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This blog has been consistently stellar so far. Really appreciate the effort you put into it. Other blogs that work on the 'template' format can learn a lot from you.

This lockout really is a mystery. The owners would have you believe that they would be losing money by playing a new season. If this is true, the players can't possibly have any leverage in this argument. Yet they continue to argue. However, if someone is lying, surely someone would have blinked first by now.

This may be a bit of a long shot, but I wonder how much of this has to do with Yao Ming retiring. If there was one American sport that can fall back on international money, it's the NBA. But surely demand for the product will drop sharply with Yao retiring. You may question how much influence one player has on demand for the whole NBA product, yet Yao Ming was voted into the All-Star team last year despite being injured all season. Anyway, just a theory.

Thanks again for the great blogs. Keep it up.

I was talking about demand in China of course.

after having lived in China I have to completely agree with you waldovski. The cultural and economic influence of Yao Ming is something not short of incredible, and time will tell as to how his retirement affects the game over there (by far and away the most popular sport in China).

However, the Lakers especially have a huge following, and players like Kobe, LeBron and Melo are massive icons in the country. Yi Jianlian is a player the Chinese have been hyping up for a few years now, but without a strong Chinese name in the L we can only hope that demand continues in the country to keep the quality of the league going (as much as an influx of stars into Europe would open up the sport over here which would be great)

going back to the original topic, this is a sad example of greedy sport stars and moneymen ruining a great sport for all concerned. lets hope the egos get out the way soon

Sooner or later i fear the lockouts that have affected american sports in the last 20 years will be felt in the pl

players are getting more obscene amounts of money, almost every club in the league is in debt so sooner or later a comprimise is going to have to be made to keep many clubs in existance, players in turn wont take pay cuts so then again in turn will refuse to play

beware!

I for one would like to see the NBA stars over here.

As for contagion to the PL Man City seem to have already lowered their threat to Senor Tevez. Shame his failure to play for the paying public should be punished and it should be a message to all the other primma donna's out there.

Don't know anything about this dispute as I rarely watch American sports, just stumbled accross the blog whilst checking the football scores but think i'd have to agree with united_kaz on this, how much longer can most clubs run with huge unserviceable debts, it's only a matter of time before they want a bigger slice of the pie and who suffers in the end?.....

You guessed it, us, the paying masses

#1

I don't think Yao will have much impact. This has been coming for some years.

While the owners have IMO over sold their position the fact remains the players have no leverage and the only reason they don't accept that is that at current they have not lost any pay.

Next month the pay starts going missing then the rank and file may not be so united. Its ok for Lebron to say lets stick this out and not go below 53% but those who earn far less and may be out of the league in a year or to, will they want to keep giving up money they will never see again.

While I think the general opinion in the US media is with the players I'm firmly with the owners. A union should support their players but what they are asking is not realistic in the current financial climate.

Who has a guaranteed contract? I don't, I could be made redundant tomorrow so why should my team the Orlando Magic pay $20 mil to an under performing player like Gilbert Arenas when it limits the ways they strengthen the team?

They also say they don't support a hard salary cap. But they fail to see it is part of the problem. The continually quote why would a player turn down $18 mil because I'm only worth $12 mil. They wouldn't but when a team over the cap knows unless they pay over the odds to keep a player (you can go over the cap to resign your own player) they wouldn't be able to replace him what choice do they have?

The players have lost because the no leverage and never did. They have failed to see this and the longer this goes on the more the owners are going to squeeze out of them.

Could the players just walk away and start their own conference? Not as if it's not happened before! Though would make life interesting for the Olympics.

A couple of points I would add, from the perspective of someone living across the pond and following this very closely. First, the owners haven't opened their books, so there is very little reason to believe their protests of poverty. When owners in North American sports have been forced to open their books, things are often quite different then they've been saying, Frank McCourt of the Los Angeles Dodgers in baseball being the most recent example. They've recently sold teams for over a lot of money, the most recent the sale of the Philadelphia 76ers for $290 million. Personally, I'm skeptical that anybody would spend that much money on a business that is in a league that claims they can't make money.
The pay cut the players are offering is in the neighborhood of $200 million, which is about 8% of their salaries - the owners flat out rejected that offer. They're essentially trying to guarantee every team can make money without having revenue sharing, because the league on the whole is making money - it's not distributed at all evenly.

As well, the owners make money from owning teams that aren't part of this discussion. First, what they're talking about is the BRI or Basketball Related Income, which isn't all the income - the owners get a fair chunk off the top. Second, there are ways that the team enhances other businesses they own that never make it on the NBA books. For a good article on this, written by Malcolm Gladwell, see this:

Or this on why the owners want a hard cap (no, or few exceptions) on salaries: ?sct=nba_t2_a9

There will be no basketball until early February at the earliest, to be honest. We might lose the entire season. I tend to blame the owners more than the players. They claimed the current deal was to their advantage when they signed it 8 years ago, the league is as popular as it's been in decades, and the new TV deal is lucrative. They can't make money? They're doing some things fundamentally wrong, if true.

Frankly I find the American adherance to a franchise system and salary caps baffling, it seems to fly in the face of the capitalist systemthat theoreticaly forms the basis for a free flowing capitalist economy.
I lived in Canada for a few some years and played and and watched baseball,ice hockey and basketball, and the opnion there was against the caps and and huge wages, but was also against the the restrictions that that the clubs implented on players. Everyone wants to see the best players play against each other, but they're also absolutely adamant (Is that a tautology?) they don't want their team to have a bad season. SO the fans are mixed yes we want good players, but with the cap we can only afford 1 great. And the greats are praised and loathed at the same time , we can't do without him, but he's stopping us getting a decent defence.
With no promotion/relegation alot of the team is tied to 1 guy for years and if he has a bad one the you you just blew 100 million.

hopefully this will happen in football here as players greed, owners selfishness and inept regulation from the premier league, football league, uefa and our government are letting our game go the same way.
for me the real issue is the same as the nba, the fans, they are forgotten in all this over there and over here.
we as fans and customers are being taken for granted and ripped off.
we have no rights or protection from the greed in our national sport.
no wonder crowds are falling people have had enough of being conned and being priced out of watching their local league club.
we have the greed of the premier giving pennies to the league clubs so keeping their closed shop.
scrap relegation scenario is already here as half the prem will never go down.
we need a max price for fans per division and to make clubs save 10% of their turnover for a rainy day and / or ground improvements and a wage bill of 50% maximum with relegation a certainty if you break these rules.
owners should not be allowed to subsidise the playing side of the club.

im for the players, of course they are getting paid crazy money but if the sport is bringing in that money then they should be reaping the benefits for playing and producing the talent and games that people are playing to see.

how can anyone want to see a owner milk more money from a system, when they do very little towards the game in a viewers perspective. if they would open up their accounts i bet you would see that it is greed on their side as much as players.

and as for the premier league, i have nothing against players making huge money as long as their is a demand for the sport but yes they clubs should be trying to love within their means as an ordinary man would be taking to court and possibly jail if they had their debt and didnt pay.