1998 Thrills & Ills

By MIKE PENNER

Dec. 25, 1998 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITER

Raise your $5.50 12-ounce cup of warm ballpark beer and toast the grand sporting achievements of 1998 if you will, but before you do, consider carefully all the angles and agendas behind them, all the ramifications and repercussions they wrought.

Here’s to Mark McGwire’s nation- captivating, record-obliterating 70 home runs . . . and to the wonders of McGwire’s body-building powder of choice, androstenedione, the same substance that got Olympic shotput champion Randy Barnes banned for life.

Here’s to the marvelous summer- long jostling between McGwire and Sammy Sosa in pursuit of Roger Maris’ record . . . and to the greedy fistfights outside Wrigley Field in rabid pursuit of a winning lottery ticket in the form of a Sosa home-run ball.

Here’s to John Elway’s heart- tugging Super Bowl deliverance, which left nary a dry eye in the house . . . and to 95% of the NFL games that followed, an expansion-diluted product that bored American television viewers to tears.

Here’s to Michael Jordan winning his sixth league championship in what very possibly was his last NBA game . . . and to the league lockout that began barely two weeks later, making that game very possibly the last played in the NBA for a very, very long time.

Forget Maris and his 61 home runs in 163 games in ’61 (as many had done by the end of September).

This was The Year of the Asterisk in professional team sports:

* Baseball’s back!*

*Except that the disparity between the big-market and small-market teams has reached an all-time chasm, and attendance--although up from 1997--continues to lag well behind pre-1994 strike levels, and the television ratings for the 1998 World Series were the lowest in history.

* Doug Flutie, Randy Moss and the Atlanta Falcons have been great, unexpected story lines for the NFL!*

*And fewer and fewer people at home are paying any mind. “Monday Night Football” ratings are down 5% from last year, NFC and AFC television numbers are barely treading water and overall, NFL TV ratings are down 22% since 1987.

* The Detroit Red Wings repeated as Stanley Cup champions for the first time since 1955!*

*Does anybody care? ESPN ratings for the NHL playoffs were a near-microscopic 1.2, 1998-99 regular-season ratings are down to 1.4 and league attendance has fallen off.

* More than 61 million TV viewers watched Game 6 of the NBA finals!*

*And nobody is watching now. The NBA players have been locked out since June 30, half the regular-season schedule has been canceled and an entire major league season could be blown out for the first time in the history of American professional sports.

* With the Yankees winning an astounding 114 games and McGwire and Sosa chasing Maris and the Broncos chasing the ’72 Dolphins and Jordan lifting the Bulls to new dynastic heights, it’s a great time to be a sports fan!*

*Provided you’re willing to pay through the nose. In the last year, ticket prices increased 10% in baseball, 4.7% in football and 2.5% in hockey. The average NHL ticket now goes for $42.79, the average NFL ticket for $42.86. The NBA also raised its average ticket price 3.4%--to $42.54--for games that might never be played.

It was a good year, it was a bad year, it was a Sybil sort of year for the professional sports industry.

Staggering new television contracts for pro football and hockey were signed--Disney paid a head-shaking $600 million to show NHL games on ABC, ESPN and ESPN2 through 2004--but ratings for both sports are either flat or sagging.

Franchise values are up all around, yet seven professional franchises changed hands in 1998--among them the Dodgers from Peter O’Malley to Rupert Murdoch for $311 million-- with the Pittsburgh Penguins filing for bankruptcy, the New England Patriots announcing plans to move to Hartford, Conn., and Florida Marlin owner Wayne Huizenga slashing the payroll of his 1997 World Series champions to a $10-million nub as he readied it for sale.

Corporate sports sponsorship has never been bigger--you will be watching the U.S. Filter/Culligan Water Holiday Bowl at Qualcomm Stadium, won’t you?--yet in 1998 IBM canceled its $100-million sponsorship pact with the Olympics and Coca-Cola sliced its NFL commitment from $15 million a year to $4 million.

The construction of sports arenas and stadiums remains a boom industry, with four new buildings opening in 1998, two others--including Anaheim’s Edison International Field--getting elaborate make-overs and seven more facilities scheduled to debut in 1999.

However, as each megamillion- dollar mecca is erected, with promises of luxuries and creature comforts previously unimaginable, the fan experience is eroded.

How many Buccaneer fans can enjoy a game at new Raymond James Stadium when it now costs a family of four more than $320 for tickets, parking, hot dogs, drinks, two programs and two souvenir caps--up nearly 60% from 1997?

How many Padre fans who voted to publicly fund a new $411-million downtown ballpark are going to be thrilled to see a team with no Kevin Brown, no Ken Caminiti, no Steve Finley, no Joey Hamilton?

“The fans have been sent up the river,” says Andrew Zimbalist, a sports economist at Smith College in Northampton, Mass. “It’s a shame that you get public money building these new venues to make venues more expensive for fans so most can’t go to them.

“Not only that, the construction is usually financed out of types of sales taxes or lottery revenues--all of which fall more heavily on middle- and lower-income taxpayers. And they’re the ones getting shut out by the high ticket prices.”

