The Louvre Museum. The Louvre Museum.

Paris, France
October 16, 2006
Apple | Cool | Disney | Entertainment | Fitness | Geek | Microsoft | Politics | Seattle Storm | Transit | Travel | UW MBA

« Spiders On Drugs | Main | Russell Peters Is Coming To The Moore »

April 17, 2007

End Game

And, just like that, it was over.

The Washington State Legislature has tabled the proposal to build the Sonics and Storm a shiny new half-billion-dollar arena down in Renton. As I've said previously, I agree with this decision - much as I love the Storm, there is precious little public interest to be served by subsidizing the payroll deficits and bad business decisions of a bunch of private team owners.

Following the announcement of the Legislature's non-action, Clay Bennett, new owner of the Soncis/Storm, said:

"This is a staggering and quite likely a debilitating blow to our efforts to develop a world-class arena facility. Clearly at this time the Sonics and Storm have little hope of remaining in the Puget Sound region."

Translation: "We're taking our ball and going home to Oklahoma."

Yes, I'm sad. Sad that the economics of the NBA are so broken that they require massive public subsidy. Sad that Seattle is losing a long-time icon (the SuperSonics, whatever you may think of their record this year, have been part of the Seattle cultural landscape for four decades). And sad that the new team owners are so freakin' vindictive that they're taking the Storm with them. WNBA is a distinct market from the NBA - the league tends to do better in "Creative Class" cities like Chicago, New York, or Washington, DC, and fail in places like Orlando or Cleveland. Seattle has one of the best WNBA markets in the country, and I'm willing to bet that the team struggles to find an audience in Oklahoma City. The new owners could easily split the teams, leave the Storm here, and take their NBA prize with 'em to OK.

But they won't.

That's business, and that's life. Nothing lasts forever.

The Storm home opener is Saturday, May 19 - just over a month from now. Catch the action while you can, y'all. I'll be there.

Posted by Gavin Shearer at April 17, 2007 1:34 PM. Posted to Politics | Seattle Storm.

Comments

Post a comment

Thanks for signing in, . Now you can comment. (sign out)

(If you haven't left a comment here before, you may need to be approved by the site owner before your comment will appear. Until then, it won't appear on the entry. Thanks for waiting.)


Remember me?


« Spiders On Drugs | Main | Russell Peters Is Coming To The Moore »

Copyright © 2004 - 2008, Gavin Shearer. All rights reserved.
The views and opinions expressed on this Web site are mine alone, and do not necessarily reflect the position(s) of any organization(s) I may be affiliated with.