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When you’re from a city that loses a team, you can rationally understand the economics, need for a new stadium, will of the league, etc. But there’s no way to rationalize the heartbreak of the fans who live and die with a team for decades, only to see the team wrenched away. Even as adults who get that it’s just a game, it’s heartbreaking, and it does change you in some way. My heart goes out to you, Kings fans.
—Author and Montreal Expos fan Jonah Keri
In another terrible NBA story that has infuriated fans around the league, it looks as if Sacramento is going to lose the Kings to the Anaheim area this offseason. The Kings were among the league leaders in attendance and sellouts as recently as 5 seasons ago, but a rebuilding period has lead to sparse crowds, and now will result in relocation after a few poor years. Last night was likely the final game in Sacramento for the Kings, and emotions were running high. Many fans refused to leave when the game had ended, staying in their seats and chanting, crying, yelling, just trying to savor one last moment of the Sacramento Kings experience. The video below is the emotional sign-off from the local broadcasting crew:
The video really hit me to my core, and got me thinking about the vast gulf in how fans perceive sports and how those actually involved in the sport see it. As fans, we tend to romanticize the connection between ourselves and our team, and the team and our city. We connect with the club on an emotional level, living and dying with each play, and telling ourselves that it all means something in the long run. Those of us who root for the hometown team do so out of some sense of local civic pride, as we interpret the fact that the team plays in our state as making them representatives of a sort for the locality, and by extension, for us. We teach our children to root for the home team, because it is a part of our city and part of us, and we want to share that bond between city, fan, and team with those close to us.
But that is not what the lords of the sport see when they look upon us. When owners and commissioners look at us, they see dollar signs. Sports are a business to them, rightfully so, and I would expect nothing less from them than to focus upon maximizing revenues. I do not mean to suggest that the owners do not care about the fans at all, just that making money will almost always take precedence over making the rabid locals happy. As fans, we would like to believe that there is a public trust aspect to owning a team, that the sweetheart tax deals and stadium subsidies and police support and other advantages afforded professional sports teams creates an obligation for ownership and for the league to treat the city and its citizens with a modicum of respect and consideration. But that is usually not how owners interpret the relationship between city and team. To them, the city is just a place of business, the fans are just consumers, and the games are just the product they are selling. If the conditions for sale are not good enough in City A, they will make the prudent financial choice and move to City B. They have little incentive to “save our team” for us, and it leads to situations like the one in Sacramento, where a rabid fanbase supports their club for two decades, and one lull in attendance and refusal to build a new arena leads to the team leaving for a city where it will likely pull the “if you do not build it, we will leave” gambit again 20 years from now.
I am not blaming anyone for treating their team as a business. While you would like to see the owners exhibit some civic responsibility and sense of acknowledgement of the bond between city and team, no one gets into any business to lose money. If the finances are not working in Sacramento, or if they could be more profitable elsewhere, I understand the action being taken. But that does not make the experience any less painful for fans, as Jonah stated so eloquently in the quote cited above.
As Yankees fans, we are somewhat removed from these concerns, but the same sort of thing is going to come up in Tampa Bay with the Rays, in Jacksonville with the Jaguars, in New Orleans with the Hornets, and in countless other localities where owners are struggling to obtain a new facility from the local government or attendance has lagged. Those teams will move to new places, and the new homes will welcome them with open arms, embrace them as a local treasure, and teach their children to love the home team. However, they may not be the home team for very long, and another generation of scorned fans will wonder what they ever did to deserve that sort of treatment. But the answer is simple, stark, and ultimately unavoidable: you loved your team unconditionally, and invested in them emotionally. You could not help but do so, because to you, sports is about more than money. You acted like a fan. But the people making the decisions cannot always afford to consider how their actions make you feel, and a disconnect like that will frequently lead to pain. To them, you are ultimately just a dollar sign.
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I think the problem is public financing of stadiums and arenas. If owners had to pay the cost of new stadiums and arenas, then they wouldn’t be so eager to leave. Anyway, have publicly funded venues ever been a good deal for taxpayers?
I often see people having conversations about contracting or moving teams from underperforming markets – one year it’s the A’s, one year it’s the Rays, and so on… And I always find myself trying to impress upon them that we should apply VERY high standards to the question of whether a particular market should lose their franchise, because to lose a franchise is traumatic. Before anyone screams at me, yes, I know there are much bigger problems in the world, but, in the world of sports, a city losing their franchise is the death penalty. Even in underperforming markets there are hundreds of thousands or millions of people who root for the team in question, a pretty good portion of which are children. And yes, the franchises are businesses and the players are mercenaries, but to a city, a sports franchise is a part of the civic fabric. I’m not a Yankees fan because I like their uniforms, I’m a Yankees fan because they represent me and my city and my family. While we’re in no danger of ever losing the Yankees, obviously, I can’t imagine how awful it must have felt, and must still feel, to have been an Expos fan or a Supersonics fan. Even with all of the negative aspects of sports and the negative news we receive – increased prices for tickets/parking/etc., the PED debates, players getting arrested, etc. – I think team relocation (or contraction) is easily the worst thing that can happen in sports, and I wish that the teams and leagues would avoid those actions at all costs.
