If you are old enough to remember the 1970s, you'll recall a time when it seemed like EVERYBODY was playing tennins. Not so much anymore. Here is the story from Bloomberg:
Prince Sports Inc. sought bankruptcy protection citing as much as $100 million each in assets and debts, and the maker of the first oversize tennis racket plans to change its business model to become more competitive.
Among the largest unsecured creditors listed in the Bordentown, New Jersey-based company’s Chapter 11 documents filed today in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Wilmington, Delaware, were Da Sheng International Holding Ltd. of Taiwan and Pais International Ltd. and Marshal Industrial Corp., both of Hong Kong, each owed more than $1.9 million in trade debt.
Declining demand “combined with increased competition over the past five years” and a drop in “consumer discretionary spending” led to the bankruptcy, said Gordon Boggis, chief executive officer, in court papers. The company plans to cancel secured debt in exchange for new equity as part of its reorganization plan.
Prince, whose rackets were used by major champions including Jimmy Connors and Martina Navratilova, was founded in 1970 when Bob McClure invented the “Little Prince,” the first ball machine for home court use, in his garage in Princeton, New Jersey. In 1976, the company changed the sport by inventing the first oversize racket. The “Prince Classic” measured 110 square inches, had a much bigger “sweet spot” than traditional wooden rackets and became one of the best-selling rackets of all time.
In 1977, Prince produced the first graphite racket, which is still being used by professionals including doubles major champions Mike and Bob Bryan of the U.S. and former world No. 1 Jelena Jankovic of Serbia.
I believe the only way Prince can "change its business model to become more competitive" is to start making something else other than tennis rackets.
According to the old saying: "it is better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to open your mouth and remove all doubt." Maybe we should upgrade that to: "it is better to stay off of Twitter entirely than to send out messages showing the whole world what a fucking idiot you are."
There was a time not all that long ago when a person might say a dumb thing, but it at most would be heard by a handful of people and then immediately dissipate into the ether. There was no permanent record of it to come back and haunt the speaker, and even those who heard the words would probably not be able to completely agree as to exactly what was said.
But nowadays, thanks to the dubious miracle that is Twitter, millions of morons pollute the collective consciousness every single day with their "thoughts," giving the rest of us a horrifying glimpse at just how addle-brained many of our fellow citizens really are. I could do a whole separate blog just on this subject, of course, and put up about a dozen posts a day like some Twitter version of People of Walmart, but to prove my point I'll stick to the one example as reported by With Leather:
Depending on who you ask, the Cincinnati Reds probably gave up too much young talent in a deal for pitcher Mat Latos this offseason, but when Walt Jocketty wants a guy, he gets that guy, damn it. Unfortunately, Latos isn’t off to a hot start this season (0-2, 8.22 ERA) but in fairness he had to pitch against the St. Louis Cardinals last night and they pretty much own the 24-year old in his brief career in the majors. The Cards are now 3-1 against Latos since his rookie season, and his ERA in that span has too many digits for me to process without my Texas Instruments graphing calculator.
But who needs stats when criticizing a guy is just plain easier? At least that’s how some Reds fans looked at his awful game last night (5.2 innings, 8 ER) and they took it out on the person who deserved it most – Dallas Latos, Mat’s wife (Bill's note: sarcasm alert).
Wow...stay classy, asshole. Tweeting that sexist garbage to the pitcher's wife just because your sorry ass team is getting its head kicked in is bad enough, but notice that the moron is holding a baby, presumably his, in his Twitter picture.
Idiocracy, the movie, had it right. We're going to hell because the idiots are doing most of the breeding and the smart people are dying out:
I’ll admit that I have a soft spot for controversial Miami Marlins manager Ozzie Guillen. I grew up a fan of the hapless Chicago White Sox, and for my first four decades of life on this planet despaired that I would ever get to see my team appear in a World Series, let alone win it. Then in 2005 Ozzie was the manager who achieved what so many previous White Sox managers, including the legendary Tony LaRussa, failed to do: he led the Pale Hose to a baseball world championship.
Moreover, Guillen is not one of those purposely colorless athletic figures who give bland, unenlightening statements to the press in every interview hoping never to offend anybody. He is instead refreshingly brash and unafraid to speak his mind, even if he can at times be combative and quite often doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. As a fan, part of the attraction of having Ozzie manage your team is that you are never really quite sure what he is going to say or do next.
Unfortunately for Ozzie, he switched locales this past offseason from the chilly shores of Lake Michigan to the balmy climes of South Florida. And whereas jaded Chicagoans were much more inclined to just write off his more outrageous pronouncements as “Ozzie being Ozzie” especially as long as he kept winning, clearly Miamians, especially those of Cuban descent, have much less of a sense of humor.
So it was that Ozzie found himself in considerable hot water this past week for these remarks he made in an interview with Time magazine:
“I love Fidel Castro… I respect Fidel Castro, you know why? A lot of people have wanted to kill Fidel Castro for the last 60 years, but that motherf****r is still here.”
The funny thing about this whole stupid media manufactured controversy is that what Guillen said is really not all that different from another comment he made back in 2008 in an interview with Men’s Journal:
"Fidel Castro," he said. "He's a bull---- dictator and everybody's against him, and he still survives, has power. Still has a country behind him. Everywhere he goes they roll out the red carpet. I don't admire his philosophy. I admire him."
Clearly, these are not so much political statements as expressions of admiration for a man who has been a survivor on the world scene for decades despite having many powerful enemies. And really, how can you NOT admire Castro at least for that? Was Castro a dictator who came to power through violent means? Absolutely. But he was not much different in that regard than the man he replaced, Fulgencio Batista y Zaldívar. What’s more, by 20th century standards Castro was hardly the most brutal dictator out there, and in fact he was no worse than many other dictators that the United States has actually supported during that time.
So now, Guillen has been suspended by his team for five games and forced to apologize just for expressing a candid opinion while right-wingers cackle with glee. The same right-wingers, I might add, who would no doubt be outraged had Guillen been suspended for making some intemperate remarks about Obama—because it is only kosher for those assholes to complain against “political correctness” when it is being wielded as a weapon in their direction.
I initially tried to avoid writing about this story because it depresses me immensely, but it just kept mushrooming until I felt compelled to say something about it. First off, Ozzie Guillen is a baseball manager. He has absolutely no influence over American foreign policy, and his opinions count in the grand scheme of things for exactly the same amount as mine do…in other words they don’t count for jack shit. The idiots who were out there protesting his remarks need to get a fucking grip already. Or better yet, if they are so damned concerned about what is going on Cuba maybe they ought to just pick up and go back there.
Secondly, regarding the craven ownership of the Miami Marlins, it would be one thing to put out an official statement affirming that the opinions expressed were the personal opinions of Ozzie Guillen and not the Miami Marlins baseball club. But by suspending Guillen they have set a very bad precedent in which any fringe group with a chip on its shoulder will demand a suspension for anyone in their organization who says something they perceive as offensive. Considering that the team employs a large group of rich young male athletes—a demographic not exactly known for its sensitivity, particularly towards women—they really should have thought this action through a little better.
