Atlantic Yards/Pacific Park Report

I wrote last week about a survey from the Brooklyn Nets that aimed to improve the Barclays Center experience but quite possibly also useful for marketing playoff tickets. Another sweepstakes laneded this week, the Brooklyn Nets Brand Partner Impact Survey, with different questions and somewhat different prizes: not just JetBlue flight vouchers but also Nike Gift Cards, and Brooklyn Nets merchandise packs. This survey ends April 20, so it's not geared to the playoffs. Respondents were first asked to compare their level of engagement this season compared to last, then asked what brands or companies they associate with being official sponsor of the team. They were given lists of brands/companies in various categories and asked to select the official sponsor: Credit Card Sports Betting Online Brokerage Sports Drink Biometric Identity Platform Luxury Outerwear Energy/Gas Provider Other questions included familiarity with various brands, positive/negative opinio...

It's kinda cute, I guess, calling the Barclays Center "The Clays," a partial parallel to shorthanding Madison Square Garden as "The Garden" (which at least refers to an actual thing).  According to language maven Barry Popik , there were some fitful attempts to call it "Clays" or "The Clays" from the arena's 2012 debut, but the nickname was popularized by Brooklyn Nets star Kevin Durant on 10/22/21, in a post-game interview. “Next we got a young, athletic team in Charlotte coming to the ‘clays, so we gotta keep that intensity.” - @KDTrey5 — Nets Smoothies (@NetsSmoothies) October 23, 2021 Hey, KD's a trendsetter, he's cool. That was picked up by team owner  Joe Tsai , who also owns the arena operating company, and even the arena's own Twitter account.   BACK AT THE CLAYS😎 https://t.co/llMXZWEaou — Barclays Center (@barclayscenter) November 16, 2021 It's been mentioned by NetsDaily , the New York Daily News , and the Ta...

Some around the NBA suggest ways the season might resume--not former Nets exec Irina Pavlova, as I wrote --but the evidence against that mounts. On NetsDaily, writes NetIncome (aka Bob Windrem): "Bottom line: There is NO safe place to run practices let alone games. The orders keep being extended and tightened." It's seemed clear for a bit that NBA season must be over. Good for a journalist/superfan to assess it so soberly. I think @barclayscenter will at some point be repurposed for some emergency or crisis-related use. https://t.co/RHhDiOWmK3 — Norman Oder (@AYReport) April 4, 2020

There's something very interesting in the article posted Monday night, 7/1/19, by the New York Post's Josh Kosman,  Why Nets’ deals for Durant, Irving are really going to pay off for Mikhail Prokhorov : a new arena naming rights sponsor: The current sponsor, Barclays, owns the rights through 2032, but is looking to end its contract early because it is no longer building a retail banking presence in the US, sources said. Barclays currently pays roughly $10 million a year, while newer arenas in big cities are getting closer to $20 million a year. “There will be an opportunity in the not too distant future to increase the money from naming rights,” an insider said. Well, we'd never been told that the arena naming rights deal had an opt-out, and "a Nets insider says that’s wrong, that rights aren’t up for renewal until 2032," according to NetsDaily. Then again, we'd never been told the so-called "ironclad" 25-year deal for the New York Islanders t...

NY Post front page You're just rooting for clothes (to quote Jerry Seinfeld)--the Brooklyn Nets' longest-tenured player, Rondae Hollis-Jefferson, is gone after four years , and home-grown All-Star D'Angelo Russell after two years --but the Nets just pulled off an amazing haul, gaining two of the league's ten best players. By acquiring free agent guard Kyrie Irving and forward Kevin Durant (both 2nd Team All-NBA , though Durant has six times been 1st Team), plus established center DeAndre Jordan, the Nets created huge buzz and positioned themselves for future contention and more ticket sales. After all, they were last in the league in attendance this past year, though they ended on a serious upswing. With reasons to bolster the fan base, wrote Forbes's Mike Ozanian, "the days of bottom-of-the league TV ratings for the team should be over." The Nets last year "averaged an NBA-low 0.46 rating on the YES Network" despite decent play. N...

The U.S. Department of Justice announced 3/29/18, Barclays Agrees to Pay $2 Billion in Civil Penalties to Resolve Claims for Fraud in the Sale of Residential Mortgage-Backed Securities : The United States has reached agreement with Barclays Capital, Inc. and several of its affiliates (together, Barclays) to settle a civil action filed in December 2016 in which the United States sought civil penalties for alleged conduct related to Barclays’ underwriting and issuance of residential mortgage-backed securities (RMBS) between 2005 and 2007. Barclays will pay the United States two billion dollars ($2,000,000,000) in civil penalties in exchange for dismissal of the Amended Complaint.  Following a three-year investigation, the complaint in the action, United States v. Barclays Capital, Inc., alleged that Barclays caused billions of dollars in losses to investors by engaging in a fraudulent scheme to sell 36 RMBS deals, and that it misled investors about the quality of the mortgage lo...

