I mean no disrespect to the good people of Oklahoma City, who I understand did a pretty decent job hosting the homeless Hornets when New Orleans was wiped out by Katrina, but doesn’t this strike anyone else as being pretty fucking stupid?
Leaving aside the fact that the Sonics’ new owner is apparently a lying, avaricious poltroon, I’m just not seeing the economic sense behind moving a team from Seattle, a large metropolitan area, to one that’s maybe one third as large. (Metropolitan Seattle has about as many people as the entire STATE of Oklahoma.)
I would assume there are issues of lease and stadium deals at work here, but it just continues to strike me as utterly, inexplicably bizarre that some sports leagues seem bound and determined to place teams away from where the fans are. In the case of the NFL, having a team in Jacksonville (???) but not LA, I can kind of see the point that the NFL is more a TV show than a live sporting event, so maybe in their case it doesn’t matter. But the NBA and NHL are still heavily reliant on ticket sales for profitability. So why would you want a team in OKC, instead of Seattle? Why would the NHL want teams in Nashville and Fort Lauderdale, but not Hamilton and Seattle?
I mean, in the short term, I would assume the issue is that the team is getting a sweetheart deal on the property they’re going to play in and so save huge bucks and can turn a profit. That’s got to be the reason the Florida Panthers play in an industrial zone in the middle of Shittsburgh, Florida. (Sunrise, actually.) But isn’t it in the best long term interests of these leagues to build larger fan bases?
I really don’t grok this at all, so you’re all welcome to shoot my thoughts full of holes if you wish.
The management would rather be the No. 1 pro team in town instead of a distant 3rd team. But in the end, the owner wants out of Seattle (he’s finally calling a bluff he’s been playing for some years) and OKC is “NBA ready” immediately because of their success in supporting the Hornets.
But that doesn’t mean it makes any real long term sense at all. Within five years the owner will be complaining when revenues max out and there is no more juice to be squeezed out of the good citizens of Oklahoma. I’m sure the guy is looking at San Antonio as a model here, but SA is quite a bit bigger, factoring in the “metro” area, SA has 800,000 more folks).
Well, I tend to think you have a lot of good points, but for the sake of discussion, I’ll mention that Oklahoma City is not exactly a small city (I’m finding it coming in at #30 in population of US cities) and many smaller cities feature professional teams (in some cases, more than one professional team).
Other factors that may come into play – Oklahoma doesn’t have any other big four major league teams in the state (unless I am blanking on something), so they may also pull support from, say, Tulsa. Anecdotally, I have personally noticed that in rural Oklahoma, people seem willing to drive fairly long distances routinely to go to “the city.” My in-laws will do it to go to dinner. (Which, as a New Yorker, I find vaguely insane.)
Also on geography, it’s the largest city in a fairly large area – you’ve got to go south to Dallas or northwest to Denver to hit larger metro areas, and in both cases, you’re leaving the state, and you know how people from Oklahoma feel about crossing the Texas border. I think it’s at least possible to get a fan base from a wide area, especially if they play their PR cards right and get people to buy into the idea of an Oklahoma (state) team.
As a culture, they seem fairly sporty – the Sooners’ stadium seats about 80,000. I know it is hard to compare college football and professional basketball with the differences in schedules and frequency of play, but at the very least, you know you have a nearby college population that is very big on sports to begin with.
The NBA owed Charlotte a franchise. The Bobcats drew well but their asshole owner felt he wasn’t rich enough and tried to extort a new publicly-funded arena out of North Carolina taxpayers. Unfortunately, when it became apparent the people of North Carolina weren’t going to give in to his blackmail, he took his franchise and moved to another city (much like that vile two-legged sack of pus and excrement that now owns the Sonics is in the process of doing right now).
As for the Sonics, if they do move to OKC (which now seems likely), I sincerely hope they never come close to making the play-offs for a generation or go bankrupt.
