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blogprincessofpeacepop · 8 years

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CEOs Face Off Against Trump (or Not) By Daniel McGinn.

Americans have become accustomed to chief executives offering their views on political issues, but rarely do they witness the scenes that played out last weekend. Within hours of President Trump ordering a 90-day halt on travel to the United States from seven predominantly Muslim countries, CEOs — primarily in the tech industry — began criticizing the new president.

Netflix CEO Reed Hastings called the executive order “un-American,” and predicted it will make the country “less safe.” At San Francisco International airport, Google cofounder Sergey Brin joined in the protest, declaring: “I’m here because I’m a refugee.” (Brin was born in Russia; his family immigrated in 1979. He noted he was participating in the protest personally, not representing Google.) And Starbucks founder Howard Schultz called the move an attack on human rights and the American Dream — and pledged that Starbucks would hire 10,000 refugees over the next five years. By the end of the weekend, companies including Google and Lyft had pledged to donate millions to the American Civil Liberties Union. As the new workweek began, a second wave of companies, including JPMorgan Chase and Goldman Sachs, began issuing memos decrying the new administration’s restrictions on immigration.

For CEOs and their communications teams, deciding when, whether, and how to speak out against a policy they object to can be a challenge — and less than two weeks into the Trump administration, it appears companies will face these dilemmas more frequently.

Research into the effects of CEO activism points to a balance of risks and rewards.

A recent study by Aaron Chatterji of Duke University and Michael Toffel of Harvard Business School examined how consumers responded to Apple CEO Tim Cook’s opposition to a proposed law that would discriminate against LGBT people in Indiana, in the U.S. The results showed that purchase intent rose or fell based on whether customers agreed with Cook’s position. (In the experiments, the positive sales effect outweighed the negative impact; in the real world, it’s difficult to determine how consumers actually reacted after Cook spoke out against the Indiana law in early 2015, because Apple’s sales are driven by factors including seasonality and new product launches.) The researchers write: “When CEOs take public stands on controversial issues, they can galvanize support for their company from those who share the same viewpoint… [and risk] alienating consumers who disagree.”

Another study, an online survey conducted in 2016 by Weber Shandwick and KRC Research, found that consumers are more likely to approve of CEO activism when the issues involved are directly relevant to the company’s business; that Millennials are more supportive of activist CEOs than other generations; that a CEO’s political statements can affect purchase intent; and that many Americans believe that CEOs who take political stands are doing so primarily to get media attention. Writing about the study in HBR last year, Leslie Gaines-Ross, Weber Shandwick’s chief strategist, stated: “In order to reap the benefits and mitigate the risks, companies have to better understand the attitudes of internal and external stakeholders when it comes to controversial issues… [and] clarify how they relate to the company’s values and business.”

In the reactions to the travel ban, Toffel sees nuance in exactly how CEOs are voicing their disapproval of the policy. Some companies, such as General Electric, have issued fairly narrow statements that express “concern” and focus on how the new policy will disrupt their employees who travel globally. Other CEOs have gone much further, attacking the policy in moral terms. In one series of tweets, for instance, Marc Benioff, founder and CEO of Salesforce.com, paraphrased from the Gospel of Mark (“When we close our hearts and stop loving other people as ourselves, we forget who we truly are — a light unto the nations”); in another, he offered the simple line “I’m with her” adjacent to an image of the Statue of Liberty.

“Some CEOs are making a practical argument, some are making a moral argument, and some are combining them,” says Toffel, who’s currently working on a research-driven framework that will help CEOs think through the complexities of voicing political views. Toffel noted that beyond the statements’ content, the way they’re distributed sheds light on how out-in-front a CEO wants to be on the issue. Among CEOs who are opposing the ban, many of them (especially at nontech companies) did so with internal memos to employees that were released to the media. This is a quieter way of sending the message than directly tweeting to the public.

On the surface, speaking out against a travel ban that seems to target Muslim immigrants (and that a federal judge quickly tried to pause, due to Constitutional questions) might seem a low risk. Can you think of any other issue that Dick Cheney, Elizabeth Warren, the Koch brothers, and Dale Earnhardt Jr. all agree on?

