An Inauguration Bigger Than The Super Bowl

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1. Obamamania -- How Does It Stack Up Against the Super Bowl?



The inauguration of America's 44th President, Barack Obama, is set to eclipse the magnitude and melodrama of the Super Bowl. A week out, the numbers behind the historic event are staggering.



As many as 2 million spectators are expected for the Jan. 20 event. [That's equivalent to the city of Phoenix and all of its suburbs coming for a visit.] Washington city planners and security agencies have not seen anything on this scale since the 1965 inauguration of Lyndon Johnson, attended by 1.2 million people. The Secret Service, which is overseeing inauguration security, last week announced that all four major bridges into Washington will be closed save for pedestrian and bus traffic on Inauguration Day. Close to 20,000 law enforcement officers, agents, and National Guardsman will make up the event's massive security force.



The local economic impact on restaurants, bars, limousine rentals, taxis, small businesses, and airports is expected to exceed the $300,000 to $400 million that a Super Bowl brings. The cost of inaugural ceremonies, parade, balls, 10 giant screen televisions on the National Mall, portable toilets [only 4,100 budgeted for!] and other expenses for the Presidential Inaugural Committee has been pegged at up to $75 million. Comparatively, Super Bowl host committees budget $10 million to $15 million to cover local organizing and logistical issues.



Never mind that their sale is illegal, thousands of the 240,000 free inaugural tickets distributed through congressional offices lurk on the online secondary ticket market, notably on Craig's List, where cagey sellers are conducting clandestine auctions behind "$1" tickets, and others are offering "free tickets with purchase" of $2,000 magnets, T-shirts, and books. As of Monday, 654 such offers were listed on the Washington Craig's List site. The same day, Inaugural Parade tickets advertised on StubHub were going for $2,646 each, on average.



Only about 600 hotel rooms remain available for next week's festivities, out of the approximately 600 properties and 95,000 rooms in the Greater Washington Metropolitan Area cited by the Washington Convention & Visitors Assn. At the Mandarin Oriental, a $200,900 inaugural package includes four nights in the Presidential Suite, Ralph Lauren clothing, a chauffeured Maserati Quattroporte, spa treatments, and daily offerings of Veuve Clicquot and caviar. On a more reasonable scale, the downtown Grand Hyatt Hotel's 888 rooms are sold out from Jan. 16-25, despite the minimum four-night stay requirement mandated by virtually all hotels. [This is also hotels' standard operating procedure during Super Bowl week.] Nearby, the Washington Marriott at Metro Center is offering rooms for $1,000 a night. Their room rate the week after the inauguration? $119 per night. On average, area hotels are charging $500 to $600 per night.



Media coverage will be heavy as well, kicked off improbably by HBO, which is televising a star-studded concert free to all cable and satellite subscribers on Sunday night, attended by Obama and Vice-President-rlect Joe Biden. The cable network paid $1.5 million to the Presidential Inaugural Committee to televise Bill Clinton's kickoff from the Lincoln Memorial in 1993. All networks are planning extensive coverage -- "It's more of an inaugural week than Inauguration Day," said ABC News chief Washington correspondent George Stephanopoulos last week.



Adding to the Super Bowl-like celebrity party aura, on Martin Luther King Day, Jay Z, Beyonc, and such other guests as Mary J. Blige, Diddy, Kanye West, and Rihanna will perform at the "intimate" Concert on the Eve of Change for 1,800, including the President-elect and Mrs. Obama, at D.C.'s Warner Theater. That same night, the "Hey, America Feels Kinda Cool Again" inaugural gala featuring Citizen Cope, Beastie Boys, Sheryl Crow, and Justin Jones will take place across town at the 9:30 Club. Performers at the Tuesday's swearing-in ceremony include Aretha Franklin, Itzhak Perlman, and Yo-Yo Ma. Capping off the day, among the 500 guests confirmed for the official Inaugural Ball are Sting, Elvis Costello, Bono, and Bruce Springsteen.



