Hmm. Clay Bennett paid about $350 million to buy the Sonics and the Storm, and now he wants the state to build him a $530 million “multiplex” from which he would reap all the profits from all events. Nice deal for him.
Um… but wouldn’t it have been cheaper for us taxpayers if we had simply bought the teams and kept them at Key Arena, which as far as I can tell, is still a pretty damn nice place to watch a basketball game? It’s a shame we can’t just force a sale of the teams via eminent domain. Sure, we might lose a few million dollars a year operating the clubs (though who really knows when it comes to professional sports accounting?) but that’s a helluva lot less than the cost of paying off the bonds on a half-billion-dollar arena. Plus, a state-owned team would be a much better investment of public monies, as sports franchises seem to constantly go up in value regardless of their performance, while flashy new arenas and stadia apparently become worthless hunks of junk the minute we drive them off the lot.
The fact is, publicly financed stadia just don’t make economic sense, but at twice the price of other new arenas Bennett’s latest proposal is particularly crazy. Crazy as a fox.
See, when Bennett and his partners bring the Sonics back home with them to Oklahoma City they’ll be greeted as conquering heroes. That’s why they bought the team. But if they come right out and say it, they’ll lose dump trucks full of cash between now and the 2010 expiration of their Key Arena lease as local fans abandon the team in droves. So Bennett has to at least make a show of wanting to stay.
In that context a $530 million arena proposal makes perfect sense. The dream of a Renton multiplex is just enough to keep hope alive and fans in the seats… but more than crazy enough to assure that it’s a political nonstarter.
At least, I sure hope it’s more than crazy enough to be a political nonstarter — though when it comes to publicly financed stadia, you never know.
A Modest Suggestion
I like Goldy’s idea dn suggest we go ahead with a few additions:
1. The obvious place to put the Sonics is not Key Arena but a NEW Hunts Point Arena. The HPA has so many advantages! The population density on the point is ow, so the number of inconvenienced people after we take proptety by eminent domain will be samll.
2. The property values can only grow. By combining the HPA witn a condo project, we can hugely enhance the tax income form this cdurrenly undervalued area. A la the monorail, we may be able to take property under eminent domain and then sell ti back for huge profits … making the while transaction FREE to the public.
3. While I like the idea of buying the team and then voting annually on the salary cap, even at the UW the highest paid athletes get less than 2 million. can we really have athletes paid 4 million. minimum. and up of the tax-paid roles? Better that we buy the team, install it in our new HPA, then sell the whole thing back t some damn fool.
4. As a government action, we could add value in many ways. Eg. if folks are willing to pay 20 or 30 million for the naming rights to Key Arena, what would they pay to rename Hunts Point itself? Imagine … Wall Mart Point and Wall Mart Arena! Too declasse? OK, Nordstrom’s Point and Arena. For a few 100 million we cold throw in the naming rights to Puget Sound! Why in hell do we give old Peter Puget, an otherwise unremarkable leftenant on osme ship owned by our former colonial masters such an hineor? For free? What would Starbucks pay?
HMMMM … maybe Paul Allen would like to rename the UW too?
How about Jimi Hendricks Memorial University? Go go you JHMU Huskies! Imagine Hendricks version of the Star Spangled Banner played at every Husky game!
Why not the Green Bay Packers model? The fans own the team. Let the wingnuts screech, “that’s socialism!!!” Hey, socialism works just fine in Green Bay —
a) the team will never move
b) every game since 1960 has been sold out
c) there’s a 35-year-long waiting list for season tickets
Green Bay stock pays no dividends, and can’t appreciate in value. Lousy investment? Over 110,000 people own shares — more than the entire population of Green Bay. And the last stock sale raised $24 million in six weeks.
Yeah, I think we should condemn the team (like you would a rundown tenement), put it in public ownership, and sell stock to the fans. And to piss off the wingnuts, we can name Fidel Castro honorary CEO!
Or, like laws that give renters first crack at buying prior to a condo conversion, what about just giving communities first crack at buying whenever a current owner wants to sell. Ownership belongs at the community level, not the national level, IMO.