Despite that range of support, companies still face risks in speaking out. “I don’t see this as a no-brainer — there are many CEOs who are thinking deeply about how they want to register any concerns they have about the ban,” says Gaines-Ross.

There are at least three reasons many CEOs are treading cautiously. First, the Trump administration’s views on immigration are shared by millions of Americans. In a poll conducted in early January, 48% of respondents supported halting immigration from terror-prone regions, while 42% opposed it. (In the same poll, 53% support a registry for Muslims.) So a CEO who criticizes it risks upsetting a large segment of consumers who share Trump’s views, even if that CEO feels firmly in the mainstream by decrying a policy that has been called ineffective, counterproductive, and unconstitutional.

The second risk is that there’s so much emotion around this issue that people may react rashly, punishing a company before it’s even clear why. For an example of that, consider Uber. On Saturday night, as protesters gathered at New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport, Uber tweeted that it was turning off its surge-pricing mechanism, which raises fares during periods of peak demand. A Twitter user misinterpreted the tweet as a move against taxi drivers, who’d briefly stopped service to protest the travel ban. (Uber’s announcement about surge pricing came out after the taxi strike was set to end.) Another person tweeted to point out that Uber cofounder Travis Kalanick is one of 18 CEOs on President Trump’s Strategic and Policy Forum. Soon the hashtag #deleteuber was trending and the ride-sharing service was in a defensive crouch — even though Kalanick has said he sees his meeting with Trump on Friday as an opportunity for “principled confrontation.”

Perhaps the biggest risk of criticizing Trump’s policy is, of course, the power and reach of the president’s Twitter account. Since his election, Trump’s critical tweets have (at least temporarily) drained billions from market value of companies such as Boeing and Toyota; trading houses are even setting up special trading algorithms to instantly trade based on the president’s social media barbs. Speaking on CNBC on Monday, Andrew Ross Sorkin, the well-connected New York Times reporter, said many of his C-suite sources are “scared out of their minds” at the prospect of Trump tweeting his rage against their employers, so they’re disinclined to criticize him.

Of course, there’s also a risk in not speaking out, though it’s difficult to quantify. The most obvious one is that employees who disagree with the travel ban (or broader elements of the new administration’s agenda) will lose faith in the CEO, decreasing morale and potentially increasing attrition. Some companies have already seen attrition or lost sales that are directly connected to the political views of CEOs or directors: In November a senior content strategist at IBM quit in protest after IBM CEO Ginni Rometty released a letter in support of the president-elect, and L.L. Bean received threats of a boycott after news came out that a board member had donated money to a pro-Trump political action committee.

With more companies speaking out on the travel ban by the hour, it’s difficult to assess how important a moment this will be in the history of CEO of activism. But it may be significant. The uproar over the ban “could be a tipping point,” says Gaines-Ross. “There’s going to be a groundswell of CEOs defending their corporate values and principles.”

They may have another opportunity to do so soon: According to some reports, the Trump administration is currently preparing a new executive order that takes aim at the use of H-1B visas to recruit high-skills workers to U.S. companies.

#president #executive #immigration #business #economy

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jeroldlockettus · 6 years

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Inside the Sports-Industrial Complex (Ep. 364)

The N.F.L. makes roughly $7 billion a year from TV contracts, more than any other sports league in the world — and more than all the other big U.S. sports leagues combined. (Photo: Ronald Martinez/Getty)

For most of us, the athletes are what make sports interesting. But if you own the team or run the league, your players are essentially very expensive migrant workers who eat into your profits. We talk to N.F.L., N.B.A., and U.F.C. executives about labor costs, viewership numbers, legalized gambling, and the rise of e-sports. (Ep. 5 of “The Hidden Side of Sports” series.)

Listen and subscribe to our podcast at Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, or elsewhere. Below is a transcript of the episode, edited for readability. For more information on the people and ideas in the episode, see the links at the bottom of this post.

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Lauren MURPHY: When you bleed and sweat and cry with somebody every day, you get to be pretty close to them.

JJ REDICK: For me, shooting a basketball and seeing it go through the net became just an obsession.

Kim NG: If you want something, you have to be aggressive.

Mark CUBAN: Yeah we were awful. When players were traded here, they just couldn’t wait to get out.

