their league doesn’t pay megabuck salaries, or even a middle-class living wage, and the season’s so short (can’t have those uppity broads stealing the guys’ thunder now, can we?) that they need to do more playing somewhere just to maintain their chops.
$500 million to replace a 15 year old arena was and is a joke. Bennett’s deal was never particularly serious, and Howard Schultz just did not understand how the Legislature and local politics works around here.
Yes, Seattle is being made an example of- because the local politicians and public, after being whipsawed by the Sonics, Mariners and Seahawks in the space of 15 years and the tune of over a billion dollars, and seeing the crumbling infrastructure around them, are finally going “enough”. About fricking time.
I could get behind a reasonable deal that improves Key Arena and did things like allow for NHL hockey (I still hate Barry Ackerly for fucking that possibility up) and a better venue for concerts and events… as long as it isn’t the typical “It’s a 50/50 split: We get the gold and you get the shaft” sports teams owners and the public USUALLY get, and the current Key Arena proposal might get us there… but the fact that Stern is against it tells you something.
One might also note that the SF Giants did just fine with a project that didn’t suckle on the public teat…
I’d be prouder to say I’m from the city that stood up to the extortion attempt of the NBA than to say I’m from a city with an NBA team. The loss of the Grizzlies hasn’t appeared to affect Vancouver BC in any appreciable way.
Stern may believe he’s teaching uppity cities a lesson, I would venture to guess that after a few money losing seasons in OKC, the owners will demand a new arena, and the real lesson will be that wooing an NBA frachise means opening yourself up to an endless demand for public subsidy.
Truly great cities don’t need professional teams as much as the professional teams need them. The fact that OKC is willing to do anything to get an NBA team tells you a lot about OKC. It isn’t exactly a bustling urban metropolis. OKC has a population density of 607 people per square mile as compared to Seattle’s 6,901 people per square mile.
The bottom line is that the NBA is a business. They’re selling a product, we as consumers don’t have to buy the product, and if enough others decide they don’t want to buy the product either, the NBA will be forced to change the way it does business.
Pro sports are a business, and like most of the rest of the business world, has sunk to an ethos based on taking the most and giving back the least, total disrespect for the customers, and never earning an honest buck when you can beg for it, steal it, or borrow it with no intention whatsoever of giving it back.
All this crap is nearly enough to make one miss Wally Walker.
Here’s something to fill Key Arena with: Roller Derby!! They lost their venue last season and have had to move to a smaller one, while their attendance has been growing steadily. They could pull at least as many people for at least as many dates as the Storm.
Oh, and if David Stern ever sets foot in this town again, he should be greeted with a pie in the face.
Seattle could join with a bunch of other mid sized cities and form their own league, say the MBA (Municipal Basketball Association), share all revenues, and tweak the rules so fans watch BASKETBALL rather than 4 step palm ball with no defense.
Who sez bread and circuses has to be prohibitively expensive?
You’ll get no argument from me. I wrote a column on how Oly’s refusal to turn tricks at the behest of pro-Sonics forces was a step on the road toward breaking the cycle of abuse and entitlement.
Let ’em go! Not a ha’penny of public money for any professional sports play pen.
The Piper
34 Now, there’s an idea. Basketball doesn’t seem to have the equivalent of minor league baseball. Maybe it’s about time.
Just trying to recall my memory a little bit. Didn’t Seattle voters pass Funding to build the Central Library building? You voted for a $200 million building for books, but everyone has a problem with public money to build an arena. This is why the Sonics are leaving.
If they haven’t already done so, then now is the opportunity to add David Stern, the NBA, and Clay Bennett as named defendants in the lawsuite between the City of Seattle and the Seattle Sonics.
It certainly seems that there is at least a preliminary basis for a claim of tortious interference with a contract (the Key Arena Lease), fraud, violations of the Consumer Protection Act (selling season tickets in 2006-2007 while planning to move the team) and – here is the fun one – racketeering!
