Retrospective: NBA Lockout

Without a doubt the NBA Lockout in 2011 is the most prominent labor dispute in the last 5 years. Looking in retrospective there are many red flags that both team owners and the players association could have looked after in order to avoid endless hours of negotiation and upset fanatics eager to watch and support the sport. 

In July 2011 the owners of 22 of the 30 teams declared themselves as unprofitable. The statement called for an immediate resolution of how the revenue was being distributed and it set the scenario for the legal dispute. The players, on the other hand, dismissed the threats brought up by commissioner David Stern who later on would play the biggest roll in this negotiation.

The original petition by the owners was a 57%-43% split of the revenue in their favor. The players association believed that was outrageous and decided to offer a $500 million dollars to the owners and settle the case.

As we know this opened Pandora’s box. The owners showed that they where not kidding around with the negotiations. On October 4^th the NBA announced the cancelation of all exhibition games asking for a deal that would deliver 50-50% split revenue but the players association stood their ground. A week later the after seven hours of negotiation between the parties David Stern declared there was “no chance” to compromise and announced the cancelation of 2 weeks of regular season games, making it a 66 game season and upsetting fans, advertisers, arenas, players, staffers and even President Obama who acknowledge being a little “heartbroken”for the cancellation of the games.

The season as a whole was “in threat” and nobody really knew how the long negotiations where going. Some of the players left the Association to begin filling for anti-trust suits in states like Minnesota and California. It was not until November 26, 2011 that both parties where able to reach an agreement. The last offer put on the table by the owners was a bargaining agreement that left the players with 49% of the revenue and 51% for them. Making sure to let the association know that if they where to reject the offer the next one would be less favorable in their end.

It was a sour time for basketball players and the fans. Despite the number of camera crews that followed Stern and Fisher no-one, not even other players, knows exactly what happened in the negotiation table.

More than a 150 hours of negotiations and 149 days it took to resolve this problem.

However, Despite the controversy on the lockout affecting local economies there has been studies whish state: “somehow, the only discretionary income that people have are spent on pro sportsis just wrong”. In the article the NBA and the economy published by Time the author proposed that regular fans still spend the same amount of money in recreational activities whether they are related with professional basketball or not.