The 130-Year-Old Labor Dispute Facing The NBA And NFL
CHICAGO (WSCR) For over 100 days, fans have had to watch as the fate of the NFL gets run through courts and negotiation tables. And now, it seems as if the NBA is in for a similar fate.
While the NFL had a head start on the NBA, they're labor disputes are really the same thing.
"The issue in both the NBA and the NFL is fairly similar," David Berri, sports economist from Southern Utah University, said on the Mully and Hanley Show. "In both cases the owners are basically saying: 'We would like you to give us more money.' And the players in both situations are going 'why.' And the owners' argument amounts to: 'We would like to have more money.'
LISTEN: David Berri On The Mully And Hanley Show
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"And so that's why they're having a hard time getting a deal. Because the owners' arguments...they keep claiming they're losing money, but if you go through the history of labor negotiations in sports, you can find owners in sports saying they're losing money all the way back to 1879. They've been saying this for 130 years.
"And every time they sell a franchise, they sell it for more money than they paid for it, franchise values keep escalating, they keep making more money. And so the players are rather skeptical of the owners' arguments. So that's the difficulty with these negotiations."
