NBA---Mike (slow)
>> malik rose of nba san antonio spurs says it french teammate, tony parker, is like a god in his home country. parker is one of a record 70 players from outside the u.s. that’s helping the national basketball association reverse a dwindling american tv audience and falling revenue. i’m not laughing about falling revenue, but my bad french. for more, we go to atlanta and my colleague, mike buteau who joins us for “the business of sports.” the nba is big in france?
>> well, not just france. the nba has, over the years in the u.s., has grown to what it has. although the ticket sales right now, tv revenue and things like that you generate in the u.s. is stagnant so they’ve gone international and there’s a record 70 players in the league right now from germany, from france, to tony parker, dirk novitski, yao ming from china and merchandise sales from the nba in other countries are taking off. $3 billion in total merchandizing sales last year and $600 million from other countries, an increase of 35% from the year before so the nba% -is taking its game global in an attempt to recoup some lost revenue from the u.s.
>> let’s, sticking with the basketball theme, we have a story saying that microsoft co-founder paul allen may be filing for bankruptcy protection with the oregon arena, home to the nba portland trail blazers. tell us the details there.
>> the rose garden is owned by paul allen and he did today file for bankruptcy protection. this doesn’t involve the trail blazers themselves, owned by a separate company. but the arena has suffered from low attendance. the trail blazers have suffered off the court, with rasheed wallace traded away and criminal problems and essentially the team is known as the jail blalers to many people and many have turned from the team and paul allen filing for bankruptcy, just with the arena, not the team itself.
>> when you thought free agent salaries were huge, now it looks like sponsorship deals are equally lucrative and now pepsi pepsi’s gatorade signing the biggest sponsorship deal maybe ever, is that right, with the nfl?
>> second only to nextel who signed up for $700 million to sponsor nascar. pepsi’s gatorade is synonymous with the nfl over the years and were involved in 1983 as an official sponsor and how many times have you seen some player at the end of a game pouring a bucket of gatorade over a coach’s head. and gatorade is paying the new mexico and supplying―paying the nfl and supplying the nfl with gatorade for free. it’s an all-encompassing deal where the teams split the revenue with the league, very significant, second behind nextel and their deal with nascar.
>> and coming to a tv near you, soon tycoon tv, it seems mark you can ban, owner of the dallas mavericks, may fall in the footsteps of donald trump with a reality tv show.
>> mark cuban will give away $1 million of his own money. you ask him why and he says because he can, i’m a billionaire, sort of like donald trump.
>> oh, my goodness, maybe we can be apprentices on that show. mike, always a pleasure. thanks for joining us, mike buteau from our atlanta bureau. former citigroup telecom analyst jack grubman has a new job. i’ll tell you where, next.