Daryl MOREY: Oh, I care so deeply, and it’s stupid. I have no idea why I care, but I like winning.

MURPHY: And I distinctly remember thinking, “I’m going to get better at this and I’m going to come back and I’m going to kick your ass someday.”

CUBAN: I’ll take e-sports. Yeah, buy e-sports, sell N.F.L.

Mark Cuban is an entrepreneur, and also a star of Shark Tank and owner of the N.B.A.’s Dallas Mavericks. When he said he’d sell the N.F.L. and take e-sports — I’d asked him to play a game of buy, sell, or hold with three stocks: the National Football League, the Ultimate Fighting Championship or U.F.C., and a basket of e-sports. So why is Cuban selling the N.F.L., which is the most profitable sports league in the world?

CUBAN: I just think C.T.E. creates a problem.

C.T.E. being chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or the brain damage associated with contact sports like football.

CUBAN: So participation has been dropping the last few years and will continue to drop more. I have an 8-year-old son; there’s no way I’d let him play tackle football. If you don’t want your child playing contact football then you diminish the viewing in the house. Now he’d much rather play Fortnite than watch football.

DUBNER: Okay, and you’re buying e-sports. So say why, and especially explain to people who can’t get their mind around it at all: what is the appeal of watching — I mean there’s stadiums being built. So why do twenty, fifty thousand people want to go to a stadium to watch other people play video games?

CUBAN: Because once you play, you understand the nuances of the game, and it’s aspirational and educational. So if you like to play League of Legends — it’s hard. But one of the ways to get better is to watch other people play. And to learn the nuances and to learn the strategies, particularly given that they change the rules every 90 or 120 days. The e-sports teams have got to practice hours and hours and hours a day. So, it takes a real skill, it’s a real sport, and you also have to realize that anybody in front of a PS2, Xbox, or PC watching these kids that play, in their mind just like we watched sports growing up and say, “Hey if they can do it I can do it.” That’s the aspirational part of it as well. There’s no physical hurdles — you can be 4 feet 1 inch or 7 feet 1 inch, and if you’ve got the hand-eye coordination and the brain-processing speed and anything’s possible, you could do it too.

Is e-sports really the future juggernaut Cuban describes? At the very least, he’s putting his money where his mouth is: among his many sports-technology investments is an e-sports betting platform called Unikrn. In this regard, Cuban is not an outlier. A lot of N.B.A. teams — as well as teams from the National Football League and Major League Baseball and the National Hockey League and Major League Soccer — they’re all investing in e-sports franchises that play games like League of Legends, Fortnite, and Overwatch. A lot of venture capital firms are investing as well. The global e-sports market is said to be approaching $1 billion, up roughly 40 percent from a year earlier — and that doesn’t even include the money flowing to the game companies themselves. Blizzard Activision, which makes Overwatch, reported $4 billion in revenue in 2017 from in-game purchases. If I had told you 10 years ago that e-sports would be a booming industry funded by multi-billion-dollar sports organizations, you probably wouldn’t have believed me. But if I’d told you a hundred years ago that multi-billion-dollar sports organizations would even exist, you wouldn’t have believed that either. Sports, in the very beginning, were a proxy for war. Here’s John Thorn, the official historian of Major League Baseball.

John THORN: The 30 best men of one side against the 30 best men of another, and both sides agreed to abide by the outcome.

Later on, sports became a tool of empire, of colonialism — a civilizing force, or at least that’s what the civilizers said.

THORN: Well, we sublimate our martial instincts by pouring them into sport. We can paint our faces, we can drink ourselves silly, we can yell insulting epithets at the umpire or certain players.

And what has sports become these past few decades?

ANCHOR: LeBron James agreed to a four-year, $154 million contract with the Lakers.

ANCHOR: Fox striking a five-year rights agreement with the N.F.L. worth about $3 billion.

ANCHOR: Record-shattering deal — Alvarez signed a five-year, 11-fight deal worth a minimum of $365 million.

ANCHOR: Serena Williams just topped the Forbes list of highest paid female athletes for the third year in a row.

ANCHOR: Rockets owner Leslie Alexander has agreed to a deal to sell the Rockets to Houston billionaire Tilman Fertitta for $2.2 billion a record for an N.B.A. franchise.

