Details of the 2013-2014 NBC Sports Group Premier League programming include:

• All 380 matches presented live on television with studio pre- and post-game coverage;
• All 380 matches streamed live via NBC Sports Live Extra;
• Games not aired on a designated NBCUniversal channel will be made available to distributors via Premier League Extra Time, a package of overflow television channels available at no extra cost for each of their customers who receives NBC Sports Network;
• Championship Sunday – May 11, 2014, when all 10 Premier League matches will be available live on a different NBCUniversal channel;
• 76 Spanish-language telecasts, 10 on Telemundo, 66 on Mun2;
• More than 600 hours of Premier League original programming.

NBC SPORTS LIVE EXTRA: Every Barclays Premier League match will be streamed live via NBC Sports Live Extra, the NBC Sports Group’s live streaming product for desktop, mobile and tablets and, in most cases, on the digital platforms of participating cable, satellite, telco and other video subscription services. The vast majority of Barclays Premier League matches will be streamed via “TV Everywhere,” available on an authenticated basis to subscribers of these services.

NBC happens to have the rights for Major League Soccer as well, which they pay $10 million a year for.  In this current deal, NBC shows usually one or two MLS matches a week, with the Premier League they will be showing around 10 matches a week through the season.  Some people have discussed that the deal would be beneficial for MLS, as it would draw more soccer fans to the NBC network who could then carry over watching Premier League matches to MLS matches.  I believe that this logic doesn’t fully fit.  First, the MLS matches would usually not transition smoothly with the Premier League, unless the MLS started playing at 10 or 11am, which would mean much less fans in the stadium.  At this point in time, fans in the stadium are the lifeblood of the MLS, as the revenues from television, once distributed, aren’t even worth a quarter of a team’s salaries for a season.  In this, the Premier League may not kill the MLS, but could draw some major attention away from the professional soccer in the U.S.

Time will tell how this deal affects MLS, but I personally think obtaining the Premier League rights was a great move by NBC.  For many years, I was part of a that crowd of people who paid extra money to get Fox Soccer on their cable plans to watch matches early on Saturdays.  Now, NBC will bring the Premier League to a national audience on over-the-air channels, meaning that people can watch certain Premier League matches without paying.  I think that this move could really help heighten the popularity of the Premier League, though I’d be curious to see how well ratings do on NBC during college football season.  The games wouldn’t overlap, but I am not sure how many college football fans will turn on their television sets early to catch Fulham play Everton.

Amongst the discussion, is the NFL wanting a team to come to L.A. before Farmers Field is built.  That would mean a franchise would need to relocate first, and then attempt to build a new facility.  What this creates is the situation where a lot of cities may try to keep their teams by offering upgraded/new facilities where they are currently located.  In this way, the team would be guaranteed at least a new stadium.  The move to L.A. no longer seems to make a new stadium a certain thing.  St. Louis and Buffalo had been two franchises that had been considered on the hot seat in regards to having their franchises pulled away to the West Coast.  Now with this news, it may be that the Rams will try to leverage a potential move to get the $700 million in upgrades that St. Louis has supposedly been offering for their stadium.  In this, there is certainly the question of which franchise would move to L.A., or if the NFL wants to keep it open, to continue to pull public subsidies from other cities across the country with the simple threat of “if you don’t give us a stadium, we will move to L.A.”

The second part of the most recent drama is the council that had approved the project had set a timeline two years ago for the Farmers Field project to move ahead.  Currently, it would seem that the project is well off track and may not be allowed to happen at this point.  Part of this deal is that AEG must finish its work on the downtown convention center it is building in L.A. before it can move forward with Farmers Field.  This project is suppose to finish in the Fall of this year, but that is not certain to happen anymore.

Finally, as noted in this article from Yahoo, the NFL doesn’t believe the economics of the stadium will work for AEG.

“The numbers just don’t work, no matter how you look at the deal,” a league source said in February. “It’s either too hard for AEG to make money [and pay the debt on the stadium] or too hard for the team. I just can’t see a way for it to work.”