Meanwhile, the New York Knicks-Washington Wizards regularly scheduled game on Jan. 16 has been swept up in the inaugural fever, with tickets via secondary sources going for way more than Wizards home tickets have commanded so far this season. You know you're witnessing the ultimate in mega-events when a Knicks-Wizards game is awash in stardust!



2. NFL Playoff Picture Comes Into Sharper Focus



And then there were four. Although ratings were down for the NFL Divisional playoff games played Saturday and Sunday, as compared with their counterparts a year ago, NFL football, and playoff football in particular, continues to top the Nielsen charts week after week. Even the lowest-rated game of the weekend, Saturday's Arizona-Carolina rout, which earned slightly over a 15 rating, beat out all other programming on all networks by a large margin -- including the star-studded "Golden Globes," which earned only a 14.6 overnight. What's more, both CBS and Fox report that this week's NFL Conference Championship game advertising inventory are almost completely sold out.



Attendance is strong as well. In Arizona, hosting its first-ever NFC Championship game, tickets sold out in a mere six minutes after going on sale Sunday afternoon, according to the home team Cardinals. University of Phoenix Stadium facilities managers increased the stadium's normal capacity of 64,500 to more than 70,000 -- a far cry from the Cardinals' earlier playoff game against the Atlanta Falcons, for which the NFL had to grant the team two 24-hour extensions before it sold out and avoided a local television blackout.



Cumulatively, the four teams still vying to get in the Super Bowl -- the Cardinals, Eagles, Ravens, and Steelers -- were up +2.2 over the course of the regular season. The Eagles and Steelers, both teams also in the NFL's Top 10 of team merchandise sales, posted modest attendance gains of 1.4% and 1.3% respectively, while the Ravens saw a 0.2% increase and the Cardinals were down 0.7%. After their historic playoff journey, I wouldn't be surprised to see a reverse 7.0% increase, or higher, in season ticket renewals for the 2009 season.



3. Amount of Money Owed to Fired NFL Coaches [This Means You, Al Davis]



Four NFL coaches were fired in the Great Coaching Purge of 2008, but don't think that the teams are off the hook for the money left on these coaches' contracts. Here is what each coach is owed:



T4. $2 million -- Rod Marinelli, Detroit Lions



T4. $2 million -- Eric Mangini, New York Jets



3. $2.6 million -- Lane Kiffen, Oakland Raiders*



2. $12 million -- Romeo Crennel, Cleveland Browns



1. $20 million -- Mike Shanahan, Denver Broncos



* Under dispute. In October, Kiffen filed a grievance with the NFL to recover the lost salary he claims he is owed by Raiders owner Davis. The issue has yet to be resolved.



4. College Football Season Ends



Just a shade behind the NFL, Thursday night's Florida-Oklahoma FedEx BCS National Championship Game earned a 17.0/27 Nielsen rating on Fox, up 9% from last year's LSU-Ohio State match up, according to Nielsen. Before Sunday's 20.9 Eagles-Giants game, the 17.0/27 marked Fox's highest-rated primetime program since last season's American Idol finale, which earned a 17.5/27.



As happy as Urban Meyer must have been after winning the BCS National Championship, he was probably even happier when he remembered the performance clause in his contract. Meyer made $137,500 for winning the SEC Championship and playing for the BCS title, and earned $100,000 more for winning the big game. Not all is lost for Bob Stoops, on the other hand, as he received $130,000 in bonuses for winning the Big 12 and playing for the National Championship -- in addition to a $3 million bonus he received for finishing his 10th season at Oklahoma. To put it all in perspective, however, Meyer made $2,500 less in bonuses than Brady Hoke made as head coach of 12-2 Ball State this year [$240,000].



And here's a look at how the top five schools in athletic department budgets fared during the 2008-09 college football bowl season:



1. Ohio State, $115.4 million budget [L 24-21 vs. Texas, Tostitos Fiesta Bowl]



2. Texas, $101 million [W 24-21 vs. Ohio State, Tostitos Fiesta Bowl]



3. Wisconsin, $86.6 million [L 42-13 vs. Florida State, Champs Sports Bowl]



4. Tennessee, $86.5 million [no bowl appearance]



5. Florida, $83.1 million [W 24-14 vs. Oklahoma, FedEX BCS National Championship]



5. PGA Tour Season Tees off in HI -- Mercedes and Sony



Talk about little fanfare. The 2009 PGA Tour season began last week in Maui with barely a whisper, which will escalate to a scream pretty darn quickly if a certain Tiger Woods' rehabilitating knee keeps him away from the Tour a week longer than necessary. At least PGA Tour executives can take comfort in the realization that most of their sponsor commitments and television deals extend through 2012 or longer, allowing them to ride out the current recession with minimal impact, and that they have yet to lose any tournament title sponsors from the economy.