But lastly and most importantly, this incident has once again aimed the direct spotlight at America’s absolutely asinine foreign policy towards Cuba. The last time that tiny island nation posed any legitimate threat to the United States was when President Kennedy stared down Nikita Khrushchev and forced him to withdraw the Soviet nuclear missiles that were being installed there. Since the end of the Cold War and the loss of its Soviet patron, Cuba has essentially lost the ability to project its power or even much influence beyond its own borders.
The country today, where the aged and infirm Castro is no longer even the president any more, has little significance on the world stage. And as for the regime still being technically “communist,” like in China and Vietnam that term no longer has much if any remaining relevance. Cuba is certainly not a democratic society, but given just how tightly the billionaire oligarchs control American politics and how most U.S. government policies involving support for big business, war and empire change little if at all no matter which party is in power, one could reasonably make the same exact argument about this country.
It is long past time or America to get over its petulance about its failure to dislodge Castro after he thumbed his nose at us after the revolution. His side won and the side of the Cuban exiles in Miami lost. In that they are no different than the losers of any war throughout world history, and in fact are living much better lives than do most unfortunates who have ever found themselves in that situation. They can continue to whine and moan about the downfall of the corrupt, gangster-ridden regime Castro replaced, but the rest of the world has rightly moved on. As for Ozzie Guillen, if because of this stupid flap he stops running his yap he'll become just another supremely uninteresting sports personality.
Bonus: A sweet little tune from the criminally underrated Florida indie rock band, The Silos, off of their classic 1987 album, "Cuba"
Bad enough that idiot box has become little more that a corporate propaganda machine aimed at idiots...but the idiots now have to pay more than ever before for the privilege of being brainwashed. Here is MSNBC with the details:
If you're one of those people who complain that there’s nothing to watch on TV today even though you have a gazillion channels, you’re not going to be happy with this news – turns out, you’re paying more for cable.
The monthly rate for pay TV has been rising at an average of 6 percent annually and hit $86 a month last year for basic pay and premium-channel TV, according to a reported released Tuesday by market research firm The NPD Group. The uptick in licensing fees - which are the fees cable and satellite providers pay for programs - is driving much of the increase, at a time when consumer household income has hardly budged.
At this rate, NDP estimates consumers will be paying an average of $123 a month in 2015 and $200 a month by 2020.
The study was based on a quarterly electronic survey of 1,000 U.S. households.
Not surprisingly, the rising costs are making many consumers pull the plug on premium television. Today, there are five million fewer U.S. households viewing pay-TV services due to the mortgage crisis, the NDP research found, adding that those who did cancel service were prompted to do so because of economic reasons. But overall, the number of pay-TV subscribers has not declined substantially because of “bulk-service pay-TV contracts with apartment complexes and homeowners’ associations that have allowed pay-TV operators to retain subscriptions in vacant homes,” the study said.
Among the pay-TV cord cutters, most are still viewing their favorite shows via free Internet TV, traditional free broadcasting, and video-on-demand services such as Netflix, NDP reported. The growth of lower-cost options, as well as cash-strapped consumers, is the reason the total number of subscribers of paid TV dropped to 100.9 million in the second quarter of last year, compared to 101.4 million in the first quarter, according to a IHS Screen Digest report released in September.
“As pay-TV costs rise and consumers’ spending power stays flat, the traditional affiliate-fee business model for pay-TV companies appears to be unsustainable in the long term,” said Keith Nissen, research director for NDP. “Much needed structural changes to the pay-TV industry will not happen quickly or easily; however, the emerging competition between S-VOD (subscription video-on-demand) and premium-TV suppliers might be the spark that ignites the necessary business-model transformation of the pay-TV industry.”
Indeed, something’s got to give: $200 a month for cable may end up getting some consumers pulling out their dusty old rabbit ears; that is, if they still work with digital TV.
I linked to a story just the other day which explained that one of the big reasons for the increased fees is that billionaire-owned professional sports teams are charging more and more money for the rights to broadcast their games so they can afford to pay their multimillionaire athletes. It looks like the greedy assholes who run the media and entertainment industry won't be happy until they have squeezed the last dime out of the idiots and the whole industry collapses.
Bonus: Released a half-century ago, this song is still as relevant now as it was then despite the dated references
For those of you who are not big sports fans and may not realize it, today is Opening Day in Major League Baseball. Once again, hope springs eternal, with every team starting out with a blank slate, dreaming of the possibility of October games and World Series title. I’ll admit, I became hooked on baseball as a kid watching the Big Red Machine back in the mid-1970s, and despite souring on it for awhile after the so-called “labor” dispute that resulted in the cancelling of the 1994 World Series, it has always been my first sporting love.
Like so many other things in America, however, the influence of big money has greatly tarnished America’s game. Beginning in the 1970s, player salaries began to escalate to previously unimaginable heights thanks to the efforts of an aggressive players union. I remember being shocked as a kid back in 1977 when slugger Reggie Jackson, one of the very first superstar free agents, signed a contract with the New York Yankees that would pay him over a half-million dollars per year. But Jackson’s union wasn’t through by a long shot, and over the next 20 years would aggressively confront the owners and stage a couple of strikes which would wipe out large portions of the 1981 and 1994 seasons. The end result could not possibly have been more ironic, during a period in which labor unions in general greatly declined in power and influence and the wages of the average American stagnated in real dollar terms, a professional association representing a group of professional athletes won more and more concessions until Alex Rodriguez really broke the bank by signing a truly staggering $250 million contract with the Texas Rangers in 2001.
Not, however, that we should at all feel sorry for the exclusive billionaire boys club that represents Major League Baseball owners. Starting in the 1980s, no group benefitted from the 30-year debt fueled bubble and the coddle-the-rich tax policies ushered in by Reaganomics. Even as player salaries were exploding, the values of major league baseball teams were rising even faster. Franchises that exchanged hands for $10 million back in the 1970s were suddenly going for hundreds of millions of dollars. And because nearly every city that hosted a major league team was eagerly ready to rape its own taxpayers to build new stadiums featuring revenue generating corporate skyboxes, life was truly good for the fat cat owners.
The only blip on the radar screen was the aforementioned dispute that resulted in the cancelling of the 1994 World Series. At the time, it seemed that the millionaire players and billionaire owners may have finally gone too far in antagonizing the fans. Attendance actually dropped for awhile and the brilliant “leaders” of the game began desperately searching for a way to put fannies back into the seats. Realizing that “chicks (and everyone else) dig the long ball,” what they came up with was a nefarious scheme to “juice” the baseballs and to look the other way while the players juiced themselves so they could hit more home runs. Soon, roided up Goliaths with swollen heads and shrunken testicles were bashing the livelier balls out of the park in record numbers, eventually shattering the two most sacred numbers in all of American sports: 61 and 755. Integrity of the game be damned, we've got millions of tickets to sell.
