Atlanta Hawks coming up for sale.

[Al Bundy]

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" lang="en"><p>Atlanta Hawks owner selling team after telling NBA about racist email <a href="http://t.co/5PL0SNqlnw">http://t.co/5PL0SNqlnw</a></p>&mdash; Deadspin (@Deadspin) <a href="https://twitter.com/Deadspin/status/508639920790188032">September 7, 2014</a></blockquote>
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[GloucesterChief]

Doubt the NBA wants the team to leave Atlanta. Though Atlanta is more of a college football town then any professional sport. If they do move it will probably be Seattle or Kansas City but I doubt they do.

[L.A. Chieffan]

I got five on it

[Prison Bitch]

After watching LA go for $2.1billion he probably likes his odds of cashing out big time here. Plus the economy is improving ad the stock market is at a record high, so an asset like this will fetch a great price.


That said anybody who's been to NBA games knows the crowd is always 90% white.

[L.A. Chieffan]

:spock: no

[-King-]

After watching LA go for $2.1billion he probably likes his odds of cashing out big time here. Plus the economy is improving ad the stock market is at a record high, so an asset like this will fetch a great price.

.

Uh, there's kind of a difference in owning a top 5 team in the biggest media market in the country and owning an average team in ATL. Just a tad. He won't get anywhere near 2.1 bil.

[Eleazar]

The pertinent part of the email:


"4. Regarding game ops, i need to start with some background. for the first couple of years we owned the team, i didn't much focus on game ops. then one day a light bulb went off. when digging into why our season ticket base is so small, i was told it is because we can't get 35-55 white males and corporations to buy season tixs and they are the primary demo for season tickets around the league. when i pushed further, folks generally shrugged their shoulders. then i start looking around our arena during games and notice the following:

-- it's 70 pct black

-- the cheerleaders are black

-- the music is hip hop

-- at the bars it's 90 pct black

-- there are few fathers and sons at the games

-- we are doing after game concerts to attract more fans and the concerts are either hip hop or gospel.

Then i start looking around at other arenas. It is completely different. Even DC with its affluent black community never has more than 15 pct black audience.

Before we bought the hawks and for those couple years immediately after in an effort to make the arena look full (at the nba's urging) thousands and thousands of tickets were being giving away, predominantly in the black community, adding to the overwhelming black audience.

My theory is that the black crowd scared away the whites and there are simply not enough affluent black fans to build a signficant season ticket base. Please dont get me wrong. There was nothing threatening going on in the arean back then. i never felt uncomfortable, but i think southern whites simply were not comfortable being in an arena or at a bar where they were in the minority. On fan sites i would read comments about how dangerous it is around philips yet in our 9 years, i don't know of a mugging or even a pick pocket incident. This was just racist garbage. When I hear some people saying the arena is in the wrong place I think it is code for there are too many blacks at the games.

I have been open with our executive team about these concerns. I have told them I want some white cheerleaders and while i don't care what the color of the artist is, i want the music to be music familiar to a 40 year old white guy if that's our season tixs demo. i have also balked when every fan picked out of crowd to shoot shots in some time out contest is black. I have even bitched that the kiss cam is too black.

Gradually things have changed. My unscientific guess is that our crowd is 40 pct black now, still four to five times all other teams. And my further guess is that 40 pct still feels like 70 pet to some whites at our games. Our bars are still overwhelmingly black.

This is obviously a sensitive topic, but sadly i think it is far and way the number one reason our season ticket base is so low.

And many of our black fans don't have the spendable income which explains why our f&b and merchandise sales are so low. At all white thrasher games sales were nearly triple what they are at hawks games (the extra intermission explains some of that but not all).

Regardless of what time a game starts, we have the latest arriving crowd in the league. It often looks and sounds empty when the team takes the floor.

In the past two years, we have created a section of rowdy college students that has been a big plus. And we do a lot of very clever stuff during time outs to entertain the crowd. Our kiss cam is better done than any in the league.

We have all the same halftime acts that other arenas have but i question whether they make sense. people are on their cell phones during half time. i wonder if flashing on the scoreboard "$2 off on hot dogs during halftime tonight" just as the half ends would be a better use of our halftime dollars and make the fans happier.

