December 12, 2003
Ratner hires stadium analyst
"Plan for Nets Arena To Get Hard Review," reads the Newsday headline on Bruce Ratner's hiring of noted sports economist Andrew Zimbalist to analyze his Nets arena plan. In his comments to Newsday, though, Zimbalist's eye looks less than jaundiced: he enthused that Ratner's plan would attract new money to the city, since with a $50 million Nets payroll, "if they came to Brooklyn [players] would pay $5.5 million or 11 percent of their income to New York State and New York City" - an assessment that likely underestimates the skills of Jason Kidd's accountant. (While declining to go into specifics, Zimbalist did tell FoS News that his comments to Newsday were taken out of context and "incomplete.") Zimbalist's public comments also overlooked the fact that while the Nets would be relocating from New Jersey, their fans would not be - a bit surprising, coming from the man who helped teach us everything we know about the substitution effect.
