Cashing In On Sports
Keep Shooting Till You Score
By Guy Junker

I first learned about the economics of the American Basketball Association in the fall of 1970. That's when I got season tickets for Pittsburgh Condor games. For five bucks.    Actually, what the $5.00 bought was a membership in the "Brisker's Banditos" fan club.   John Brisker was an all-star forward with the Condors. For the five bucks you got an official membership card, tickets to your choice of five games, and a big sombrero that had to be worn to get in the building. My best buddy and I were in ninth grade at the time and we would take the bus downtown to see the games. I still remember walking from Fifth Avenue up to the Civic Arena in a snowstorm with powder piling up on the brims of those ridiculous hats. Attendance was terrible and by early December we received letters from the team that we could use our Brisker's Banditos membership card to get into all the remaining games, roughly two-thirds of the season. So in essence, we had season tickets for $5.00.

There won't be any plans that cheap this fall when the red, white and blue basketball of the ABA returns to Pittsburgh , but taking a family to a Pittsburgh Hard Hats game won't require taking out a second mortgage either. The Hard Hats will be part of an ABA expansion that will see the new version of the league more than double in size. Native Pittsburghers Ken Powell and Charles Fenstersheib co-own the new team that they promise will be family friendly.  

"Prices are going to be such that you can take your family to a game and get everyone a hot dog and not be broke," Powell said from his current home in Miami . He is moving back to Pittsburgh this month and is committed to making this work. "This is not a wooden-nickel operation. If I can say this without sounding brash, we have the money."

Powell and Fenstersheib, fraternity brothers from their days at Pitt, made that money in real estate. Powell says he didn't play basketball and self-admittedly was a scrub on the Allderdice football team.

"My athletic ability was in sports trivia," he joked. And he's hoping his Hard Hats won't themselves become part of a trivia answer to go along with the Rens, Ironmen, Pipers and Piranas, other professional basketball teams that failed here.

The line of skeptics is longer than the cluttered list of failed ventures, but Steve Greenberg isn't standing in it. An executive with the Pirates for 25 years, Greenberg was instrumental in the planning and construction of PNC Park . Now he hopes to help Powell build a basketball franchise and has been working with him as a business consultant on the project.

"I think this can be a successful enterprise," he said. "I'm not convinced those basketball teams in the past had the right approach. They tried to sell it as an alternative to the NBA."

Greenberg points to the success of the Washington Wild Things baseball team of the independent Frontier League and wants the same wholesome family entertainment from the Hard Hats. He thinks having identifiable players, guys that played their high school or college ball in the area, and having the right venue, are keys. The team hopes to announce in April that Duquesne's Palumbo Center will be home. The coach is a Pittsburgh native who will also be announced in April after he resigns his current position.

Powell believes that financially, the Hard Hats are the most solid of the expansion teams and on par with the established teams in Kansas City and Long Beach . You do the math. The franchise fees have been taken care of and they have $750,000 in real cash in the bank. They have budgeted about $185,000 for their coaching staff and trainer. As far as the expense of hiring players, last season the ABA had a salary cap of $125,000 per team. That is expected to go up a little with the league's expansion. They already have a $100,000 sponsor for the team bus and are negotiating television rights with Fox Sports Net. Perhaps most important, they have the right attitude and the pockets to back it up. Powell knows he won't make money for a few years and is prepared to "feed the kitty," as he says.

"He wants to give something back, put money into the community, not take something out. And there is nothing wrong with that," says Greenberg.

For now it all sounds great. Maybe this November some kid will walk through the snow to see Dennis Rodman and his Long Beach Jam team come to town. Even if he has to wear a hard hat as some promotional gimmick to get in, it's a lot cooler than a sombrero.  

Guy Junker covers sports business for Pittsburgh Sports Report.