Atlantic Yards/Pacific Park Report

GQ on March 24 published Exclusive: The Jay-Z Interview  and two of the exchanges with interviewer Frazier Tharpe are relevant to Atlantic Yards and the Nets. Q. You also have a discipline of almost shrugging off any kind of perception of a loss. “The Nets could go 0 for 82 and I’d look at you like, This shit gravy.” A. Yeah, because it’s all wins. If I had point-zero-zero-zero-one of the Nets, I won. It’s like: I had ownership in a basketball team. In Brooklyn. That actually relied on me heavily to get to Brooklyn, right? So yeah, I didn’t win the championship with the Nets. I still won. That is true, as we've known for a while, thanks especially to an unskeptical New York Times article Aug. 16, 2012, With Arena, Rapper Rewrites Celebrity Investors’ Playbook . My critique . And yes, Jay-Z still won. As I once wrote, in Jay-Z’s hip-hop of distraction , "you can't hustle a hustler." Yes, I wrote that before I knew the Jay-Z line , "Can’t out-hustle a hustler, you ...

The Brooklyn Nets and associated businesses are "only" worth $6 billion ( link ), according to CNBC's new list of NBA valuations, "only" a 7.1% increase over last year's $5.6 billion . That mean's they're ranked tenth in the league, rather than eighth last year. Still,  they're only a notch behind the  Philadelphia 76ers , worth an estimated $6.1 billion, and the  Miami Heat , valued at $6.05 billion. "The average value of an NBA team is now $5.52 billion, 18% more than a year ago," CNBC's Mike Ozanian writes . He cited  the impact of the new NBA TV deal, the role of private equity, teams being sold over multiple years, and new arena for the Los Angeles Clippers. For the Nets, he cited revenue of $409 million, EBITDA (Earnings Before Interest, Taxes, Depreciation, and Amortization) of $80 million, and 13% debt as a percentage of value. The calculation, as always, is a bit of an art, relying on both revenues, including if the team o...

It’s not too early to state that the Nets (0-5) are not just a bad team," wrote Substack columnist Steve Lichtenstein Oct. 30. "They are also acutely displeasing to a basketball purist’s eyes." The fan site NetsDaily suggested the Nets "may have one of worst defenses in NBA history." Meanwhile, as NetsDaily editor-in-chief Anthony Puccio observed , "Nets ticket prices seem high for a tanking team. $44 to get in the door; $100+ to sit in the 100s."  Still, the Nets sold out their first two home games, at the new capacity of 17,548 (from 17,732, to account for new entertainment space). Well, surely they want to put a decent team on the floor while aiming for a choice draft spot, but it's a "sports entertainment corporation" (to quote subsidy skeptic Bettina Damiani) first and foremost, so there are different reasons people might attend, including fans of other teams, tourists, and others seeking a basketball experience that, however not...

Most of us would be pretty happy with a 9% return on our investments. For Joe and Clara Wu Tsai, who own 85% of BSE Global (with the Koch family owning the rest), that figure shows they're lagging rival NBA franchises, as values ever rise. NBA TEAM VALUES 2025: WARRIORS LEAD AT $11.33B, AVERAGE HITS $5.5B , Sportico recently reported , with the Brooklyn Nets and their parent company valued at $6.22 billion, up from $5.7 billion last year.  Screenshot from Sportico Don't cry for the Tsais. In 2023, Sportico valued the Nets and the parent company at $3.98 billion, which was only 13th in the 30-team league. Then came a 43% increase in 2024. What changed last year? The emergence of an eager investor, the Koch family, vaulting the value to fourth in the league. These numbers aren't definitive. Note that CNBC in February valued BSE Global at $5.6 billion, and Forbes' last year set a $4.8 billion value , with its 2025 valuation is expected soon. Major factors This year, Spo...

Substack sports columnist Steve Lichtenstein, in his Oct. 12 The Too-Early Preseason Assessments Of Nets' Draft Haul , wrote mainly about the four (of five) first-round draft picks who played in the first exhibition game, but added a bonus note about 6'11" 22-year old Fanbo Zeng, who played in the first NBA exhibition in China in six years: I’m over it now, but the ploy I assume was spurred by ownership to play an obviously undeserving China native during Friday’s exhibition had me seething. Ok, maybe if you’re going to have Zeng on the training camp roster, giving him six minutes during the second and fourth quarters can be justified as a goodwill gesture to the hosts. But did the Nets have to play him in the overtime? The Suns targeted Zeng mercilessly by forcing him to switch onto their ballhandlers, where he got toasted, and then the Nets rarely passed him the ball on offense. That helped lead to a loss. Added Lichtenstein: Joseph Tsai, from all appearances, wa...

