By Evan Weiner

April 14, 2008

(New York, NY) -- You can forgive NBA Commissioner David Stern if he was asked about the impact of referee Tim Donaghy's betting scandal on the business of the NBA and if he answered Tim Who? Despite predictions from sports pundits like sportswriters and sports radio talk show hosts and TV talking heads of utter doom for the NBA, the league is doing quite well in terms of attendance, TV ratings and marketing partnerships globally. Money is rolling in.

Donaghy's alleged betting activities last year are a non factor when it comes to the business of the NBA.

At the end of the day, the bottom line is what counts the most and Donaghy's fate will be decided by the United States judicial system. Sure Donaghy has some visibility but the NBA has other issues than are more germane than a referee who may have bet or helped betters or shaved points or did something that caught the eye of law enforcement officials.

People in Boston bought tickets at record numbers after the Celtics picked up Kevin Garnett and Ray Allen in trades and most importantly for the Celtics ownership the people in the seats were customers who spent money inside the arena instead of people picking up discounted tickets as had been the case when Boston had a bad NBA team. People spend money on a winner, it really is that simple. Donaghy had no bearing on Celtics consumers.

Seventeen of the NBA's 30 teams are averaging more than 17,000 people per home game. There are some attendance concerns though in some areas. Memphis continues to be near the bottom of the league coming in at 29th followed by Indiana and at some point, Grizzlies owner Michael Heisley and others will be pushing Stern to get him to work out a revenue sharing deal with the big market franchises. Sacramento ownership is still looking to get a new arena from the city after failing to get funding for a building in 2006. New Orleans is still struggling from Hurricane Katrina which hit on August 29, 2005 as the rebuilding of New Orleans and the United States Gulf Coast continues at a slow pace. New Orleans was in 27th place. Lame duck Seattle is in 28th place. The Sonics franchise has two things going against it. Seattle has a bad team and its owner Clayton Bennett is ready to move the franchise to Oklahoma City as early as this July.

Bennett expects to get NBA approval to move the franchise by the end of this week but he owes Seattle two more seasons on his lease and may not be able to leave the Emerald City until 2010.

Eight NBA have sold 100 percent of their arena’s seating capacity, including Detroit, Chicago, Dallas, Golden State, Utah, Boston, San Antonio and Orlando. Both Cleveland and Miami were very close to the 100 percent mark.

Through the first week of April, Disney's ABC-TV was averaging a 2.2 rating for games this year which represents a 10% bump when compared to last year. It is the first time since 1995-96 that NBA ratings have increased over a previous year. Both TNT and ESPN have reported slight increases in viewership for NBA games this year.

These are US ratings, in China there have been all sorts of estimates of hundreds of millions of people watching a November 2007 NBA game between the Houston Rockets and the Milwaukee Bucks because of the presence Yao Ming and Yi Jiamlian. The NBA has a significant TV following globally.

The NBA Store on Fifth Avenue had its best March ever with a 46-percent sales increase over last year. Since the beginning of the 2007-08 season, sales revenue at the NBA Store is up over 17 percent versus last year as the regular season enters its final week. The NBA has put out a news release saying it expects the NBA Store will have its best sales year ever for the 2007-08 season breaking last year's record.

In March, NBA.com set a monthly traffic record with more than 191 million visits which broke the previous record of 172 million visits set in February which only had 29 days as opposed to March having 31 days. Regardless, people are flocking to the NBA site in record numbers. The NBA is streaming more than 1.4 million video streams per day which is 70 percent more than last season.

David Stern has always been ahead of the curve when it came to technology and people are getting information from the league website as well as individual teams’ websites.

Donaghy has had no affect on the business of the NBA.

Clayton Bennett was going to move his team from Seattle to Oklahoma City if he didn't get a new arena somewhere in the Seattle area. Seattle officials are resigned to the fact that Bennett will take his team and go home but there are people in Seattle who are confident that the NBA will return someday even though Stern has threatened that will never happen, at least through expansion which is what happened in Charlotte after George Shinn took his team to New Orleans.

Oklahoma City may get Bennett’s team. Kansas City, Las Vegas, Louisville and Baltimore have expressed varying degrees of interest in obtaining an NBA franchise.

Time Warner Cable, whose parent company Time Warner has had a multi-decade partnership with the NBA for cable TV coverage, and FOX Sports struck a major marketing partnership with the Charlotte Bobcats last week. Charlotte reached a naming rights agreement with Time Warner Cable and a television broadcast rights deal with Fox Sports Net South (FSN South). Charlotte Bobcats Arena will become Time Warner Cable Arena, and television carriage of Bobcats basketball games switched from News14 Carolina to FSN South.

The NBA appears to not to have a worry about last week's protests against the Olympic Torch Relay in Paris, London and San Francisco. The league has far too many business partnerships in China to be concerned about the Olympic Torch Relay protests and basketball will be played at the Beijing Olympics in August. The NBA has to be there and the players will be muzzled by an International Olympic Committee rule which won't allow them to comment on China's Human Rights violations, China's involvement in Darfur or Tibet. There is too much money to be made by the NBA and IOC and that means the NBA will more than likely not voice any opinions on China.

As far as London and Paris, the NBA has a presence in those cities. The Miami Heat, New Jersey Nets, New Orleans Hornets and Washington Wizards will play preseason games in Barcelona, Berlin, London and Paris in October. London, of course, will host the 2012 Summer Games and the NBA will be there in full force. Stern would like to start an NBA European Division, possibly by the 2012 London Games with the European franchises competing against North American teams. London would be on top of the international expansion list.

What Stern and the NBA will watch with a large degree of diligence is the sputtering United States economy and the league will know sometime over the summer how the fallout from the Bear Stearns collapse, the spiraling process of food, oil and other items will impact consumers. The stock market downturn has caused part of Bruce Ratner's planned development of the Atlantic Yards in Brooklyn, New York to be scaled back. Ratner still plans on moving his New Jersey Nets to Brooklyn at some point in the future but the cost of construction continues to skyrocket and there is no guarantee that Ratner will be moving his team anytime soon.

Madison Square Garden officials have pulled out of the Moynihan Station redevelopment project and Garden owner Jim Dolan plans to renovate Madison Square Garden again although that could change.

The NBA season ends this week with the playoffs on tap. It has been a very good year for Stern and most of his owners and a bad year for the sportswriters who last summer were predicting doom and gloom for the NBA. The problem with sportswriters and others covering the NBA and sports is that they have very limited knowledge of how the sports business in the 21st century really works. The David Stern Axiom of government (to provide public funding mechanisms for arena/stadium construction, to deregulate cable TV and provide tax breaks for companies buying entertainment tickets), cable TV and corporates who buying luxury boxes and club seating. Dongahy put the NBA in a tough spot for a few days but he has faded into the background and will only be resurrected when he actually goes to jail or works out a deal to avoid major jail time. Donaghy has been forgotten and the business of basketball continues apace. That is why David Stern could answer if asked about his thoughts on Tim Dongahy. Tim Who?

evanjweiner@yahoo.com or eweiner@mcn.tv