When my home team isn’t winning I’m an honorary Cheesehead for that reason. They don’t even have professional cheerleaders–high school squads from all over the state of Wisconsin fill that function.
http://www.motherjones.com/com.....57_01.html
The Packers belong to 110,901 people, many of them Green Bay residents who paid up to $200 each for a share in the team, and the organization makes a point of finding ways to repay the community. Each morning, when players leave for practice, they pair off with local kids. Pretty soon the parking lot is a parade of large men steering small bicycles through a haphazard aisle of a few hundred admirers, as the bikes’ owners drape themselves across the players’ backs or sprint alongside to keep up.
http://www.motherjones.com/mot.....owitz.html
When the Green Bay Packers won the 1997 Super Bowl, it was a triumph of soul. The Packers are deeply rooted in the Wisconsin city where they were founded in 1919. They were named after a local meat processing plant, the Indian Packing Company, which paid for the first uniforms. Starting in the 1920s, the Green Bay Football Corp. made a series of public stock offerings. In 1950, 1,900 local residents each put up $25 a share to buy the team. They and their descendants remain the owners. No one owns more than 200 shares of Packers stock. And it pays no dividends — every cent goes back to the team in pay or toward the improvement of facilities. The result is a community — and team — spirit unmatched in any other National Football League city. That’s why Packer players who score touchdowns leap into the stands to embrace spectators. That’s why fans at Lambeau Field sing “Amazing Grace” during time-outs. That’s why, as Bruce Adams of the San Francisco Examiner wrote last year, “a group of nuns 75 miles away in Fond du Lac prays for the Packers on Sunday morning and then settles down in front of a television set to watch the game.”
http://www.house.gov/blumenaue...../pr066.htm
Today Oregon Congressman Earl Blumenauer re-introduced his Give Fans A Chance legislation to address this unfortunate crossroad. Blumenauer’s legislation, which already has nine co-sponsors, would put communities on equal footing with the sports leagues by allowing communities to own their team.
Congressman Blumenauer’s bill would:
· Require leagues to eliminate rules against public ownership to retain their billion-dollar broadcast antitrust exemption
· Give communities a voice in team relocation decisions
· Tie the leagues’ broadcast antitrust exemption to the requirements in this bill.
Also see
http://www.newrules.org/sports/index.html
This web page identifies rules, and models, of organized and professional sports that allow us not only to root for the home team to win, but to root the home team in place.
Roger: Post #2 isn’t funny? It’s not even hyperbole. Try not to politicize everything? It makes you look dumb. On second thought, you work hard on that all by your lonesome!
Socialism:noun
1. A Marxist aesthetic doctrine that seeks to promote the development of socialism through didactic use of literature, art, and music.
2. Any of various theories or systems of social organization in which the means of producing and distributing goods is owned collectively or by a centralized government that often plans and controls the economy.
3. The stage in Marxist-Leninist theory intermediate between capitalism and communism, in which collective ownership of the economy under the dictatorship of the proletariat has not yet been successfully achieved.
You stay in the rubrik of communism, marxism, naziism and now socialism Silly Rabbit! I bet your favorite pasttimes are feminism and schizophrenism.
I like the idea of community ownership of sports franchises. Where is that socialism Silly Rabbit? Where does a franchise under community ownership promote the even distribution of anything? What are you distributing? Free tickets? Hardly.
I realize you are a rabble rouser, but many times your tenuous use of words is silly, Rabbit! I’ll give your one: Silly Rabbit must be getting tired. Why doesn’t the Silly Rabbit go to sleep for a year!
Roger, you idiot – That’s not socialism, that’s capitalism. The State (city/county/whatever) doesn’t own the Packers. Private shareholders are the bedrock of capitalism.
Delbert
A few thoughts…
1. Goldy, it’s obvious you are not a sportsfan or even coordinated enough to have ever played a sport. Don’t try to be, in fact, don’t even bring the subject up as you look like an limp writed, ass in the process.
2. In the world od sports facilities….Key Arena is a dump.
Professional sports is about the game and then…. it’s about making money. Ticket sales are just the beginning. I would generally assume that you’ve seen Mariners games alot more frequently than you’ve seen Sonics games. Safeco does an incredible business in concessions while Key Arena does not.
