When we last checked in on the Memphis Grizzlies, owner Robert Pera had just gotten allocated $350 million in state money for renovations for their not-yet-20-year-old arena, to be shared with the Liberty Bowl, then immediately turned around and had the city’s new mayor (and Grizzlies season ticket holder) ask for more public money if Pera is going to extend his lease past 2029. And now, state legislators think they’ve found some more cash under the sofa cushions:
The bill, introduced by state Sen. Raumesh Akbari, D-Memphis, and state Rep. Antonio Parkinson, D-Memphis, would direct more revenue from the city and county hotel/motel tax to the Memphis Sports Authority if needed. The allocation would bridge any funding gap related to FedExForum renovations that are projected to cost at least $550 million.
After spending $120 million of its state cash on the Liberty Bowl, Memphis has $230 million left over to upgrade the Grizzlies’ arena. Akbari and Parkinson haven’t indicated exactly how much money would be siphoned off from the hotel/motel tax, but if it really would bridge “any funding gap” and the funding gap is currently $320 million, we can make an educated guess.
The hotel/motel tax money is currently designated for “tourism and tourism development,” though it’s mostly being used for paying off the arena’s initial construction costs, plus acting as a slush fund for things like expanding the city’s convention center; the state legislators behind the bill also didn’t indicate how they would backfill paying for anything the tax money would otherwise cover. Pera has reportedly been interested in redoing the arena’s seating to have more lower-bowl seats and fewer upper-bowl seats because he can charge more for lower-bowl ones — which at a $550 million cost may seem like an awfully expensive way to raise ticket prices, but if you can get the public to pay for the expense, all the rest is gravy.
As for why Tennessee should want to give the local billionaire $550 million so that he can increase his profits a bit, city councilmember Chase Carlisle warned in December that Pera had put the city “on notice that we need $550 million” or else “we have to start seriously considering our options.” (It must be so nice to be a billionaire and have elected officials to make your non-threat threats for you.) So far there’s been no hint of how much of a lease extension Pera might agree to in exchange for his demand for public funds, but given that he got the first $230 million in exchange for agreeing to absolutely nothing, it’s probably best not to get your hopes up.
My my count, there are about 15 US markets (plus two Canadian markets) bigger than Memphis that do not have an NBA team.
I don’t follow the NBA much, but from conversations I’ve heard among people who do, I got the impression that a lot of people in the league would love for the Grizzlies to “consider its options.”
Other than expansion fees, the NBA doesn’t really have any use for small market teams. They don’t really fit into their marketing. The players can pretty much put together their own teams and, as far as I can tell, none of them want to put together a contender in Memphis.
Yeah, and plenty of other mid-sizes cities do have new-ish arenas without NBA teams.
Of course, if all Pera wants is a mid-sized city with a new-ish arena, he’s got that right now.
We can’t say that Memphis has been a great basketball market since they moved there. Attendance has never been great even when the team has played well. Its more of a market issue than an arena issue.
Memphis has always been a basketball town, it’s just that for this season the Grizzlies are going to be a lottery team. The city’s crime problems are another factor.
Just going by this data. They did have a good year attendance wise last year:
https://www.statista.com/statistics/197536/nba-home-attendance-of-the-memphis-grizzlies-since-2006/
Agreed Aqib. I read somewhere that it took more than a decade for the Memphis Grizzlies to top the avg attendance that Vancouver had (for a truly horrific team). They may well have lost less money playing in Memphis for the first decade, but they were still losing money according to the owner.
IIRC, this was more of a “Heisley wants to go to Memphis” than ‘the NBA wants Memphis’ thing. I don’t recall there being much of nation wide search for the team’s new home.
He went pretty much straight from a commitment to stay in Vancouver to ‘we have permission from the league to move and it’s off to Memphis’.
They had a nationwide search. Louisville made an offer that involved them changing their name to the Kentucky Colonels. New Orleans made an offer. There was even talk of them going to Chicago and playing in the Allstate Arena. He even visited Vegas but Stern wouldn’t allow it without casinos removing NBA from the sports book
He was waiting for NBA approval to move just months after agreeing to buy the team. By March 2001 they were on their way to Memphis.
https://www.chicagotribune.com/2000/01/25/chicagoan-buys-grizzlies-says-theyll-stay-in-vancouver/
https://www.nytimes.com/2001/02/13/sports/nba-roundup-grizzlies-told-they-can-move.html
Seems to me like there wasn’t time to try to sell tickets or even hire a competent GM in a short window like that. Other cities certainly expressed interest, but that is not unusual for underfunded franchises.
The really interesting part to me was that Bill Laurie had agreed to pay more for the team than Heisley ultimately did on condition they move to St. Louis (he had just bought the Blues). And Stern & co refused that bid on the grounds that they didn’t want franchises to move. Just a couple of months later, Heisley was in and the Grizzlies were as good as gone (with Stern’s consent).
There is a documentary on Showtime called The Grizzlie Truth which talks about how quickly Heisley turned from keeping the team to moving it.
My point is simply that he wasn’t zeroed in on Memphis like Clay Bennet was with OKC. He did talk to a few cities here is an article from back then: https://www.espn.com/nba/news/2001/0315/1155510.html
So, in other words then, Vancouver is about $1Bn ‘up’ on this whole deal?
When the Vancouver Grizzlies joined, the NBA’s rules for expansion teams prevented them from being competitive.
A great many things prevented them from being competitive, among them the idiocy of Stu Jackson, the wanna be big-time owner Arthur Griffiths (who’s family had money, but not THAT kind of money), the low exchange rate and the team’s dismal drafting.
Not only did Jackson diss Steve Nash (“we aren’t drafting a guy just because he’s Canadian”) – who went 15th overall in 1996 (Vancouver had the 3rd and 22nd picks that year) – and whiff on Bryant Reeves (who never really stood a chance of filling the role Jackson thought he could), he also drafted Steve Francis after being told “don’t draft me, I’m not playing there”.
Now that is big time stupidity.
The #1 pick embargo certainly hurt the team, but then, the Raptors faced the same issue and fared much better (even with Isaiah Thomas as GM…)
“You don’t want to see Ja Morant have to go be a miscreant in another city, do ya?” should be their slogan.
Good point. Losing all those handguns to another city would leave Memphis feeling defenseless.