The NBA just borrowed almost 200 million dollars to help keep teams solvent. The NBA has for the last few years been a cash cow. Is it ending? How long before the players salaries start to drop? I can see a team telling a superstar he will not get a max contract. Many of the players have a terrible sense of entitlement . It will be interesting to see the resolution of the salary conflicts, which are sure to come.
Other sports will follow. Manny is holding out for a huge contract when the economy is shrinking. Soon, the money will not be there.
Manny’s situation has a lot more to do with Manny than it does with the economy.
Probably not. Salaries will drop in the short run, but not to the point they were before free agency.
Somewhat relevant, our local minor league baseball team, the Modesto Nuts, are seeing increased interest due to the cost of travel and tickets to the SF Giants and Oakland A’s.
I would certainly be interested in minor league baseball if the A’s and Giants were my other choices. I doubt things could ever get bad enough to make me visit modesto though.
I meant the local residents are foregoing the trip to “The Big City”. 
Said on the same day that NFL got it’s first 100 million dollar man. Star players will make the same, everyone else might take a short-term drop, but it won’t last too long.
Is there any record of a player in any sport, besides Manny, turning down 25 million dollars to play for a year?
Player salaries are generally proportional to the total league revenue. The big pro sports may see a small drop in revenue, but it’s not going to be catastrophic; five years from now there will still be an NFL, NBA, etc. The rise in player salaries is largely due to the fact that the teams make enormous assloads of money as compared to what they used to.
As well, it’s worth noting that if things DO get really bad, the results aren’t evenly distributed throughout all teams. Suppose several NHL franchises go belly up, as in fact appears to be happening in Phoenix. Phoenix going belly up doesn’t change the fact that Montreal packs the house every night. Montreal’s revenues will remian high and a good hockey player will remain correspondingly valuable. The number of NHL jobs overall will go down, but the demand for hockey in strong markets would not change; you’d be shedding the LEAST valuable hockey player jobs first, while retaining jobs for hockey players in markets where they remain valuable. That will be fundamentally the same in any sport, although the NHL’s the closest to it actually happening.
The NBA has been a major money maker for a long time. The idea that 15 teams are now losing money is far beyond bliptitude. Baseball has had franchises hanging on for a long time. I see downsizing in most sports. I see more players and less spots as a salary reducer. I think the golden era of salaries will be over. I see huge conflicts with ego driven players meeting a new financial reality.This could be a new sport.
Owners have complaining about losing money for a long time. It is a good way of keepings costs down and blackmailing cities into giving them free money. There isn’t actually any evidence that any baseball team has ever barely hanging on beyond the cries of owners who wouldn’t open their books. You will forgive me if I am a bit skepical. In fact there is substantial evidence to show baseball is making more money than it ever has. The recession might slow things down a bit, but the stars will still get every penny, and no teams will fold.
As for Manny it doesn’t appear that the problem is how much money he gets paid in absolute dollars. Rather it is how much gets deferred without interest.
Bull. The last time baseball had franchises “hanging on” was the 1940s. Baseball makes a bloody fortune.
The Detroit Lions have 5 expensive draft choices. No body wants to trade for them. They have to invest so much in a guessing game.
The Lions have started to have a lot of empty seats. The season tickets are down about 35 %. They will be losing money soon. How do they justify the expense of free agents and draft choices in a business sense. The graph is headed down. A no. 1 QB will not show results soon, if ever. Ford is after money in the Lions. He does not act like a guy who needs a superbowl title to complete him.
No one is forcing the Lions to make those draft choices. They are allowed to pass. They won’t because the can afford to make them. And it is in their best interest to do so.
Detroit has been harder than most cities, but mostly the Lions have had ticket sales go down, because they have had terrible teams. Stop having terrible teams, and people will come back. It really is as simple as that.
The Sports Guy: Bill Simmons Welcome to the No Benjamins Association - ESPN Page 2 Here is Bill Simmons of ESPN suggesting that several NBA teams will die, merge or ask the league to take them over. The players contract is over soon and they will get cut severely next time. The money will go down fast.
No Hawkeye it is not as simple as that.
So one guy with no business background makes an argument about a different sport means the Lions are going to be in trouble? I don’t really believe NBA teams are in danger of folding, but NFL and MLB are in much better shape than the NFL. The players will strike before they accept a severe cut in baseball or football, and probably basketball too. And I don’t think they would be wrong for doing so.
Back in the early ‘80s, NBA players agreed to a pay cut rather than see a bunch of teams go bankrupt. I think that, if teams were actually headed towards bankruptcy AND if the league opened the books to players & players’ union reps to prove it, they’d see some cooperation. Ditto with the NFL and MLB - these guys aren’t (for the most part) stupid, and they know what kind of deal they have.
Cite:
About to “end”? Absolutely not. About to go on hiatus for a bit? Possibly.
But as Albert Haynsworth and Dan Snyder just proved this morning, there’s often more salary money available than you’d think.
Especially since most NFL contracts are not guaranteed and are typically back end loaded so Dan Snyder will never have to pay the whole $100 million.
Almost 30 years of exorbitant salaries and spoiled players have gone since the NBA players cut back. I doubt this generation will do that.