You wanted a professional opinion on lost profits from concessions? Howard Schultz was straight forward when he discussed lost revenues.
3. Clay Bennet Proposal? Put up or shut up, it’s that simple. Quite frankly this opportunity is a boom to either Renton or Bellevue. However, if we choose to let it go, so be it.
4. Roger, I like the idea of the Packers. However keep in mind, there’s not alot going on in Green Bay beyond that. Green bay, like Buffalo or Pittsburg is essentially a blue collar town that lives and breaths for their sports. After a Sunday loss, Monday is pretty much a day of mourning. So there’s a slot more invested in the sports than just money.
Seattle is a fair weather sports town. Locals are few and far in between and they are outnumbered 20 to 1 by transplants.
I guess what it really comes down to is do you want professional basketball in the Seattle area? If you don’t, turn down the offer and the decision has been made.
Paul: Well said. I wondered if his sportz prowess matched his GG voice?
Moonbat!s: Visit San Antonio or Dallas for basketball arenas. But wait… this requested visitation means a Moonbat would have to leave his King County/Seattle based cocoon and experience the real world!
Reckless: Furball the Pelletizer has issues with nouns. He is still struggling with “IF”!
wrecked one at 3
Humor just escapes doesn’t it?
Must be a sad, lonely life you lead.
I do have a serious question, what are the thoughts of this:
Include the planning of the proposed sports arena with the takeover the Washington dinner train tracks. Hsve a dual use for the tracks, Train with a bike path.
Then…..link thos lose with the exisiting Sound Transit and close the loop north.
You might even include an idea to ensure the sounder is linked with sound transit?
Oh, and run frequent trains that commuters could actually use.
Link the east side and west side with Sound transit lines that run across the I-90 and develop a new plan for the 520 with said transit tracks in mind.
Imagine, being able to fly into Seattle for a sports game (held in either Seatlle (or Bellevue or Renton)), have the option of staying in Tacamo or Seattle (or even Woodinville), have no need to rent a car?
Oh yeah, commuters could use the trains too, not just sports fans
4
While I agree with you that Green Bay’s mood swings with the Packers’ fortunes, I would submit to you that if the Sonics were owned by the city of Seattle through a stock sale, the people of Seattle would feel more of an ownership in the team, win or lose. I don’t think they’d feel that same ownership if the city just owned the team and ran it through the Parks and Recreation Department or something similar, althogh it might be cheaper than trying to build a new arena (assuming at this point that Bennett would sell, which I don’t think he will — I agree with Goldy’s thesis that this is just a way for Bennett and company to say, “See, I tried but they wouldn’t go along with it, Oklahoma here we come.”)
Basically this way it’s a win-win proposition for the new ownership group. Either way they get what they want.
Sorry, #9 was supposed to be a reply to 5, not 4.
I’ve had brief thoughts before that maybe the government should see if they can end the escalation of the monetary spiral in sports by threatening, for instance, to nationalize Major League Baseball. At the time, I thought, it would make a certain amount of sense. Baseball is part of our national history, and Major League Baseball could be something like a living national monument.
But then I came to the conclusion that doing so would be like turning a building into a national monument. Yes, it would be preserved, but much like an insect is preserved in amber. Nice to look at, but frozen in time and about as exciting to watch. No thanks.
Although the idea of Alex Rodriguez making a civil servant’s pay does have some attraction . . . naw.
I’ve always liked the Green Bay model, as it links the team with the city in a way which brings out the best in both. That’s why there is only one NFL team with that type of ownership. The rest of the NFL owners outlawed public ownership, with Green Bay being grandfathered in.
I agree that financially, the city/state would come out ahead if it owned the team, rather than getting involved in building sports complexes for the more or less exclusive use (and profit) by one private owner.
But I cannot imagine a more difficult public entity to manage. You think you have problems with Seattle City Light responding to a little snow and ice? You think its bad trying to decide how to build and finance a new Viaduct or Tunnel? Try having next major Mayoral/City Council campaign revolve around “What are we going to do to fix the Sonics”? Entire elections could revolve around whether or not a player trade was a popular decision.
I do have to wonder how the wingnuts who hate any sort of road tax would feel about a tax to bring in a few superstar players.