Yes, sports has become big business. How big?

Victor MATHESON: So, the answer here is actually surprisingly small. Sports has a social impact that is way, way bigger than its economic impact.

That’s Victor Matheson, an economist at Holy Cross and president of the North American Association of Sports Economists.

MATHESON: So the biggest league in the world in terms of revenue generated is the N.F.L., and the N.F.L. generates something like $14, $15 billion a year.

Add in all the other major American leagues, plus the P.G.A., pro tennis, mixed martial arts and so on:

MATHESON: You’ve got maybe $50 billion of pro sports, a few more tens of billions of dollars in college sports. But you’re still only up at $60, $70 billion. That makes spectator sports in the United States roughly the same size as the cardboard-box industry in the United States. Now obviously none of us gather around the water cooler on Monday morning saying, “Hey man, over the weekend, did you see that awesome cardboard box that American Paper just put out?” Of course we don’t. So obviously, culturally, sports is huge.

Okay, so the sports industry punches above its weight in cultural significance, that seems clear. One way to think about this is that consuming sports is really cheap considering how much attention we give it. That said, a $60 or $70 billion industry isn’t nothing. It’s an industry that offers a select few athletes the chance to become multi-millionaires; and it gives billionaires somewhere to park their money that’s a bit more exciting than cardboard boxes.

So, our “Hidden Side of Sports” series continues with a look at how this industry works from the ownership and management side. How does a game become a sport become a business become an industry? We’ll get into the economics of a startup league. We’ll hear how the big leagues are trying to get even bigger. We’ll hear what team executives hate about their own sports. We’ll learn about an exciting legal development. And we’ll get into the unusual fact that in sports, your labor force is also your product.

* * *

DUBNER: So let’s begin. If you would, just say your name and what you do.

Lawrence EPSTEIN: My name is Lawrence Epstein. I’m the chief operating officer at the Ultimate Fighting Championship.

DUBNER: And for those who’ve never seen a U.F.C. fight or maybe who don’t know anything about the U.F.C. or M.M.A., mixed martial arts, just describe it.

EPSTEIN: Mixed martial arts is essentially the sports of boxing, jujitsu, judo, karate, muay thai, taekwondo, and then both freestyle and Greco-Roman wrestling all combined into one sport. And the U.F.C. is a brand name that we operate our promotion under.

DUBNER: Okay, so let’s focus on the U.F.C. then. How often does a fighter typically fight?

EPSTEIN: We’ve got currently about 525 fighters under contract and they fight on average about 2.3 times per year. Over our 25-year history, we’ve done about 9,500 individual bouts.

DUBNER: Okay, what share of U.F.C. fighters are female, and do women ever fight against men?

EPSTEIN: No. Absolutely no women against men. But about 15 percent of our athletes are currently female, and that percentage is growing.

DUBNER: So, I understand that you recently negotiated a new TV deal, this is with ESPN for—

EPSTEIN: $300 million per year, over five years, $1.5 billion in total.

If you’re not a fan of mixed martial arts, you may be wondering how such a league could be so valuable.

EPSTEIN: Dana White, our president, he says, “There’s four corners in any city, anywhere in the world. One corner, you got a soccer game going. On another corner, you got a basketball game going on. On the third corner, you got some guys playing tennis. And on the fourth corner, a fight breaks out. What happens? Everybody runs to the fourth corner to watch the fight. So people understand fighting. They get it. It’s part of our D.N.A. and they like it.

In 2016, the mega-agency W.M.E./I.M.G. and a group of private equity firms bought a majority stake in the U.F.C. for nearly $4 billion. Its ringleaders, Lorenzo and Frank Fertitta, had acquired the U.F.C. just 15 years earlier for $2 million.

EPSTEIN: Lorenzo Fertitta famously says that, “I paid $2 million for three letters, U.F.C.” And that was really essentially all that was purchased. There was literally a box of contracts and there was another box of tapes and there was a wooden octagon that had been used over the years.

Many businesses talk about, “We built this thing from the ground up.” We actually inherited a business that was about 10 stories underground and it took us about three or four years to get up to the ground level before we could actually turn it into a real business.