Officially, a league spokesman said Monday that the NFL is still tracking what AEG is trying to do.

“We continue to monitor the AEG situation and remain interested in multiple sites in the Los Angeles area,” NFL spokesman Brian McCarthy said in a statement.

Sounds to me like an NFL franchise is a long way from calling downtown Los Angeles home.

Hat-tip(H/T) to my students in my sports economics class who brought up this news during our discussion on stadium subsidies today.

What would all of this mean?  It would be a major sweeping change in athletics, and the financial and economic structure of how the NCAA and member athletic departments do business.  It would also make things more interesting as it would push forward the discussion of whether a student-athlete is an employee or not.  Many argue both sides of this, with discussion of whether the National Letter of Intent which all student-athletes sign is a contract or not.

This is still in its early stages, and is sure to be battled in court for quite some time.  With that said, I’m sure many in the NCAA and athletics are probably sweating a bit after today’s ruling.

Which might have been a smart thing, as I believe it is now 35 years since Man City has beaten Arsenal at Highbury or the Emirates. (Yes, I’m an Arsenal supporter, and I keep track of these things…)

Notably, Arsenal and other teams in England have begun using multi-tiered pricing where different games are priced differently based on the opponents and other factors.  This practice means big games like Man City vs Arsenal will garner a high price, while QPR vs Norwich will be rather cheap.  It is also a practice which is not new to fans in North America, where many of the sport leagues use variable ticket pricing to try and capture greater consumer surplus.  Economists have begun to examine this practice of price dispersion, and research studies looking at similar practices in Theaters have found that it has boosted revenue for organizations.  Which means it seems only natural for sport organizations to copy this behavior.

But Arsenal fans are also unhappy, and have complained to the club this week because of the high prices.  They noted that in other countries across Europe, tickets often run between ten to twenty Euros.  I think with the growing nature of the business that is the Premier League, fans will only be disappointed in the future as ticket prices continue to soar, especially for matches with top tier opponents.

Already many articles are pointing at the potential economic impact that this may have for Cooperstown, where the Hall of Fame is located.  The LA Times notes that some stores do about 15% of their annual sales during the induction weekend.  Professor McDonnell in this article of Forbes discusses the tie between Cooperstown and the Hall of Fame:

The village of Cooperstown is just as anxious to hear the Hall of Fame results as the candidates themselves. Cooperstown’s hospitality and tourism industries are inextricably tied to the Hall of Fame’s fortunes. They can ill afford to have a half empty dais on Hall of Fame weekend due in part to protest or lack of interest. Likewise, they need Main Street to be bustling with visitors who are spending their disposable income at the local restaurants, shops, motels and inns. A summer without a single living member of the Class of 2013 or a boycott of any kind by fans or current Hall of Famers could be detrimental to business owners that rely heavily on the allure of baseball’s history.

I understand that there is a good deal of business in hospitality and tourism that revolves around the Hall of Fame, but the Hall of Fame itself has been losing money over the last several years.  While it is a big deal for many local businesses, I begin to wonder how much we should be worried about the economic impact of the Hall of Fame vote.  Yes, some individuals and businesses will be affected, but at the same time, one has to question whether Cooperstown has literally put all of its eggs into one basket.  Furthermore, if we are talking about the vote mattering for the economy, then will not some writers feel more pressured to vote yes for individuals they think shouldn’t be in the HoF, all for the sake of propping up some businesses that have a great dependence on a event for a few days every year.

I hate to sound like I am not sympathetic, but at the same time I have to shake my head when I hear all this talk of the economic impact of the Hall of Fame vote.  It wasn’t like people knew this problem, I think better business planning and strategies needed to be created to try and offset some of these issues.

Scott Burnside from ESPN has a great article on the damage done by the lockout.  I am not sure the “Bad News Bears Breaking Training” philosophy of “Let them play” is the best course of action, but that does seem to be the logical marketing strategy for a league that cannot seem to get out of its own way. Fans are very upset, I am not sure you can just drop the puck and let it be. Will the hardcore fans flock back to the game? Of course. The NHL has a lot of work to do in the coming months and years.