A Sept. 29 column ( link ) by Fortune's Diane Brady offered "insights from CEOs shaping the next wave of live entertainment," including this squib about the emerging "ecosystem" of sports, media, and events: Create an ecosystem. Brooklyn Sports & Entertainment CEO Sam Zussman is proud of what he’s built around the Brooklyn Nets and New York Liberty, but his goal is to turn the Barclays Center into a destination for the community. (The latest example is the Brooklyn Basketball Training Center.) That vision is a big reason why Brooklyn Nets owner (and Alibaba Chairman and cofounder) Joe Tsai chose Zussman. “Sam came in as an outsider and saw BSE Global as a venue-based entertainment business with IP that’s proprietary to us,” Tsai told me recently. “I was looking for someone who can create an ecosystem.” While Zussman says the goal is to “build generational fandom,” the BSE CEO views sports as “a vertical of entertainment” with talent, partners and facilitie...

The Brooklyn Nets sponsor an annual Practice in the Park. This year's version, 11 am to 5 pm on Saturday, Sept. 27, will be held at Potomac Playground in Bedford-Stuyvesant and sponsored by  local businesses  Barclays Center partner  Ticketmaster, with music, a youth clinic, streetball scrimmages, contests, and swag.   "This is your chance to see the team lock in, build chemistry, and bring that Brooklyn energy before the season tips off," the announcement states. Or, perhaps, to see one set of players before they get replaced.  As NetsDaily noted , about 2,500 people attended at the same location last year, but when the Nets had superstars and a bigger venue, the event in 2022 attracted 8,000 people to Brooklyn Bridge Park. Enter Type.Set.Brooklyn   Also, Type.Set.Brooklyn, the new online digital property launched by Brooklyn Nets parent company BSE Global, will be sponsor the Type.Set.Brooklyn Celebrity Game, "a 5v5 clash celebrating Brooklyn’s cultural...

Fifteen years ago, Jay-Z (aka Shawn Carter), in an appearance on the on Howard Stern Show keyed to the release of his book Decoded , offered some illuminating observations about sports team ownership that soon were no longer accurate. HS: "Are you making any money with the Nets... It's gotta be profitable, right?" SC: "No, It's not really profitable." HS: "It's just an ego thing?" SC: "Yeah, NBA teams are like paintings for billionaires." As I wrote in 2013, Jay-Z had done very, very well with the team and the arena, leveraging his career, advertising, and a free suite. And the value of the team , thanks to the Brooklyn move and the NBA's new collective bargaining agreement, had skyrocketed. Today, the increase in value is exponential, goosed by the government assistance including tax breaks, direct subsidies, tax-exempt financing, and more.   About Joe Tsai      A July 28 interview with BSE Global owner,  AMBITION: Joe Tsai...

The recent BSE Global June Community Update announced: We are committed to positively impacting surrounding communities through various initiatives and programs. See the below recap of June events and activations hosted by the Brooklyn Nets, the New York Liberty, the Long Island Nets, Brooklyn Basketball, and BSE Global. Positive impact, marketing juice, sponsor involvement--it's all connected. Keep in mind that the BSE Global/Nets/Liberty spending is dwarfed by the huge benefit, for example, of a tax-exempt venue and tax-free construction debt. But if the Nets are aiming to build "generational fandom," as corporate leaders say , they're on the way.  School clinics For example, consider the item headed Brooklyn Basketball: Department of Education Clinics: On June 25, Brooklyn Basketball completed its second year of free in-school basketball clinics for elementary and middle schoolers in public schools across Brooklyn. This year, the program reached over 32,000 student...