DUBNER: Now, how do you get that done? Because this was a sport that was nearly driven to extinction before it had the chance to get big. Senator John McCain famously called it “human cockfighting,” led the charge against it. So, how did you turn that around, state by state?

EPSTEIN: We put together a set of assets that included the economic impact our events were having in regulated markets, the truth about health and safety, whether our athletes were sustaining major injuries or not, and of course they weren’t. Third we had — and this was the most compelling thing — we had many of our athletes help us in this process and introducing elected officials to our athletes was key. And the other factor, which was really, really interesting was the staff at all of these offices around the world are generally young people. I mean, you’ve probably been to legislators’ offices, and you’ve got people that are right out of college. Early 20’s, mid-20’s.

DUBNER: And they’re fans.

EPSTEIN: They are fans. They love it. So they’re talking to their boss, saying, “This stuff is awesome. These people are cool. This is something that’s fun to watch,” and the staffers were absolutely key in convincing the elected officials to ultimately vote in favor of regulating the sport. But the whole premise of the original Ultimate Fighting Championship was: there are no rules. It was a no-holds-barred event. And that was just something that we felt didn’t have any sustainability. You had to have regulation. You had to have a regulatory environment that looked a lot like the boxing regulatory environment. And so that’s what we did.

So the U.F.C., in state-by-state petitioning, made itself legal and legitimate. But it still had one big problem.

EPSTEIN: We couldn’t get on television. There was no interest in putting us on any television other than pay-per-view. So we put on these pay-per-view events and we had to produce them ourselves. So we actually developed a core competency in putting on these fairly unique events with, many times, 20–24 different cameras.

This practice, interestingly, continues today.

EPSTEIN: One of the reasons why we are a little bit different than the other sports organizations is that we pay all of the production expenses for our event. As far as I know, we’re the only sort of major sports organization that does it ourselves.

Consider, for instance, the N.F.L.

EPSTEIN: When they do a deal with CBS Sports, they just get a check and CBS Sports, in addition to paying them billions of dollars every year, they also handle all of the production.

Okay, so the U.F.C. early on learned how to produce its own events. But they were still a fringe sport, relegated to pay-per-view. So they did what any sensible start-up sports league would do: they created a reality TV show.

EPSTEIN: You take 16 athletes, you put them in a house, they do a bunch of goofy things like you always see on reality shows, and at the end of each episode there’s a fight. Winner stays, loser goes home.

The show was called The Ultimate Fighter. It went on the air in 2005.

EPSTEIN: We were able to do a deal with Spike television, and they didn’t pay us anything, but they said, “We’ll let you put this on our air. We’ll give you not all, but we’ll give you half of the ad inventory.” And we went out and tried to sell that ad inventory. We were able to sell no ads at all, to any sponsor. So we took that ad inventory and used it to promote our upcoming pay-per-view. And any metric that you look at in the U.F.C., whether it’s profitability, or the number of fans that we have, or ratings, we have the sort of hockey-stick type of a graph and the inflection point is The Ultimate Fighter, Season One.

The U.F.C. has grown exponentially since then, and has the ESPN deal to prove it, but it still relies heavily on pay-per-view as well, distributed via cable and satellite as well as digitally, via Amazon and its own UFC.TV. Their biggest pay-per-view hit to date was actually a boxing match between the undefeated fighter Floyd Mayweather Jr. and U.F.C. champion Conor McGregor. Epstein points to one big downside of the pay-per-view model.

EPSTEIN: I mean, it’s a 100 percent churn business. We sold 3.5, 4 million-plus buys for Mayweather vs. McGregor, and every one of those customers left. We didn’t keep one of them. We got to resell them for the next fight.

DUBNER: So, that is a really interesting conundrum, and I’m kind of surprised that you guys haven’t solved that yet.

EPSTEIN: I mean, our decision’s been frankly strategic. We’ve decided this is the world we want to live in. Because as consumers change the way they’re consuming content, we can simply shift content into different buckets to meet consumer demand. But at the end of the day, pay-per-view is a bet on yourself. And listen, if ESPN was willing to pay us what they’re paying the N.F.L., I think we’d probably get off pay-per-view, but they’re not. And in the meantime, we are willing to bet on ourselves.

