Quote:
Originally Posted by bushwacker
They are not store front properties, but I wonder how the economy will affect professional sports. Ticket prices have gone through the roof in recent years, I can't see the average joe dropping a couple of hundred dollars to take the family to a basketball or football game.
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the National Hockey League has several franchises in serious trouble - Phoenix Coyotes are hanging by a thread and being kept in business by the NHL. There are other teams in the US Sunbelt/Bible Belts that are losing big money and won't survive a long recession.
The NBA has some teams in trouble but the NBA has done a great job of selling itself globally and the worst that will happen in the NBA is a small market team or two will relocate or sell.
NFL is invinceable - no business isn't feeling the effects and the NFL is no different but no NFL team is ever in trouble - just some franchises like Jacksonville that would be better off in a new market.
Baseball has some small market teams that draw flies as it is and in this economy will draw even less but baseball has some big revenue and the the small shitty teams like Pittsburgh and Kansas City have tiny parolls and can survive.
the thing with pro sports franchises is that they are the ultimate toy/hobby for wealthy men - men who have been brilliant in building their own empires buy sports franchises and because it's an ego thing for them they run their sports franchises horribly. there is always another one of these guys who wants in the club so if this recession hurts sports franchises the current owners will not have much trouble finding a buyer. Sports franchises provide a ton of hours of programming for media companies - even when nobody is buying tickets to the games they still have a lot of value.