“It’s a shame we can’t just force a sale of the teams via eminent domain.”
Why can’t we? Is there a prohibition against using eminent domain for sports franchises?
•••
The team’s ownership structure is interesting. It is not owned by government but by stockholders. But, according to Wikipedia:
“Based on the original “Articles of Incorporation for the (then) Green Bay Football Corporation” put into place in 1923, if the Packers franchise was sold, after the payment of all expenses, any remaining monies would go to the Sullivan-Wallen Post of the American Legion in order to build “a proper soldier’s memorial.” This stipulation was enacted to ensure the club remained in Green Bay and that there could never be any financial enhancement for the shareholders. ….. As of June 8, 2005, 111,921 people (representing 4,749,925 shares) can lay claim to a franchise ownership interest. Shares of stock include voting rights, but the redemption price is minimal, no dividends are ever paid, the stock cannot appreciate in value, and stock ownership brings no season ticket privileges. No shareholder may own over 200,000 shares, a safeguard to ensure that no individual can assume control of the club. To run the corporation, a board of directors is elected by the stockholders. The board of directors in turn elect a seven-member Executive Committee (officers) of the corporation, consisting of a president, vice president, treasurer, secretary and three members-at-large. The president is the only officer to draw compensation; the balance of the committee is sitting “gratis.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Bay_Packers
More Leverage
Unfortunately, the issue extends beyond the simple issue of whether we can have a $20 mill.yr public employee who psushed ball through a hoop. We subsidize other highly paid folks by creating public facilties. Examples:
Symphony and Opera
UW professionalized sports programs
Seattle Art Museum Sculpture Park
So, why not leverage the idea of public support? If we can buy Pul Allen a football stadium adn then sell the naming rights t Ma Qwest, why not sell naming rights to Puget Sound or the UW?
For that matter maybe Paul Aleen would pay for the Mayor’s tunnel if we offered to rename Seattle in return … Allentown? Or maybe just Paul Bay?
The possibilities are endless.
Sorry, this is off-topic, but I couldn’t wait.
Bush is apparantly planning to announce a plan to “fix” America’s heath-care and insurance crisis by TAXING EMPLOYEES WHO RECEIVE SUBSIDIZED INSURANCE FROM THEIR EMPLOYERS.
“Bush is proposing to change to how the tax code treats health insurance, by counting employer contributions toward health insurance as taxable income while establishing a standard deduction for anyone with insurance. The White House says it would introduce increased market forces to the health care industry and make coverage more affordable for the uninsured. Aides estimated the plan would represent a tax increase for only about 20 percent of employer-covered workers.
Rep. Pete Stark, D-Calif., chairman of a key health subcommittee in the House, said he would not even consider holding hearings on the proposal. He dismissed it as a dead-on-arrival attempt to encourage employers to stop offering health insurance.”
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/16767118/
I have to wonder what hair-brained guy in the administration thought this was a good idea. The best part of the U.S. health-care system was employer-paid health insurance. By offering a tax deduction to the employer, and a tax-free fringe benefit to the employee, it provided employers an easy way to lure valued employees at a reduced cost to themselves. The biggest problem we have now is that a lot fewer employers offer this benefit, leaving many American workers uninsured. So Bush wants to fix this by making all American workers uninsured, leaving it to “market forces” to fix the problem.
Of course, the whole idea of employer-provided health insurance originated with the Unions, and was put into the tax code when Democrats were in the White House and controlled Congress, so I guess it makes sense that some neo-con idiot would figure that it must be a bad idea, and that somehow “market forces” would sort everything out.
But did they really think that a Democratic controlled Congress would buy this idea? Or that it would be received favorably by the public in general? Are the people in the White House so addled with neo-con philosophy that they cannot see that this would be unpopular with American voters? Or like the Iraq “surge” plan, are they just throwing out some idiotic idea, so that when it isn’t adopted they can then try to blame the Democrats for the problems that occured on the Republican watch? Or have they written off the remainder of the Bush presidency, and this is just some sop to put out in repayment for some campaign donation, even though they know it won’t pass?
Thank God we have a Democratic Congress now.
