Have you heard about the Federal Expresses? It's a potential football team in a new corporate league the cbs people have pinned to the drawing board. If this goes through, we will be rooting for the Union Carbides or the Meridian Bancorps, the Reynolds Metals or maybe even the Digital Equipments.
In auto racing, they plaster the cars with brand names and turn them into speeding billboards, but if companies get football teams, the fans will see 22 rampaging advertisements on every play. This will take the game back to its roots in the 1920s, when we had the Decatur Staleys, owned by Staley's starch company, which later became the Chicago Bears. There was the Oorang Indians, Jim Thorpe's team named for the Oorang Airedale Kennels. In Japan today there are many corporate teams, including the Nippon Ham Fighters, owned by a pork producer, but that's baseball. Back in our country, maybe someday we will get the Hormel Spams.
A lot of fans like to complain about too much shill in sports, where even the scoreboard has a sponsor. As it stands, a relief pitcher in baseball can't enter the ninth inning without announcers mentioning Rolaids or the NYNEX "call to the bullpen." If this keeps up much longer, expectorating on the field will have a sponsor. But there's a good side to corporate ownership. It gives the fan a new way to enjoy the game: buying shares in the company that owns the team.
Right now, the N.F.L. opposes corporate ownership of teams, and until it changes the rule or the new league comes along, the best opportunities in share buying are in basketball, baseball and hockey. Paramount Communications (soon to merge with Viacom) owns the Knicks and the Rangers, Comsat owns the Denver Nuggets, and Disney has the Mighty Ducks of Anaheim, California.
For the price of a good seat at an Atlanta Braves game, you can buy a $17.50 share of Turner Broadcasting, which along with the cable and other stuff makes you the owner of 58 cents worth of the Braves and the Atlanta Hawks. For a $50 share of Anheuser-Busch, you get 39 cents worth of the Cardinals; and for a $60 share of the Tribune Co. in Chicago, you get $1.84 worth of the Cubs, not that you would want it, but some people are masochists. With Disney, your $42 gets you 9 cents worth of the Ducks.
These are only rough guesses, but what really matters is that buying a share puts you in partnership with the big shots. What comes out of your pocket when they raise the ticket prices can go back into your pocket if the stock price goes up. You can pay for your hot dogs with the dividends.
A pro team can be a huge potential moneymaker no matter how much crying you hear about selfish players who demand salaries greater than the GNP of small nations. For companies in the entertainment business, the idea is to end up with at least one pro franchise, plus the cable network to broadcast the games, the stadium with skyboxes and concessions, the movie rights and the foreign rights, and a shopping channel to sell the fan memorabilia. They can put Pete Rose on there eight hours a day signing baseballs while they show film clips of his greatest hits, with a special ceremony when he breaks the record and pens his one millionth autograph.