Buy Me Some Peanuts and Cracker Jack, and a $20 Souvenir Cap

Team Marketing Report Inc. of Chicago has tracked professional sports ticket and concession prices since 1991, using a “Fan Cost Index” that comprises the cost of four average-price tickets, parking, two small beers, four small sodas and hot dogs, two programs and souvenir caps--in short, a typical outing for a family of four.

In 1998, the Fan Cost Index rose 7.2% for major league baseball, 5.2% for the NFL, 2.9% for the NBA and 1.4% for the NHL.

Some local Fan Cost Index figures:

* Lakers: $301.43, seventh highest in the NBA, including a league-high $20 souvenir cap.

* Clippers: $197.99, fifth lowest in the league, but then, you get what you pay for.

* Kings: $255.78, including an 18% increase in average ticket prices from last season.

* Mighty Ducks: $248.96, up 8% from 1997-98.

* Dodgers: $111.83--including the most expensive hot dog in the majors, $3--ranking them 16th among 30 teams. But that was before the signing of Kevin Brown, and price hikes are coming.

* Angels: $113.31, just ahead of the Dodgers, up 11.4% from 1997.

A new endangered species has been spotted on the horizon of the new millennium: The average professional sports fan actually attending a professional sporting event.

“I don’t think sports in general have totally reached that point yet,” says Sean Brenner, an editor at Team Marketing Report. “Almost every major league baseball team sells at least some of its tickets for less than $10 a game. So, you could certainly make that comparable to the cost of a family going to see a movie.

“For the other three major sports, what’s called ‘the average fan’ may find it too expensive to go to more than a handful of games per season.”

Not that any of this troubles the barons of professional sport. NBA Commissioner David Stern typified the let-them-eat-cake approach to the average fan when he said earlier this year, “You would like your teams to have tickets at some price that families can afford, but the average sports fan is now a television fan. And they have more access to NBA games and other sports programming than ever before.”

After, of course, ESPN pays $4.8 billion for eight years of Sunday night football and $350 million for five years of NHL telecasts and passes some of the cost on to the consumer. In July, ESPN notified cable operators that it wanted a 20% rate increase to help defray the cost of its new NFL contract.

When Sporting Goods Go Bad

The fans are starting to fight back, much to the chagrin of Nike, Reebok and other major players on the sports apparel-and-merchandise block.

Nike reported a first-quarter loss of $67.7 million in 1998, its first quarterly loss in 13 years, with profits down 49% for the fiscal year, prompting the largest layoffs in the company’s history.

Fila and Reebok reported first- quarter losses of $8.7 million and $3.4 million, respectively, with Converse claiming a 50% drop in sales of its basketball merchandise.

With the exception of Jordan, whose Nike line increased 57% in sales after the NBA finals, superstar-driven products have hit the wall. Cory Bronson, an editor at Sporting Goods Business magazine, estimates that sales of licensed sports merchandise are down 10% from 1997--and could sink to close to 20% by spring if the NBA lockout continues.

Sales of NBA merchandise alone are down 50%, with Bronson projecting a further drop to 70% by the end of January.

“I think the licensed category really saw its peak toward the latter part of the ‘80s, early part of the ‘90s,” Bronson says. “It really achieved some explosive growth, but then you had the emergence of so many new footwear companies, coupled with the fact that a lot of the leagues were just being driven by one team.

“For example, in the NBA, some of the statistics I have been hearing had it that at a point in time, the Chicago Bulls were driving 80% of the merchandise--and 90% of that merchandise was all Michael Jordan.

“We really saw a flattening out of the industry around ’94 coupled with the major league baseball strike.”

Sports apparel manufacturers finally responded in 1998 by making serious roster cuts.

When Laker star Shaquille O’Neal’s five-year, $15-million contract with Reebok expired in July, it was not renewed. Reason: O’Neal’s “Shaq Attack” shoe, once the crown jewel of Reebok’s basketball line, wasn’t moving.

Reebok also terminated similar contracts with Dallas Cowboy running back Emmitt Smith, outfielder Larry Walker of the Colorado Rockies and Milwaukee Buck forward Glenn Robinson as it slashed its athlete-endorsement roster from 960 to 260.

Converse put Larry Johnson’s “Grandmama” in a retirement home and waived Latrell Sprewell, post-P.J. Carlesimo chokehold. Nike informed 24 of its NBA players that their deals would no longer be guaranteed but performance-based--and with no games going on, there’s no performance, meaning there’s no reason for Nike to pay.

Suggested new slogan for Nike’s NBA line: “Just Don’t Do It.”

“Companies are getting away from showcasing their athletes, who, with the free-agent market are jumping from team to team and making it tough for fans to really build up a relationship with an athlete,” Bronson says.

“We’re sort of in a day and age where athletes are perceived as greedy and lack a lot of the team loyalty that fans like to see or grew up seeing. Now you’re seeing a lot of these companies like Pro Player or Starter really push the kids on, say, ‘Dawson’s Creek’ and ‘Friends’ to wear a sweatshirt that features a New York Knicks’ [logo].

