Monday, April 11, 2011

Is Baseball the Only Saving Grace for Sports Fans These Days?

With the economical downfall thats has taken in the USA during the last three years, it has been very difficult for businesses of any size to maintain stability.  Professional sports franchises are no different.  In fact, after the 2010-2011 sports seasons, the National Basketball Association (NBA) and the National Football League (NFL) have both become the subject of what they call a performance lockout.  A sports performance lockout means that the team's owners have taken their right, after the league's contracts have expired, to negotiate how much money they want going out to the players.  Let's face it, professional sports leagues have some of the world's highest paid people and they are not all worth the millions being paid to them.

Take for instance Drew Gooden of the Milwaukee Bucks.  This guy is worth $6 million a year but only averages 11.1 points per game according to: http://www.nba.com/playerfile/drew_gooden/
Picture courtesy of Jonathan Daniel of Getty Images.

As the NBA gets closer to the end of their 2010-2011 season, they could be faced with the same fate as the NFL players.  After several months of negotiations, the NFL players and owners begin mediation on April 14, 2011 to see if some type of conclusion can be agreed upon, in order to start the 2011-2012 season.
Video courtesy of YouTube.


As for Major League Baseball (MLB), their last lockout took place during what was supposed to be the 1994-1995 season.  During this time, the lockout had an enormous impact on the MLB fan-base, which in return lost the league a lot of dedicated followers and money.  According to www.nydailynews.com, by this time, the average salary for the MLB players had reached $1 million.  At the conclusion of it all, the lockout lead to about 930 game cancellations; as a result, this left the NBA and NFL to gain a bigger fan-base.  With the current lockout situations, the MLB seems to be the league that's winning and has  the potential to gain a bigger fan-base as did the NBA and the NFL during the NFL's time off.


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2 comments:

  1. KyleApril 11, 2011 at 7:55 PM

    Good read but I have seen much worse contracts than Drew Gooden. Try Gilbert Arenas's $20 million per year while only averaging 10 points a game.

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  2. K. PatriceApril 12, 2011 at 11:18 AM

    I have too and totally agree with you about Arenas but I've chosen to focus on someone with less hype in the media. $20 million is definitely too much money for only 10 points per game.

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