While Geoff Ogilvy walked off the Plantation Course in Kapalua with a $1.12 million check and the year's first win, change may be in the tropical air for the Mercedes, rumors now abound that Mercedes may walk away from its PGA sponsorship agreement and the $20 million burden of hosting the season-opening tournament as early as 2010. PGA Tour Commissioner will only say that the Tour is "looking at some options in terms of what is the best future for this tournament," both in terms of sponsorship and location.



Woods, meanwhile, canceled his teleconference participation in Monday's media day for the Buick Invitational at Torrey Pines, an indication that he probably won't play in next month's San Diego tour stop on the PGA's West Coast Swing. The February Buick Invitational and late July Buick Open have in recent years been givens for Woods' participation, thanks to his former sponsorship deal with the beleaguered car company.



6. Pulling the Trigger?



In Chicago, local sources report that Tribune Co. is "close to selecting a winning bid" for the Chicago Cubs from three finalist would-be ownership groups. According to the sources, the company "could make a decision within a week to 10 days," as reported in Sports Business Journal.



In November, three serious prospective ownership groups presented offers for the Cubs: the family of locally based investment banking firm Incapital Holdings Founder and CEO Thomas Ricketts; Chicago real estate mogul Hersch Klaff; and a group led by Clarion Capital Partners LLC Managing Partner Marc Utay.



7. Or Gun Shy?



Has MLB's Hot Stove Thermostat Ever Been Turned Down So Low?



Last week, The Boston Herald led its counterparts in noting the current economic downturn is clearly the main factor for the molasses-slow pace of free-agent signings this year, only 60 of the stated 223 MLB free agents having signed contracts as of late last week, and such high-profile stars as Manny Ramirez are, in the middle of January, still out there looking for a job. Teams and free agents, the paper went on to say, are playing a "game of chicken, with each side hoping that a longer wait translates into a better deal."



Mega agent Scott Boras, appearing on the new MLB Network's Hot Stove last week, said: "I don't think any businesses out in the world are guaranteed a substantial sum of money to begin with. There are [only] eight or nine franchises that are going to receive $30 million to $40 million in revenue-sharing." In a separate interview on the Yes! Network, Boras added: "While we have a lull in our national economy, the baseball economy is one that has a safety net around it because they've got vendor contracts that keep revenues forthcoming for five or six years at a time When you go to look at baseball revenues, and the success of this industry in particular, apart from the economy, we can say that even if baseball took a 5% or 10% decline in its revenues, which were record revenues in 2008, you are going to have still what would be record revenues near $6 billion in 2009."



While virtually all MLB teams are keeping a close eye on costs and minimizing season ticket increases for their fans -- if not cutting process outright -- perhaps all should borrow a page from the creative scorebook of the minor league Akron Arrows, who are offering generous merchandise tickets in a fan "economic recovery plan."



8. Meanwhile in New York



As widely reported last week, the city of New York under Mayor Michael Bloomberg will relinquish the use of a dozen-seat luxury box at the new Yankee Stadium, "in exchange for whatever revenue the Yankees generate by selling the seats, minus the cost of marketing them," according to The New York Times. The city, according to government e-mail messages made public, had finagled the luxury box in exchange for 250 parking spaces and other perks for the Yankees organization. The Yankees, under their hastily arranged agreement with the city, will be "allowed to keep the parking spaces and use of the billboards, and the city will be guaranteed at least $100,000 for each baseball season, even if no one buys the suite."



While the market value of the suite has not been publicized, similar suites in the new ballpark are being sold for as much as $600,000 per year.



