Bills Bonus or Bogus

[x13thfloorrand]

And back to Sports radio

The level of arguments on professional sports in todays radio landscape is impressive on this thread....Because sports and concerts seem to be the last bastion; even a crappy Bills game can't be voice-tracked. Because live sports have tremendous value. WECK scored a pretty decent coup by landing UB sports and covering the recent UB Bulls playoff run and Bowl game (can't believe those words left my lips and showed up here!). As mentioned in previous posts, the 'minor' sports get select coverage when deemed necessary (during season, potential playoff runs, etc).. Remember when Mark Hammister had the Destroyers Arena team?

I agree, Bobs analysis of pros/cons of team movement in light of recent economic conditions is spot on.

On a national note, the NFL is seriously considering opening its bids to NFL Radio broadcasts to national games (playoffs, Monday Night, Super Bowl) away from Westwood one!

Does the dissatisfaction center on a lack of intelligent choices or unintelligent material?

 

[listener-in]

I can't tell you how many hours, how much money and emotional capital Western New Yorkers have invested in this football team, only to be kicked in the butt (wide right) by its owner. Where will the Bills go if they choose to leave Buffalo? Don't know, but I do know that whatever community gets the Bills better be ready to make some huge sacrifices.* (*I had initially written a pretty gross description of "sports extortion," but good sense prevailed and I refined the statement

Okay, as long as we are on sports teams with their hands out, I don't recall many complaints in Western NY about the Yankees milking the taxpayers for their new stadium. I believe that they shook down every level of government except the Feds - and who knows, maybe an earmark or two even managed to sneak its way through Congress.

This particular variety of socialism for the rich and well-connected flourishes in North America as nowhere else, with the media typically acting as willing enablers or, at best, failing to ask the questions that should be asked. In the UK for example, major cities have multiple stadia, none of them relying on government funding, the only exceptions being when they are built not for an individual team but for an event such as Olympic or Commonwealth games (which may or may not be justified - that's another discussion). For a microcosm of the kind of political and financial and media influences at work, Jim Bouton's "Foul Ball" makes interesting reading. Whether it's the Bills, the Yankees, the Redwings or the Rhinos, they can only get away with this stuff because we let them. I hope now that the nation is waking up to a big hangover, one of its major steps in sobering up will be for communities of all shapes and sizes to dig in their heels and quit indulging the greedy franchise owners and their hangers-on.

 

[AndrewLawson]

Today's (January 18) Buffalo News carries a story about Erie County (NY) subsidizing the Bills to the tune of nearly $1 million per game. As a taxpayer and Bills fan, while not wanting the team to leave, I just don't know how much taxpayers of Erie County and New York State can bear to support what for the last decade seems to be a millionaire's past-time. A friend who happens to be an Erie County sheriff's deputy has said he can clear more than $450 in overtime working in uniform on the traffic detail at Bills games. As to the local radio broadcasting rights, you have to wonder how much more the Bills can wring out of any radio station that has the rights to the games. Aren't the right's fees around $4-5 million a year?