Lemieux & Burkle + Pirates = Needs to Happen

I’ve been trying to steer away from sports on this blog, but being as much of a hockey fan as I am, coupled with my desire for the Pirates to be relevant again, I could not avoid this topic.

The big news in Pittsburgh today was the report that Penguins co-owners Mario Lemieux and Ron Burkle had met with Pirates majority owner Robert Nutting and made an offer to buy the Pirates.

Sadly, Nutting seemingly turned down the offer immediately, stating once more the Pirates are not for sale.

A purchase like this, if it were to be reconsidered, would have major implications on the city of Pittsburgh.

For starters, it could be assumed that Lemieux and Burkle would put at least a little more money towards the Pirates payroll to try and make them contenders again. Now Major League Baseball is set up a little different than the National Hockey League in terms of payrolls, so it wouldn’t be guaranteed Lemieux and Burkle would make a difference, but it couldn’t be any worse than Nutting, who seems content with fielding a mediocre team and yielding a profit every year.

What made me really take notice of this offer was technology related, unsurprisingly.

If Lemieux and Burkle owned both the Penguins and the Pirates, they would own the two teams that have local television contracts in the city. Remember, the Steelers are apart of the National Football League’s very lucrative broadcasting contracts. So, with the Penguins and the Pirates being owned by the same people, that would open the door for Lemieux and Burkle to make additional revenue by creating their own television station.

Currently, FSN Pittsburgh pays for the rights to broadcast Penguins and Pirates games to the Pittsburgh area. However, the advertising revenue is split between the Penguins, Pirates and FSN.

A Lemieux/Burkle owned network would see all the of ad revenue going straight to the owners, which would produce a lot more than what they are currently receiving now from FSN.

This model only works to its fullest potential if the same group owns both teams.

A joint venture could be set up, where Lemieux, Burkle and Nutting all had a share in the new network, but then its uncertain whether or not there would be a substantial enough gain in revenue to warrant kicking FSN to the curb in place of a new network.

In my opinion, something needs to be done.

Ever since Liberty Sports Group took over FSN Pittsburgh, I feel that the quality has gone down. While the event coverage has been on par of where it was before, it is still much better than Versus or NBC, the national broadcast parters of the NHL, the other programing has taken a fall.

Liberty Sports Group has taken the route of airing syndicated national programming that airs on all FSN networks across the country, as opposed to airing local programming that features the local teams, as was the case before.

In addition, I think we can all agree that the new FSN graphics package is bad enough to call for FSN to be thrown out of town without even considering anything else.

So let’s all sit back and hope Bob Nutting reconsiders the offer from Mario Lemieux and Ron Burkle, it would benefit the city greatly.