Celtics owner Wyc Grousbeck is catching more flak for the pending TV deal with CSNNE:
Here you have Grousbeck, owner of the Celtics, negotiating a media rights deal that presumably is favorable to the Celtics franchise. On the other hand, he is the acting chairman of the NBA's planning committee, which is overseeing the NBA's attempts to overhaul its revenue-sharing system. In other words, Grousbeck has to know how the league is planning on building its revenue-sharing system, which is a system that will likely redistribute local broadcasting rights like the one he just signed with Comcast.
Which is the more likely scenario – that Grousbeck would use his inside knowledge of the league's revenue-sharing negotiations to structure a deal that benefits his team the most, or one that benefits the league the most? It would be one thing if the revenue-sharing system were already in place and he just negotiated a deal using that system as his parameters. However, this isn't the case at all. The system isn't even instituted yet; so Grousbeck built his TV deal first, knowing that he as the chairman would have a leadership role and active input in protecting his deal later on.
While Wyc leads the NBA Planning Committee, I doubt the other owners will allow him to craft a plan that unfairly benefits his team. I'm confident what happens in those meetings is being passed along to all owners and they'll be smart enough to detect any wrongdoing.
SB Nation's Tom Ziller chimes in too:
Now talk to me about competitive balance. The Celtics have been great to the team's fans by investing heavily in the product on the court. No doubt that, altruistically, Grousbeck would invest a portion of the CSNNE equity stake's spoils back into the Celtics. But it belies the competitive balance angle completely, because that kind of money isn't available to smaller market teams, and that kind of power of leading the creation of a system around your circumstances.
It'd be like if Spurs owner Peter Holt ran the competition committee and pushed through a system to ban dunks.
Again… I refuse to believe the owners of small market teams would allow the league to craft a deal that doesn't benefit everyone.
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