I demand TARP funds for the NBA

The Sports Business Journal reported recently that the National Basketball Association will take out a $175 million loan from Bank Of America and JPMorgan to bolster its ability to prop up teams suffering from the economic downturn. The money comes at a whopping 8.27% interest rate. Perhaps the NBA could have received better terms by borrowing the money from LeBron James.

According to another SBJ report, the NBA expects gate receipts to stagnate, while sponsorships for events, venues, publications and team-related products have become a very tough sell. The players are also suffering, with many endorsement contracts bringing in half of what they did during the recent boom times.

Overall sponsorships for the league are also up for renewal, and only a Hail Mary bucket could help it avoid a sharp decline in the revenue from these rights.

The NBA is not alone in this decline. All pro sports, from the NFL to NASCAR, are struggling to find replacement sponsors for companies that can no longer afford the cost and the perception of fiscal irresponsibility of sports sponsorships. Minor sports such as arena football have already canceled entire seasons, and I expect that before the economic crisis is over, we'll see some pro teams in the three major sports on life support.

I mean, while we're bailing out banks, automobile manufacturers, and insurance companies, can't we spare a few billion....

Comments

tom said…

Oh horrors...

Professional sports might have to scale back or cancel seasons. Whatever will angry sports fans do for entertainment?

Here's a thought: maybe they could pay attention to the shit the federal government is wasting an extra 10-15% of their annual salary on this year.

March 2, 2009 at 10:45 PM

Comment Rescue (?) and child-related gun violence in Delaware

In my post about the idiotic over-reaction to a New Jersey 10-year-old posing with his new squirrel rifle , Dana Garrett left me this response: One waits, apparently in vain, for you to post the annual rates of children who either shoot themselves or someone else with a gun. But then you Libertarians are notoriously ambivalent to and silent about data and facts and would rather talk abstract principles and fear monger (like the government will confiscate your guns). It doesn't require any degree of subtlety to see why you are data and fact adverse. The facts indicate we have a crisis with gun violence and accidents in the USA, and Libertarians offer nothing credible to address it. Lives, even the lives of children, get sacrificed to the fetishism of liberty. That's intellectual cowardice. OK, Dana, let's talk facts. According to the Children's Defense Fund , which is itself only querying the CDCP data base, fewer than 10 children/teens were killed per year in Delaw

The Obligatory Libertarian Tax Day Post

The most disturbing factoid that I learned on Tax Day was that the average American must now spend a full twenty-four hours filling out tax forms. That's three work days. Or, think of it this way: if you had to put in two hours per night after dinner to finish your taxes, that's two weeks (with Sundays off). I saw a talking head economics professor on some Philly TV channel pontificating about how Americans procrastinate. He was laughing. The IRS guy they interviewed actually said, "Tick, tick, tick." You have to wonder if Governor Ruth Ann Minner and her cohorts put in twenty-four hours pondering whether or not to give Kraft Foods $708,000 of our State taxes while demanding that school districts return $8-10 million each?

New Warfare: I started my posts with a discussion.....

.....on Unrestricted warfare . The US Air force Institute for National Security Studies have developed a reasonable systems approach to deter non-state violent actors who they label as NSVA's. It is an exceptionally important report if we want to deter violent extremism and other potential violent actors that could threaten this nation and its security. It is THE report our political officials should be listening to to shape policy so that we do not become excessive in using force against those who do not agree with policy and dispute it with reason and normal non-violent civil disobedience. This report, should be carefully read by everyone really concerned with protecting civil liberties while deterring violent terrorism and I recommend if you are a professional you send your recommendations via e-mail at the link above so that either 1.) additional safeguards to civil liberties are included, or 2.) additional viable strategies can be used. Finally, one can only hope that politici

Search This Blog