NDP has conflated the Hornets and the Bobcats. The Hornets franchise was a fairly stable one until the shitheel owner started extorting the city for a new stadium. Eventually the fans grew to despise him and essentially boycotted the franchise. This led to atrocious attendance figures and essentially led to the Hornets bailing for a less than ideal situation in New Orleans. Since much of the problem with basketball in Charlotte was the relationship of the owner and fans the NBA essentially promised them a new team. The city prior to the move actually agreed to fund a new stadium under the condition that the scumbag owner sell the team. Didn’t happen.
As to the OP, I think it’s important to remember that middle-sized cities have a excellent track record of supporting professional sports teams. Small metro areas like Green Bay, San Antonio, Kansas City, Buffalo, Nashville and Sacramento have all well supported professional franchises. To assume that Seattle by virtue of a large population will automatically out perform OKC is not necessarily supported by history. As a matter of fact, some of the biggest franchise failures were in major cities like LA and Miami. Seattle has already once lost a MLB team, large areas like Miami and Tampa are probably the next weakest in baseball. Atlanta is notorious for its terrible fan support, as is fast growing Pheonix.
To move the Sonics to OKC in hopes that they become the next Green Bay Packers is probably a gamble worth taking. There’s a lot to be said for having a captive audience, just look at the support the Sooners and Cornhuskers get.
Finally, the city closest in size to OKC is Portland, OR. They only have an NBA franchise and it’s pretty damned successful.
The NBA has a history of being the first major league franchise in smaller cities. Phoenix (a huge metro area now, much less so when the Suns began), Portland, Utah, Sacramento, and Indiana are a few examples of how successful a franchise can be if an NBA owner uses his monopoly of local pro sports wisely.
And OKC has an advantage over those other markets in that the Hornets provided a demonstration of the city’s potential fan base in advance.
I used to live in Seattle, so I’ve followed this story a bit as it has unfolded. But there’s one question I haven’t found an answer to, so maybe one of the locals can help.
I keep reading how awful Key Arena is, and that seems to be the main issue in moving the team. But they just gutted the place and rebuilt it practically from scratch. I used to drive by and the only things standing were the four beams of the roof. That was 12 years ago, but it should take longer than that for a building to go from almost new to driving the owner away.
So is the arena issue a smokescreen, or was it a mistake to renovate the existing building (couldn’t squeeze enough luxury boxes under the old roof)?
Does Seattle just not know how to build a sports stadium? I remember watching the Kingdome being built; all that trouble for something that didn’t even last 25 years. Maybe I’ll see Safeco or Qwest fall to the wrecking ball during my lifetime. Or did Seattle just make it to the big leagues at a time when team owners figured out they could start begging from the legislature as soon as the new arena smell wore off?
He’s a new owner, and I think he’s actually from Oklahoma City - so once he bought the team, this was going to happen and probably happen sooner than later.
Well OKC is home to Tinker AFB so Super Sonics isn’t too bad a name.
OKC has nothing else that will compete with the frachise. I’m suprised that they don’t have a NFL team since HS and college ball is very popular there.
Key Arena is a fantastic venue from all aspects for the fans, great seats, great food, great sound. It has one drawback though, it’s a bit small. This is its greatest virtue as a fan watching the game, it is wonderfully intimate with even the “nosebleed” seats feeling close to the court.
The small scale marginalized the fans, however. To make money, ticket prices rapidly climbed, and more sections became “premium” sections. It reached the point where the common blue-collar bloke was priced out of the venue, and most tickets were snatched up by corporate lots. The seats were no longer filled with what I consider “true” fans, but by those who got tickets from the boss or company and were playing the “impress the client” game.
There were a wonderful few years after the renovation where it was a perfect sports fan experience. The only reason Key Arena is hated is just that it has become too exclusive for most people to enjoy anymore. The sports fans have taken their money to the Mariners and Seahawks, leaving the Sonics to shmooze the corporate client crowd.
Hmm…OKC makes sense in one aspect. That’ll shorten the Sonics travel schedule by quite a bit. OKC is close to Dallas, Houston, and San Antonio. It will also shorten their travel time to most other cities.
I still think they’ll look to move yet again in less than ten years.