Finnancialization of the NBA…
Looking at the NBA today, it is easy to see that the game has gone through a major change since its inception in 1946. One such change has been the role that owners play in the game and for the cities whom their teams represent. It used to be that owners of NBA teams acquired teams to bring notoriety to their cities and to serve a sort-of civic service. A city that has an NBA team is always recognized as a major metropolitan city, and the the hometown pride that comes from winning a major sports championship can be as great as hosting an Olympic Games. Owners did not see their ownership in an NBA franchise as a source of profit, and rather saw it as an avenue to bring pride to their city, and pride to themselves by owning and operating another succesful enterprise. Essentially, they could make their money and profits from their original businesses, and the NBA team could be their hobby.
This is changing however, in an NBA market where owners are buying teams less for the will to win a championship, and more to use the team as a new investment to add to their portfolio. Donald Sterling, owner of the Los Angelous Clippers is one of these types of owners. One of the largest property holders and landlords in LA, he bought the Clippers for 12.7 million dollars in 1981. Since his acquisition of the Clippers, they have been the worst team in the NBA. The statistics are astonishing, “2008-09 marks the seventh time the Clippers have lost 60 games in a season and the 17th time they’ve lost 50 (they play 82 games a season)” and “The Clippers have reached the second round of the playoffs just once in that time, going 701-1,317 overall, for a .347 winning percentage that is easily the worst among the four major sports”. Sterling employs many cost cutting strategies like “declining to replace injured Clippers” and even had the Clippers playing in the “Los Angeles Sports Arena (they have since moved to Staples Center), a facility so outdated that the Lakers had abandoned it nearly 20 years earlier…even though the team averaged fewer than 8,500 fans per game in its first three years in LA — among the worst attendance in the league, the arena charged the Clippers just a few thousand dollars per game in leasing fees, making profitability easy”. With these cost cutting strategies, in the last nine years the Clippers have “made $140 million in profits”. Compare that with teams such as the Dallas Mavericks who try to win championships, and the Mavs have lost 137 million over the same period.
Sterling “runs a low-risk, sure-reward game” and this has been the trend in the NBA for a number of years. Just last year, the SuperSonics moved to Oklahoma City (a metropolitan city??) because they thought they could make bigger profits there than in Seattle, their home for over 40 years. Owners now see their ownership of teams as profitable investments, and now groups of people buy teams (such as Professional Basketball Club LLC, owners of the Oklahoma City team) to add it to their portfolios. Teams make cost-cutting moves that hurt their championship aspirations in order to save money and capital losses. This is just one of the many things that are currently being finnancialized by the NBA, but it is also one of the most major.