How about trading them, straight across:
* Give the private owners the arenas & stadiums,
* give the teams to the fans.
Let the owners charge what they like for seats for all events, let the teams & events tack their own per-customer fee onto the ticket price, and let the cost of operating the team, and the cost of operating the facility, come from no other sources. Where two national-level teams share a facility, the current owners would co-own it, let ’em work things out between ’em, or one sell their interest to the other.
If the team can make a better facility deal from a new facility (privately funded, of course), they’re welcome to do it.
Advantage: not another public dime or forced election for mass entertainments. Nobody’d move a team again. And nobody can move a stadium.
Memo to Sonics: Go now. I don’t care if you win or lose. You are unexciting to watch and incapable of handing a winning streak and Oklahoma City is exactly where you belong.
dear rhp, did you happen to see the part of the plan where PRESIDENT Bush plans to, pay attention now, OFFER A BIGGER TAX CUT TO THOSE BUYING THEIR OWN INSURANCE?
The POINT, is to get individuals off the corporate nanny tit and KEEP them off the government nanny tit… the antithesis to you socialist pigs… one might even say ANTI-LIBERAL!
tsk, tsk rhp, did you happen to see the part of the plan where PRESIDENT Bush plans to, pay attention now, OFFER A BIGGER TAX CUT TO THOSE BUYING THEIR OWN INSURANCE?
The POINT, is to get individuals off the corporate nanny tit and KEEP them off the government nanny tit… the antithesis to you socialist pigs… one might even say ANTI-LIBERAL.
This is a little off topic, but I heard the Packers were moving to San Francisco.
Professional sports franchises are really large-scale Ponzi schemes.
In an actual kapitalist free enterprise system, any legal entity would be able to assemble a “team” & take on all comers.
What an economic joke. Go Sonics. Yeah, really GO! About 30,000 people will miss you. All the rest, not so much.
Puddybud would certainly recognize a limp wrist from all of the “reach arounds” he’s received (and given).
@4 Let’s submit this one to the voters:
ROGER RABBIT POLL
Who’s sillier?
[ ] 1. Roger Rabbit
[ ] 2. Reckless
[ ] 3. Any trollfuck you can name
[ ] 4. 2 & 3 above
@5 “Roger, you idiot – That’s not socialism, that’s capitalism.”
Well duh-uh! I know that and you know that, but trollfucks are too stoopid to figure out when they’re being made fun of!
@6 “Professional sports is about the game and then…. it’s about making money.”
No, it’s about legalized extortion!
@7 Puddybud says: Furball the Pelletizer has issues with nouns. He is still struggling with “IF”! 01/23/2007 at 7:10 am
“If” is a noun? Good work, puddycheeks! This may be your most valiant effort at mastery of the English language yet! However, you just impaled yourself on a conjunction.
@7 (continued) Another imploding home-school failure …
@13 “Try having next major Mayoral/City Council campaign revolve around “What are we going to do to fix the Sonics”? Entire elections could revolve around whether or not a player trade was a popular decision.”
I like it!!! Think how much money we’d save if Mayor Nickels spent his time worrying about the Sonics’ win-loss record instead of hatching new ways to spend our money for the benefit of downtown interests.
@16 “Bush is apparantly planning to announce a plan to ‘fix’ America’s heath-care and insurance crisis by TAXING EMPLOYEES WHO RECEIVE SUBSIDIZED INSURANCE FROM THEIR EMPLOYERS.”
Bush never met a worker he liked! But when HE wants to raise someone’s taxes, you KNOW he’s got a major-league hate for someone …
Hmm, Gregoire’s plan to save Puget Sound will cost ~ $200 million. That is almost 2/3 of the cost of a new arena. Sweet, we can only manage to pony up 2/3 of a stadium to salvage what is left of the PS. Tunnel anyone?
@19 “The POINT, is to get individuals off the corporate nanny tit and KEEP them off the government nanny tit… the antithesis to you socialist pigs… one might even say ANTI-LIBERAL!”
Huh? Most people WORK for their salary + fringe benefits. Usually they get FIRED if they don’t WORK! So now WORKING for a corporation is considered welfare?
