Thursday Late Night News: Sports Marketing as the Recession’s New Whipping Boy, Manny Contract, More
5th March 2009
Today turns into tonight before I can get to the personal blog. Hey, you have to have some time to research articles, right?
The focus early on Thursday centered around how sports marketing it taking a licking due to the economy, especially those banking giants that are set to receive TARP money from the federal government to bail them out.
Business of Sports Network staff writer Pete Toms does an extensive (and I mean extensive) article entitled Sports Marketing is the Recession’s New Whipping Boy, while over at the Business of Sports Network, I add some Nielsen Media Research data on how banks are spending TV ad budgets on sports. Found that to be really surprising, so take a peak at the link.
The other thing that I hit on today was the Manny Ramirez contract. Maybe it was the constant onslaught of coverage, but when the whole deal started to hinge on the amount of money being deferred, a couple of teeth got knocked off my sprocket. I go into why there’s some level of insanity in the Dodgers of all teams deferring salary and placing Manny’s salary on the books well after he’ll be out of Dodger Blue. I provide a table from Forbes showing the revenues the Dodgers have pulled in and their overall valuation ranking over the last five years. Let’s just say the number “4″ is popular. Here’s a whole bunch of stats on Man-Ram.
In other news…
Will Manny get his asking price for his condo?
The New York Jets are asking some employees to take two-weeks of unpaid leave in lieu of job cuts.
Liberty Sports Group today announced that the company has transitioned its three regional sports networks to broadcast full-time in high definition. That includes FSN Northwest, FSN Pittsburgh, FSN Rocky Mountain (and sub-region FSN Utah).
The Nationals are offering up more tickets to the Elton John, Billy Joel concert at Nationals Park due to a computer glitch when tickets initially went on sale.
The NHL really had the trade deadline covered from all angles.
Some guy named A-Rod had puss drained today.
T.O. is now officially unemployed.
Sad news for baseball fans as Jon Weisman reports that Diamond Leung has been laid-off by the Press-Enterprise.
Getting a home for the Masters Tournament has gotten cheaper due to the economy.
And finally, former New York Times baseball reporting icon Murray Chass appears to have gone complete off the deep end regarding Mike Piazza and his (wretch) back acne.
Maury Brown is the Founder and President of the Business of Sports Network, which includes The Biz of Baseball, The Biz of Football, The Biz of Basketball and The Biz of Hockey. He is contributor to Baseball Prospectus, and is available as a freelance writer. Brown’s full bio is here. He looks forward to your comments via email and can be contacted through the Business of Sports Network.