In short, the Pacers want a bailout 1. Businessmen think they can make money by operating big building and renting it out for events. 2. Businessmen find out they were entirely wrong about how much money they could make. They couldn't sell enough and the costs were higher than anticipated. 3. Businessmen ask government to cover operating costs but continue to give revenues to businessmen. This, my man, is a bailout plain and simple. ---------------------------- I know I don't post here a lot, but I still follow this stuff pretty closely, and I follow finances especially closely. I guess the way I look at the Pacers financially can be summarized as saying the Pacers' problems are largely of their own creation. 1. Yes, Indy is a small market team, but small market teams can be relatively successful in the NBA. 2. The Pacers have been fairly successful in the past, and have had a fairly strong fanbase. 3. A big chunk of PS&E's failure to thrive is basically accounting trickery. They've taken significant chunks of revenue (like stadium naming rights) in lump payments, and they spread out costs annually. The result of stuff like this is that the Pacers look like they rarely make money. Consider it buying a house with cash. You pay $500k for your house today, and you have little to no cost for the next 20 years. Well, the Pacers do the opposite. They get $500k today, and then spread the costs over 20 year periods. If you look at any of those one year periods, the costs will be higher than the annual revenues associated with it. 4. An even bigger chunk of the Pacers failure to thrive has been lots of terrible decisions on and off the court. This has resulted in: a. Higher costs than a small market team should typically have. Small market teams have to get their players on good long-term deals (ahem... most of the team), not incur dead money (ahem... Jamaal Tinsley, Foster), and emphasize the draft, since that's where you get good and cheap players (I won't even go there). b. Lower revenues. Fans have stopped spending on the Pacers as the Pacers have become less compelling a purchase. c. Lack of urgency. All teams have to rebuild, but a 3 year teardown process is an extraordinary burden on a team's fanbase and it's own pocketbook. Folks can say they wouldn't tolerate a quick teardown, but this has been a death by a thousand cuts, and I fear its led to a long-term loss of interest and excessive financial losses as well.
