Racist Comments by Hawks Owner, to sell team after racist comments - UPDATE Luol Deng Comments added

[TRY GOD]

Dude outted his own email to cash out

Thanks to Sterling and the PRICE RE-EVALUATION.

Smart move, whats he looking at getting, a couple MILLION? nikkas is selling their seats to a VERY exclusive table.

Goes to show you that all these Je...TEAM OWNERS all have the same mind-frame.

 

[loyola llothta]

Well, were his observations correct?

Are you still pretending to be a black women over the net? Or do you still use your second account

 

[DrX]

Why is everybody surprised ...this country is meant for u...these crackers hate us.

 

[TRY GOD]

I've read and wrote emails like this where you have to break down stuff like this. Its a harsh reality but its what you do to gain more income streams from different demographics. From what I read through dude doesn't really come off as racist, he comes off as a business man trying to get a certain demographic (which he happens to be) who are known for disposable income to feel comfortable and represented. The way he words some shyt though makes it come off like he's whining about it being too many black people. If he was black this wouldn't be news.

And I got news for nikkas, this is run of the mill demographic research results emails and they're in every business on earth about every race/demographic.

BUT WHY DID HE SAY

"Hey guys, I made a racist email 2 years ago. My bad bros.

I should probably sell my portion of the team...."

 

[JBoy]

"Ya'll" huh?You trying to say "You people?"So when he says blacks, you aren't included, huh?:stupid:Guess you' re only black when you defending your bullshyt threads on here, lying ass loser:smugjamie:

you an Atlanta brotha, what is your opinion on the dynamic of race and sports in the city?

 

[Blessings]

aw mannnnn....subs reading later

 

[killacal]

Another Jewish NBA Team Owner?

Theyre almost all jewish

 

[notPsychosiz]

So the jewish owner of the hawks gets caught being racist, understands the situation because the jewish owner of the clippers had to sell his team to the jewish ceo of microsoft because he too is racist... only this time he does the honorable thing and turns himself in to the new jewish commisioner of the nba... even though this really reflects more heavily on his mentor, the old his jewish commishioner of the nba.

If only we could spot a pattern, maybe we could prevent this from happening again.

 

[Trajan]

He doesn't come across as racist IMO. In fact he's breaking down white people's irrational fears of black people.

My theory is that the black crowd scared away the whites and there are simply not enough affluent black fans to build a signficant season ticket base. Please dont get me wrong. There was nothing threatening going on in the arean back then. i never felt uncomfortable, but i think southern whites simply were not comfortable being in an arena or at a bar where they were in the minority. On fan sites i would read comments about how dangerous it is around philips yet in our 9 years, i don't know of a mugging or even a pick pocket incident. This was just racist garbage. When I hear some people saying the arena is in the wrong place I think it is code for there are too many blacks at the games.

Sounds more like a businessman than a neo-Nazi to me


That's the reality of how white people think. Why beat around the bush?

 

[Supercoolmayo]

You telling me this dude sent around racist emails so he could sell his team?

Damn it really is chess

 

[☑︎#VoteDemocrat]

From: Bruce Levenson

To: Ferry, Danny

CC: Foreman, Todd (ucg.com); Peskowitz, Ed (ucg.com)

Sent: 8/25/2012 11:47:02 PM

Subject: Re: Business/Game ops

1. from day one i have been impressed with the friendliness and professionalism of the arena staff — food vendors, ushers, ticket takers, etc. in our early years when i would bring folks from dc they were blown away by the contrast between abe pollin’s arena and philips. some of this is attributable to southern hospital and manners but bob and his staff do a good job of training. To this day, I can not get the ushers to call me Bruce yet they insist on me calling them by their first names.
2. the non-premium area food is better than most arenas, though that is not saying much. i think there is room for improvement and creativity. Levy is our food vendor so we don’t have much control but they have been good partners. i have wished we had some inconic offereing like boog’s barbeque at the baseball stadium in balt.
3. our new restaurant, red, just opened so too early for me to give you my thoughts.
4. Regarding game ops, i need to start with some background. for the first couple of years we owned the team, i didn’t much focus on game ops. [yeah this would be too hard ] then one day a light bulb went off. when digging into why our season ticket base is so small, i was told it is because we can’t get 35-55 white males and corporations to buy season tixs and they are the primary demo for season tickets around the league. [Dude is blaming the ENTIRE reason season tickets are low on black people. Peep game ]when i pushed further, folks generally shrugged their shoulders. then i start looking around our arena during games and notice the following:

— it’s 70 pct black - Its a black city dumbass.