The really fun part is it allows the city to engage in some pre-trial discovery which will make the NBA owners cringe. Let’s see every e-mail between team owners, Clay Bennett, Howard Shultz, David Stern, other NBA officials, and one another, going back for the past ten years. Just to make sure we got them all, we send in our computer forensic people to disect the hard drives of every computer used by those people or their staffs, including personal computers (to make sure they weren’t using them for NBA-related discussions). Oh, and the cell phone records, including text messages! After we get all that, then the depositions can begin. We will want to depose EVERY NBA owner and employee. The owner’s depositions should take, oh, I don’t, know, a couple of weeks each, you think? And don’t forget the written interrogatories and requests for production of documents – after which we will drag them into court at least five times to question them concerning each and every document.
Oh, and make sure the slightest embarrassing detail which is revealed in the course of pre-trial discovery is quickly leaked to the press. Let’s see if half of the marriages among NBA owners survive that kind of scrutiny.
And the first time one of them tells a lie – even a small one – we have the King County Prosecutor file perjury charges.
Remember the recorded phone conversations which Snohomish County PUD discovered when it took Enron to court over it’s inflated electric rates? No telling what embarrasing evidence might come to light when we really take a look at it.
Sound onerous? Well, that’s not half of what the Clintons went through in the 1990’s when Republican-led efforts tried to destroy him with a variety of legal strategies, including travelgate, Whitewater, Paula Jones, etc.
Anyway, after about a year of this, I suspect the owners will be ready to lynch David Stern for attempting to play hardball.
And we can still tell the NBA that if they want to play ball in Seattle ever again, they will have to kiss our rear ends and make it worth our while. I’m thinking treble damages.
GEE GOLDY WHO IS YOUR SOURCE THE BAR TENDER AT DL
Speaking of the legal case…wasn’t the deal between Schultz and Bennett predicated on Bennett’s “good faith” negotiations with the city and state? Well we have evidence that Benntts group never intended to negotiate in good faith…both from a member of the group and now another NBA owner. Can somebody challenge the original sale on this basis? Is it up to Schultz to do so?
Eric @ 37:
(1) In Seattle, books are more valuable than basketball teams. That says a lot about Seattle, for the better, I think.
(2) We paid money to build a library. We own the library. It will be used as a library for the next half-century, perhaps more. The NBA wants more money to build a new arena where the profits will all go into the NBA owner’s pockets. It’s a big difference.
(3) We don’t build a new library every ten years, like the NBA wants us to do.
(4) We decided how much libarary we wanted, and how much we wanted to spend on it. The NBA wants to decide how much of an arena it wants, and how much we spend on it. Big difference.
(5) Clay Bennett and the NBA never intended for the Sonics to stay in the Seattle area. The fix was in from day one, when the team was sold quietly without any attempt to find a local owner. Seattle could have offered to spend billions on a new arena, and Bennett would have just used that offer as leverage to extort more money from other cities. Bennett’s and Stern’s PR campaign that Seattle wasn’t willing to step up to the plate to keep the Sonics in Seattle is just that – so much PR bullshit.
40: Well, we would have to prove that the City of Seattle was an intended third-party beneficiary of the contract. Might be hard to do if we are suing Schultz at the same time.
Personally, I think we could have a lot of fun in court simply with Bennett’s statements that a continuation of the sales tax to fund a new arena in Renton would pay off for the state in increased revenue collections from the Sonic’s presence, yet only a few months later Bennett’s own lawyers are arguing in court that they should be allowed to break the Arena lease becuase the Sonics’ presence doesn’t provide any significant financial benefit to the City of Seattle, and therefore the city isn’t damaged if it leaves.
Love your plan, rhp6033. The emails of the owners and especially Bennett’s group would, alone, be worth the effort.
Yeah, alright….I know the NBA owners would never go for a citizen-owned team. But dammit, a gal can dream!