Baseball finally seemed to at least partly reclaim its senses during the middle of this past decade. Public outcry over steroid use finally helped purge the sport of that particular scourge. Free agent contract awards also leveled off, and for more than a decade no other player signed a contract for even close to the amount of Rodriguez’s deal. In the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, in fact, baseball owners became particularly stingy about giving out the big money, no doubt recognizing that their sport, lacking the massive national television deal that so buoyed the NFL, was far more dependent on the now financially distressed fans for its survival. Attendance, which had been steadily growing since the late 1990s, leveled off in the wake of the crash.
Then suddenly, this past offseason all restraint fell by the wayside and Major League Baseball has resumed throwing money around like there is literally no tomorrow. The Miami Marlins, who had always had a reputation for being a notoriously cheap franchise that would trade star players rather than pay them the big bucks, went all out after a shady, taxpayer funded new stadium deal, giving out over $200 million in free agent contracts to several players. Not to be outdone, the Los Angeles Angels, Detroit Tigers and Cincinnati Reds each paid out well over $200 million for just one player, bringing the 2001 Rodriguez deal much closer to the norm.
But even all of that paled in comparison to the mind boggling figures involved in the recent sale of the Los Angeles Dodgers. Prior to this past month, no major league team had ever fetched more than the $845 million the Cubs were purchased for in 2009. Yet despite that precedent, the Dodgers were sold to a new ownership group for the staggering sum of $2.15 billion, a figure as unprecedented today as the Rodriguez contract was a decade ago.
Right about now, those of you who have indulged me to this point in the article are probably very reasonably asking: “so what does this have to do with peak oil and economic collapse?” Well, the fact is that baseball wouldn’t be throwing around these incredible dollar amounts if the sport wasn’t confident that it is going to see vastly increased revenues going forward. It is, of course, the fans who ultimately pay those nine-figure salaries being doled out to star players and whose support is what increases the value of a franchise well into the ten-figure range. The billionaires who made these decisions clearly believe that in the near future the economy is going to start booming again, and that the average fan will have plenty more money in their pockets to blow on attending baseball games and buying lots of overpriced food and memorabilia at the stadium.
Obviously, I don’t subscribe to that theory. It is really hard to imagine that with all of the headwinds facing working and middle class Americans—underwater mortgages, massive student loan debts, skyrocketing health care costs, tepid job market and high gasoline prices to name a few—that they are suddenly going to experience a surge in their disposable incomes. And all of that is not even counting what will happen when the economy does finally slip back into recession.
The fact is that Major League Baseball, which benefitted greatly from the loose fiscal policies of the bubble years, is now in the process of blowing the biggest bubble of all at precisely the worst possible time. The sport is setting itself up for a spectacular blow up akin to the way Las Vegas kept building larger and more lavish casinos right up until the moment when the gamblers stopped coming in such large numbers and the local economy cratered.
So, as I said before, it’s Opening Day. Hope springs eternal for every baseball fan, who can for at least this one day imagine that this will be the year their team makes it to the World Series. Enjoy it while you can, because the idiots who run the game have virtually ensured that the sport is heading for a very spectacular downfall.
Let’s play ball!
Addendum: Here's a little story from Deadspin about how if you have cable or satellite teevee, you are subsidizing billionaire sports team owners, whether you want to or not.
Bonus: "Put me in, coach...I'm ready to play today"
Only in America, where the public is completely asleep at the switch, could a collective of filthy rich billionaires who run sports franchises receive tax exempt status for their operations. Here is Business Insider with the dirty details:
You may not know it, but the National Football League is a nonprofit organization. It may seem absurd that a collection of teams that generated at least $9 billion in revenue last season would be given tax-exempt status, but the NFL is technically classified as a 501(c)6 organization.
The article then goes on to describe just how absurd this is:
It seems inconceivable that the NFL is not “engag[ing] in a regular business of a kind ordinarily carried on for profit.” How are their efforts to maximize profits any different than those of Major League Baseball, the National Basketball Association or the National Hockey League? As far as the NFL’s “net earnings,” the nonprofit was actually in the red in 2009, according to its latest available return. Virtually all of the leagues $192.3 million in revenue in 2009 came from “membership dues & assessment.” While the NFL doesn’t explain how much each clubs pays in dues, it averages to about $6 million per team. NFL owners don’t have to pay taxes on those dues, as they are considered donations to a nonprofit. Meanwhile, the NFL had $234.6 million in expenses in 2009, but the “nonprofit” paid $53.6 million to 8 individuals. NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell earned $9.9 million in 2009 (and will earn $20 million by 2019) but he wasn’t even the highest paid individual. NFL Network President Steve Bornstein was paid $12.6 million by the “nonprofit” even though NFL Network is part of NFL Enterprises, LLC. In other words, the only reason the NFL is operating in the red is because of the massive salaries it’s paying its key executives.
It seems even more inconceivable that a country that has been running trillion dollar plus budget deficits for the past four years didn't close this particular tax collection loophole a LONG time ago. But that's America: land of the billionaires, by the billionaires and for the billionaires. And the rest of us sit back, drinking shitty beer, eating crap food and mindlessly cheering on their tax exempt league, and caring more about where Peyton Manning is going to play quarterback next year than we do about how these same billionaires and others like them are ruthlessly destroying America's prosperity while they laugh all the way to bank.
Bonus: "I'm amazed at the TV stations...I'm amazed what they want me to believe"
I haven't done a Friday Rant in awhile, so hopefully I'm not out of practice. For those of you who don't follow the NBA, Mark Cuban is the owner of the world champion Dallas Mavericks. His net worth is in the billions of dollars, and apparently he is a flaming asshole to boot. That's the only explanation I can come up with for what compelled him to write the article below for Business Insider:
Every kid needs to make some money, right? You want a job. You can’t get a job. You need experience. You got no experience. High School and College kid problems.
But fear not. Not every job has to be a career. Money plays. You don’t need brilliant ideas. Sometimes you just need to make some money for the summer. Or to pay for your braces. Or to pay for the phone bill your parents killed you on. Whatever you need cash for, it's always a problem that needs solving.
To solve your big money problems, sometimes you only need to solve simple problems. Sometimes you just need to be creative. I’m going to give you 2 ideas any student going to any school can do to make more than minimum wage.
1. Shoelaces.
Say what? Shoelaces. I said it.
I guarantee you that if you go to the parking lot of any high school or college football game with a bunch of shoelaces in team colors that you bought for 2 bucks a pop, and put up a sign and 2 chairs, you can make money. Not football season? Go to where ever there are people in your community. Flea Market. Basketball Game. Dance recital. Wherever people who go to your school show up, you show up. You set up your sign and your chairs.
On the sign you put something like ”Get in the YOUR-SCHOOL spirit.” I will re-lace your shoes with “YOUR-SCHOOL” color laces for $10 (small schools), $20 bucks (big schools with more drunk alums or lots of rich people). If you want to make it even more fun, you can add “I will lace them in 5 minutes or they are free”. If you are really enterprising, you can put up on the poster about 5 different ways to lace the shoes and charge a premium for anything but “Missionary” lacing. Easy money. Guaranteed.
