d-train wrote:wco81 wrote:Yeah but if he owned the arena, he could make money for non NBA events, which he doesn't have to share with the league.
There's an advantage to being landlord rather than the tenant.
You are assuming the "big events landlord business" is a good business. I'm not familiar with that business but I can assure your there are many factors that determine whether the business bleeds cash or is a license to print cash. The biggest factor is almost always location. I'll bet it's magnitudes better to own a fancy big area in LA than it is to own such a facility in Portland or Seattle. Yet, the cost to build a big fancy arena is about the same in all 3 locations.
I suspect the Moda Center is a huge money pit. I think it's likely many Blazers fans have the wrong idea about how great it is to own the Moda Center because of all the bad reporting and false narratives that were floated while Blazers and Moda Center had separate ownership. The Moda Center is a financial disaster and the only reason Paul Allen was better off to own it is because of the agreement Allen had with the banks that financed the building allowed the banks to confiscate almost all the ticket revenues from Blazers games. The telling fact is that Paul Allen lost less money while the banks owned the Moda Center than he did while he owned the Moda Center and made payments to the banks for the building's financing.
That's pretty much the business model of the Warriors new arena, the Chase Center. The owners wanted to build it with their own money so that they would control it and bank all the non-NBA events money.
So they've booked a lot of concerts but it's a lot of older groups like Metallica.
There have been some chatter that they've already booked $2 billion in revenues over some period of time. In addition to all the season ticket sales, they sold PSLs too.
But there are other music concert venues in the area and the Warriors owners clearly plan to take that business away. We will know they're succeeding when they book current acts like Ed Sheeran than oldies groups like Metallica, whose fans must be at least in the late'40s.
This also seems to be what Ballmer is pursuing in LA too. He's going to try to take away the concerts business from other venues, though it must be way more competitive in LA. That is why MSG which owns music venues down there is suing or trying to stop their arena some way.
When the Blazers aren't playing home games, a modern arena could be an attractive venue for other events -- concerts, ice capades, WWE, etc.