— the cheerleaders are black - so?

— the music is hip hop - every NBA arena has this

— at the bars it’s 90 pct black - Where people drink seems to bother him

— there are few fathers and sons at the games - see, blacks don't take care of their kids

— we are doing after game concerts to attract more fans and the concerts are either hip hop or gospel. - a black city with black entertainment?

Then i start looking around at other arenas. It is completely different. Even DC with its affluent black community never has more than 15 pct black audience. (look at these good nigg*rs )

Before we bought the hawks and for those couple years immediately after in an effort to make the arena look full (at the nba’s urging) thousands and thousands of tickets were being giving away, predominantly in the black community, adding to the overwhelming black audience. ( these blacks just love freebies not to mention they pay for their own tickets )

My theory is that the black crowd scared away the whites and there are simply not enough affluent black fans to build a signficant season ticket base. (I guess we sink or swim on season tix ) Please dont get me wrong. There was nothing threatening going on in the arean back then . i never felt uncomfortable, but i think southern whites simply were not comfortable being in an arena or at a bar where they were in the minority . On fan sites i would read comments about how dangerous it is around philips yet in our 9 years, i don’t know of a mugging or even a pick pocket incident. This was just racist garbage. When I hear some people saying the arena is in the wrong place I think it is code for there are too many blacks at the games.

I have been open with our executive team about these concerns. I have told them I want some white cheerleaders and while i don’t care what the color of the artist is, i want the music to be music familiar to a 40 year old white guy if that’s our season tixs demo. i have also balked when every fan picked out of crowd to shoot shots in some time out contest is black. I have even bytched that the kiss cam is too black. ( black cities can't have black kiss cams Look at all those nigg*rs kissing )

Gradually things have changed. My unscientific guess is that our crowd is 40 pct black now, (make up data brehs ) still four to five times all other teams. And my further guess is that 40 pct still feels like 70 pet to some whites at our games. Our bars are still overwhelmingly black. (repeat hateful talking points brehs )

This is obviously a sensitive topic () , but sadly i think it is far and way the number one reason our season ticket base is so low.

And many of our black fans don’t have the spendable income which explains why our f&b and merchandise sales are so low. At all white thrasher games sales were nearly triple what they are at hawks games (the extra intermission explains some of that but not all). [we need more white sports ]

Regardless of what time a game starts, we have the latest arriving crowd in the league. It often looks and sounds empty when the team takes the floor.

In the past two years, we have created a section of rowdy college students that has been a big plus. And we do a lot of very clever stuff during time outs to entertain the crowd. Our kiss cam is better done than any in the league. [except that its too black ]

We have all the same halftime acts that other arenas have but i question whether they make sense. people are on their cell phones during half time. i wonder if flashing on the scoreboard “$2 off on hot dogs during halftime tonight” just as the half ends would be a better use of our halftime dollars and make the fans happier.

We do all the usual giveways and the fans are usually their loudest when our spirit crew takes the floor to give away t-shirts. It pisses me off that they will yell louder for a t-shirt then for our players.

Our player intro is flat. We manufacture a lot of noise but because of the late arriving crowd and the fact that a lot of blacks dont seem to go as crazy cheering (another one of my theories) as whites, it is not great.

Even when we have just returned from winnng four straight on the road, i am one of the few people in the arena standing and cheering when our team takes the floor. Bob has kicked around ideas like having the starters coming down aisles rather than off the bench during intros. Sounds cool but may highlight all the empty seats at the start of games.

Not enough of our fans wear hawks jerseys to games. i have just begun to push for ideas like discount food lines for folks wearing jerseys, special entrances, etc. I think we need a committed and perhaps incentivized fan club.

