Comets, WNBA are circling the drain
The spin coming from the Houston Comets on their upcoming move is amusing:
The Comets will leave Toyota Center and play their 2008 home games at the smaller but cozy Reliant Arena.
Comets owner Hilton Koch signed a contract with Reliant earlier this week.
"We are very excited that Reliant Arena will be the new home for the (Comets)," Koch said. "As an organization, our goal is to provide Comets fans with a phenomenal in-arena experience while at the same time maximizing the team's long-term growth potential.
"Reliant Arena's smaller venue (capacity 5,800) will be a great setting for our boisterous fans and will help create a powerful home-court advantage."
That's the press-release perspective.
Reality is this: The Comets and the WNBA are an inferior product that few people want to watch, and they are moving from a top-notch NBA arena (an attraction in itself, really) to what is effectively a rat trap in an undesirable part of town.
How much longer will the league or the franchise survive?
Crossposted to Bad Sports, and appropriately so, because this is truly about some Bad Sports
Posted by Kevin Whited @ 12/13/07 22:02 | Houston | Technorati
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Comments
I would have lost a lot of money betting that the WNBA wouldn't have lasted this long, so I'll refrain from making such a bet in the future. The better question, I think, is why it's lasted as long as it has.
When I think of the WNBA, what I actually think of is a huge clash between Debbie Schlussel and Cathy Young in 1999 in the Jewish World Review. Schussel dissed the WNBA, Young used her next column to defend it, responding directly to Schlussel's column, and they each kept writing more and more responses that got increasingly hostile. The JWR kept publishing them all, but when the dust cleared they released both columnists and have since apparently taken down most of the fight.
That was the most excitement I'd ever seen the WNBA generate.
Posted by R. Alex @ 10:24 on 12/15/07
I expect a heaping dose of blame. It is the taxpayer's fault for not asking the Sports Authority to issue $300 million in bonds to build them an exclusive arena.
Where's Jordy when you need him!
Posted by Royko @ 09:00 on 12/17/07
I'm sorry! I wasn't thinking clearly this morning.
Heck, this was another missed opportunity for the COH to dispose of more prime taxpayer property. They could have leased the land under the Police facility att 77 Reisner Street AND the Municipal Court building for forty years to Tilman, so he could build a sports and casino complex next to the shark tank.
Posted by Royko @ 09:06 on 12/17/07
Well the question of why it has lasted as long as it has is easy to answer: they're subsidized by the NBA to the tune of 12 million per year
Posted by leeo @ 11:58 on 12/24/07
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