The lockout was going to hurt the economy outside the NBA. Yes, teams were not going to be filling arenas or playing games or bringing foot traffic to stadiums and downtown arenas.
What about the shoe retailers selling the new Kevin Durant sneaker? Or the jersey salesmen at your local Champs? How about the Best Buy down the street peddling copies of NBA2K12?
OK, so maybe a lot of these places are not hurting so much. And maybe the NBA represents a small fraction of their business. But not having the NBA and facing the backlash fans might inflict on NBA and its related products, a lot of these sports-related vendors probably feared some loss of business during the lockout. After all, the LeBron James shoes, poster and jersey seem to mean less when LeBron James is not playing.
Luckily, Saturday’s tentative agreement has the league moving quickly toward starting the season on Christmas. Everything will be back to business very very soon.
And some businesses have to be very very happy.
One of those is certainly Madison Square Garden Company. MSG, which broke off from Cablevision in 2010 and owns the arena as well as the television network which bears its name, saw its stock soar in the first two days after trading following the tentative agreement. MSG’s stock is up 12.2% in the last two days, reaching a price of $28.91 per share, the all-time high for the company according to Darren Rovell of CNBC.
This is welcome news too throughout other NBA-related industries.
Foot Locker started the week priced at $21.12 per share and ended Tuesday at $22.86 — an 8.2% increase. The shoe retailer is making gains again today at midday, rising to $23.57 per share. Competitor, Finish Line has also seen some gains in the last two days. Finish Line opened the week at $20.33 and has risen modestly to $20.87 today.
So how about other NBA merchants? Adidas stock rose from $49.70 on Monday to $52.07 today, a 4.8% increase. The company’s stock is up $2.66 today alone (as of 11:45 a.m.). Nike’s stock has increased too from $93.26 at the beginning of the week to $94.29 at the end of trading Tuesday. The stock has climbed to above $96 per share during trading today.
One final stock report, Take Two Interactive Software, the creator of NBA2K12, increased by $0.39 in the last two days. A modest gain for sure, but considering the stock started at $13.28 at the beginning of the week and is trading now at above $14.
Does the NBA’s deal have something to do with all these increases? Possibly.
It does not entirely explain why all these NBA-related stocks have seen some modest increases since the announcement that a tentative agreement was reached. But one thing we know, having the NBA back is good business for us all. At least for now.
