Posted on 05/01/2013 2:34:11 PM PDT by llevrok
A consortium of Seattle businessmen offered to pay $365 million for a controlling 65 percent interest in the Sacramento Kings, (snip). A competing group offered $341 million to keep the team in SAC (snip) or $35M less.
At first glance this seems perverse. (snip)
Well, it seems to all go back to the arena. You see, in addition to offering $365 million for the team, the Seattle bidders were offering to build a brand new arena for the Kings. By contrast, the Sacramento bidders managed to persuade the city of Sacramento to build a brand new arena for the Kings. The Seattle bid, in other words, would have set a good precedent for the future of American public policy. And the owners didn't want that. The owners want to be able to make this move over and over again. "Give us a new publicly financed stadium or we'll move to Seattle" is a threat that works (snip)
And the major American sports leagues are organized as a cartel for a reason. (snip) But the league approval process means the owners as a whole can think of the interests of the overall cartel, and those interests very much include a strong interest in maintaining the ability to get cities to pony up subsidies.
(Excerpt) Read more at slate.com ...
And the mayor of Sacramento is Hussein’s buddy.
Pro sports are THE major USA entertainment addiction. One of many, but it is the #1 addiction of ignorant Americans. Try to tell your average NFL fan no taxes for the benefit millionaires, let the owners and players build their own place of business. They’ll never hear you.
I could care less about the nba but I like sports...mustn’t forget that Sac. has a black mayor....they had the advantage of the race card....
The interesting thing is that the old Super Sonics went to the Mayor and city counil....begging for a new arena. The old place....was approaching twenty years old, but it just wasn’t in the top twenty things they were going to take on. What the team wanted were private seating areas for the VIPs and the ability to take profit off them.
So the city political leadership was in total shock as the team left. The hotels downtown suffered a fair amount on business lost. The only promise of the NBA was that a team would eventually return. I’m sure that the NBA has written a fairly huge demand for the new arena, to help the owners.
As for Sacramento? Well....they will be promised an NBA team in a decade. Maybe the Wizards?
What’s the gay angle to this story? If it involves the NBA there must be one...what am I missing?
I think it would be hilarious, and a thumb in the eye of the NBA if the Seattle ownership group put out a press release saying they were gay, and as such want the NBA to reconsider.
Funnier, if the NBA put out press release saying, “Well why didn’t you say so, of course you can move the Kings! . . .”
But the Seattle group had the Nordstrom family. Norwegians are a racial minority too, you know!
WA ping
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