This is consistency.
The Yankees have pennants, the Celtics have titles, the Cowboys have bombast, and the Charlotte Bobcats fire executives. Executive vice president and chief marketing officer Greg Economou is the latest team fixer to be shown the door.
This is being portrayed as somehow a friendly parting. I doubt that in the extreme. Not with the agreement with new concert booker AEG blowing up in the face of Bobcats Sports & Entertainment. Not with there being no sign that the Bobcats will sell significantly more season tickets this year.
Economou was essentially sent to the Bobcats by NBA commish David Stern in October 2006 from a league office job. Within a year Economou was slashing ridiculously high ticket prices, canning people right and left, but declaring that things were “on the right track” for the franchise.
By September of last year, Economou was touting the “branding” of the Bobcats via things like more blue on their uniforms and billboard ads. Didn’t work either as ticket prices for the upcoming season were still too high for the Charlotte market. In fact, the Bobcats went the other direction, targeting Charlotte’s country clubs for ticket sales. By December it was clear none of it had worked. The Bobcats remained a QC afterthought.
The larger question remains the financial viability of the Uptown arena. And tied up in that is the question of Bob Johnson’s continued ownership of the franchise. Recall that back in April Johnson had a hissy fit and blamed the Charlotte business community for the Bobcats’ woes. This effectively made Economou’s job impossible as the universal reaction to Johnson was “go to hell, then.”
As a result the marketing of the Bobcats is over. It is down to results, not spin. Either coach Larry Brown puts a winning team on the floor this year that fills seats or something gives. I think that would be Johnson cashing out, but it might be the NBA picking up the franchise and moving it to Kansas City or somesuch and daring the city of Charlotte to do something about it. Something in between would be Johnson leaving in exchange for greater public support of the operating costs of the arena. We shall see.
And so will Greg Economou. From afar.
