Sports Franchises

The Anaheim Grizzlies might never materialize, but that hasn't stopped an Anaheim ticket brokerage from reserving the Internet domain name, anaheimgrizzliestickets.com, and a Mississippi college student from reserving the name anaheimgrizzlies.com. Michael Heisley, owner of the Vancouver Grizzlies, faces a March 26 deadline to tell the NBA where he would like his team to play next season, with Anaheim one of five cities under consideration.

Tim Harris once played goalie for the Los Angeles Lazers, an indoor soccer team owned by Jerry Buss. Harris, now an executive with the Lakers, said that as he looks back it was obvious what Buss was doing. "He was setting up these labs for his kids to learn," Harris said. "That's how Jeanie learned and that's how I learned. Jeanie and I chuckle at it now. It wasn't that long ago we were sitting in roller hockey league meetings and now we're sitting in NBA league meetings. " Buss earned his fame and accolades by owning the Lakers and Kings.

Despite the huge success locally of last summer's Women's World Cup, Los Angeles will not have a team in the women's professional soccer league set to begin play in April 2001. The Women's United Soccer Assn. (WUSA) on Monday identified its eight initial franchise cities and announced that it had signed a four-year cable TV contract with Time Warner Inc. The league conditionally named Atlanta, Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Orlando-Tampa Bay, San Diego, San Francisco and Washington D.C.

The Golden State Warriors released a statement from former Lakers All-Star and general manager Jerry West regarding Jerry Buss, who died on Monday. “This is an extremely sad day for me," said West.  "As I have said many times, I have been blessed to work for Jerry Buss, the most successful owner in basketball history. His incredible commitment and desire to build a championship-caliber team that could sustain success over a long period of time has been unmatched. "With all of his achievements, Jerry was without a doubt one of the most humble men I've ever been around.

The Dodgers are the most valuable franchise in the history of professional sports, according to a survey by Fortune magazine. Citing estimates by "knowledgeable industry sources," the Aug. 4 edition listed the approximate value of 98 American sports franchises, and the Dodgers and the New York Yankees were rated 1-2, valued at between $91 million and $100 million each. Not surprisingly, the survey showed that the most valuable teams are those in the largest markets.

Al Davis agreed Monday to accept the richest deal ever given a sports franchise and return his Raiders to Oakland in 1992, a decade after he beat the National Football League in court for the right to play in the Los Angeles Coliseum. Within hours, both the Oakland City Council and the Alameda County Board of Supervisors had approved the deal--the council, by a 5-3 vote with one abstention, and the supervisors, with a 3-1 vote, also with one abstention.

Hockey and now baseball, so why not football too? Tony Tavares, Disney Sports Enterprises president, said Disney has not ruled it out. But National Football League rules prohibit such a venture for two reasons: The league does not allow cross-ownership of sports franchises and requires that football be the primary purpose of any corporation buying a franchise. The NFL remains flexible, however. A year ago it gave conditional approval to H.

In 1988, MSG Network signed a record 12-year, $486-million contract to air Yankee games. If local cable TV rights alone were worth that much 10 years ago, why not just buy the whole team? That's the thinking behind Fox Group's $311-million purchase of the Dodgers on Thursday and Cablevision Systems Corp.'s reported interest in buying the Yankees. Media companies are pushing further into sports ownership in a trend that shows no sign of reversing.

If the Russian metal magnate Mikhail Prokhorov's bid for 80% of the New Jersey Nets seems landmark for its foreignness, just gaze at the motherland. In a United Kingdom whose churning internationalism can make the United States seem cloistered by contrast, foreign ownership of the 20 soccer clubs in the globally towering English Premier League has reached quite a juncture: half. "I'm almost losing track," said Michael Brunskill of the watchdog group Football Supporters' Federation.

The new owners of the Dodgers are expected to get $6-billion-plus for the TV rights to their team's games. That may be a big win for the home team, but consumers won't be doing high-fives once they see their pay-TV bills. The average household already spends about $90 a month for cable or satellite TV, and nearly half of that amount pays for the sports channels packaged into most services. Massive deals for marquee sports franchises like the Dodgers and Lakers are driving those costs even higher.

