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An NBA Team in Las Vegas? January 28, 2010

Posted by Michael McCarthy in : Uncategorized , 2,083comments

In Vegas, I got into a long argument with the man at the roulette wheel over what I considered to be an odd number.

-Steven Wright

It’s been a while.  Between finals, winter break and a trip, I have not been keeping up with the blog like I should have.  However, with a new semester, I am energized to begin again.  I will start with the topic I planned to discuss last time, an NBA team in Las Vegas, especially in light of recent stories pertaining to this.

Of the four major North American sport leagues, the only one that has even seemed to entertain putting a team is Las Vegas is the NBA.  The NBA has owners who are active in Las Vegas (the Maloof brothers, who own the Palms resort and casino and the Sacramento Kings) and hosted their All-Star Weekend in Las Vegas in 2007.  However, the main obstruction to putting a team in Las Vegas has always been gambling.  The perception would be, if a team is in Vegas, it will be influenced by gambling and lead to fixed games.  Three recent stories have reemphasized the NBA’s concern with its association with gambling.

First, which I discussed in my last post, was Tim Donaghy publishing his book detailing his gambling on NBA games.  The second story involved a Kings scout who was banned from the NBA for betting on league games, including Sacramento games.  And finally, the Gilbert Arenas story, in which he brought guns to the locker after a dispute, originated from gambling on a card game on the team plane.

However, as the above three examples show, gambling is everywhere.  Especially in this age of instant communication, it is naïve to think that gambling cannot reach outside Las Vegas.  It is understandable that the NBA would be hesitant to attach a team to a city noted for gambling, especially in the wake of the Donaghy scandal and the concern of refs “rigging” games.  However, the average sports fan should be sophisticated enough to separate the gambling from the game.  Therefore, the NBA should not allow that to hold them back to putting a franchise in Las Vegas.

At this point, the discussion of whether to put a team in Vegas should be the recession.  Las Vegas was hit particularly hard by the current economic setback.  Prior to it, Las Vegas was one of the fastest growing cities in the country.  Now, it will be interesting to see how Las Vegas responds to this recession.  Its response may determine whether a team will be put there, not just for the NBA, but any sport.  The market there is devoid of any major league sports, so the first team that enters there is likely to capture a large piece of the entertainment market.  That, along with the number of tourists coming through, would make a sports team a good investment for a sport league willing to take a chance.

Next week, I will look at the NBA’s opening an office in India, and whether the NBA can crack into the Indian market.

Time for NFL to Embrace European System? January 28, 2010

Posted by pknox in : Uncategorized , 23comments

Promotion and relegation? Do most American sports fans even know what that means? Unless you are a fan of soccer, football, futbol, or whatever you choose to call it, which many Americans are not, you do not know these terms. I recently spent a few weeks over in Western Europe, mainly in the UK and got into some interesting debates about the American sport system versus the European sport system. My good friend Peter, or “Petah” as Peter as I say it sounds way to American, is a former grad student at UMass who was known for discussing/arguing things as trivial as which oil was best for frying fish. But of course, as Sport Masters students, are debates centered around that subject.

While staying in the UK with “Petah”, I had the opportunity to see a Manchester United game at Birmingham City, which was a miracle considering all but two games of the premier league were cancelled that weekend due to inclement weather. I’ll tell you one thing, England absolutely shuts down for a few inches of snow. Leading up to the game, I had a lively debate with “Petah” about why American sports, particularly American football, should embrace the idea of promotion and relegation. For those who don’t know, the European system is built around clubs. Anyone with the resources can start a soccer team, which starts out in low level leagues, but then has the ability to move up into better leagues based on success. So for example, in the Premier League (highest league in England), the bottom 3 teams every season move down to the Championship (2nd highest league) and the top 3 teams from the Championship move up to the Premier league. This is done to keep competition up and not allow teams and owners to sit back on their laurels and collect huge paydays. I always argued with “Petah” that this system would never work in the United States, for a few reasons.

Looking at the top 3 sports in America (Football, Baseball, Basketball), we have the highest standards in the world for each of those sports (granted they are mainly American sports, with the exception of basketball). Teams cannot survive without fan attendance, and people will not pay to  see lower quality sports, just because they have a team. Take for example the new USFL that started this past year. This league had a large number of talented players in its ranks but attendance was almost laughable. People want to see the NFL, NBA, and MLB, period. Secondly, we already have a second tier development system for our most popular sports, it’s called the NCAA. Now I realize that this is “amateur” at least depending on who you ask, but college football and basketball are arguably more popular than their counterparts. To create the idea of promotion and relegation at least within American football, you would have to allow players to play after graduating high school, which will not happen for several reasons. At the end of the day, these leagues have create a natural monopoly. The best athletes want to play there, and other leagues simply cannot match what the NFL, NBA, and MLB have done.

While I disagree that the promotion and relegation system could work in the US, it is interesting to look at some of the things it brings to the table. Take the NFL for example, which has huge revenue sharing deals as a league. While the NFL is the king of parity, due to its strict salary cap restrictions, NFL owners do not have much incentive to spend. Teams can basically sit back and regardless of success, collect huge profits, due to revenue sharing. While most owners want to win, we have seen teams less preoccupied with winning and more preoccupied with the bottom line. Maybe a little competition is what the NFL needs. If teams were threatened with being demoted to a second tier league, with less financial resources and less prestige, maybe that would be a good thing.

Having said that, it won’t happen anytime soon.

Back for Another Semester January 26, 2010

Posted by pknox in : Uncategorized , 303comments

After a nice long winter break, the UMASS Sports Biz Blog is back at the start of the new semester. This term, we will have a wide variety of discussion topics, including the Olympics which are coming up in a few weeks, the American Needle v. NFL case and its effect on the world of sports, and many more. If any of you out there are interested in writing for the blog, please contact the administrator. Hope to have some great conversations over the next few months.