There are some interesting findings in the survey.  First, Canadian passion toward hockey is diminishing.  Only one-third of Canadians would classify themselves as passionate hockey fans.  Second, researchers found those in the other two-thirds to be apathetic or angry towards their feeling toward the NHL.  The last bit of noteworthy information in the study is the emotional map created by the NHL brand was as bad or worse than BP after the oil spill in 2010.

It does seem like this lockout is completely different in the eyes of the fans.  I hold onto the notion that fans will come back to the game no matter how long this work stoppage endures. However, it may take a McGwire/Sosa type of race to get a lot of fans back.

There were a lot of rule changes last time to make the game more exciting i.e. shootouts, crackdown on obstruction.  What can the league offer this time?  One thing we do know, it will not be cheap tickets!

Yesterday was bowl selection day for the NCAA College Football teams across the United States.  Teams who won half their games (or others who receive special exemptions despite losing records) are all eligible to play in bowl games.  While much of America was screaming at the Orange Bowl for having Northern Illinois University (NIU) playing in a Bowl Championship Series (BCS) game, a few individuals were very unhappy that Louisiana Tech was not going to a bowl game.  It was not a matter of record (the team went 9-3) or that they didn’t get an invite to a game (the Independence Bowl offered), but that the athletic department was indecisive when trying to figure out whether to accept the invite.

The bowl business is tricky stuff, and La Tech was thinking they were going to some specific bowl games coming into the weekend.  Then Northern Illinois finished 16th in the BCS rankings and won an automatic bid to the Rose Bowl, kicking Oklahoma out of the BCS.  This shift cause other bowls to shift who they were inviting, and soon La Tech found themselves with only an invite from the Independence Bowl.  It is not that the Independence Bowl is a bad game to play in, but that the payout the athletic department would receive would be around $1,100,000.  While that seems to be a good chunk of change, the bowls that La Tech thought they were in the running for had payouts around $100,000 to $200,000 higher.  While this seems like a small amount in the age of athletic departments spending tens of millions of dollars on football, I think La Tech had good reason to hesitate.

The bowl game system is one which invites teams from across the country to travel long distances and stay many days (teams travel, practice, have some fun events, play the game, then go home).  Most schools also bring donors, alumni, students, the marching band, athletic department staff, and university staff and administrators to the game.  Think about the bill for hundreds of people having to travel, stay in hotels, food, drinks, banquets, tailgates, events, and all of the sudden you are running a pretty high bill.  Couple this with the fact that some bowl games require schools to make a revenue guarantee in regards to the amount of revenue generated by fans purchasing tickets, and bowl games can quickly become a losing situation for many athletic departments.  In other words, bowl games are a “winners curse” for some.

So did La Tech do the right thing?  I think so.  It is better, in my opinion, for an athletic department to take their time and make the right decision, than make a poor one which would put them in the red.  La Tech’s most famous alumni Karl Malone, a former NBA superstar, was not happy.  Mr. Malone took to twitter and lambasted the school and its athletic department for not landing in a bowl game.  I can understand Malone’s anger as those who are punished by this are the student-athletes who earned the chance to a bowl game, but are now not going anywhere.  Malone suggested that not going to a bowl game is “exactly what is wrong with our university”.

I disagree Mr. Malone.  The athletic department was weighing their options carefully.  Is it a disappointment? Yes it is, but it does not hint at a bigger systematic issue with the university and the athletic department.

Dr. Phil Miller posted his thoughts as the Sports Economist blog, and Yajur Parikh shared his thoughts and sentiments over at the Sport Analyst blog.

I began class today with a discussion of Marvin Miller and his importance to sport as we know it today.  It was unfortunate that his passing was the first that many had heard of Mr. Miller, but they quick appreciated the importance he had for baseball and all professional sports.