NBA’s Heat announce layoffs
May 14, 2:21 pm EDT
Buzz up!4 votes PrintMIAMI (AP)—The Miami Heat have laid off employees as the national economic downturn has hit the AmericanAirlines Arena.
Heat team president Eric Woolworth said in a statement that the team had eliminated a small number of positions. Employees who were laid off Wednesday will receive a severance package and be eligible to be rehired.
“The Heat Group and its employees remain focused on delivering a quality experience to guests and sponsors,” Woolworth said in his statement.
A team spokesman said in an e-mail that the Heat weren’t commenting on the number of layoffs that occurred, but the South Florida Sun-Sentinel reported about 20 employees lost their jobs.
“These challenging economic times mandate that every organization maximize efficiencies and remain strong,” Woolworth said.
The newspaper reported that all of the layoffs were made on the business side of team’s operation.
Among those laid off was Wali Jones, the team’s community affairs liaison and a former NBA player and scout. According to the team’s Web site, Jones, who has an economics degree from Villanova, has spent about two decades with the organization.
Advertising revenues are hurting. Ticket sales are down. I think we'll see a lot more cutbacks by teams, in a number of areas. Jerry Jones couldn't find a name sponsor for the new "Cowboys Stadium". Holt's reluctance to get cash strapped may look more visionary than cheap in a year or two.
DX is reporting that draft candidates struggle to get workouts because teams are in cost cutting mode and try to limit their workouts.
Spurs have invited some marginal players to work out for them. At the end, Spurs will likely be one of the team who will have worked out the most players. We can guess that they aren't in a that bad financial shape.
Technically, Stan Kelly was the equivalent of a layoff. They got their Silver Stars announcer to do double duty, paying one salary for two jobs.
That being said, the Heat were outed as a team in financial trouble in the Bill Simmons article on ESPN a few weeks ago, and the Spurs were not.
oh brother, all the owners of these teams are worth billions or at worst triple digit millions...there is no excuse other than them being stingy bas s.
Yeah, Cuban has opened up the purse strings, and you see how many championships he's been able to buy. And how about that Knicks management? They sure as haven't been stingy in the past decade. Could it be that you would have to be stupid to own a business and intentionally lose money?
The Sad thing is that 1 Spare Avg Vet minimum salary is probably more than all salaries from the people laid off combined.
God forbid we give the spare player on the bench a few hundred thousand less to save the poor schmuck and his wife, 2 kids, with a mortgage and car payments, job.
Yeah and most of these "owners" only own a small part of the team, and rely on the city to even have a stadium. They're rich but it's not like all of their money is in cash. It can be tied up in real estate and stock and all sorts of things.
It's gonna shock fans, but pretty soon a lotta teams are gonna be behaving like the Grizzlies. Spurs included.
The Spurs have generally been a very fiscal responsible team. It's not a choice. Never has been.
The real trouble begins for all the teams will be on on the levels of TV contract money. That's the engine for it all and if the TV sponsors think the revenue generated doesn't warrant the costs then look out. Only the strong will survive and as one media reporter stated a awhile back, the NBA gets more free press/marketing in the US media than many think it deserves and far more than it pays for the audience it actually attracts.
The Spurs made the playoffs early this last season
One of the layoffs should have been Jermaine O'Neal, but oh, well . . .
Besides the profits* he has already made, Holt would have made much more after we repeated and possibly even threepeated with Lewie Scoldawg holding down the 4 spot.
*What is the teams value increase when comparing the time of the Scola turndown and now?
Also how would Scoldawgs salary compare when combining the salaries of Finley, Boner, Beno Undies, Kurt Thomas, anyone else I've missed.
There are currently 1 users browsing this thread. (0 members and 1 guests)
Posting Permissions
Reply With Quote
