Home -> Law Blog Directory -> Media & Entertainment Law Blogs -> Sports Biz

Media & Entertainment Law

: Sports Biz

The Hornets: Coming to a City Near You in 09

By Mark

David Stern is a consummate marketer. He may have been trained as a lawyer and got his job because he used to the NBA general counsel, but he has kept it so long and earned the reputation he now has because he is focused above all on the image of the NBA and its players and marketing them to its sponsors and potential sponsors. That is why it is important to not take his pronouncements about the state of the league too literally. While he delivers his annual State of the NBA speech at the All Star Game Weekend in February, he previewed it recently in traditional Stern speak:

"Well, our finances are good and up," Stern said. "Our basketball is great. Some of our teams are struggling at the gate ? we have a half a dozen teams or so that are having some problems ? but at the same time, we have 15 teams that have sold over 10,000 season tickets. So it is really a double tale, so to speak. But overall, business is great, ratings are strong, and attendance remains very strong."

However, if you read through the lines, so to speak, you can see the real problem, one we have visited before: New Orleans. While the Hornets proudly announced recently a new lease for New Orleans Arena that supposedly keeps them in the city through 2014, what it really provided owner George Shinn was something that he has craved since the end of the first season in town - a way out. The new lease provides that the Hornets may terminate the lease and leave town following the 2008-09 season if they do not draw an average paid attendance of 14,735 for the final five months of this season and all of next season. They are not off to a good start - in the eight games played from December 1 through the January 10 announcement of the deal, the Hornets averaged 12,215.

New Orleans was probably too small market to support a NBA team when the Hornets first moved there. The corporate base was virtually non-existent and the population size was marginal at best. Then came Katrina and the all of the ownership's best hopes for the franchise moved to Oklahoma City. Well, not really, they actually moved to Houston, Atlanta, Memphis and other places scattered throughout the South. Mostly, they left New Orleans and didn't come back and what was once a marginal NBA city at best, became a marginal D League city. The best intentions of the league notwithstanding, the Hornets tenure in New Orleans can now be accurately measured - it ends at the end of the 2008-09 season and the only remaining question is what unlucky city gets to receive a good team with lousy ownership - can anyone say Seattle Hornets?

Let's just swap the Hornets for the Sonics and move the Hornets back to OKC. Seattle gets to keep its team. The Sonics owners get a team in OKC where they live and Seattle has to put up with Shinn which I guess is what they get for not agreeing to a some sort of deal on an arena.

Full post as published by Sports Biz on January 18, 2008 (boomark / email).