2. Become an expert in programming All-in-one T.V. remote controls. People are buying a single remote control to replace all the remotes they have. No one really wants to take the time to figure out all the options. No one wants to take the time to learn how to program the stupid remote. In fact it pisses them off that it takes far more time than they have to do something they bought the stupid remote to do.
To help solve everyone’s problem, go to a local electronics store and find out what remotes they sell. Go to the local Walmart, Target, Best Buy, etc, etc. if the grocery store sells remotes go there too. Find out what the most popular sellers are. How do you find out which are the most popular? You ask someone.
Then, you become an expert in programming those remote controls. The worlds best expert. Once you know your shit, go back to the store with business cards with your email/cell phone number on it and the following:
Your Name I will program any Remote Control for $20 I Have a Phd In Remote Control Programming Cell #/Email/Website
Then you go to all the stores and tell them that their customers will be far happier if they send them to you to program the remote. You will program it exactly like they want it, connecting to any and all devices. All the store has to do is let you put up a stack of cards next to the remote control; maybe a little sign. Then you give a sheepish grin to the manager of the electronics or remote control section of the store and tell them how this is really important to you and how you will do a great job, you promise. Then every couple days you go back to the store and talk to the salespeople who work there and remind them about your PHD in Remote Control Programming and how if they send you enough business, you might be able to spiff them a commission.
Then you damn well do a great job or some other kid is going to steal your remote control programming business.
There you go. Easy breezy money. Nothing fancy. Nothing complicated. Just some hard work, some customer service and the ability to be nice to people and thank them when they pay you and tip you.
I don't think I have ever in my life read such an arrogant, condescending pile of fucking rubbish. Shoelaces and universal remotes? That's this psychopath's advice to young people who need to raise tens of thousands of dollars just to be able to afford a college tuition these days? It sounds like something a bitter, dried up old prune confined in an assisted living facility might say right before they serve him his tapioca pudding, but according to his Wikipedia page, Cuban himself is only 53 years old.
I'm not saying it is bad advice for young people to be industrious or entrepreneurial, but could Cuban have picked two more inane supposed money making schemes for his article? How much of a fucking market could their possibly be for colored shoelaces at a sporting event? Great, let's get 'em started early peddling cheap shit people don't need. That's how we got into this fucking mess in the first place.
And exactly how would you react if some kid you don't know handed you a business card saying he could program your remote control for $20? Even if you are so inept that you can't follow the instructions, would you trust him to come to your house? Or would you more likely suspect that he might be wanting to case the joint so he could rob you later?
Take this tripe for what it is, an attempt by someone who is looking to morally justify why he has billions of dollars while others are destitute. "Hey, I gave 'em some advice as to how they can work hard and pull themselves up by their bootstraps, so what the fuck else do they want from me?"
Actually, I have a better idea, Mark. How about we tax the living fuck out of rich pricks like you so that maybe young people won't have to become debt slaves just getting a college degree or going to a trade school? After all, those who are the most successful in any society should have an obligation to give the most back to that society that enabled them to have such success. I'd really like to put that proposal to a vote in a free and fair election in which you and your 0.00000001% billionaire buddies are prevented from financing political attack ads against it.
Yep, "let 'em sell shoelaces" has become the new "let 'em eat cake," with the difference being that the latter is an unfair smear against the person who supposedly said it. We can always hope that someday billionaire asshole extraordinaire Mark Cuban will share the fate of the unfortunate French Queen.
Bonus: Turning Kirsten Dunst into Marie Antoinette (soundtrack by New Order)
As I've said before, I'm not a golfer, but I recognize the importance the sport has in an area like the Carolinas which relies on the tourist dollars it brings in. So this story from Bloomberg cannot be a good sign:
Cliffs Club & Hospitality Group Inc., which owns several luxury golf communities in South Carolina and North Carolina, filed for bankruptcy protection.
The Travelers Rest, South Carolina-based company listed assets of less than $50,000 and debt from $100 million to $500 million in Chapter 11 documents filed today in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Spartanburg, South Carolina.
The eight communities are located between Asheville, North Carolina, and Greenville, South Carolina, according to the company website.
Holy crap! Assets of less than $50,000 and liabilities of over $100 million? Sounds like this move was LONG overdue.
Bonus: George's classic bit on what we should do with golf courses
You'll recall that a few weeks ago I posted a story about former NFL Wide Receiver Terrell Owens, who managed to blow the cool $70 million he made as a football player and is destitute at the age of 38. Well, former NBA player Allen Iverson, who is no stranger to attention-whoring himself, has now stepped forward and more than doubled down on Owens's stupidity. Here is Yahoo Sports with the details:
Allen Iverson has reportedly gone from 11-time NBA all-star to financial deadbeat. The Philadelphia 76ers icon was recently ordered to pay over $860,000 to a jeweler, and he couldn't cut a check.
A Georgia judge has ordered the seizing of Iverson's bank account, so the relatively little money he has left will be garnished, reports the Philadelphia Inquirer.
This isn't just another formerly famous athlete blowing a ton of cash. Iverson was among the biggest superstars in the NBA, earning more than $154 million during a professional career that began back in 1996. (This doesn't include endorsement money and other business deals.)
How did Iverson lose so much?
Loyal to his friends from a youth spent in Virginia, Iverson traveled with one of the biggest posses in professional sports. Bill Lyon of the Philadelphia Inquirer says the group has as many as 50 people for some Sixers home games. "A.I." took a hair stylist on the road with him and also loved to buy jewelry for himself and his beloved mother, Ann Iverson.
I realize that professional athletes blowing their earnings and ending up destitute is not exactly a new or original story. What's appalling, however, is the sheer amount of money that Owens and Iverson managed to squander before they even reached the age of 40. Throw in the millions they no doubt earned on their endorsement deals and these two idiots managed to blow through more than a quarter of a billion dollars between them. I mean, you really have to TRY to go through that much loot so quickly and have nothing left to show for it.
Once again, it is well past time that we as a society stopped looking up to morons like Terrell Owens and Allen Iverson as heroes. They are not. Like supermodels, they are people who were born with immense genetic gifts who otherwise are no damn different than you or me. That the media continues to place their ilk on a pedestal and we throw tens if not hundreds of millions of dollars at them just to play a kid's game is all you need to know about what a decadent and depraved society we have become.
Bonus "The morons they are winning"...at least until they retire and go broke
One unconventional place to keep an eye out for signs marking the continued deterioration of the economy is in the world of sports. Attending sports events represents the ultimate frivolous household expense that can be cut back or eliminated by families looking to economize. Here is the latest example of distress in the sports world, as reported by the Pasadena Star-News:
Irwindale Speedway, considered by many to host the finest short track racing in the nation, appears to be history. On Saturday, workers appeared to be closing down the facility, which has had the biggest NASCAR short track races on the West Coast for more than a decade.