Rafi Kohan's entertaining, eclectic book The Arena , subtitled "Inside the Tailgating, Ticket-Scalping, Mascot-Racing, Dubiously Funded, and Possibly Haunted Monuments of American Sport," contains a scooplet of sorts regarding the Barclays Center and the Brooklyn Nets.  Kohan writes , "Jay-Z has been widely credited for the team's color scheme, although Gregg Pasquarelli tells me his firm, SHoP Architects, first pushed the idea." That's certainly plausible, given that Pasquarelli is a design professional and Jay-Z is a tastemaker. Ditto for the team logo. Remember how the Nets credited Jay-Z, but, as NetsDaily discovered , another designer did the real work. The original claim “The inaugural event at Barclays Center, the new home of the Brooklyn Nets, was the perfect time to reveal the new Nets jersey and there was no one more fitting than Brooklyn’s own JAY Z to do it,” Brooklyn Nets and Barclays Center CEO Brett Yormark said in a 9/29/12 press r...

Barclays PLC, whose subsidiary bought naming rights to the Barclays Center, has a history of sketchy behavior, including civil and criminal penalties that, as I argued , should have stripped the arena of the Barclays name. Now there's more to stain the bank's name, a civil complaint that seems destined to lead to a major fine, if not necessarily the sum sought by federal authorities. A 12/22/16 U.S. Department of Justice press release, United States Sues Barclays Bank to Recover Civil Penalties for Fraud in the Sale of Residential Mortgage-Backed Securities : The United States Department of Justice today filed a civil complaint in the Eastern District of New York against Barclays Bank PLC and several of its United States affiliates (together, Barclays), alleging that Barclays engaged in a fraudulent scheme to sell residential mortgage-backed securities (RMBS) supported by defective and misrepresented mortgage loans. As alleged in the complaint, from 2005 to 2007, Barclay...

A press release today, excerpted below, explains that Barclays Capital, already a felon paying huge fines for exchange rate manipulation, will pay $70 million to the state of New York and the Securities and Exchange Commission as a penalty for misleading investors and violating securities laws regarding high-frequency trading. Notably, Barclays "exposed its clients to the predatory traders from whom it promised to protect them," according to the press release from New York State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman. Here's coverage from the Times and  Reuters , and Bloomberg. Below is the press release. A.G. Schneiderman Announces Landmark Resolutions With Barclays And Credit Suisse For Fraudulent Operation Of Dark Pools; Combined Penalties And Disgorgement To State Of New York And Sec Of Over $154 Million Barclays To Pay Total Penalty Of $70 Million – Largest Penalty Ever Levied On A Dark Pool Operator; Admits To Core Facts In The Attorney General’s Lawsuit; Admi...

Today, Morgan Pehme, writer, filmmaker and executive director of the good-government group Effective NY , noted that Barclays agreed to pay an additional $150 million penalty to the New York State Department of Financial Services for misconduct related to automated, electronic foreign exchange (FX) trading. That's on top of many larger fines to the state and federal agencies, as well as a felony plea. As I argued @morganpehme , state contracts seem2 require @Barclays name stripped from @barclayscenter https://t.co/vVdkbThTad @CityAndStateNY — Norman Oder (@AYReport) November 18, 2015 In other words, an elected official need not call for a name change. Rather, they should just ask for contracts to be enforced.

The nature and up-down intensity of Brooklyn Nets fandom has been the subject of much discussion, as noted 5/1/14  on NetsDaily : In a tweet from their own account, the Nets disassociated themselves from Lenn Robbins tweet of Thursday night in which the team's in-house beat writer advised Nets fans to "set your DVD and take notes" on the Raptors home crowd, noting "this is what a playoff crowd sounds like." Robbins later apologized, and Nets fans in a subsequent game were reportedly quite loud. Fandom in Brooklyn? Then again, intense fandom has not exactly penetrated Brooklyn, however much Brooklyn Nets gear pops up around (and beyond) the borough. The night of that subsequent 2014 game, I wandered up Fulton Street and Lafayette Avenue just blocks from the arena. The game was on in most bars and restaurants, but only a fraction of people were watching attentively.  A week earlier, I was in Pittsburgh, the day of a Penguins hockey playoff game...

So the "Barclays Center" has a nice ring to it, right? Well, the bank behind the name has long been tinged by scandal, including a $450 million fine related to LIBOR (London interbank offered rate) manipulations, and a bank-commissioned review that described an "at all costs" attitude. Now comes even more damning evidence, thanks to federal and state investigators, describing a $ 2.4 billion penalty related to a scheme to manipulate spot trading in the foreign exchange (FX) market. And this reminds us of Michael D.D. White's prescient observation, back in August 2012, "I hope future New York Times sports articles start referring regularly to the Ratner/Prokhorov arena as the 'problematically-named Barclays Center' or something else of informative ilk." The $2.4 billion includes payments of $485 million to the New York State Department of Financial Services, $400 million to the Commodities Futures Trading Commission, $710 million...