Well first, I'm not trolling for Dish or anyone else. Just being realistic. And no, I don't have a news article to say Dolan spoke with X, it's called common sense. Having worked for publicly held companies before and having worked for a couple which have closed their doors I know that's how it works. When a company I worked for closed its doors the founder of the company didn't lose the money, it was investors' money.
As far as sports goes, I hear the same argument over and over yet I've not seen any hard numbers from anyone in any league (excluding the NHL) which shows ALL sources of revenue (including merchandising/advertising/TV contracts) while still showing a loss. Want to know why? They aren't publicly traded companies so they don't have to disclose what they make/lose. We have to take it on blind faith they are losing money. I just find it difficult to believe any of these guys are going to continue to lose the amount of money they claim they are for years and years. Just not gonna happen. I wouldn't do it and neither would you. At some point you'd say to yourself, "I'm losing too much money. I've got to get out." But that doesn't happen very often does it? Because they're making money elsewhere.
Again, I'm not saying there isn't a team or two who loses money but they aren't going to lose money for long or they will be sold/moved/out of the league they're in. You think owning a sports franchise is a hobby for some rich guy/gal to pump their hard-earned money into with no return?
Think about it. The Jets are working to have a new stadium built. The stadium is going to cost around $1.4 BILLION (I live in the area so I've been following it). The Jets are throwing in something like $800 MILLION of that. Now let's just do some math here. They play in the Meadowlands, which holds approximately 60,000 people. What's an average ticket price for a game, say, $50? If we use that the Jets bring in $3 Million per game on tickets (assuming a sellout. They only play 10 home games a year (not including potential playoffs and including 2 pre-season games which might not sell out). So they're bringing in about $30 Million in tickets. Where is the other $770 Million coming from!!??
The other thing people fail to realize (who may not live in a large-cap market) is the large cap teams will contribute a LOT more to the pool of money the various leagues have for revenue sharing or whatever they call it in their respective league. So the small cap teams receive money from these pools which aren't figured in when saying they're losing money.
It's an argument I've had with other people. Because they're not public companies it's hard to have a hard conclusion but, suffice to say, most teams just aren't losing money. They can't lose the kind of money they claim to be losing and still stay in business. And it is all about business...
The Rickster
P.S. I lost my voice at the Eagles game the other day so I can't make phone calls. That's my excuse.