Workers were dismantling the pit grandstand, which is adjacent to the first turn. They also were taking apart storage areas. A large billboard bordering the San Gabriel Valley River Freeway was not lit up for the first time in its history, barring power outages, and the track's web site was taken off the Internet.
"They went out of business," said a prominent Irwindale racer who did not want to be identified.
Vice president and general manager Bob DeFazio and some staff members were in the locked administration building Saturday morning, with a moving truck backed up to the office's side entrance and a moving box stacked outside. DeFazio, through track operations director Bob Klein, refused to comment. Klein only would say an announcement would be made Monday.
The article goes on to describe what did the racetrack in:
Opened in 1999 amid much fanfare, it featured a state-of-the-art track surface which cost several million dollars. Track CEO Williams, a former owner of Golden States Foods which supplies food to McDonald's and a friend and car builder for Roger Penske-driven IndyCars, said at the time he wanted to rival the draw of the Dodgers.
NASCAR Hall of Famer Darrell Waltrip, in a visit to the track, called the facility the finest short track in America.
It gained national attention when Stewart won the 2000 Turkey Night Grand Prix and then even more praise when NASCAR bestowed its tour racing Grand National series all-star event, the Toyota All-Star Showdown, to the track.
But it all came unraveling last season. Car counts were down significantly and nearly every division had the fewest racers since the track opened. More important, attendance was down. There were roughly 900 people in the stands for a Saturday, May 14 race.
Attendance over the past two seasons gradually has dwindled since the heydays of the early 2000s. The track does not release attendance numbers, but they averaged about 2,700 people at 28 races last year.
The track averaged more than 5,000 attendees in a 6,500-seat stadium for four consecutive seasons, starting in 2001.
This is just the beginning, of course. When the day finally comes that Major League Baseball, National Football League and National Basketball Association teams start to fall by the wayside, you'll know that a full blown economic collapse is drawing near.
Bonus: Instead of speed, we now have the sound of loneliness
In my January 17th post, "Extreme Makeover: Reality Edition," I highlighted a story about an Arizona family who was given a million dollar home by the reality teevee show and was unable to keep it. In the post, I asserted that there are a lot of people who just can't handle prosperity. At least some of the blame for that can be placed squarely upon the media, which relentlessly glorifies narcissistic celebrities who live extravagantly lavish and foolishly wasteful lifestyles.
Very few sports figures in recent years have come to personify this phenomenon as much as NFL wide receiver Terrell Owens. To put it bluntly, for well over a decade while he was in his prime Owens perfectly exemplified everything that is wrong with modern professional sports. He was a selfish, me-first attention whore of a ballplayer who hogged the spotlight and thumbed his nose at his coaches while always blaming his teammates for his own shortcomings. Along the way, Owens completely ignored the old mantra that you should be careful how you treat people as you're climbing the ladder lest they shit all over you when you're on the way back down.
So I have to admit to having experienced a considerable amount of schadenfreude when I read the story below from ABC News:
Terrell Owens, the former NFL star receiver who has signed to play for and co-own an indoor football team, is friendless and nearly broke, he told GQ magazine. “I’m in hell,” Owens, 38, said he tells people who ask about his well-being.
After the Cincinnati Bengals did not renew his one-year, $2 million contract last year, Owens has been suffering from his financial shortcomings, including ventures gone bad and child support for his four children, he said.
The $80 million or so he had made in his career is almost gone, he said, but not because he lived a lavish lifestyle.
In a profile story in GQ’s February issue, Owens said his financial advisers lured him into risky investments such as an Alabama entertainment complex that cost him $2 million. He later learned the venture was illegal in the state and violated the NFL’s policy of prohibiting players from investing in gambling, he said.
He also owns a slew of properties that he thought he would be able to rent before the housing market tanked, he said. He has a home in Los Angeles that cost him $499,000 and a multimillion-dollar home that is for sale in Atlanta. The home in New Jersey for which he paid $3.9 million was sold in late 2010 for $1.7 million, he said.
Owens also pays $44,600 a month in child support for his four children, ages 5 to 12. Three of the four mothers have sued him.
The football player laments about losing trust in people and friends. When people text and ask where he is, he answers, “I’m in hell.”
“I don’t have no friends,” he told GQ. ”I don’t want no friends. That’s how I feel.”
It's time we stop, children. What's that sound? It's the sound of me, playing the world's smallest violin for Terrell Owens. No one should feel ANY sympathy for a pathetic excuse for a human being who, because of the utterly skewed values of our society, is handed $80 million merely for playing a kid's game and manages to blow the whole roll by the time he's 38 years old. If I saw the fucker out panhandling I wouldn't waste a wooden nickle on him.
Back when Terrell Owens was still a star in the NFL, there were plenty of idiot sports fans who stupidly looked up to him as a role model. But I would argue that he is actually a much better role model now. Kids everywhere need to be shown his example and taught that he is exactly what they should aspire NOT to be, on the field or off.
Bonus: I'd like to dedicate this song to Terrell Owens. "I guess you ain't worth a damn, when you're broke"
I've posted several stories here on TDS Blog about how the preeminent sports league in the United States, which a decade ago could sell out a seven-on-seven summer training camp practice scrimmage, is becoming increasingly desperate as sales for its overpriced tickets to watch its increasingly mediocre games continue to decline. The latest, and frankly the funniest to example of this to date, was reported on Friday by The Consumerist:
The Jacksonville Jaguars have traditionally had difficulty selling out home games, and the franchise is apparently so frustrated that it has resorted to insulting those who don't buy tickets. While introducing the team's new head coach, new owner Shahid Kahn said he's only interested in hearing criticism from ticket buyers.
First Coast News relays the foot-in-mouth quote:
“"For me a fan is somebody who is a season ticket holder for the Jaguars. So that is a key definition we need to get out. We want to hear from people, we want a huge amount of constructive feedback. We need input, but we need that from fans who are season ticket holders."
The team's PR machine was quick to backtrack, with Kahn's spokesman saying the owner was joking and speaking off-the cuff. Khan later released an email statement that re-accepted the Jaguars' throngs of non-game-attending fans back into the fold:
"All it takes to be a Jaguars fan is to love the Jaguars. And if you love the Jaguars, you're the most important person to me and the entire organization."
We don't know what's more entertaining, PR blunders that reveal what executives actually think, or the fumbling, forced apologies that always follow quickly thereafter.
A couple of points here. First of all, NFL tickets have become too damn expensive for the average fan. My last season as an NFL season ticket holder was in 2009, when I paid $120 per ticket, per game, for seats in the end zone about 40 rows up from the field. That price was also more than double what I paid my first year as a ticket holder back in 1997, and didn't even cover the cost of parking or food and beverages. Attending a single NFL game for a family of four has become a $600 or more proposition, which is simply not affordable for most people.
Secondly, the Jacksonville Jaguars had a 5-11 record this year and have sucked balls for most of their existence as an NFL franchise, so maybe the fans recognize a bad value for the money when they see one. And don't get me started about how the NFL forces season ticket holders to buy tickets to two meaningless home exhibition games every year--for the same price as a regular season game. For fans of a crappy team like the Jaguars, that's like the cherry on a shit sundae.