Betting on themselves has served the U.F.C. well; they’ve joined the pantheon of prominent American sports leagues. Which, they’ve discovered, presents its own challenges:

EPSTEIN: Well, the challenges are competition. And I’m not talking about just competition from other M.M.A. promoters, but we’re competing against the N.F.L., college football, baseball, video games, movies, YouTube videos, and the list goes on and on. The consumer is getting bombarded with options for lots of entertainment, and of course the consumer only has a certain amount of bandwidth for their time and a certain amount of bandwidth for their wallet.

Welcome to big-time sports. Where even the behemoths are worried about their future.

Jed YORK: We are the dominant sport in America. But if we really want to build our business and become an international sport, that’s going to take some figuring out.

That’s Jed York of the National Football League’s San Francisco 49ers. He’s the team’s C.E.O. and a co-owner.

YORK: I would first say that the biggest blessing and the biggest curse of the N.F.L. are the TV contracts, where it makes you very successful, but it also makes it so you don’t really try new things and try to disrupt.

How big are the N.F.L.’s TV contracts? Roughly $6 billion a year, No. 1 in the world. No. 2, at just under $5 billion, is the FIFA World Cup — which is pretty remarkable for an event whose finals are held only every four years, although they are playing to a global audience. Rounding out the top 10 global TV contracts are the N.B.A. and Major League Baseball; the top soccer leagues in England, Germany, and Spain along with the UEFA Champions League; and the Summer and Winter Olympics. Not cracking the top 10 are the N.H.L, M.L.S., or U.F.C. Which means the N.F.L. has more TV revenue than all the other big American sports leagues combined.

Al GUIDO: Thirty-three of the top 50 shows are still N.F.L. TV games.

That’s Al Guido, president of the San Francisco 49ers.

GUIDO: The eyeballs are still there, they’re just scattered. They’re just in different places. And I think the N.F.L., along with every other league, needs to do the best job they can getting content in a fan’s hands, wherever they are. And that’s changing dramatically.

Cable subscriptions in the U.S. have been dropping fast; 54 percent of viewers between 18 and 29 use streaming services more than cable. That said, live sports are much better-positioned than just about any other kind of content that plays on old-fashioned TV.

MATHESON: We still do watch the Super Bowl live, we watch the World Cup live, we watch the World Series live, and that gives advertisers a chance to put their product in front of a live audience. And it’s one of the last places that that happens. And this is why we still see increasing contracts even though the actual number of eyeballs watching sports contests is not going up particularly quickly.

The N.F.L. has also made big deals to stream its games: Amazon, for instance, recently renewed its N.F.L. deal, paying $65 million a year for the digital right to stream 11 Thursday night games that are already being broadcast on TV. That was a 30 percent bump over the same rights last season. Amazon reportedly beat out rival offers from Twitter and YouTube.

GUIDO: My 9-, 7-, and 5-year-olds don’t even turn on the TV.

The 49ers’ Al Guido again. He’d like the N.F.L. to grow, especially overseas; but that’s complicated.

GUIDO: In the N.F.L., we have what I would deem right now an event-based strategy. We host games overseas. And that is immensely — I mean, it’s successful. However, what is the global strategy and footprint long term? What is it at the league level, what is the team level? And how do we incentivize our clubs to invest more money outside of their footprint? I am frustrated at the inability for us to take our rights and marks across global footprints.

I’ll give you a specific example: Jarryd Hayne was on our team a few years ago, Australian rugby player, they said he was the Michael Jordan of Australian rugby. He comes over here, he plays, he’s an immediate success. Sells more jerseys than any player in the N.F.L. We obviously would love to do a deal over there with Rio Tinto, or we’d love to open up a pop-up retail shop in Australia. We can’t. Well, we can, but if we were to sell our rights and marks and they were to use it in Australia, that revenue is split 32 ways. Doesn’t necessarily come back to the team.

DUBNER: Thirty-two ways because 32 teams in the league?

GUIDO: Right. So we make as much money on a Jimmy Garoppolo jersey as we might on a Russell Wilson jersey.

