Columnist Steve Carp: Mistakes still plague minor sports

Steve Carp

Thursday, June 17, 1999 | 12:49 p.m.

Steve Carp is a Las Vegas Sun sports writer. Reach him at carp@lasvegassun.com or 259-4087.

So, roller hockey is back? Another minor league pro basketball team wants to give it a go? And yet another pro soccer franchise thinks it can do what the others couldn't?

It's easy to dismiss these latest sporting ventures as acts of futility and say they have no shot of making it in Las Vegas. But the question to be asked is, "Why are these people doing this? Don't they know the history of pro sports here?"

And the expected response would be, "You don't understand. This time, we're going to do it differently. We're not going to make the same mistakes the others did."

Oh really?

Little do they realize it, but by merely uttering those words, these sporting entrepreneurs will have made their first mistake.

Because while their intentions may be noble, the backers of Roller Hockey International, the International Basketball League and A-League Soccer fail to have the one thing at their disposal that would permit them to make such a comment with a degree of accuracy.

None of them own their own venue.

If you own your own building, you, as landlord, control all the revenue streams. You control the tickets, the parking, the concessions and the merchandising. You control the luxury boxes, the club seating and the signage. And you would control the title sponsorship of your building, which may be the most lucrative revenue stream of all.

Control the revenue streams and at least you have a fighting chance of making it. The owners of these teams are, or would be, tenants. And tenants don't get to share the wealth. At least the vast majority of them don't.

Look no further than the Thunder as Exhibit A. The Thunder had to pay the Thomas & Mack Center a hefty amount of rent to play its International Hockey League games. And the team got very little back when it came to parking, concessions, et al.

Had owners Hank and Ken Stickney been able to build their own arena or at least get a sweetheart deal from someone else who was building one, the Thunder would be alive and skating today.

Every other failed franchise had the same dilemma. All were tenants. None were landlords. So when you hear the IBL guys proclaim today at their press conference that they won't make the same mistakes that were made in the past by the CBA and the WBL, kindly restrain your laughter.

I will throw a caveat to Yan Skwara, the owner of the proposed pro soccer team. Skwara actually gets it. He said he can't make it work here without his own stadium.

He'd like to build a 10,000-seat soccer-only facility which his company would run.

But he has yet to obtain the financing -- about $4 million -- to construct such a venue. Nor does he have the land to build it on.

The other ventures don't even have such plans. Nor do any of them have the other elixir -- a national television deal -- which would bring some money into the coffers.

That means no exposure and no revenue. That's a deadly combination when you're trying to run a successful sports franchise anywhere, not just in Las Vegas.

Still, these businessmen remain hell-bent on making a go of it. Good luck to them. Just don't tell us how this time you're going to do it right. Because without your own building, you can't.