More content from the Brooklyn Nets, getting together some old heads from the New Jersey Nets: "Kenyon Martin Reflects on the 2000s Nets with Kenny Anderson, Derrick Coleman & Buck Williams." The summary: "In Episode 2 of One Night in Brooklyn, presented by Beam Suntory, Kenyon Martin, Derrick Coleman, Kenny Anderson, and Buck Williams reflect on the Nets’ early 2000s era. Kenyon dives into what made those teams special, while Derrick shares a classic story about dunking on Shaq." Right, we wouldn't be watching it without that sponsor, "The House of Suntory: The Nature and Spirit of Japan." (The YouTube version below is shorter than the version on the Nets' website .)   The former ballers, perhaps loosened a bit by their host's spirits, are companionable raconteurs, and surely they have enough to say about basketball. Different candor But some might remember a May 2016 interview (my coverage ) with Martin by then-Yahoo columnist Adrian Wo...

It seems like a step back, like from Brooklyn to Piscataway. But maybe it reflects the limited upside, at least in the next few years, of the Brooklyn Nets, at least on the court. Brooklyn Nets Name All In Won as Official Jersey Patch Partner , the team announced, citing a "multiyear partnership" with  "a New York-based premier medical billing company"--um, the kind of business that wouldn't be needed with a more streamlined health care system. No dollar figure was announced, and no one's leaking numbers like the reported record $30 million a year paid by the trading platform WeBull in 2021, when the Nets had a superstar trio and were slated to be on national television a lot. It's the first marketing partnership for All in Won, founded in 2017 by Krystal McKenna. NetsDaily noted that the company's goal is to connect not with consumers, but health care executives. If, as NetsDaily noted, the "league average is $10.9 million. with deals ranging...

Three sports team owners, including Clara Wu Tsai of the Brooklyn Nets and New York Liberty, spoke at the Forbes Iconoclast Summit June 5 in Manhattan, with Wu Tsai suggesting that the WNBA offers a "huge investment opportunity" and Marc Lasry, former co-owner of the NBA’s Milwaukee Bucks, saying "it's never a good time to sell" a sports team, given steadily rising valuations. (See coverage in Forbes and NetsDaily .) Nobody, of course, mentioned that the leagues are monopolies, that team ownership offers great tax breaks, and that team owners leverage subsidies, tax breaks, and other benefits from their host cities and states. To Forbes' Randall Lane, Wu Tsai confirmed that, yes, the Liberty just got a minority investment that valued the team at $450 million. (Previously, it was just "reportedly." ) He congratulated her on the path to the professed $1 billion valuation: "So that number is good." "Number's great," said Wu T...

The Barclays Center yesterday released its April 2025 event calendar, with eleven ticketed events: five Brooklyn Nets games, five concerts, and one high-school all-star basketball game. That's an slight decline from April 2024, with twelve ticketed events, though still better than April 2023, with only eight ticketed events, The arena typically leaves a good fraction of dates in April and even May open for potential Brooklyn Nets playoff games, but the team has already been eliminated. A private event The arena no longer announces most private events , which disserves neighbors who should be told about potentially disruptive crowds.  But it does note events that serve the arena operator's interests. The calendar does note a "community convening event" on the morning of April 7. That turns out to be a free event, "Navigating the Changing Legal and Funding Landscape: Tools and Guidance for Brooklyn Nonprofits," presented by Brooklyn Org and the Social Justice...

From City & State's First Read newsletter ( link ), Feb. 15, a sponsored message from the Brooklyn Nets: Out here, we put the city in authenticity. When Brooklyn builds, we put down roots. Now’s your chance to get in on the ground floor as we build The Brooklyn Way. Lock in your 2025-26 Season Ticket Membership and unlock access to exclusive benefits, rewards, and perks that make every moment mean more. Let’s build the Brooklyn way! What exactly does "authenticity" mean here? The name "Brooklyn"? The use of a hip-hop reference in an ever-flexible slogan? The continuity of a roster that keeps changing? The ability to benefit from a tax-exempt site?  Screenshot from First Read This has been a continuous theme in brand identity since 2012. Remember, you're only rooting for the clothes.  About the Nets Thing is, the Nets, for now, have a lousy, albeit overachieving, team, and are hoping to use draft capital and "cap space" (budget for players) to ...