Okay, let’s take a step back here. Jimmy Garoppolo is a 49ers player; Russell Wilson is not. Al Guido’s point is that the N.F.L., like most American sports leagues, is so devoted to its revenue-sharing model — from TV income all the way down to merchandising — that the incentives can be skewed. With revenue sharing, a team can make a lot of money even if it has a losing record every year; and why invest in new ideas when others don’t have to, and when you get an even cut of the pie regardless? As Jed York said, that’s the downside of the N.F.L.’s fat TV contracts:

YORK: It makes you very successful, but it also makes it so you don’t really try new things and try to disrupt.

This sort of revenue-sharing is a key feature of American sports leagues. It’s less business model than cartel model; it’s a sort of billionaire socialism. And this is not, by the way, how the big soccer leagues work in Europe — where, interestingly, there’s a lot of political socialism. The European soccer leagues do share some revenues but, unlike most American sports leagues, there are essentially no firm salary caps, and every year the weakest teams are relegated out of the league while new ones are promoted.

Stefan SZYMANSKI: Well, I’ve always been very surprised by this.

Stefan Szymanski is a British economist who teaches sports management at the University of Michigan.

SZYMANSKI: So to me, thinking as an economist, I think of this as the difference between equality of opportunity and equality of outcomes. And when I think of Europeans in general, we tend to have strong systems of social services and safety nets, which ensure, really to a large extent, equality of outcomes within the European systems. But traditionally, we have a sense of limited equality of opportunity. We have class systems, we have big social gaps. And America, we always think of as being the reverse — where there’s equality of opportunity, but very limited safety net.

And it seems to me the sports story is completely the opposite. In Europe, we have this incredibly hyper-competitive, capitalist system where the devil take the hindmost, and we have a lot of financial failure in Europe. That’s also one thing that goes with this — an incredible financial distress and failure. And yet, in America, there’s these leagues which are essentially closed societies, which don’t allow any competition, and then share out the resources equally in almost a socialist fashion amongst the top teams. It seems that the mental framework for sports is at odds with the mental framework about competition in society more broadly.

That said, the American sports business model is too entrenched to change much, at least anytime soon. So how, in the face of more and more entertainment competition, are these giant leagues looking to grow?

Kim NG: Right now, one of the Commissioner’s main objectives is to spread the game globally.

Kim Ng is a senior executive with Major League Baseball.

NG: We’ve been very aggressive on that front. We’ve had games in the last couple of years from spring training to regular season games in Puerto Rico, Mexico, next year we’ll be in London. We’re doing a barnstorming tour in Asia as well as playing some regular-season games in Japan.

Major League Baseball, despite declining stadium attendance, is still the world’s second biggest sports league by total revenue. It hopes to maintain that status not just by bringing American baseball to the rest of the world, but by bringing the rest of the world to American baseball.

NG: We have three development centers in China. We have high-performing programs in Puerto Rico, Mexico, Nicaragua, Curacao, South Africa, and these are basically academies in which we train kids on a yearlong basis and they go to school as well. And our goal is to get them into colleges and hopefully some of them into the big leagues as soon as we can.

* * *

Even the most profitable sports league in the world — the National Football League — is concerned about its future. TV revenues are still strong, but viewership is slipping. Some people have been turned off by the sport’s violence, and the risk to players. Others didn’t like how the National Anthem protests turned the game of football into a political football. And the N.F.L.’s most visible attempt to globalize the game — it was called N.F.L. Europe — it failed. So, as in any maturing industry, the league has been searching for new revenues. The U.S. Supreme Court recently did its part to help. In May of 2018, it struck down a federal law that had limited legal sports betting to Nevada. Which should be good news for the NFL and other American sports leagues.

GUIDO: Yes, I mean, from a revenue perspective, there’s no question.

San Francisco 49ers president Al Guido.

GUIDO: If you think about what fantasy football has done, it’s increased the popularity of our sport.

EPSTEIN: Gambling on sport is good for sport in the sense that it creates revenue opportunities and it creates a deeper fan connection to the matches, the games, the events themselves.

Lawrence Epstein is with the U.F.C..

EPSTEIN: So there is no doubt that the proliferation of sports gaming around the United States is going to be good for not just the U.F.C., not just the N.F.L., but all sport.