We do all the usual giveways and the fans are usually their loudest when our spirit crew takes the floor to give away t-shirts. It pisses me off that they will yell louder for a t-shirt then for our players.

Our player intro is flat. We manufacture a lot of noise but because of the late arriving crowd and the fact that a lot of blacks dont seem to go as crazy cheering (another one of my theories) as whites, it is not great. Even when we have just returned from winnng four straight on the road, i am one of the few people in the arena standing and cheering when our team takes the floor. Bob has kicked around ideas like having the starters coming down aisles rather than off the bench during intros. Sounds cool but may highlight all the empty seats at the start of games."

[ClevelandBronco]

They were a basketball team, right? Dominique something comes to mind.

[L.A. Chieffan]

Haha what a Jack ass

[KCUnited]

I would like to say that I would support an NBA team in KC, but I went to my first NBA game in PHX back in March and was totally overwhelmed by the marketing/hype machine. I mean, they were parachuting Carl Jr burgers from the rafters during timeouts. It was like a basketball game broke out at an advertising convention.

[Eleazar]

I don't see what is terribly racist about that email personally. They are brainstorming about why their season ticket base might be so low. If you read it hoping to see racism you're going to see it. But he is just saying "how do we get more affluent whites to the games?"

I don't think it's racist to target a key demo and market to them.

[Rams Fan]

Good. However, since Deadspin only has a few good reporters now, what they fail to realize is that he is apart of a larger owner group. Still, fuck him and the other ASG owners who forced the Thrashers to relocate.

[Eleazar]

Good. However, since Deadspin only has a few good reporters now, what they fail to realize is that he is apart of a larger owner group. Still, **** him and the other ASG owners who forced the Thrashers to relocate.

I don't think anyone in Atlanta noticed that the Thrashers relocated.

[GloucesterChief]

I don't think anyone in Atlanta noticed that the Thrashers relocated.

Other then Dallas, Tampa Bay, and Nashville the NHL hasn't done too well in the South. The Panthers are probably going to relocate to Quebec City or Seattle in the near future.

[Prison Bitch]

Other then Dallas, Tampa Bay, and Nashville the NHL hasn't done too well in the South. The Panthers are probably going to relocate to Quebec City or Seattle in the near future.

Seattle doesnt want the NHL, they told Bettman as much when he pitched expansion to them this Spring.

[GloucesterChief]

Seattle doesnt want the NHL, they told Bettman as much when he pitched expansion to them this Spring.

Quebec City it will be then.

All hail the return of the Nordiques.

http://www.stadiumstyle.com/eCart/catalog/Nordiques%20jersey.jpg

[Prison Bitch]

Very likely. They have a rich owner in place and a new arena being constructed.

[Bewbies]

I don't think anyone in Atlanta noticed that the Thrashers relocated.

We would have never lost that team if the ownership wasn't shit. The Hawks have a huge fanbase down here, but have shit owners.

This is a huge deal in Atlanta, we may finally have a winner...

[Bewbies]

I listened to this idiot on the radio a few years ago talk about how their goal is never to win a title, it's to be better than they were last year. That way they aren't one of the 29 teams who are disappointed at the end of the season.

That really happened.

[ChiliConCarnage]

Was it racist? Yeah, he got into some stereotypes of both white and black people but none of it was malevolent. It's probably nothing different than most people do in a day.

Yeah, he cashed out.

[tk13]

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" lang="en"><p>High-ranking league official w/ direct knowledge of Bruce Levenson probe disputes to Yahoo the fact that owner self-reported email to NBA.</p>&mdash; Adrian Wojnarowski (@WojYahooNBA) <a href="https://twitter.com/WojYahooNBA/status/508664000725254144">September 7, 2014</a></blockquote>
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[Eleazar]

Was it racist? Yeah, he got into some stereotypes of both white and black people but none of it was malevolent. It's probably nothing different than most people do in a day.

Yeah, he cashed out.

I don't see anything false there. He gets into some things that may be sensitive issues but I don't see how a fact can be racist.