Screenshot from CNBC So CNBC, following Forbes and Sportico, is now offering its own NBA  team valuations , declaring that the average team is worth $4.66 billion, thanks significantly to a new media rights deal in which the 30 teams share $6.9 billion a year over 11 years. That's $230 million per team. The article is by Mike Ozanian, who formerly did such valuations for Forbes. The  calculation , as always, is a bit of an art, relying on both revenues, including if the team owner controls the economics of the arena (as does BSE Global, with the Barclays Center), and valuations set by prices for sales or investment slices. About the Nets The Brooklyn Nets' valuation of $5.6 billion, sixth in the league, likely excludes the WNBA's New York Liberty (and the unspecified slice of the Paramount Theater), and is slightly less than the full BSE Global transaction when selling a slice to the Koch family, of an  estimated $5.8 billion  (or more). Sportico last December v...

It wouldn't be the first time. As I reported ( link ) in September 2015, both Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams and Brooklyn-based Mayor Bill de Blasio modeled new "Brooklynified" jerseys for the NHL's New York Islanders, about to move to the Barclays Center. BP Reynoso with  KidSuper founder Colm Dillane Well, that didn't work out well, but there's indeed precedent for elected officials boosting a home team jersey.  Remember Gov. Kathy Hochul with a Brooklyn Nets jersey in November 2021, or Sen. Chuck Schumer, Borough President Marty Markowitz, Mayor Mike Bloomberg, and Gov. George Pataki all with Nets jerseys , in January 2004, after the team was purchased? Enter BP Reynoso One surprising, but not shocking, variation is seeing Brooklyn Borough President Antonio Reynoso appear last October in a press release and photo boosting a new Brooklyn Nets merchandise collection, rocking a $995 leather varsity jacket , from the Brooklyn-based brand KidSuper. The ...

A Nov. 14, 2024 press release, Brooklyn Nets Unveil 2024-25 Nike NBA City Edition Uniform, Created With Renowned Artist KAWS , told us: The Brooklyn Nets have unveiled their 2024-25 Nike NBA City Edition Uniform, created with renowned artist and Brooklyn resident, KAWS. The Nets remain the first and only professional sports team the Brooklyn-based artist has collaborated with. Year two of the partnership further expands upon the Nets’ commitment to highlighting local tastemakers and leading creators from Brooklyn to celebrate the unique culture found within the borough and is an example of how the team continues to elevate their retail offerings to reflect the fanbase’s growing interest in fashion and style, including launching a private label, premium merchandise line, bǝrō. KAWS is the third icon from Brooklyn that the team has paid homage to through the NBA City Edition program after previously celebrating the lives and legacies of The Notorious B.I.G. and Jean-Michel Basquiat. What...

I wrote ( link ) in December 2019 that the Brooklyn Nets had gone all-in on Biggie Smalls and his Bed-Stuy neighborhood--or had they? Yes, there was Bed-Stuy front and center on the team's 2018-19 Nike City Edition uniform. But Bed-Stuy and Black Brooklyn were absent from the Brooklyn Nets Bar Network, presented by Modelo. There were about 25 bars in a screenshot I took in Brooklyn, Queens, and Manhattan, plus a few in Queens and Staten Island that were omitted. No locations in New Jersey, the longtime previous home of the Nets. And today Well, today's Bar Network is paltrier: 13 locations in Brooklyn, plus one in Staten Island. None in Manhattan, Queens, or New Jersey.   As the map above suggests, the bars in Brooklyn form pretty much a direct route north from Bay Ridge to Greenpoint, with stops in Sunset Park, Park Slope, and Williamsburg. There's one outlier, in Coney Island. Maybe they'd blame Modelo, but you'd think that the enlightened marketers behind th...

You know the Brooklyn Nets are struggling. They're losing games ( "worst defeat in franchise history" ) and tanking, aiming to get a better chance in the loaded 2025 NBA Draft Lottery, which could reset the franchise with new talent, and make it a lure for free agents.  (As columnist Steve Lichtenstein put it,  Nets Mid-Term Grades Won’t Be Displayed Proudly .) So they're offering various promotions to fill the seats, such as no fees on single-game tickets, or a free ticket with a coat donation. In their three previous home games, the announced attendance was: Jan. 4:  Philadelphia 76ers , 17,926 Jan 6: Indiana Pacers , 16,088 Jan. 8: Detroit Pistons , 16,098 Note that attendance doesn't mean gate count, nor does it mean tickets sold. It means tickets distributed. The Barclays Center official holds 17,732 for basketball, so exceeding that means standing room. The team is averaging 17,480 at home as of now, according to ESPN , but the trend line--at least against l...