Thanks for proving what I’ve been saying all along — Republicans hold workers and work in contempt, and only a fool works! Much better to live off capital gains, which are very lightly taxed.
In fact, capital gains are so lightly taxed, it’s getting downright difficult to figure out how to give tax breaks to rich capitalists! Maybe Bush will come up with an EARNED INCOME CREDIT for people who live off capital gains and don’t work. (Irony intentional.)
EUREKA!!! YES!!! YES!!! THAT’S IT!!! The way to discourage work is raise taxes on people who work to subsidize people who don’t work!!! Roger Rabbit thought of it first.
Oh, wait, Bush already thought of it. See plan to tax workers for their health insurance to give more tax breaks to the Ownership Society.
Let’s see. Most of America’s uninsured are working poor, who by definition are in the low-tax or no-tax bracket. So, giving a Wal-Mart worker who pays an effective tax rate of 2% on his $10,000 annual income is going to enable this worker to go out and buy health insurance at market prices? This would be funny if it wasn’t so pathetic.
And I fail to see how this scheme does anything about reigning in the private insurance industry’s spending 25% of our health care dollars on administrative overhead — mostly for the purpose of cooking up excuses to deny claims. Administrative expenses are about 1% of Medicare’s costs, and about 1% of the state pension system’s costs, so why does private-sector health insurance need 25% of the premiums for administration? Another fucking market failure. If we ever want to do anything about the high cost of health care in the U.S., we need to figure out a way to get the insurance industry’s greedy fingers out of the premium pie.
@21 Do you believe everything you hear? Don’t answer that … it’ll only make you look more stupid than you already are.
@21 (continued) Actually, I suspect this is supposed to be “wingnut humor.”
anti-everything at 19, 20, etc.
Yes, I saw that he was going to (a) tax the employees for the benefit they receive, and (b) offer a standardized tax deduction (maybe a credit – its unclear) for actual premiums paid.
So those who’s employers don’t pay anything for insurance, and then go out and buy the cheapest-ass private insurance with $10,000 annual deductables but lower premiums get the biggest tax break. They’ll probably never file a claim, nor will they go to a doctor because it will cost too much out-of-pocket, but they will get the biggest tax break.
And the people who are already NOT insured by their employers and make too little to buy private insurance themselves get – NOTHING. No insurance. No tax deduction, because they often don’t have homes so they can’t itemize. The very people who have the insurance problem now will be the worst off.
It’s really a lousy plan. It doesn’t help anybody it is supposed to help. It discourages employers from offering insurance. And it encourages people to buy the cheapest insurance possible, even if it provides lousy coverage.
Have you seen the cheapest insurance available? I don’t pertend to be an expert, but I went looking at one of the online insurance sites a month or two ago, and it was horrible. For a person in my age bracket, with a wife and a single dependent, every single company wanted over $300 a month for policies with $5,000 annual deductibles. That’s ridiculous! I have to go to my primary physician at least four times a year because she wants to keep tabs on my cholesterol, my wife goes about as often, and that doesn’t count visits for infections or minor injuries, prescriptions and the like.
Even if I could afford to retire and live off of Farmer Sharkansky’s lettuce patch like Roger, I wouldn’t be able to afford the insurance. So I pretty much HAVE to work. Sucks to be a working American.
Of course Bennett’s arena deal hinges on wether he is actually sincere in his statments to keep the team in Seattle.
I don’t believe Bennett for one second. This whole dog and pony show he’s putting on in Olympia is just merely going through the motions so he can say he made the effort to keep the team in the area.
In every scenerio, Oklahoma wins out finacially and emotionally for Bennett. If he stays here, he has to pay at least $100 million for a new arena. If he goes to OKC, there is an NBA arena ready and waiting and he does not have to pay a dime to use it. Pluse he will be considered a god in his hometown for bring in the NBA.
Bennett is only going through the motions in Olympia because he has to.
re 37: Roger, surely you must see the sly pun involved. C’mon. My gay friends say I’m a regular laff riot.
Get it? San Francisco….. the Packers. Heh!
Phuck the Sonics. They’re nothing but a bunch of overpaid underachievers!
I hope they move their sorry azzes to OK City. Good riddance, suckers!