Money & Sports
>> sports teams and leagues have been helping in the hurricane relief effort. earlier, i got more from bloomberg news reporter mike butel in our weekly look at “money & sports.” specifically, i asked him what teams are doing to help the effort.
>> when you look at all the sports leagues, as you said, everybody is trying to help occupant, each helping out in their own way. the national football league, national basketball association, major league baseball all contributing at least $1 million, some more. individual athletes are doing things as well but from the league standpoint they’ve all stepped up. the pga tour i spoke with this week and they said by next week they’ll have a plan in place and they plan to contribute quite a bit. they’re right now trying to determine the way to go about doing that.
>> also some of the conferences as well, specifically the southeastern conference also doing things so in addition to donations tell us what the southeastern conference is doing.
>> there is a lot of individual things going on as i said. the southeastern conference, where most of the college football teams in this region play, are contributing cl 1 million as well -- $1 million as well. when you go back and look at the national football league, individual players, warrick dunn, son of a single mother, he has built about 150 homes in this area for single mothers and now that’s in the past. now he’s focusing on right now. and he’s challenged individually, each player in the national football league to give at least $5,000. when you do the math on that, 32 teams times $5,000, at a minimum of 50 players a team you’re looking at almost $5 million just from individual players in the nfl. that is, of course, if they go ahead and do that, but warrick dunn, running back for the atlanta falcons is doing that on his own.
>> let’s talk about the new orleans saints and a special game friday night. what’s that about?
>> exactly. friday night they play the oakland raiders out in oakland. they have been in oakland almost a week now. the game will be played as scheduled. the national football league has no plans of cancelling any preseason games. they don’t plan on cancelling any saints games. where they go from here remains a big question. they’re going to go immediately back to san antonio, where they’ll train, where they’ll live, san antonio, texas. there is a distinct possibility that they could be in san antonio for the whole season. the stadium there holds about 66,000 people. from the national football league’s point of view, is san antonio the best market ? maybe not. they would hope to have games in louisiana, if possible, just to get the local support and the local interest and have the majority of fans in that area that are interested in football, which is a huge thing in the southeast, be able to go to the games and be able to watch the games.
>> let’s talk a little bit about tennis if we can. you had andy roddick being eliminated in the first round over at the u.s. open. let’s talk about the business aspect of this. what does it mean for the american express mojo campaign?
>> it’s an interesting campaign. it brought a lot of buzz leading up to it. “where is and’s―“where is andy’s mojo?” from an american express point of view you put all your eggs in one basket although they have serena williams as well. it’s a significant blow. one marketing expert put the value at almost $7 million they’re spending on the mojo campaign alone, billboards, radio ads, television ads, they’ve continued the campaign but they’ve made some changes to it, not so focused on andy who was eliminated in the first round but american express is still continuing with the campaign, and andy roddick transcends tennis a little bit, a little bit of the pop culture as well, not so much what he does on the court. some people can see those commercials and not know he’s been eliminated in the first round if you don’t follow tennis closely.
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Listen Market briefing --- Ellen (slow)
Nasdaq --- Robert (slow)
>> microsoft suffering a business setback in massachusetts. the government there deciding to stop using the company’s office software on its computers. instead, it will switch to open source―that is, word processing and spreadsheet programs. the commonwealth’s chief financial officer says microsoft programs are proprithetary and prevent some users from reading documents. the plan is to complete the switch by 2007. this is not the first such blow to bill gates and company either. singapore made a switch last year and in germany, munich has dropped windows for a linux operating system. let’s switch our attention to the broader stock market where the had you nasdaq ending the week on a down note, down .3%, however it was higher for the week. as for today you had retailers and truckers pacing the decline, robert grace standing by at the nasdaq marketsite in times square. robert.
>> hi, ellen, thanks, it was the slowest day of trading on the nasdaq since the day after thanksgiving, so keep that in mind even though we did finish down lower on the session. you can talls take a look at the chart behind me showing the choppy trading we’ve seen over the last month. this is the 50-day moving average and chart watchers and traders will be important to note that today we did close just above the 50-day moving average so we did hold above that this week, it was below that much of the past week until about midweek this week. as john odonahue, the head of trading at s.g. cowan securities told bloomberg the market held off well in the light of things that should have hit it harder. in today’s session, hurricane katrina’s aftermath and the record gasoline prices across the country taking their toll. take a look at some of the retail-related stocks. fred’s down 1.2%. about 20% of their stores are located in the gulf coast area. the shares at their lowest level since october 2001 for fred’s. dollar tree shares, their lowest level since april 2003 during the session and panera bread, dining stocks down as investors are saying consumers will be choosing between taking their s.u.v.’s out or taking their―filling up their s.u.v.’s or taking the family out to dinner. record jet fuel prices may send them closer to bankruptcy. they’re going to seek bigger concessions than the $1.1 billion they’re trying to seek from their employees including the mechanics strike which they’re ongoing right now. yellow roadway, the largest u.s. trucking company leading the truckers down more than 1%. also, again, gasoline concerns for the truckers although we did see a lot of the tanker stocks continuing to rise, up better than 5% in today’s session as they’re bringing over a lot more fuel and they were also―president bush relaxing the law allowing the foreign flag ships to deliver crude and other energy gas to domestic markets , ellen, so we did see those tanker stocks rising again today. back to you.
>> robert, thanks so much. a few other stocks that we’re following today, saks restated earnings for the past four years in order to strip out the improper collection of vendor payments. those shares ending the day up .8%, h&r block, narrowed to known cents a share down from a loss of 11 cents a year earlier, revenue climbing to 615 million. the company made and serviced more home loans and what that did was offset declines in the number of customers seeking tax preparation services. four days after hurricane katrina relief supplies and national guard troops are arriving in downtown new orleans. let’s get the latest from mark crumpton.
>> ellen, a vast truck convoy of food and water making its way through the flooded streets friday. along with it came national guard troops with weapons and with orders to retake the streets. the relief comes to 15,000-20,000 hungry and desperate people at the quecks center and thousands more -- convention center and thousands more at the superdome. it came amid blistering criticism from mayor ray nagin and others saying people died in the streets for lack of food, water and medicine. president bush says that the damage along the gulf coast was
