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January 14, 2007
Feinstein to NFL: Take our antitrust exemption, please!
Here's something you don't see every day: U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein has introduced legislation to grant the NFL an antitrust exemption that would allow it to block franchise moves. "This legislation is designed to slow the movement of NFL teams and prevent communities from suffering the financial and intangible costs of these moves," said the former San Francisco mayor.
The team being targeted here, of course, is the San Francisco 49ers, whose owners are talking of moving them south to the miniscule suburb of Santa Clara. Feinstein noted that MLB has an antitrust exemption that allows it to control team movement, and in the last 25 years, only one team (the Washington Nationals nee Montreal Expos) has moved, while seven NFL teams have uprooted themselves for greener pastures.
But Feinstein overlooks some important distinctions between the NFL and MLB: While football teams get most of their money from national TV revenue, baseball teams get it from local sources: cable contracts, corporate sponsorships, and old-fashioned ticket sales. The NFL has seen several teams of late move from large markets to smaller ones, since for a team owner, a sold-out stadium with 1/32nd of the national TV revenue and lots of luxury suites in Nashville is preferable to a sold-out stadium with 1/32nd of the national TV revenue and not so many luxury suites in Houston. For baseball teams, that kind of move would be suicide, since a team in Nashville would never be able to bring in the kind of local revenue as one in Houston, regardless of how shiny the stadium was.
Add in that baseball is played seven days a week to football's one, making it more important to have stadiums near central-city transportation hubs, and the suburban threat hasn't been as great in baseball, either. (Some wacky ideas notwithstanding.) So while MLB's antitrust exemption has no doubt come in handy from time to time - Feinstein was no doubt thinking back to when the league blocked the move of the San Francisco Giants to St. Petersburg, leading to both the construction of a mostly privately financed stadium for the Giants in S.F., and the creation of the Tampa Bay Devil Rays to ward off an antitrust suit from the state of Florida - it's more the financial structures of the two leagues that make NFL franchises footloose while MLB ones tend to stay put.
Feinstein's bill, in fact, is likely to do nothing to keep the 49ers in Santa Clara, since NFL owners would be just as happy to have the 49ers in a new stadium in the burbs, if it will bring in more cash. The NFL has already endorsed Feinstein's bill, as you would expect, and the 49ers ownership doesn't seem concerned by it, either, issuing a statement that "we do not believe this legislation will deter our efforts to create a stadium that provides a world-class fan experience that the Bay Area deserves." Next up: Sen. Feinstein introduces the National Fox Employment Act to ensure the security of our nation's henhouses.
I think the MLB antitrust exemption should be ended not expanded to the NFL but I'm happy to at least see the topic under debate - even if it's a horrible idea like Feinsteins.
Posted by joejoejoe on January 14, 2007 01:54 PM
Let's get the facts straight.
Were the Yorks to sell the 49er francise today, they'd probably get between $750 million and $1 billion, minus the less than $40 million the DeBartolo family paid for it, would yield a very tidy capital gain.
Monster Park, aka Candlestick Park is about 45 years old.
Yankee Stadium opened for business in 1923, which makes it almost 84 years old.
The price for a season ticket package, in the end zone, with nose bleed seats, at Candlestick Park, is $490 per person, or about $2000 for a family of four. Of course this doesn't count parking fees and the cost of hotdogs and beer. But then, that's what home equity loans are for, right?
Congress is looking to raise the minimum wage to about $7.25 an hour or so, which would translate to about $14,500/year if your employer were to let you work a full 40 hour week.
Health insurance premiums for a family of four are up near the cost of rent.
Gas is back up near $3/gallon now that election season is over.
Building the 49ers a new ballpark will cost upwards of $700 million.
The land that a new ballpark will sit on will be worth how many hundred million clams?
It sounds to me like the rich are getting a lot richer and the rest of us are paying for it.
The thing that pro sports teams (and the players) seem to forget is that they are selling more than just entertainment. They are selling the illusion that there's an emotional relationship between the fans and their teams. That illusion is their primary product.
Once you break that illusion, you're screwed.
Major League Baseball nearly destroyed that illusion with the strike and lockout a few years ago. Every time a sports league has a strike, the fans get hit with the cold water of reality that everyone in the industry is just out for the money, and that money comes out of the pockets of the fans. Furthermore the strikes reveal just how greedy everyone is in the industry, both players and owners alike.
The 49ers want to keep the name San Francisco because of the strong recognition of the brand name. Have you ever really accepted the phrases, "Saint Louis Rams" or "Arizona Cardinals"? Or how about "Golden State Warriors"? Now there's a name with regional identity!
What the NFL should do is to recognize that this illusion I'm speaking of is the goose that lays the platinum eggs.
The 49ers wanted to replace Candlestick Park with a new stadium and a shopping mall. Shopping mall?! What kind of crack cocaine were they smoking? A shopping mall in Hunters Point?! What were they going to sell there? Shotgun shells and shots of smack?
It was a $500 million project that fell on its face, even after the voters of San Francisco agreed to a $100 million bond to help out.
Now the 49ers are creating all this noise, which really does threaten the illusion that there's an emotional relationship between the team and the community. And they say they're willing to spend nearly double what they were planning to spend in San Francisco, to build a new stadium? Who's really going to pay for that stadium?
Methinks that the Yorks will be laughing all the way to the bank.
Not only should the NFL find some way for the 49ers to stay in San Francisco, they should also amend the salary cap rules to allow teams to retain francise identity players. Jerry Rice should have never left San Francisco. He should have retired as a 49er instead of this bogus one day contract retirement thing.
Each team will have one or two marquee players who are their identity to the public. Today the 49ers have that in Bryant Young, though defensive linemen aren't the same public face offensive stars are. There should be a salary cap exemption for one or two star players on each team, with a history of 10 years or more with the team. Brett Farve should never play for any team not named the Packers. Peyton Manning and Marvin Harrison are that for the Colts. You get my drift.
These are people the fans love, and that love is the product that pro sports is selling. Love is fickle though and can vanish far more quickly that people realize. Teams need to realize that their identity and the illusion that somehow it all matters is the real source of their value.