As expected, word that Mario Lemieux might be interested in buying the Penguins lit the internet on fire yesterday. Here’s a rundown of some of the fallout.
Both Cory Humes at Titletahn and Shawn Hoffman at Squawking Baseball note their reservations about Lemieux taking over.
The Pensblog checks in, of course.
Brian at Raise the Jolly Roger feels similarly to the way I do; it’d be cool, but just because Mario is a good hockey owner doesn’t make him a good baseball owner and it’s probably not happening anyways, so let’s not worry about it.
At Bucs Dugout, Charlie talks to Frank D from Pensburgh about what kind of owner Lemieux would make.
Finally, DK has an update at the Post-Gazette today with one very interesting paragraph about halfway down about Lemieux and Burkle’s potential plans:
Each team’s television rights are owned by FSN Pittsburgh, and each is generally satisfied with its rights fees. Another possibility is starting a fledgling cable network, which is becoming more common for sports franchises. Those tend to need more than one major league team to sustain year-round programming.
I’ve said before that one of the huge differences between the Pirates and teams like the Yankees, Mets, and Red Sox is that while the team might be “satisfied” with their deal with FSN Pittsburgh, that deal can’t compare to what teams that own their own networks make. The Pirates are obviously not in position to do something about this right now. If they were to pull off of FSN Pittsburgh and launch Fam-a-leeTV and demand a particular rate from each cable company per subscriber to carry Pirate games, they’d be laughed at. If the jointly owned Pirates and Penguins were to launch launch PittsburghSportsTV, they’d have to be taken seriously because of the immense popularity of the Penguins in the region.
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