Being a team exec who gives a speech isn’t the only way to get the media to broadcast your message verbatim, not these days. You could also be, oh, a rich-and-famous sports editor who decides to post some gossip on Twitter one day:
Hearing Hawks owners want team to stay in Atlanta. BUT – hearing Thomas Tull and Chris Hansen have separate Hawks-to-Seattle bids planned.
— Bill Simmons (@BillSimmons) January 6, 2015
No sourcing, no details, no nothing, right? (It’s 140 characters, who has room for “facts”?) But look at poor Chris Daniels of KING-TV in Seattle, forced to write an entire article checking whether Tull and Hansen are actually planning to buy the Atlanta Hawks and move them. (Tull’s spokespeople: Nuh-uh. Hansen would presumably buy anything that moves, but that’s not news.) And that was just one of many articles yesterday sourced entirely to some kinda-famous guy sitting down at his keyboard for 10 seconds to show off how he gets to hear rumors that you don’t.
Anyway, the Hawks are for sale, and Hansen does still want a team, so even if this is based on nothing but complete speculation, maybe it’s worth investigating a bi—
Seattle's best chance for an NBA team: if Milwaukee doesn't get its arena done. (PS: This story wasn't a great omen. http://t.co/8HA9Jc7MK4)
— Bill Simmons (@BillSimmons) January 8, 2015
FOR PETE’S SAKE, SIMMONS, STICK WITH ONE RUMOR AT A TIME, WOULDJA?
I really hope Seattle gets an NBA team soon, if for no other reason than to keep them from ghoulishly slavering every time another team needs a new arena.
From my recent visits to Seattle, it didn’t appear as if the city was falling apart at the seams because its NBA team left town some 7 years ago. But I suppose the 10 million extra jobs that a new arena and team would generate goes a long way toward explaining why people there might be eager to steal another city’s team.
“Rich-and-famous sports editor”? That’s mean and unfair, Neil. He’s the most popular sportswriter in North America and he built his empire from nothing. Plus he’s been accurate when tweeting “gossip” (your words) about NBA ownership activity.
He’s not getting articles written about his tweet because he’s more accurate than the next guy, though. He’s getting them written because he’s Bill Simmons™.
As for your scare quotes around “gossip,” what do you call it when people say they heard something from someone, but don’t even hint at who they heard it from?
Neil,
I strenuously object (Demi Moore voice) to the assertion that his past accuracy isn’t the reason that Simmons’s tweet spread like wildfire. It’s almost the entire reason. It’s why Jay Glazer’s NFL info spreads.
Gossip is about people. News is about things. Philosophy is about ideas. This was news. Unsourced news, but news.
We’ll just have to disagree, then. On pretty much everything you just said.
We are Seattle and we will assimilate all the sports teams.
Bucks, Hawks, Coyotes, Kings, whatever. We’ll build stadiums downtown, in Tacoma, in Bellevue, heck, we’ll even do some of that chintzy east coast stuff and have our team facilities in a neighboring state like Idaho just to mess with you.
That has to be about the saddest article I’ve ever seen in lacking even basic question-asking capability.
I’d be interested to hear from the owners on how improving the season ticket base to 10,000 tickets (with a higher percentage of corporate tickets) would be the (not even “a”) catalyst for downtown economic growth.
I’d say it really is evidence that people in Milwaukee really don’t care that much about Bucks basketball.
Neil–I’d say Simmons is credible, and for that subset of people who seem to think the NBA is a big deal, that leads people to follow what he says. (chicken and egg argument, to be sure, and it is also probably fair to say he became a “name” before he became an NBA “insider”).
I remember some years ago after a Pats Super Bowl loss that he mentioned that he knew some of Tom Brady’s “people.” Soon after that, he became an inveterate name-dropper and gossip, to the benefit of his news value but to the detriment of his perspective/writing ability.
Maybe ATL can bid on the Olympics to pay for the arena? Wait…they already did that. Never mind…
Looks like whoever buys the Hawks will have to buy the operating rights to Philips Arena, too. Wonder if even Hansen would go for that:
http://abcnews.go.com/Sports/wireStory/atlanta-hawks-owners-approve-plan-sell-team-arena-28089661
My understanding is that the owners of the Hawks are making tons of money off the operating right for Philips Arena while losing on the team itself. If someone buys the team, they have to buy the operating rights but does that mean they’re obligated to leave the team at Philips or could they move the team, pay the early exit fee, but keep the operating rights? If so, the bond payments shouldn’t matter because the operating rights are producing a good revenue stream. Given the opportunity costs of the money losing Hawks making Philips Arena unavailable for money producing events a large chunk of winter and spring, the math gets real interesting. Living near Philips it is hard not to notice that the crowds are much larger when Toby Keith or Dora the Explorer on Ice come to town than they are for Hawks games. No idea though if there are enough other events that are bypassing Atlanta currently due to schedule conflicts with Hawks games. Whatever the case, I don’t think it is as simple as adding on the bond payments and early exit fee to the sale price of the Hawks when determining if if makes economic sense to move them to Seattle or anywhere else.
Well Neil, considering Hansen was angling to operate the KeyArena, I guess establishing his own mini-AEG could be an option.
Or maybe he’ll do a split season with half the games in ATL and half in SEA, just to make the most money from season tickets.
Jason: Even if Philips is making money, though, is part of that via lease payments (or revenue shares) from the Hawks arm of the operation? That’s a tried-and-true tactic for team owners, after all — shift some of your revenue to your arena company, to hide it from both revenue-sharing and anyone who might question whether your team really needs subsidies.
I have no idea if Atlanta Spirit Group has been playing accounting games or not through shifting around costs and revenues. It’s hard to get a clear picture with any pro team but gets even more convoluted with the Hawks due to all the various ownership groups involved. I can say the playoff games have brought larger than normal crowds to the neighborhood relative to regular season games but it’s still poor in comparison to the crowds that a concert will bring in. That’s not just crowd size but also how much the crowd lingers before and after the event. For Hawks games, the crowd seems to get in and get out quickly. Often I don’t even realize there is a game going on without checking the schedule. It’s always painfully obvious when there’s a concert. But the Hawks do have a lot of home games per season and if some of the revenue for them is hidden in the balance sheet of whatever legal entity is setup for the operations of Philips, they might indeed be bringing in more money than advertised.