Beer @ 43: Yep, I’m having fun just thinking about it. We could set the owner’s depositions to take place next spring, about the time of the NBA finals? Or some other time when they would prefer to be wined and dined and treated like royalty, instead of sweating inside a law office conference room, being asked questions like:
“…and on April 16, 2001, when you were meeting with two other NBA owners at the hotel in Chicago, who also was at that meeting? Were there any discussions concerning expansion of teams, movements of NBA teams to other cities at that meeting? Who else was travling with you? Was your wife traveling with you? Then who is the other person who is registered in your hotel room as “other guest”? Were they in the meetings also? What is their name, address, and telephone number? How many other times did this person attend NBA functions with you? Were they an employee in your office? For how long? How come you haven’t revealed their travel records also, as requested in the Plaintif’s thirty-second Request for Production of Documents? After the meeting with the other owners, did you discuss the contents of that meeting with this person? How come they weren’t listed as a potential witness to these discussions? How long were you with that person after the meeting ended? What did you talk about? Well, okay, what time did she leave the next morning?
And now for April 17, 2001……”
By the way, the NBA doesn’t have a federal anti-trust exemption, as does baseball, does it? It seems to me that they are engaging in some price-fixing and monopolistic practics, in addition to their other vices.
Hey Roger – how would you feel about contributing some time to a private group which could file their own lawsuit against Stern and the NBA? Might have to do some work to establish appropriate standing to sue, although arguably a disgruntled Sonic season-ticket holder as a named Plaintiff might suffice. If we could make the antitrust, Consumer Protection Act, or Racketeering charges stick, we could get treble damages, costs, and attorney fees!
37 I don’t see any “VIP box suites” at the library.
I don’t see an exhorbitant admission charge at the entrance.
I don’t the sale of TV rights to watch scholars and citizens reading.
I don’t see any sweetheart deal with the main purpose of a “public investment” being to further line the pockets of a bunch of people who are already, to quote a friend of mine, “so rich, they can pay other people to masturbate for them”.
RHP – I love your idea! Would make for a GREAT CourtTv case, maybe ranking right up there with the OJ trial!
That’s funny, I’ve been sayin’ Seattle needs to teach the NBA a lesson by letting the Sonics pack up and leave.
@50: Yeah – but we need to whip their butts in court (not on the court) and make them pay for collusion on the way out the door.
@27 … Not a Problem, an OPPORTUNITY
Again given the ludicrous sums required to simply have the privilege of an NBA men’s team, I can imagine having adequate funds to pay at least some of the players enough wages to be here year round or at least come back for special occasions!
Moreover, done well, Tsonkwa could make money on tis own!
BTW our cat is called Tsonokwa!
@34 PTB an Ass
Look at my proposal. Why not focus on the STORM!!
@24 “Roger @21, if you check around at all you will find that this is one issue on which the far left and far right agree.”
Then why is our usual gaggle of trolls missing in action instead of posting comments here about the NBA welfare queens?
@33 If Stern sets foot in Seattle again, call Homeland Security.
34, 36 We could call it “alternative basketball.”
Seattle Jew: Are you for a “perfect” storm?
@54: RR
Actually there are probably a number of issues the left and right can agree on: Hey trolls – how about a consensus on these:
1. Spying on americans – the right and the left should be against it.
2. The budget deficit – the right and the left should be against it. (now – we may not agree on how to fix it – I would start getting out of Iraq and restore taxes on the rich and corporations like Exxon).
3. Taking care of our veterans health.
4. Lobbyist and earmark reform.
@37 The difference is we get to read the books without paying at the door.
@37 (continued) If we have to pay $500 million for a Basketball Palace, why shouldn’t admission be free, like it is at the library?
@40 Don’t forget that Stern and the NBA fined one of the Sonics’ new co-owners $250,000 for telling an Oklahoma newspaper that Bennett planned all along was to move the team to OKC.
@47 It takes more than free legal work to try a big case like this. The Democrats spent $2 million defending the 2004 governor’s election in a trial lasting 3 weeks with fairly simple pretrial discovery. Who’s going to front the money for the lawsuit you’re proposing?
