Lets be honest ...
The Seattle pro basketball team, the Sonics, have been sold to some Oklahoma City types who claim they want to keep the team here. Now that is honesty!
Prof sports:
A publicly funded subsidy divided amongst highly talented practitioners.
Problem:
the owners want more and more dollars from the public till to finance the salaries .. the multi million dollar salaries .. of the athletes. Without the subsidy, the players would not be able to demand these obscene salaries.
Solution:
Since prof sports are now a well recognized socialist function of govt, then the practitioners would need to submit competitive bids for the franchises ... just a Boeing and Lockheed bid to build airplanes.
So:
1. Sports would become agencies of govt. ... just like universities and museums and parks.
Cities hosting these teams, should legislate their ownership to make them into utilities .. like a publicly owned electric company. Call it the Enron approach.
2. In order to run a prof sports team, an organization/sponsor would have to bid for the privilege.
The bid would, presumably include a profit. The effect would be to eliminate the tax subsidy associated with athlete depreciation and appreciation of the team's value.
3. If no one bid, the sport would die or find a way of reducing its costs.
Is this too simple?
5 comments:
The Green Bay Packers are the only pro sports team that do this that I'm aware of. They're owned by the city of Green Bay.
I'm not sure I totally agree with your categorization though. Just because an industry relies on public funded infrastructure to operate, that does not mean that the entire enterprise is a publicly funded subsidy. By that logic, any company that used roads to move company equipment around would be considered a publicly funded subsidy.
We are not talking about building a facility to house the Sonics and other users .. like roads or even to house the sonics at a reasonable cost to the public ticket buyers. We are talking about subsidizing the Sonic Players' huge salaries.
Your example would be more apt if we were proposing to subsidize Tom Douglas' restaurants so they could charge more to fewer people.
We are not talking about building a facility to house the Sonics and other users .. like roads or even to house the sonics at a reasonable cost to the public ticket buyers. We are talking about subsidizing the Sonic Players' huge salaries.
Um, no we're not. Here's an article talking about the deal. Nowhere in there does it talk about subsidizing player salaries. Where are you getting this from?
And by the way, just so you're clear, player salaries in the NBA are set by a cap so that each team basically spends around the same amount of money on their payrolls. It doesn't vary based upon other factors like the ones you're talking about. That's how the NBA works. I can have my buddies who maintain a blog for the Knicks explain this to you if you're still confused.
Sorry,
The NBA may set the caps, but the NBA is the owners and the owners make their money by the NOT spending more than they earn and by the subsequent increasing capital value of the teams at time of sale.
If teams were limited in their income to what the owner's capital could buy, there would be less $$ for salaries.
Obviously if profits were lower in any sport, the players salaries would go down. Just like airplane pilots!
BTW,
this discussion could also apply to other publicly subsidized activities that enrich the few .. opera singers do well too. The difference there is that most opera singers do NOT do well so cutting the subsidies would likely mean no Opera. I do not believe that cutting the athletes salaries would mean no sports anymore than the airlines can not find pilots.
OK? \\BTW /// thanls gor visiting. You might ewnjoy some other entries .. esp the one on Seattle Center.
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