Also on Thursday, the city's Industrial Development Agency is scheduled to hold a hearing on the Yankees' and Mets' request for about $400 million in municipal bonds -- $260 million for the Yankees and $82 million for the Mets -- to finance the rest of the construction on their respective ballparks. The New York Post describes the teams' status for bonds as "triple tax-free" -- at the same time Yankees President Randy Levine was making the media rounds insisting that "there are no taxpayer funds that are being used to fund this stadium, which is different than 99.9% of stadiums all over the world." Indeed.



9. Premier League: For Richer, for Poorer



Manchester City owner Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan, a member of the Abu Dhabi royal family with a reported fortune of pounds 15 billion, toppled Roman Abramovich in British Football's Rich List. This is the first time that the Chelsea owner has been knocked off the top spot since buying Chelsea in the summer of 2003. Abramovich has slipped to third in the list behind second-place Lakshmi Mittal, the 58-year- old Indian industrialist worth pounds 12.5 billion who joined Formula One's Bernie Ecclestone and Flavio Briatore after investing in fellow West London club Queen's Park Rangers in December 2007.



The Russian oil tycoon supposedly lost an estimated pounds 3 billion in the economic downturn, reducing his wealth to around an estimated pounds 7 billion. Celtic shareholder and Irish entrepreneur Dermot Desmond is the richest person in Scottish football, eighth on the list overall, said to be worth pounds 1.2 billion. The Rich List says David Beckham is the richest player associated with British football with a reputed personal fortune of pounds 125 million, ahead of second place Michael Owen [ pounds 40 million] and third place Wayne Rooney [ pounds 35 million]. Manchester United boss Sir Alex Ferguson is No. 78 on the list [ pounds 22 million]; Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger is No. 92 [ pounds 14 million].



On the less affluent side, the owners of EPL club Liverpool have been given an extra six months to pay back a pounds 350.5 million debt owed to lenders the Royal Bank of Scotland and Wachovia. The loan, made last January, was due to be repaid or refinanced by Jan. 25, but the banks agreed to extend it to July 24. [The club is paying pounds 30 million per year in interest on its loans.] The extension was granted following a written request from Kop Football, Liverpool's holding company co-owned by Americans Tom Hicks and George Gillett. The loan was originally taken out to cover the club's running costs and also included a pounds 60 million contribution to be spent on the construction of a new stadium. Liverpool hopes that by July they will have qualified for the Champions League for the 2009-10 season, securing vital additional income for that period.



10. This Bites!



In a game last Tuesday against Buffalo, Ruutu allegedly bit the gloved thumb of Sabres enforcer Andrew Peters during an altercation. Ironically, Ruutu received no penalty on the play while Peters received a minor for unsportsmanlike conduct. The next day, however, he was suspended for two games and fined $31,700 by the NHL. Here are the top five incidents of biting in sports.



5. Conrad Dobler - Shedding light on what goes on at the bottom of an NFL dog pile, Dobler admitted to biting the finger of Viking's defensive tackle Doug Sutherland back in 1997. Said Dobler: "He put his fingers through my face mask, and I don't think they were there to stroke my mustache."



4. Aron Bright - In a move that would make Ozzy Osbourne proud, Bright, the Head Wrestling Coach at Avon High School, was suspended for two weeks after biting the head off of a live sparrow to motivate his team. Bright later resigned from his position and acknowledged that maybe he "wasn't thinking clearly."



3. Mike Tyson - It might be surprising to see Iron Mike so low on this list. Regardless, his biting history is very well documented, including the infamous nibble on Evander Holyfield's ear in 1997 and his gnaw of Kevin McBride's nipple in 2005.



2. Peter Filandia - The captain and assistant coach of Victoria Football League's Port Melbourne was suspended for ten matches after he bit the scrotum of an opponent. Filandia, who became entangled with his opponent and could not breathe, claimed that the bite was a "reflex action."



1. Francisco Gallardo - The Sevilla midfielder helped a teammate celebrate a goal by bending down and biting his penis. Although Gallardo was not suspended for the incident, I'm sure that teammate Jose Antonio Reyes wishes he was.