Roger Rabbit misplaces decimal point @ 16:
“Where else can a city get a 2% return on its investment and a contract that isn’t worth the paper it’s written on? Even bankers don’t offer deals that bad. To throw away taxpayers’ money like that, you need a pawnshop or a professional sports league.”
Roger — YOU ARE SLIPPING! The return on taxpayer subsidized sports arenas is more like 0.2% — they tend to have an annual rent of 0.2% of the cost of building them.
Sort of like renting a $600,000 house for only $100 per month.
But I love your spirit in this thread, Roger, and Goldy’s as well. Too bad the community didn’t show the middle figure in the 1990’s, when the Mariners and Seahawks showed up at the corporate welfare trough.
Maybe Bennett will take the Mariners with him when he goes. We can always plant wheat in the outfield. The way the price is rising, it should provide us with a greater return than the current occupants of Reluctant Taxpayers Memorial Baseball Stadium.
Seems the majority on this thread would rather not have any major league sports teams than have any amount of public monies expended on stadia, or, should public monies be spent, it be free to get in (like HA!). I would suggest that all dollars be spent on bikelanes and Womanfests, if we could get a line on these in Vegas.
Yes, this is sarcasm, RR.
At least the Seahawks are demonstrating that if the team actually wins some games, there’s going to be butts in the seats and money in the till. I don’t exactly expect Paul Allen to move them to Albuquerqe any time soon.
The jury may still be out regarding the Mariners. We’ll see if things get any more interesting come summer, or if they’re just moving the team out one player at a time. At least the stands still get filled up when the Red Sox come to town and bring along their posse.
In regards to the Mariners, yes we got screwed paying for that after voting it down, but since they have been talking about using the added taxes they have been using to pay for Safeco Field since Safeco is almost paid off, that tax should be going away FINALLY.
NO MORE TAX PAYER MONEY FOR SPORTS TEAMS! Enough is enough! Howard Shultz is just as much to blame and Bennett! And Bennett and Stern need to be put in their place! I hope the Oklahoma Stealers have horrible fan turnout and Bennett loses more money than he expected!
37:
Actually, the NBA started its own minor league, the National Basketball Developmental League (the D-League) a few years ago. I’ll be picking up season tickets shortly for the new D-League squad that will play in Reno this upcoming fall. And at $200 a piece, that’s a great deal. Either that, or I’ll get tix for the University of Nevada WolfPack.
66:
Think about this for a minute. How many times was Seattle held hostage by pro sports teams threatening to move if they didn’t get new stadia? Remember when Ken Behring actually pulled an Irsay and moved the Seahawks in the dead of night to Anaheim (to overwhelming apathy from SoCal, and a first-class ass-whipping from the NFL)? All the backroom deals? Building stadia despite voter rejection? The voters of Seattle said ‘enough!’ to this when they passed I-91. And I don’t blame ’em for feeling that way one little bit.
———————————————————-
The NBA is allowing this for no other reason than to make money. What suckers they make it off of is irrelevant to them. And Oklahoma City is offering to waste more money than anyone here is willing to spend. And you know what? I’ll wager that Clayboy and the Redneck Mafia will be threatening to take their new toy to Vegas, Kansas City or St. Louis in five to ten years after they find som new way to screw a city out of its money. So I’ll say this one last time:
FUCK THE CARPETBAGGERS
FUCK CLAYBOY
FUCK THE REDNECK MAFIA
And for good measure…….
FUCK DAVID STERN AND THE NBA!!!
Pelletizer: Just can’t get it through your oxygen starved brain that maybe, just maybe we don’t care for this NBA extortion either.
I realize you can’t here survive unless you have an ax to grind. I realize you can’t survive here unless you see your 50+ posts per thread and then drop in “Wow this thread already has 100 posts (50 are mine) much more than that sucky blog run by Stefan” Then your next entry is “Stefan, what about your lawsuit?”.
While I love baseball, Safeco Field was overpriced for what we got.
RR @ 62: Perhaps our motto should be: “Millions for defense, but not one penny in tribute!”
Come on guys ..
STORM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!