For being a clueless billionaire sports owner of a lousy football team but nevertheless determined to drive away his remaining fan base, I hereby declare Jacksonville Jaguars owner Shahid Kahn to be a Real One Percenter of Genius.
Bonus: Right now, Jacksonville Jaguars fans are probably feeling like Captain Kirk
Regular readers of TDS know that I am a big believer in the need to laugh at the madness of the crazy world of ours so that you might not go insane. Well, few stories have been more insane than the Penn State football pedophile scandal and the university's clueless (at best) handling of the situation, which has sparked well justified outrage.
Amusingly, a few clever football fans knew exactly how to hit Penn State right where it hurts most--by mocking them at their recent bowl game. Here is Deadspin with the details:
We got an email, telegram-style, this morning: "Pedobear spotted tailgating outside ticket city bowl in Dallas complete with joepa cleats." We figured it was just a gag tailgate outfit that would never make it into the TicketCity Bowl (at the Cotton Bowl) and that we might not wind up with photographic evidence. Boy, were we wrong.
We got plenty of photos. And he even made it on the JumboTron, with a sign (complete with Nittany Lion emblem) that read "Keep Quiet and Don't Tell Anyone"
If you don't hang out in the unsavory corners of the internet, you might not know Pedobear. Per Wikipedia: "It is a concept used to mock pedophiles or people who have an interest in minors, and the bear image has been likened to bait used to lure children or as a mascot for pedophiles." So there you go.
Don't worry, I'm not going to turn this post into a Kunstler-esque screed putting down NASCAR fans as if they are solely responsible for dragging America down into the abyss these days. The fact is I really don't care what floats your boat as far as entertainment goes. I have my own guilty pleasures and at one time in my life was spending a couple of thousand dollars a year as an NFL season ticket holder. As long as your entertainment doesn't begin to fog your brain to the point where you might actually consider voting for the likes of Newt Gingrich or Donald Trump, I say knock yourself out.
Still, I couldn't help but find this story from ESPN amusing:
Dover International Speedway in Delaware is hoping to make race fans' experience a little more comfortable by widening seats in the track's outdoor grandstands.
The speedway announced Thursday that the process of increasing seats from 18 inches to 22 inches will start next year and will be complete by 2014.
Denis McGlynn, president and CEO of Dover Motorsports, says the widening comes in response to fans' suggestions. The change will reduce the capacity of the speedway from 140,000 to 113,000.
I could start making all kinds of tired, overused jokes about fat, lazy ass Americans here, but will refrain from doing so. Instead, I'll just point out the audacity of Dover Motorsports President Denis McGlynn trying to pass off the fact that he is shrinking his available product base by 27,000 and trying to pass it off as if he gives a shit whether the more bovine attendees at his auto races are able to wedge themselves into the seats or not. Fact is, if Dover Motorsports could still sell 140,000 tickets to their auto race, they would, and wider fan posteriors be damned.
As the final regular season Sunday of the NFL season kicks off, here is a story from CBS Sports about the former America's Team that might better explain why the league took its lockout of the players to the very brink this past summer:
In the stadium’s first year, the team drew an average of 89,700 fans. Even last year’s 6-10 team managed to attract 87,000 fans. But this year, the fan attendance number dropped to just 85,000 fans – despite the fact that Cowboys have a chance to win their division this weekend.
RJ Choppy with 105.3 The Fan analyzed the attendance drop from a few different angles, but does not see it as a huge problem. “The Cowboys have been sort of mediocre and the economy has been in the tank,” he said. “I don’t really think it should be such a long-term problem, but in the short-term, it certainly is a little bit of a concern.”
If the team starts winning consistently again, Choppy predicts that the attendance will go up again. “So much of it is economics,” he said. “You have to pick things that you want to cut from your life and, unfortunately, one of the first things that go are recreational.
”Adding to the attendance concern is the sheer size of Cowboys Stadium. While other NFL teams have been building smaller arenas, Cowboys owner Jerry Jones bucked the trend and went bigger. “Everyone who builds these new stadiums, they’re going smaller, more intimate, more quaint,” Choppy said. “I think the natural feeling that, well, that Cowboys Stadium is so big. It’s almost to the point where it’s not practical.”
They can try to spin this story all they want. The fact is that not too long ago many NFL teams had years long waiting lists for people who wanted to buy season tickets. Nowadays, a lot of NFL games don't even sell out anymore. Given the league's prominence at the top of the heap of the sporting world in America, that is pretty significant.
As for me, I was an NFL season ticket holder for 13 years until I sold my personal seat licenses for a tidy little profit prior to the 2010 season. I have to admit that I don't at all miss going to the games at the prices they charge for tickets these days.
Bonus: Sorry Josh, but I think soon you MAY be the only cowboy
image: in case you needed another reason to hate Bono
It's been a relatively slow news week, so to make up for it here is a link to a recent article listing 10 of the world's wealthiest celebrities and their respective net worth. It strikes me upon looking at the list that to reach these heights of wealth as an entertainer you need to be a shrewd business person in addition to doing something for which the public will lavish huge sums of money on you. Or you could just mercilessly whore yourself out.
The story contains details for each one as to how they made their money. Love 'em or hate 'em, these are some truly charmed individuals with more money than a single human being should ever need:
10. Bryan Williams (Birdman) - Estimated Net Worth: $100 Million
9. Gisele Bündchen - Estimated Net Worth: $250 Million
8. Howard Stern - Estimated Net Worth: $500 Million
7. Magic Johnson - Estimated Net Worth: $500 Million
6. Jerry Seinfeld - Estimated Net Worth: $800 Million
5. Bono - Estimated Net Worth: $900 Million
4. J.K. Rowling - Estimated Net Worth: $1 Billion
3. Julia Louis-Dreyfus - Estimated Net Worth: $2.9 Billion
2. George Lucas - Estimated Net Worth: $3.25 Billion
1. Giorgio Armani - Estimated Net Worth: $7 Billion
Bonus: Bill slams artists who sell out (specifically, Jay Leno)
As it turned out, Black Friday was not the most out-of-control display of mindless consumerism in America this year. That honor now goes to today, Black Friday Redux, and the accompanying violence and senseless behavior over the latest release of sneakers endorsed by a washed up has-been who hasn't played a game in nearly a decade. Here is BBC with the details:
There was disorder from California to Georgia as shoppers vied to buy a retro version of a classic Air Jordan model.
A new pair costs about $180 (£115), but they are already being listed on eBay for as much as $605.
The ugly scenes recalled the violence that broke out in the early 1990s on streets across America as the shoes became popular targets for thieves.
In the early hours of Friday, police used pepper spray on about 20 customers who started fighting at a mall in suburban Seattle, Washington state, as they waited in line to buy the black-and-white Air Jordan 11 Retro Concords. Gunfire
One man was arrested for allegedly punching a police officer.
"He did not get his shoes. He went to jail," Officer Mike Murphy said.