We need to realize atl is simply different than every other city. Just adopting nba best practices is not enough. we have to create our own. [ for whites ]

I am rambling and could probably go on forever. If you have any specific areas you would like my thoughts on, let me know.

Best,

Bruce

ps — I have cc’d todd and ed so they can chime in with additional or different thoughts.










Yeah, not racist at all

 

[NatiboyB]

I've had to do things like this Im not going to call it racist due to the fact that it's about money...If anything it shows another reason why we should practice group economics...

In other words dominate society has no need to cater to us we are also rans.

 

[NatiboyB]

@Napoleon why can't i rep you breh?

 

[BelowTheMasonDixon]

What exactly did he say bad? shyt like this takes away from real racial issues. Also the problem with the Hawks is Atlanta is Atlanta. shyt is a transplant city, a huge chunk of the people come from other cities so they don't give a shyt about the hawks. And the people from atlanta are like most southerners (could give a shyt about basketball)

 

[A.V.]

This shyt just spells "GROUP ECONOMICS"

Dude said ya'll are late to games and don't spend money on shyt....he even brought up the "single parent" issue

This hurt to read

I've read and wrote emails like this where you have to break down stuff like this. Its a harsh reality but its what you do to gain more income streams from different demographics. From what I read through dude doesn't really come off as racist, he comes off as a business man trying to get a certain demographic (which he happens to be) who are known for disposable income to feel comfortable and represented. The way he words some shyt though makes it come off like he's whining about it being too many black people. If he was black this wouldn't be news.

And I got news for nikkas, this is run of the mill demographic research results emails and they're in every business on earth about every race/demographic.

He may be racist but this email is just an example of what goes on behind the scenes in business and marketing. Race and income are going to be a factor whether people like it or not. This is in no way comparable to the Sterling situation.

I wouldn't compare this to the Sterling situation either. They guy says straight out that the team suffered from white flight.

I'm actually more interested than upset. I don't exactly like what he said but I think it's interesting to see a businessman deal with racist attitudes and a resulting loss of ticket/merchandise sales.

He doesn't come across as racist IMO. In fact he's breaking down white people's irrational fears of black people.



Sounds more like a businessman than a neo-Nazi to me


That's the reality of how white people think. Why beat around the bush?

I've had to do things like this Im not going to call it racist due to the fact that it's about money...If anything it shows another reason why we should practice group economics...

In other words dominate society has no need to cater to us we are also rans.

Salute to all these posts. First off fukk racist CaCs (so by default, most CaCs in general)

Secondly, this definitely could've been worded a LOT worse if he was indeed racist (or MORE racist). He seemed to be careful in his analyzation and wording, to NOT come off as racist, even though he's speaking on African-Americans in general. At some point, you have to ask yourself. As a businessman/owner looking for more ways to bring in THE REAL MONEY (i.e. - OLDER CACS - Something WE know & understand), why would you classify this as racism? Nothing wrong with calling out & getting rid of dudes who ARE indeed racist, but the way this is worded and rhoroughly broken down, it comes off NOTHING like the Sterling situation. Some of this shyts justified. If a Black man said some of this stuff about Black people, we'd be nodding like he has a point. So let's keep it funky.



I'm far from a c00n, and very pro-Black, on justifiable issues that'll bring about equality for us. Not an unfair advantage, but equality. Just an even playing field, which is all we're logically and justifiably ever going to get if we're going hard about it, the right way...But if we're to scream racism at turns of events like THESE, where economics, harder-to-grasp-than-average concepts and big money/statistics are involved, all that does is make us LOOK like a bunch of uneducated buffons. It actually helps THEIR racist cause, more than it does ours, of striving for equality and understanding. I'm not cool with some of what he said, but for the most part...He didn't rub me the wrong way. He wasn't even asking for them to ban hip-hop, black people, or cheerleaders...he just seemed to want some racial equality, to attract a richer demographic, it is what it is. Same shyt McDonalds does with the "White" commercials and "Black" commercials, they attract everybody.