Hawks to be Sold After Revelation of Racist E-Mail by Owner

What is the Falcons' fan base like?

 

Perhaps Les should confess his private racist remarks and sell the Rockets for Billions. Hell, everyone else is doing it!

 

Lol, Well. Cya Hawks, off to Seattle?

 

The one thing lost in the conversation is that NBA owners don't really need to be profitable in operations to make money. Their Franchise license is likely the fastest growing asset in their portfolios. That's why they rarely sell. And when they do, we witness huge profit gains vs their buying price.

So why even write such an email under the guise of "Business Reasons."

To put this in perspective, Dallas (according to Forbes http://www.forbes.com/sites/chrissmith/2012/01/25/the-most-and-least-profitable-nba-teams/) lost $45m in five years and rank 26th in the league for profit due to operations. That was mainly because of luxury taxes. That's a drop in the bucket to the increasing value of his franchise license. And Cuban's accountant simply apply that loss out of IRS taxes.

The idea that owners are struggling to keep their businesses afloat is at best a disingenuous claim by owners to win over the media/fans every five years during CBA negotiations while they rape the Player's Union. At worst it is a lie as they utilize a legal, yet artificial, accounting trick to concentrate losses in one of their holdings for tax purposes.

bottomline: the state of his business and increasing value of his franchise license asset does not justify he making those statements under the guise of business reasons.

 

This is getting silly. Levinson wants to have a successful business and the way to do that is to have rich customers. He doesn't have rich customers today and is looking to improve his bottom line. Nothing wrong with a demographic analysis, which is what he's doing. It's definitely true that wealthy whites in Atlanta don't want to be surrounded by blacks -- surely no one disagrees with that(?). It's a factual statement, and not a reflection on the person saying it, but rather on the wealthy southern whites themselves. Levinson is just calling a spade a spade and he's correct with his assessment.

 

I don't know about the sue part but, I agree with your statement that some people have trouble with the definition of racism. What some people aren't realizing is that this letter would not have even been written if money wasn't involved.

IMO, there's a worse issue going on here beyond the national dialogue of racism. One can argue on that merit but this doesn't stink of racism.

 

I expect Ludakris to buy shortly.

 

Do you have statistics to back this up?

You are doing the same thing the owner did in the email.

Am I bothered or offended by your opinion? Not really, it is your opinion based on your life experiences.. Just be aware of what you are saying or doing.

 

I don't really think the e-mail was particularly 'racist', but it wasn't a demographic study either, so some of you need to stop suggesting otherwise. That would require actual quantification, and analysis based off of the collected data.

Come on.

 

lol. The owners are like "hell, I'll be a racist for $2 billion!"

 

Where is the Pistons stadium located?

The Suburbs of Detroit, filled with upper middle class white people. It isn't a comparable situation.

The truth is the Braves struggle to draw like the should at times. The city has many transplants and many people that just don't care about pro sports like in the NE.

 

That's racist in itself. "Rich whites don't wanna be around black ppl, so let's find a way to cater to our racist white demographic". Not sure someone can't see the overtly amount of racism in that statement lol. Not sure how these rich white ppl are so scared black ppl, but will pay big $$$ to sit courtside when the black superstars play each nite smh. The nba is majority African American

 

Who said it was a demographic study? He gave his opinions on why the Hawks don't make more money, which he felt was in part demographics (I think he is wrong).

 

But the demographic he's trying to appease is southern racist whites. If your team is majority black, why are you openly recruiting racist fans? Business is business but this email definitely has a serious racial undertone. Why even mention hiphop?

 

You don't understand how the wealthy think. It is irrelevant that the license of the Hawks turns a profit. He isn't making as much as other teams or as he thinks he should.

 

The thought police will eventually control everyone's thoughts and opinions. The guy thought too many black fans was hurting his team's image. He was probably right. Not that many preppy white people would want to go there. Same with other groups. Not everybody in the world loves hip-hop. Move the team to Seattle, less of those types of folks there........

 

this is nothing I haven't done. there's demographics where you make more money with. He's exploring options to make more money. he didn't say he doesn't want black fans, he just said he wants more white fans and more season ticket holders. this is nowhere near what sterling said.

 

Of course I know that. It's a matter of scale. His reasonable profit-making ability in any small-market for pure basketball operations is miniscule compared the rise in value of the franchise license. Saying any amount of increase in profit is important is a weak argument.

Plus, the point is that you are assuming he is actually suggesting a more profitable business model worth making such claims. You can't just make that hypothesis to dismiss my point. Just because he's rich and makes claims like he did, doesn't make it true. As torocan pointed out, he is not basing the email on any tangible evidence. It's pure conjecture, likely based on his personal world view and not an actual business plan. There are plenty of other reasons for lack of profit vs the Bulls.

There are no losses or fear of losing his business enough to make claims of demographics for business reasons versus other more reasonable business choices.

 

Because Hip Hop is not popular with middle aged white men with disposible income.

And he is recognizing they need changes to chase a different sector of the community.

Smart business.

DD

 

Of course, what you're saying is valid. Nearly anything to increase profit should be fine. But it assumes that is the best way to increase profit. We don't know that to be certain. You'd think hiring a great coach might be better. Or getting better players. Focus on basketball decisions vs side entertainment. Are we really to believe that changing the music that every other teams plays will suddenly increase his season ticket sells. The NBA stadiums pretty much all sell the same product, with regard to side entertainment at the games.

I don't see Atlanta being significantly different. Maybe suburban fans just hate the horrible Atlanta traffic, so don't want to make that drive 44 times a year.

Further, the email was 2 yrs ago. We can assume that he did change the music. Did it help? If it did, then I doubt Silver forces him to sell. So, sounds like it might have been bad business to focus on such minor things as the music.