The new owners of the Dodgers are expected to get $6-billion-plus for the TV rights to their team's games. That may be a big win for the home team, but consumers won't be doing high-fives once they see their pay-TV bills. The average household already spends about $90 a month for cable or satellite TV, and nearly half of that amount pays for the sports channels packaged into most services. Massive deals for marquee sports franchises like the Dodgers and Lakers are driving those costs even higher.

On Monday night, a star-studded lineup that includes Kobe Bryant, Steve Nash, David Beckham and Landon Donovan will gather in El Segundo to celebrate Time Warner Cable's new regional sports channels SportsNet and Deportes, which go live at 7 p.m. It probably won't take too long for Time Warner Cable executives to flip the switch on the channels -- which will carry the Lakers and the Galaxy -- since so far its cable systems are the only ones carrying...

It was the night when a population that has spent 45 years begging and pleading for sports' most enduring trophy felt comfortable enough to loudly demand it. "We ... want ... the ... Cup," rang the chant at Staples Center, washing over nearly 20,000 black sweaters, rising into rafters stocked with the silver streamers that would soon engulf them. It was the night when a population that has spent 45 years on the fringes of the Los Angeles sports community stormed the landscape with glow sticks flashing, towels waving, a celebratory cry accompanying them to the threshold of a championship.

The purchase agreement between Frank McCourt and Guggenheim Baseball for the Dodgers, filed in U.S. Bankruptcy Court Friday afternoon, failed to answer two big questions: What McCourt's future involvement with the team and property might be; and where exactly is the new owner's money coming from. Guggenheim is paying $1,587,798,000 in cash and assuming debts of no more than $412,200,000 to buy the Dodgers from Frank McCourt, according to documents filed. However, Mark Walter, who is designated as "the MLB Control Person" with respect to the team, is the only buyer named in the document.

This post has been corrected, as indicated below. It looks like all pay-TV customers in the greater Los Angeles area will be footing part of the bill for removing Frank McCourt from the owners' box at Dodgers Stadium. With Fox Sports West, Time Warner Cable and local stations all competing for the right to broadcast Dodgers games starting in 2014, the odds are good that the team will be able to extract the kind of multibillion-dollar deal that the Lakers reportedly negotiated with Warner last year.

People who study the business of sports are, at the very least, mildly surprised by the price the Dodgers fetched on the auction block. The experts had predicted something in the range of $1.3 billion to $1.6 billion. They were taken aback to read the headlines Wednesday morning announcing that a group led by Magic Johnson had paid $2 billion. "It's a lot more than I expected," said Andrew Zimbalist, a Smith College economics professor and author of "Baseball and Billions.

How often professional sports franchises moved, from each league's formation through 1999: NBA--Team moved an average of every three years, six months. NFL--Team moved an average of every six years, two months. NHL--Team moved an average of every six years, 10 months. MLB--Team moved an average of every seven years. Source: World Features Syndicate

The City Council unanimously approved construction of a $155-million sports arena near the city's eastern waterfront Tuesday, expressing hopes that the arena would revitalize a depressed economy and spur downtown redevelopment. Mayor Susan Golding said San Diego intends to follow the lead of such cities as San Jose and Phoenix, which recently built arenas. Those cities, however, have major-league hockey or basketball franchises--neither of which San Diego has.

If the Russian metal magnate Mikhail Prokhorov's bid for 80% of the New Jersey Nets seems landmark for its foreignness, just gaze at the motherland. In a United Kingdom whose churning internationalism can make the United States seem cloistered by contrast, foreign ownership of the 20 soccer clubs in the globally towering English Premier League has reached quite a juncture: half. "I'm almost losing track," said Michael Brunskill of the watchdog group Football Supporters' Federation.

The first thing you notice about Jorge Vergara are his socks. He's not wearing any. "One day when I was 11 or 12, I thought, 'Why do you wear socks?,' " he says. He couldn't come up with a suitable answer, so he hasn't worn them since. That kind of logic hasn't always played well in the button-down Mexican business world. But it's not the only sector of Mexican society the iconoclastic Vergara is shaking up.