He added: "It was not a nice, orderly group of shoppers. There were a lot of hostile and disorderly people."
In other disturbances:
At least four people were arrested after customers broke down a door at a store selling the shoes in Lithonia, Georgia
There was an attempted robbery on a victim who was mistakenly believed to have just bought the shoes in Stockton, California
About 100 shoppers forced their way into a shopping centre in Taylor, Michigan A gunshot rang out as shoppers queued in Richmond, California, although no injures were reported
Disorder were also reported in Charlotte, North Carolina; Indianapolis, Indiana; and Omaha, Nebraska
How many of these people do you suppose were also putting themselves even deeper in debt just to buy a pair of these overpriced pieces of shit? What a sad, sick culture we live in. Frankly, when it finally collapses I won't miss it one damn bit.
[How's that? It's been too long since I've had a weekend feature, so here's one that's macabre yet fascinating in equal measure--and it's not solely about money. A weird tale in three parts.]
(I) Sporting venues the world over hold pride of place in the national firmament. Not only do they often reflect a country's achievements in competition, but also its idea of nationhood. Some we are familiar with through hosting marquee events over the years and whose location is never in doubt: Madison Square Garden, Wembley Stadium, Stade de France, and the Tokyo Dome among others.
However, it's perhaps a reflection of cricket's relative obscurity outside of the Commonwealth that Pakistan's hallowed ground for the sport is little known to the rest of the world--trivia buffs like yours truly aside. It's called--you guessed it--Gadhafi Stadium and happened to host the 1996 Cricket world Cup. A few weeks ago, the UK Foreign Minister William Hague embarrassed the FCO by suggesting that Lider Maximo Moammar Gadhafi was en route to Venezuela, even earning the opprobrium of Venezuela's diplomatic corps. Yet what is there to suggest that Pakistan--duplicitous erstwhile American ally--is an unlikely place for him to literally pitch his tent? The Indian Express had a story recently on how it came to be named after a man known for his brutality long before his (short-lived) international rehabilitation. Let's say it has something to do with Moammar supporting Pakistan's nuclear arms programme:
The Gaddafi Stadium in Lahore is Pakistan’s Lord’s or Eden Gardens, no less. It is one of the best-equipped cricket grounds in the world, a symbol of national pride, which hosted the 1996 World Cup final. But this being Pakistan, it follows, as if as a rule, that this national structure too be blemished somehow. And it has got enough infamy to its credit in recent years...
It was Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, as the prime minister, who embarked on the policy of looking west to the Arab world for bonding and the obvious financial benefits that would accrue to Pakistan by being a player in the petrodollar economy of the Arab states, even if they were run by despotic autocrats. In 1974, Bhutto hosted the heads of Muslim states in Lahore for the Organisation of Islamic Conference summit, which included such adversaries as the reigning sheikhs of the oil-rich Gulf and Arab revolutionaries like Gaddafi and Yasser Arafat. The occasion was chosen to elicit support for Pakistan’s nuclear programme, as India was all set to go nuclear, and Gaddafi fitted the bill. In a grand ceremony at the Lahore Stadium, Bhutto announced the renaming of the cricket ground after the man whom he came to call one of his best friends.
Only Bhutto could have got away with feting and feasting such pro- and anti-US leaders as the Gulf sheikhs and the Shah of Iran on the one hand, and the Syrian, the Libyan and Palestinian leaders on the other, at the same table. At the Lahore summit, there were no walkouts by Gaddafi or other revolutionaries from the proceedings, as was and has been the norm at OIC summits held before and after 1974.
Lahoris cherished the grand mela that was being held in their city and broke into spontaneous dance at the sight of a visiting dignitary’s convoy. It was in such spirited bonhomie that they lost their stadium to the man called Gaddafi, although they have a long history of resisting any change of names, be it the city roads, neighbourhoods or landmarks.
In the rest of the article, let's just say Gahdafi stands accused of fomenting subversive activities in Pakistan--why oh why does trouble always have to be there--after the coup overthrowing Bhutto pere.
(II) We've heard a lot about Moammar's progeny in recent days for obvious reasons. First came the LSE PhD Saif, the "Arab Michael Corleone." There's also "Khamis Does America" of Khamis Brigade infamy (home from being feted across the US, he's now busy stamping out ill-equipped rebels). But wait, there's also Saadi Gadhafi, whose sporting achievements are slight but are definitely ones to remember for trivia buffs. John Foot of UCL offers this indictment of money in sports and Italian football in particular:
It is perhaps for this reason that Saadi Qaddafi thought that he might be able to play in Serie A, despite not being good enough. The strategy was simple — pay teams to have him in their squad, and train with the first team. He might even get a few minutes on the field, on rare occasions... Having served his ban [for using performance-enhancing drugs], Saadi finally saw some action, for 15 minutes, in a key relegation game against Juventus in May as Perugia won, 1-0. A week later an attack of appendicitis conveniently put him out for the rest of the season
In 2006, Saadi Qaddafi had his second 11 minutes of fame, turning out for Udinese in a dead end-of-season match against Cagliari (again the manager was Cosmi) and coming close to scoring with a “great left-foot shot from the edge of the area” His statistics for the entire season consisted of eight passes, one shot and two tackles.
Qaddafi’s final season in Italy was an inglorious one. He was on Sampdoria’s books for a whole season, but was not even allowed the regulation 10 minutes on the field. All in all it is an extraordinary story. It tells us a lot about the corruption of Italian soccer, the power of (Libyan) money and the occasionally the farcical nature of Serie A in the age of Moggi and others.
(III) OK, so Saadi was never going to be a soccer hero--not even good enough for a lousy Nike commercial methinks. Allegations of current misadventures aside, perhaps his prowess was ever-so-marginally greater in the boardroom. As you probably know, Western powers recently froze foreign assets of entities linked to the Libyan government, including those of the Libyan Foreign Investment Authority (LAFICO). Partly due to Saadi's interests, LAFICO held some 7.5% of the shares in the troubled giant of Italian football prior to the freeze. What's more, Saadi used to be on Juventus' board of directors as befitting the owners of a fairly substantial share. However, he resigned this post in 2003. You've heard of player/coaches in sport, right? Saadi did them all one better by being a player/owner of sorts:
Al-Saadi Gaddafi, son of Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, has resigned from the board of Juventus, the Serie A club said on Wednesday. Al-Saadi Gaddafi had represented Libyan Arab Foreign Investment Company (Lafico), which holds a 7.5 per cent stake in the Italian champions, since October last year. Gaddafi’s passion for soccer is well known. As player/owner of Libyan first division side Al-Ittihad the striker scored 25 goals in the last two seasons and in June he signed a two-year contract for Serie A side Perugia.
In a statement on its website, Juventus said Gaddafi had presented his resignation to the board “with immediate effect”. A source familiar with the situation said Gaddafi’s resignation from the board would not trigger changes in the club’s share holders structure, adding that the move could be linked to his transfer to Perugia.
