LeBron James has turned his back on the Cleveland Cavaliers and taken his marketing party to South Beach and the Miami Heat. The no-doubt lucrative free agent deal will put James in the middle of a hot stew with Dwyane Wade, Chris Bosh and Pat Riley. This spells big business for the Heat and Miami and a proverbial kick to the shins for the Cavaliers and Cleveland, but as Bloomberg and other media outlets speculate, is the LeBron James deal really bad for the NBA?
LeBron James on a Heat super-team is bad for broadcasting
The NBA has contracts with networks (ESPN, ABC, Turner), and all of them are no doubt looking forward to big Miami Heat ratings in 2010-11. But beyond the Heat, having too many marquee players on one team can cause great difficulties for ratings across the remainder of the league. A comparable pattern will hold true for gate receipts. NBC Commissioner David Stern surely wants all teams to be successful, but the truth is that most people want to see starts like LeBron James play. As former CBS Sports President Neal Pilson told Bloomberg, “You can’t just show Miami all the time and certainly the TV carriers benefit whenever you have attractive stars and personalities on multiple teams”.
Interestingly, if LeBron James had signed with the New York Knicks (a team that was in the running), it would have been broadcasting and marketing serendipity. It bears mentioning here that New York, Los Angeles and Chicago are the top three Nielsen markets. Miami clocks in at number 17.
‘The Decision’ – Milking it for all it’s worth
ESPN and online sources aired the ridiculous online program “The Decision,” in which LeBron James and posse make a foregone conclusion seem like a deep personal struggle. Bloomberg indicates that everyone from the University of Phoenix and Microsoft to Coca-Cola and McDonald’s had a sponsorship stake within the manufactured event. It wasn’t all bad, as the Boys and Girls Clubs of America made $2.5 million off “The Decision”.
But what if his team stumbles?
Cleveland and Cavaliers primary owner Dan Gilbert will probably share a big high five. The Cleveland newspaper The Plain Dealer ran a full front page photo published a picture of LeBron James walking from the camera, accompanied by the headline “Gone” and a subhead that mocks the “King’s” lack of NBA Championship rings. Dan Gilbert called a press conference just so he could blast James for his disloyalty and call him a narcissist, so clearly it’s happy time in Cleveland. Dan Gilbert sees a curse surrounding LeBron James, and insists the Cavs will win a ring before the turncoat James ever will. We’ll see if LeBron James sees those as fighting words.
Sources
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-07-09/lebron-james-on-super-team-might-be-good-for-miamiheat-bad-for-the-nba.html
http://trueslant.com/level/2010/07/09/cleveland-plain-dealers-front-page-parting-short-to-lebron-james/
