Vikings Ads: Nauseum

 Vikings Ads: Nauseum



Yesterday's public hearing on the amount of blackmail to be paid for the Vikings new stadium was easily the most glaring recent waste of time. The newspaper account of it was notable mainly for its juxtaposition with the story that Minnesota may go into the hole for another half billion dollars next year, which will be added to the five and a half billion already owed. Hole is an understatement. Try chasm.

But what the hey, there are millionaire investors from the East who aim to prosper on the prairie, and they want a free football field.

At the hearing, one of the suitably-intent appearing solons thought to ask, at last, whether the Vikings made any money in 2010, or ever. That's the question that should have been the first in all discussions of how to best accommodate and enrich absentee owners in the 1% bracket. The second should have been the number of different fans who actually attend games in person. "In person" is a redundancy, obviously. Blame it on a weariness that has finally smothered incredulity.

Of course, the Vikings and 28 other NFL teams refuse to divulge profits, particularly when blackmailing the public for support. Even so, Forbes Magazine, which has gone list-wacky in attempting to outdo the Fortune 500, estimates the Vikings netted $3.75 million in 2010, after having serviced 300 million in team debt. This year, their path to pauperism will be partly stayed by their share of new network and cable TV income amounting to $131 million.

Regarding the second question, in their ad in the Sunday, November 20 Star-Tribune, the Vikings claim a fan base of 2,500,000. The team sells an estimated 60,000 season tickets to an estimated 15,000 buyers whose average purchase is 4 tickets. With a capacity of 64,000 at the Hump, and only a thousand more projected for the new stadium, the number of different people who see a game in person could total 650,000,or about 26% of their fan base. But for that to happen, each season ticket holder would only use one ticket and attend only one game, which, of course, is entirely ludicrous.

So pick a number. Does 10% of the fan base go to one game? How about 7%? Or, keeping in mind the 60,000 season tickets, let's guess 6%, which equals 150,000 of the base, a figure that may be generous. The cost estimate of one billion will hold up until a new and perhaps lower one is submitted. Until then, barring factual refutation, the speculative cost for the speculated number of fans is one billion dollars for 150,000 or fewer.

Given the fact that L'Etoile du Nord is broke, no government, city, county or state, would subject an electorate to that kind of cost/benefit ratio.  Or would one?

The betting here is that the game is almost over. Only a few pesky laws having to do with spending limits and referendums remain to be circumscribed. But, as we have seen with the Twins, dodging those laws will not be a problem.

It is to be devoutly hoped that the end of those dreadful Vikings ads is also in sight. They were produced on the cheap and if people were persuaded by them, I may get back in the business.

They were also less than forthcoming, to wit: in their print ad of November 20, the first bullet point was what the Vikings claim to be their contribution to the new building. They say it's $407 million, but the NFL will kick in a purported amount that varies from $50 million to $150 million, depending on which way the 24/7 media wind is blowing. What is the Wilfs' real number?

The ad also claims income from some future Super Bowl will be $200 million. First, where did that figure come from? Second, no matter its source, the claim is purely academic. Unless, by some miracle, Minneapolis is selected as a neutral site by two teams actually contending for the Super Bowl who have no place else to go, there's little likelihood that the new field will be put to that use anytime soon. Look at the Vikings current standings.

The first Sunday ad crowed that no money for the Vikings would be drawn from the State's General Fund. But the second ad proposed exactly that by listing an assortment of tax sources that, do, in fact, go into the General Fund. In football, that's called a reverse, and sometimes it works. In politics, it almost always does.

Most of the ad space is taken up with the usual blather about jobs, tax income to the state, yad it ta, yad it ta. Those same jobs and those same taxes would also accrue if Minnesota were to invest the billion dollars under discussion in roads and bridges, education, and health care. Which of the two is more beneficial?

If the print ads play fast and loose with the facts, and they do, the TV ad is even more preposterous. That's a pretty good trick. Absurdly derivative, it ham-handedly plagiarizes the Twins Territory theme. It's based on Tradition, supposedly. What tradition is that? The visuals are gauzy, indistinct and not clearly related to much of anything. Significantly, there is no mention of cruisin' Lake Minnetonka, running down traffic cops, nor resisting the fierce threat of an unarmed woman by attempted strangulation, although all are indubitable parts of Our Vikings Tradition.

It's possible that the Occupiers, who represent the other 99%, could mount an effective attempt to slow or stop what now seems to be an inexorable process.
But the Occupiers aren't yet ready. Now is not their time.

Final tally: naked greed wins, we the people lose.

But there are other songs to sing.