As you'd expect, the reasons for Saadi giving up a seat on Juventus' board all those years ago remain obscure. Indeed, mystery surrounds the involvement of clan Gadhafi in sport. Yet, from still having Pakistan's hallowed cricket ground named after them to owning part of one of the world's ten most valuable football teams, their puzzling legacy lives on.
And yes, the stadium is long overdue for renaming. I just hope it won't be as bad as George W. Avenue.
Governance of sport should be of considerable interest to its followers given how much attention and money fans devote to sporting events. At the same time, let's just say that global governance of sport often fails the smell test on justifiable grounds. If there ever were institutions that could use standard prescriptions of transparency and fair dealing, the backroom world of sports politics is long overdue for attention.
Now, the words "FIFA" and "corruption" go together in popular discourse alike "America" and "bankrupt." Despite my tendency to favour new locations all over the world to host World Cups--especially in regions where they haven't been held before--you certainly have to wonder about how poorly some obvious bidders did. While us Londoners have major gripes about the cost and quality of public transportation here, London will host the 2012 Summer Olympics. So the UK sent Becks (David Beckham), Wills (Prince William), and PM Cameron (Cams?) to Zurich to secure the 2018 event--with nothing to show for as its bid was dismissed early. Also, despite hosting the 1994 World Cup well--the lack of on-field action isn't America's fault, obviously--the United States lost out to the rather daft choice of Qatar in 2022. Having been in the American and MENA deserts at the height of summer, I can only imagine what athletes will have to contend with--oddball promises of cloud climate control notwithstanding. ("But it's a dry heat.")
In the meantime, the political circus that is FIFA rolls on. Incumbent President Sepp Blatter is keen on securing a third term as FIFA president despite the controversy which continues to surround his tenure. His former ally, Qatari Mohamad Bin Hammam--president of the Asia Football confederation--is keen on unseating Blatter. However, I tend to believe that Hammam's bid would do little to dispel allegations of corruption at FIFA since, er, he promises larger giveaway packages to national member associations if elected:
Mohamed Bin Hammam, who is challenging the Swiss national [Blatter] in the June 1 vote, has said he’d double the $250,000 that each of FIFA’s 208 national member associations get each year. Blatter said only FIFA’s governing panel can change funding as he dismissed the offer from the 61-year-old Qatari, who runs Asia’s soccer federation. Blatter, 75, has run FIFA since 1998. “We’ve already made the budget” for 2011-15, Blatter said. “If you give only money and you don’t control where the money is going, this is not a good gift.”
As a champion of lost causes--I supported rally legend Ari Vatanen's bid to succeed Mas Mosely as FIA president over that of Jean Todt (formerly Ferrari team boss)--I must therefore support someone who isn't Blatter or Hammam. Potentially, step forward the great Chilean central defender Elias Figueroa:
Former South American player of the year Elias Figueroa may challenge Sepp Blatter for the presidency of FIFA, the Chilean said on Friday. The 64-year-old ex-central defender said he was the choice of a group called FIFA Change who are seeking a new leader of world soccer's ruling body at the June 1 election in Zurich.
"This arose through a group in England and other parts of Europe who wanted to present someone as a candidate for FIFA and they called me to join a committee which later decided I was the most suitable person as a candidate," Figueroa told Reuters. "I really didn't want this to be known (yet) but the news came out. I'll only be replying on Monday or Tuesday and if I accept I'll reveal who my backers are."
Blatter, who succeeded Brazilian Joao Havelange in 1998, has said he will seek re-election for one more four-year term before retiring in 2015. The Swiss is already certain to be up against Qatar's Mohamed Bin Hammam, leader of the Asian Football Confederation, in the June 1 presidential election.
Figueroa, who shone for Penarol of Uruguay and Internacional of Brazil and played for Chile at three World Cups, said the support group had gained backing from a FIFA national federation. "If I accept I know I'll face a rather difficult scenario but nothing is impossible ... I know very good things have been done in football but we also have some proposals," said South America's triple player of the year from 1974-76.
A long shot, yes, but hey--we've seen upsets before in world sport. Certainly, FIFA's reputation has nowhere to go but up as a result of a long-overdue change.
A few days ago, I had a brace of posts [1, 2] on the cancellation of the first race of the Formula One season due to the troubles in the miniature kingdom of Bahrain. Formula One is of particular IPE interest since it is one of if not the most watched sports in the world depending on which source you listen to and whose figures you take into consideration. Moreover, the highly international nature of this money-go-round makes it prime fodder for the global glitterati and its wannabes.
So we now understand that political unrest has resulted in the cancellation of the first F1 race in Bahrain. Aside from that one, it turns out that traditional fixtures on the F1 calendar are also facing the axe. Not due to political unrest, but budgetary pressures. Cue Australia (the second event on the calendar which has now become the first) and Catalunya, then. From Racers Republic:
While all the talk at the moment is of whether the Bahrain Grand Prix should go ahead due to the ongoing political situation in the Gulf, doubt has been cast over two more events on the F1 calendar with finances putting both the Australian race at Albert Park and the Spanish GP at Catalunya at risk. The future of the Australian event has been questioned for some time due to the rising costs involved with the mayor of Melbourne Robert Doyle having said the race shouldn’t continue beyond its current contract, which expires in 2015.
Bernie Ecclestone has said he would be prepared to talk to Australian bosses about ending the contract if they wanted to get rid of the race, with Ecclestone no doubt aware about the growing number of nations that would jump at the chance to take the place of Australia on the F1 calendar.
Now, a member of the Australian parliament, Michael Danby, has also spoken out against the race and said the government should severe ties with the race and let it drop off the calendar. "The grand prix may have been a good deal in 1996, when it cost the government only $1.7 million,” he said, “but, with falling crowd numbers and taxpayers footing a $50 million-a-year bill, the government should cut its losses and walk away.”
Now however, the issue of the Spanish Grand Prix in Catalunya being at risk has also been raised and again because of the rising costs involved in being part of the F1 schedule. Barcelona has a contract to host the event through to 2016, but Catalunya president Artur Mas has been quoted in the Spanish newspaper El Pais as saying that even though the event is safe for the next two years, the long-term future of the race could be called into question due to the fact that the event makes a loss each year.
"The situation is what it is and I'm not trying to fool anyone," he said. "I said from day one that I would speak the truth and that I would speak clearly. I know the value of hosting an F1 race and I'm here to give all my support to the people at the circuit...I will do all I can to keep that F1 race, but we can't hide the truth. We have to reduce the budgets. The Generalitat must tighten its belt and that will affect all fields. We will see what happens this year and in 2012."
Bernie Ecclestone always has a stock counter that there's some country willing to put up the cash to host a race elsewhere, but you must think his location choices are will become more cautious after being burned in Bahrain. WikiLeaks suggests Myanmar's reclusive leadership tried to buy Machester United; what about the Yangon Grand Prix as a consolation prize? The possibilities boggle the mind. Still, if races really are this unprofitable to hold, there will come a point when the rights holder will have to charge less from existing and prospective hosts.
