Recent Articles from Stewart Schley
Sports biz: Skiing gets a second life
Been skiing yet this season? Then you might have already noticed something’s different: There aren’t as many snowboarders zooming down the slopes. A sport that seemed to be on an unstoppable growth track now seems to be declining. Just over 30 percent of U.S. ski resort visits came from snowboarders last season, compared with 32.6 […]
Sports biz: Tech it out, sports fan
Tech it out, sports fan The annual industry forum for the display of electronic gadgets that are better than stuff you bought last year concluded last month in Las Vegas, and if even only some of the trend indicators come to pass, you, sports fan, are in for some serious sensory stimulation. The international CES […]
Sports biz: Hey, Buffaloes: Meet big data
Want to make a few million bucks? Get hired as the University of Colorado’s head football coach. Then get fired. That’s the path that has enriched the last three coaches who guided the Buffaloes’ football program. Gary Barnett walked away with $3 million when he was fired in 2005. Dan Hawkins collected $2 million when […]
Sport biz: Fashion statement
Cowards, I say! The people who run the NBA are cowards! Took a perfectly good opportunity to slam-dunk an easy-money scheme and dropped it like a bad bounce pass. Where, oh where, is exploitative capitalism when you need it? You probably heard. Before the season began, the NBA nixed a contemplated plan to festoon the […]
Sports biz: Collectively speaking, baseball rules
Being a sports fan demands patience. Not just with your team’s performance in down years (that means you, Rockies guy), but with the pull-your-hair-out frustration surrounding labor negotiations that often result in truncated or abandoned seasons. Such is the case now – at least of this writing – with the National Hockey League, which promised […]
Sports biz: Want ice with that, Denver?
With the debut of the Central Hockey League’s Denver Cutthroats at the Denver Coliseum this month, Denver becomes one serious playground for hockey fans. Here’s the math: Including the NHL’s Colorado Avalanche, the Cutthroats and Denver University’s men’s ice-hockey team, an inventory of 1.1 million seats for live hockey are waiting to be filled this […]
Sports biz: CSU’s lesson in football 101
Like all artist renditions of buildings-to-be, a drawing of the 42,000-seat football stadium envisioned for Colorado State University is irresistibly grand: a picturesque Saturday, the sky drenched in sunlight, fans strolling toward a stadium nestled into the south end of the campus, stately mountains etched across the background. As a CSU alum, it gets my […]
Sports biz: Come here often?
In a sad Rockies baseball season, there’s one surprisingly bright statistic: attendance. Somehow, in the middle of a year that’s as grey and sober as the team’s road uniforms, the Rockies averaged 34,055 fans at the All Star break. That’s enough to rank the Rox 13th out of 30 MLB teams, ahead of National League […]
Sports biz: Forgive me, for I have sinned
Don’t tell anybody this. But I don’t get ESPN. As in, I don’t have it at my house. As in, if you drop by on Monday evenings in the fall, we won’t be able to watch “Monday Night Football.” (What’s that? No, I completely understand. Sorry you’re not feeling well.) And yet: I am alive […]
Sports biz: The CHL’s next stop: Denver
A Boulder business executive is betting that the Central Hockey League can play in a big-league market. And that market happens to be Denver. Ball Corp. CEO John Hayes is putting up a significant personal investment to reintroduce professional hockey to the Denver Coliseum on the faith that hockey’s popularity among youth will translate to […]
Sports biz: Eat, drink and be Manning
Hey, it’s great to see everybody here in the off-season. If you’d take your seats, please, we can begin. That means you too, Spicy Tamale in a Throwaway Wrapper. OK, great. A few preliminaries: As most of you know, I’m $7 Diet Pepsi with Ice, and as chairman of the Sports Authority Field Food and […]
Sports biz: C-Unit brings buzz to Boulder
Years ago a friend convinced me to go in on season tickets to the University of Colorado men’s basketball program. There was a promising new perimeter guard on the team named Chauncey Billups, and coach Ricardo Patton seemed like he knew what he was doing, so what the hell. We made the trek up U.S. […]