(Moshe – Excellent work, as usual.)
“Before anyone screams at me, yes, I know there are much bigger problems in the world, but, in the world of sports, a city losing their franchise is the death penalty. Even in underperforming markets there are hundreds of thousands or millions of people who root for the team in question, a pretty good portion of which are children. And yes, the franchises are businesses and the players are mercenaries, but to a city, a sports franchise is a part of the civic fabric. I’m not a Yankees fan because I like their uniforms, I’m a Yankees fan because they represent me and my city and my family. While we’re in no danger of ever losing the Yankees, obviously, I can’t imagine how awful it must have felt, and must still feel, to have been an Expos fan or a Supersonics fan.”
Perfectly said.
It’s a business pure and simple. They’ve been trying for a new arena for 15 years there. It is a dump. The local gov’t should have helped build it. Now they are going to lose millions in revenue by not having the foresight to help build a state of the art arena to keep them there.
What is weird is them not going all out for Vegas.
Spot-on, as per usual, Moshe. I totally agree, and as I brought up to Ross (StadiumInsider) on twitter, a good ownership does not get emotional about the stadium, the players or the fans. If your hardcore fans aren’t spending the hardcore dollars, they’re not worth any more than the tourist who buys a souvenir and food and a ticket. It sucks, but that’s the way life is.
And after all, it’s what we want. We want the Yankees to not get emotional about players, don’t we? Could you imagine if they resigned Posada or Jeter (again) after their contracts are over? But getting emotional about fans… that’s a different story.
Great as usual Moshe, business is business.
It’s always sad to see a team go. I said last night while watching those announcers choke up live on TV, it was very hard to watch.
But while my heart goes out to the real diehard fans of the team and the city they play in, i find myself having to put some of the blame on the fans.
I want to be fully behind the Kings fans but then i see they were next to last in attendance this year.I look that and say, “Are you kidding me? Even *THIS* year with the cloud of relocation hanging over your team’s head, and when the city/team needs the fans most, you didn’t go to the games.”
Maybe that’s unfair on my part. Maybe I’m being too cold-blooded. It sucks to see a team move. It sucks that fans are left out in the cold. But when no one is showing up for games it’s tough for me to blame everything on the power/money hungry owners.
The Kings last made the playoffs in 05/06. Since then they haven’t had a winning season, and their win totals are as follows: 33-49, 38-44, 17-65, 25-57, 24-58. They have no marquee players nor do they play in an affluent market, and their market just happens to be the capital of a state devastated (even moreso than most) by the recession. In addition, they knew all season that the team was, in all likelihood, abandoning them after this season anyway.
It’s unfair to blame the fans. The team is moving because their new home has a nicer arena and is in a more affluent area/bigger media market.
If fans know that relocation is possibly in the their future, that’s more the reason to go out and support the team. Not roll over and die. This proud and great fan base decided to just give up? Come on.
Pistons fans still showed despite tough times with the recession. Cavs fans still showed despite their PUTRID year this year.
I’m not trying to put ALL the blame on the fans. By no means. These owners know what they want (be it a new stadium or a move) and at times have stopped at nothing to get it. But if fans show up it has to make the move harder. Has to. Would it stop it? Eh, can’t say that. But it’d make it harder.
They weren’t staying without a new arena, what you’re talking about is irrelevant.
Attendance declining at ARCO was one of the reasons given for ‘new arena’ talk. Saying that the drop in attendance is irrelevant is off base. How relevant it is can be debated but it played a part in their move.
I think you’re failing to see through the smokescreen. The Sonics had decent attendance figures right up until the team was sold to the Oklahoma City ownership group, and the Kings had decent attendance right up until the team morphed into one of the worst in the NBA (for multiple seasons). The Kings sold out every game from 2000-2007*, this was not an unsupportive fanbase.
The owners may make public statements about attendance, but I think it’s pretty clear that’s a PR game.
Agree to disagree.
*And even when they were selling out for 7 straight seasons they were still in the middle of the pack in the NBA on an attendance per game basis, further illustrating that this is an arena issue and not an attendance issue.
I lived in Seattle and never counted myself much of a Sonics fan. But I’m still pissed the team moved to Oklahoma. While it’s been tough for Seattle fans, I imagine it will much much harder for Sacramento fans. Seattle has numerous other things to do and teams to get behind. Sacramento, not so much.
I agree that relocation is an unfortunate experience for diehard sports fans, but it’s worth noting that the Kings moved to Sacramento from KC with previous stops in Cincinnati and Rochester. Although relocation can break a lot of hearts, it can also create a lot of happiness.
As much as fans hate to think of sports as a business, it is important to remember that the leagues and teams wouldn’t exist otherwise.
Absolutely. As I noted in the post, its a necessary part of the game, and I don’t begrudge owners acting like businessmen. Im just trying to get at the heart of that disconnect between fans and owners.
Great post but you’re glossing over the fact that often mismanagement of a sports franchise leads to the creation of terrible teams that local fan bases abandon because sometimes supporting a terrible team is harder than letting it go.
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