NEW ORLEANS -- Talks to keep the Saints in New Orleans broke
off Tuesday and the state's chief negotiator said the team's owner
was trying to force up the price to potential buyers while
threatening a move to Mississippi.
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A week ago, we thought we might be getting close, but they came back with a Mickey Mouse deal today. ” |
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— Saints owner Tom Benson |
Saints owner Tom Benson countered that he was "shocked and
frustrated by the allegation that the Saints acted in bad faith."
"The opposite is true," he said.
"A week ago, we thought we might be getting close, but they
came back with a Mickey Mouse deal today."
Benson and Steve Perry, Gov. Mike Foster's chief of staff,
exchanged their comments hours apart at dueling news conferences
following the collapse of a two-hour negotiating session aimed at
keeping the Saints in New Orleans.
Perry said the Saints had not even countered the state's latest
proposals and left the meeting without making any demands. Benson
said the state slammed the door on the Saints, although his team
had left the meeting expecting to be talking with state officials
again later.
Perry said the Saints are still under contract to play in the
state-owned Louisiana Superdome through 2005 -- an obligation the
state was willing to renegotiate as part of a sweeter deal.
"Under that strategy of walking away from us, they're walking
away from $100 million here in the next few years while they're
bound to play in the Dome," Perry said. "It doesn't make sense
from any business point of view for this to be done unless they
have an attempt to go out and try to pit suitor against suitor to
try to leverage it and put it together quickly."
Benson, visibly upset and at times pounding the desk at the news
conference, was flanked by photos of proposed stadiums in the New
Orleans area, including one near Canal Street about 10 blocks from
the Superdome, where the Saints now play.
He acknowledged that they had talked about moving to Mississippi
if negotiations with Louisiana did not work out. Failing that,
Benson said, there was talk of selling the club.
Perry said the state will seek to put together an investment
group to purchase the team from Benson.
The deal in Mississippi would include a new stadium, training
facility and a sports-themed amusement park, with parking and
tailgating areas, according to Jack Capella, a lawyer for the state
agency that runs the Superdome. The complex would be just off
Interstate 10. Five casinos would guarantee suite sales under the
deal the Saints outlined, Capella said.
The NFL declined comment.
Timothy Ryan, dean of the college of business administration at
the University of New Orleans, said the day's events seemed to be
part of the negotiating process.
"I've never seen negotiations where at some point somebody
didn't break off negotiations," he said.
"The cards are all on the side of the Saints," he said.
"There's no reason to compromise until they have to."
Moving the franchise to the Mississippi coast, where casinos
have become one of the primary industries, may not be that
feasible, said Andrew Zimbalist, a sports economist at Smith
College in North Hampton, Mass.
Selling suites to casinos is one thing, but when you start
depending on them for advertising and signage, will the NFL allow
that?" Zimbalist said. "The NFL may have some reservations about
leaving New Orleans for a gambling strip in Mississippi."
Perry said moving the team to Mississippi would be a
"catastrophic mistake for the franchise on every conceivable
level.
"For one thing the population base doesn't exist there," he
said. "It would require everyone in New Orleans driving to
Mississippi to go to the games. This is a huge corporate blunder on
their part."
Perry said there was widespread support crossing political,
racial, urban and rural lines to keep the team in the state. He
also said the state's offers would have moved the team from the
bottom to near the top of NFL money-makers.
"You really wonder why they want to walk away from that,"
Perry said.
The main disagreement has been when the Saints would be moved to
a new stadium, largely financed by the state. The Saints early on
said they wanted to be in a stadium by 2004, but later established
a deadline of 2006. For weeks the state insisted the new stadium
would have to wait until after 2010. The state's latest offer
included a new stadium ready by the 2009 season, plus more than
$100 million in incentives that would put the Saints among the
league's top 12 revenue earners in the interim, Perry said.
The Saints ended negotiations after two hours of meetings
Tuesday morning, Perry said.
"We're still totally committed to the Saints, but when they
decided to terminate negotiations this morning it was clear to us
that we had a potential partner that didn't really want to get
married," Perry said.
The state and the Saints have been exchanging offers for weeks.
When the Saints approached the state about a new stadium they
had not done a study to see if they would make more money in a new
facility, Perry said.
"That was frankly astonishing to us," Perry said. "Because
you don't normally come with a half-billion dollar proposal to
someone without having worked out a business model on it. That made
us a little suspicious in the beginning that we were maybe going
through a process that wasn't entirely in good faith."
Under the state's latest offer, the Saints would profit from
free rent in a renovated Superdome, a greater share of advertising
and concession revenue, income from a proposed 4 percent tax on
tickets for events at the Superdome and the nearby New Orleans
Arena, an income tax on visiting teams' players and money from the
naming rights to the Superdome.
"They have a contract with us that we were willing to walk away
from and give them $100 million," Perry said. "We weren't bound
to give them anything. But we care about them and we want them
here, we want them to be an asset to the city so we were willing to
offer them $100 million to stay here. But they decided to walk away
from it."
Mississippi Gov. Ronnie Musgrove wouldn't say what kind of
contact, if any, the state is making with Saints owners.
"If the Saints wish to negotiate with the state of Mississippi,
we will be glad to sit down and talk with them concerning their
future," Musgrove said
Asked if he felt the Saints were using Mississippi as a pawn,
the governor replied: "The state of Mississippi has in no way been
used, whatsoever."
Bay St. Louis Mayor Eddie Favre said to this point he's had
informal discussions with coast tourism representatives and county
officials about a possible Saints move.
"I think it's time we find out if they're serious and put a
package together," Favre said.
Sherry Vance, spokeswoman for the Mississippi Development
Authority, the state's economic development agency, said it was her
department's policy not to comment on economic development
projects.
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