“They’re weighing their options now as to where their money can best be spent. I think the day and age of putting a lot of your marketing and endorsement dollars on athletes might be gone and you might see a lot more [television and pop music] celebrities instead.”

Rich Get Richer, Poor Get High Draft Picks

Are these the earmarks of a troubled industry?

A group headed by Al Lerner and Bernie Kosar pays $530 million for ownership rights to the expansion Cleveland Browns, who begin play in the NFL in 1999.

Cablevisions Systems offers to buy the New York Yankees from George Steinbrenner for $550 million.

The Washington Redskins pay $57 million to sign two free-agent defensive linemen, Dana Stubblefield and Dan Wilkinson.

The Dodgers sign a 33-year-old free-agent pitcher, Kevin Brown, to a seven-year contract worth $105 million.

Catcher Mike Piazza, who forced his trade from the Dodgers by demanding the kind of money they eventually threw at Brown, signs a seven-year contract with the New York Mets worth $91 million.

The NFL signs new eight-year TV contracts with Fox, CBS, ABC and ESPN worth a combined $17.6 billion.

According to Forbes magazine, the Dallas Cowboys, Colorado Rockies, Portland Trail Blazers, Washington Redskins, Miami Dolphins and Detroit Pistons all turned profits of more than $30 million in 1998.

“To me, sports are basically healthy,” Zimbalist says. “The franchise values are growing. But there are some perennial problems that have not been solved--and the NBA lockout is emblematic of all of that.

“The big issue for professional team sports that is uncharacteristic of other industries in the United States is that they have to maintain a semblance of competitive balance on the playing field or on the court among the teams. In order to do that, the teams need to have not equal resources, but resources that are similar to each other. And you don’t have that in sports today.”

The gap between the haves and have-nots is growing, with worrisome consequences everywhere except the NFL, where the highest-salaried team in the league, the San Diego Chargers, has shown it is possible to spend $25 million more on players than the lowest-salaried team, the Philadelphia Eagles, without much affecting the standings. San Diego, with a payroll of $70 million, is 5-10 in 1998; Philadelphia, at $45 million, is 3-12.

Elsewhere, however, disparity between the big- and small-market teams is turning division races fraudulent when it isn’t shutting down the games altogether.

In 1998, the Yankees won 114 games and swept the World Series with a payroll of nearly $74 million--nine times the size of the Montreal Expos’ $8.3-million payroll. Individually, five players--Gary Sheffield at $14.9 million, Albert Belle at $10 million, Greg Maddux at $9.6 million, Barry Bonds at $8.9 million and McGwire at $8.9 million--earned more than the entire Expo roster.

In the NHL, the two-time Stanley Cup champion Red Wings have a $48.3-million payroll--more than three times that of the expansion Nashville Predators’ $13.6 million. And in the NBA--big surprise--the biggest payroll belongs to the Bulls, $61.7 million, and the smallest to the Clippers, $24 million.

“All of that threatens competitive balance,” Zimbalist says. “And the big-city owners and the rich teams do not want to share revenues with small teams. . . . They don’t want to share their revenue and equalize resources, hence, they try to put the problem on the players’ backs.

“Although the problem is taking a more [dramatic] form in basketball, right now, it’s a problem fundamental to all the sports. It has to do with revenue disparity among the owners and the distribution of the pie between the owners and the players--and it creates labor unrest.

“Some sports are obviously doing a little better at the moment than others, but none of them has really created a lasting solution.”

Is there a solution?

Economists suggest one: competition. The more the better. Create new leagues to give fans a viewing alternative when the other is striking or locked out. Break up existing leagues--turn the NFC and AFC into separate, rival entities again--and force them to compete for players and fans, resulting in fewer work stoppages, more fan amenities and lower ticket prices.

“If you focus on basketball, one scenario is that an alternative league is formed,” Zimbalist says. “If the owners go ahead and do what they’ve been threatening to do for the last several months--call off the season-- the basketball players and their representatives are prepared to build their own league. . . .

“There’s a great advantage to something like that happening. Either you’ll have competition in professional basketball--you’ll have two leagues-- and if you have competition, a lot of other problems go away. Or you’ll have a league that’s structured through some system of player involvement, which will eliminate the structural conflict and dichotomy between the owners and the players.”

Sounds like a plan.

Any takers?

Why, yes. Coming in 1999: the International Basketball League, with designs for a 64-game schedule beginning next November. And in 2000: a summer professional football league, brought to you by the people who were outbid for NFL contracts last January, NBC and Turner Broadcasting.

So help is on the way.

Assuming “Dawson’s Creek” hasn’t siphoned off all the professional basketball fans by then.

* TOUCHED ‘EM ALL: Any discussion about the year in sports begins with ubiquitous slugger Mark McGwire. Page 11

* 1998 BY THE NUMBERS, PAGE 10

* BEST AND WORST, PAGE 11

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TEAM PAYROLLS

NFL

Highest: San Diego Chargers: $70 million.

Lowest: Philadelphia Eagles: $45 million.

Baseball

Highest: Baltimore Orioles: $74.1 million.