Sport Agent Steinberg Says NBA Lockout May Drive Fans Away

The National Basketball Association’s labor dispute, which will likely cause the cancellation of some regular-season games, may drive fans away from the league, said sports agent Leigh Steinberg.

“Fans go to sports for a respite from everyday life,” he told the Bloomberg Forum. “If you force-feed them with strikes, it destroys the fantasy. Missing a significant number of games will hurt basketball with fans very much,” said Steinberg, who represents seven NBA players, including John Starks of the New York Knicks.

NBA owners and players disagree over salary-cap levels. The league locked out its players June 30 and has canceled all exhibition games. The regular season is scheduled to begin Nov. 3. However, with neither the players nor owners having budged far from their original positions, some analysts say the season probably won’t start until at least January.

A delay until then would cost the NBA dearly, as fans turn their attention to other sports, said Steinberg, who represents about 70 National Football League and 40 Major League Baseball players.

A hiatus for basketball until January “allows football an unblemished season,” said the agent, who represents 13 of the NFL’s 30 starting quarterbacks. “That puts football ahead with no labor problems. And baseball is having its best season in years. There is enough fan anger about economics anyway that basketball risks a major backlash.”

Steinberg was referring to escalating ticket prices and player salaries throughout major sports. NBA ticket prices rose more than 7 percent last season to an average of $36.32, and the average player’s salary was $2.25 million.

While owners in many sports complain that rising salaries threaten teams’ financial viability, Steinberg said the revenue owners are getting from generous television contracts allows them to pay players lofty sums. NFL teams, for example, will receive an average of $73 million this year from national TV contracts, up from $40 million last year.

Steinberg said it’s important for his clients to do public service and charity work. “We have a requirement in our practice that our clients serve as role models and retrace their roots,” he said. He criticized the attitude of some athletes who believe “it’s a dog-eat-dog world and they have no responsibilities.”

In particular, Steinberg cited NBA star Charles Barkley, who has said that parents rather than athletes should be role models. “It’s a bit disingenuous given the structure of some families in the inner cities to ask parents to be role models, when they may not be present.” Barkley isn’t a Steinberg client.

With the recent surge of player salaries, those athletes who donate to charity can have a major impact, Steinberg said. He offered two of his clients as examples. Drew Bledsoe, quarterback of the New England Patriots, pledged $2 million for a family counseling center in Boston, and Steve Young, quarterback of the San Francisco 49ers gave $2 million to children’s charities in San Francisco, Steinberg said.

Over his career, Steinberg has negotiated more than $2 billion worth of contracts for his clients. The first was in 1975, for Atlanta Falcons quarterback Steve Bartkowski.

Steinberg said his most memorable deal may have been a $42 million, four-year package he negotiated for Young with the Los Angeles Express of the now-defunct U.S. Football League in 1984.

Steinberg and Young had to meet with Express owner William Oldenberg to finalize the contract after most of it had been settled. While Oldenberg was expecting a quick finish, there were hours of work to do, Steinberg said.

“Oldenberg became angry and frustrated. At one point, he entered the room and asked ‘What’s the holdup?”’ the agent said. “When I responded it was the contract’s guarantee language, he threw a big wad of $100 bills and said, ‘Here’s all the guarantees you’ll need.”’

Later Oldenberg, seething with impatience, began poking and punching Young in the chest, Steinberg said. “Steve finally said, ‘If you do that again, I’m going to deck you.”’ Oldenberg had Steinberg and Young escorted out of the building at 3:30 a.m.

“Things came back together in a day or two, but they didn’t prepare me for that in law school,” Steinberg said. That experience and others led him to co-author a recently published book about negotiations, titled “Winning With Integrity”.