Hooray for Sports....Sports is Money!!!

I should have known that owning a sports team is where it's at from an investment standpoint. Who needs stocks, bonds, gold and silver?


from Todd Harrison's Investment site, Minyanville:

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Minyanvilles-2010-MidYear-minyanville-2811083429.html?x=0&.v=3


Minyanville's 2010 Mid-Year Review

Theme 7: Bracket Buster

According to Sports Illustrated, if you invested $25 in a US treasury EE bond on January 1, 2000, it would now be worth $36.10. If you plunked that money in the S&P, it would be worth $22.45. Had you invested in an index fund that tracked the value of professional sports franchises, it would have doubled or tripled.

As the Age of Austerity permeates, look for attendance at sporting events to decline as consumers curtail discretionary spending. This should manifest through regional blackouts and the contraction of major league franchises. While there will be relative winners -- soccer should benefit with the arrival of the 2010 FIFA World Cup -- we'll likely see "status backlash" against high profile professional athletes.

Update: Status backlash indeed; while Tiger Woods and Michael Vick set this trend in motion, Ben Roethlisberger, Lawrence Taylor and Jamarcus Russell, for this self-loathing Raider fan, proved yet again that money can buy many things but public opinion isn't for sale. (See: The Short Sale of American Icons)

Structurally, we've yet to see contraction on the professional level but the realignment of college conferences -- and the raid on the Big 12 -- is likely the first step towards major restructuring. Overall annual revenue for college athletics programs is estimated at about $10.6 billion, according to the NCAA. Look for institutions of higher learning -- and perhaps the student-athletes -- to jockey for a bigger slice of that pie.