Fans like to think of the Broncos as their team.
They buy jerseys and sometimes paint themselves orange. They whip themselves into ecstasies when the Broncos win or plummet into depressions when they lose. Besides this remarkable emotional investment, fans spend hundreds of dollars on tickets, parking, souvenirs and concessions. Even people who don’t like football help pay for these expensive spectacles. That’s because a fraction of all sales taxes in the Denver metro area goes to pay for Invesco Field at Mile High.
It should be called Taxpayer Field. The taxpayers are footing 75 percent of the costs to build it. But the naming rights went to a mutual-fund firm – Invesco – that subsequently shamed itself by allowing market-timing trades and no longer uses its name in consumer marketing.
Another way people pay is through cable or satellite TV subscriptions, which typically include sports channels such as ESPN that may cost more than $2.50 a month, whether you want them or not. So people who don’t even like sports are subsidizing sports through their cable bills and sales taxes.
This is why many folks think of the Broncos as their team, and rightfully so, since they so generously support it.
But it is not their team.
It is Pat Bowlen’s team. And Bowlen is in a league with a bunch of billionaire owners who have helped turn professional sports into a greedfest, sucking money out of every pocket they can.
The latest manifestation of this long-running trend is the NFL’s decision to ban local TV stations from photographing the games for their newscasts. The NFL wants more control over images from its games, and it wants to be paid.
“The absolute, primary reason is intellectual property rights,” said Broncos spokesman Jim Saccomano. “The secondary reason is sideline congestion.”
News organizations are not only clogging the sidelines but shooting footage that ends up in films, television shows and websites without any compensation to the NFL, Saccomano said.
To me, the words “intellectual property rights” sound odd coming from the NFL. Is football intellectual? And who really owns this “property” when it is created in a publicly financed arena?
The traditional notion is that the NFL does. And the league is aggressively expanding this concept as it beefs up its own NFL Network – all football, all the time, on a pricey cable channel near you.
This is an affront to sportscasters at local TV stations, who have come to think of the Broncos as their team too.
“The press has covered the Broncos for more than 40 years and helped make millions for the players and the owners,” said 9News news director Patti Dennis.
But now 9News – a partner of The Denver Post – and other local TV stations can no longer shoot exclusive video at the games. Instead, they can only get feeds from a pool photographer, the CBS network and the NFL Network.
This means there will be fewer cameras on the field when, say, Bronco Jake Plummer flips off a fan. Or when Minnesota’s Randy Moss moons the crowd.
“They want to control everything,” said longtime sports photographer Brian Olson of 9News. “In 10 years, everything will be on NFL Network 1,2 and 3 … and you’ll have to have cable to get it.”
Fans probably won’t notice, but when they watch news reports on local stations, the images may not be as sharp.
“It’s ridiculous how bad the pool feed is that we get from the ground level,” said 9News sports anchor Susie Wargin. “It’s just not shot very well.”
To NFL officials, this might sound like reporters whining about access. It’s not 9News’ team or any other local TV station’s team. It’s their team.
“All of the league owners voted for this,” said Rich Clarkson of Rich Clarkson and Associates, which manages photography and publishing projects for the Broncos, the Rockies and the National Collegiate Athletic Association. “All of them (knew) that in every one of those cities, there were going to be TV stations that were going to scream bloody murder. … And they did it anyway.”
The fans, the taxpayers and the media have given the Broncos and the NFL a lot of love.
Shouldn’t the NFL give at least some of it back?
Al Lewis’ column appears Sundays, Tuesdays and Fridays. Respond to Lewis at denverpostbloghouse.com/lewis, 303-954-1967 or alewis@denverpost.com.