The U.F.C. happens to be based in Las Vegas. Sports leagues used to stay far away from Vegas, worried about the long-standing, and well-deserved, connection between gambling and match fixing. The most famous fix — alleged fix, at least — was the 1919 World Series. In early 2019, more than two dozen professional tennis players were arrested for participating in a match-fixing ring based in Spain.

That said, even before the Supreme Court ruling, American sports leagues were finally starting to shed their fear of the Vegas connection. In 2017, the National Hockey League finally put a team there, the Las Vegas Golden Knights. Their first season got underway just a few days after the horrible mass shooting in Vegas where 58 people were killed at a music festival, and the Golden Knights turned into one of the biggest feel-good stories in recent memory by making it all the way to the Stanley Cup Final. And next year, the N.F.L.’s Oakland Raiders will become the Las Vegas Raiders.

The embrace between professional sport and professional gambling would seem to be complete. What does this mean for the leagues and their teams? Here’s Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban.

CUBAN: Yeah, I think it’ll lead to our franchise valuations doubling, literally, because there’s a lot more reasons for people to pay attention, a lot more reasons for people to watch. And that’s good for our bottom line.

It’s too early to say whether team valuations really will increase like Cuban suspects, or even to say exactly how gambling fees will be divided. Individual states are already setting up their sports-betting tax rates, and teams and players are angling for their cut as well. One idea that’s been pitched is a so-called “integrity fee” — an incentive to keep the matches clean. I asked the sports economist Victor Matheson who he thinks will be the biggest winners and losers as sports gambling grows in America.

MATHESON: So, I would say the biggest winners are all of the professional leagues. The people simply enjoy the sport more when they have something riding on it. There’s a reason why every March, everyone tunes into all those first- and second-round March Madness games: because everyone has filled out a bracket and it’s hoping their bracket isn’t busted on the first day.

So, we know that gambling makes things exciting, but we also know gambling can lead to corruption. And there’s two really big losers here: I think the N.C.A.A. is a huge loser here, because their athletes are particularly vulnerable to corruption because they’re not being paid. Now mind you, that’s the N.C.A.A.’s own fault for not paying their athletes. But we don’t have to worry about LeBron James or Steph Curry throwing games because they’re not going to risk their $30 million paychecks and their reputations to try to make a little money from a mobster. On the other hand, an unpaid, poor 19-year-old college kid might.

The other big loser might be the gamblers themselves. There are groups of people that this type of gambling will appeal to, in particular it was suggested that young, confident men are — this is exactly the sort of thing that will suck them in. They watch sports 40 hours a week. They’ve got to be good at gambling, they think to themselves, and guess what: there’s people who are a lot better than them still.

If gambling represents one way forward for the business side of sports — that is, a new revenue stream — there is of course another, time-honored way of staying in the black: controlling costs. In most industries, the largest single cost is labor.

MATHESON: For the economy as a whole, the traditional number that economists use is that roughly two-thirds of all gross domestic product goes to labor, and about a third of it goes to capital.

Sports, meanwhile, has had a dramatic trajectory.

MATHESON: If you’re looking back in 1970, you are seeing a world where players are making only a tiny fraction of the total revenues. The rest of that is going into the pockets of the owners. By the mid 1970’s and mid 1980’s we have free agency in every sport except maybe the N.F.L., which had free agency on paper but not in reality until about the mid-90’s. And in Europe, in soccer, you started to have free agency in about 1995-ish. And at that point you have players earning more like 50, 60, 70 percent of team revenue — so a huge increase in what they’re earning.

That’s a huge percentage increase to the athletes at the same time as revenues were also exploding. But, more recently:

MATHESON: More recently, the owners have clawed a bunch of that back, and in the big leagues in the United States, the N.B.A., N.H.L., and National Football League, by agreement between the union and the leagues, they basically split the revenue 50/50. Half of the revenue goes to the players in terms of pay and benefits, and the other half sticks with the owners as profit or to cover costs to run the league.

So, how costly is it to run the league, and how much is left over for profits? That’s very hard to say, since most pro sports teams are privately owned. One notable exception is the N.F.L.’s Green Bay Packers, who are publicly held and therefore publish their financials. The Packers are a venerable team but also a very small-market team: Green Bay has a population of barely 100,000 people. And yet, remember, they get the same share of N.F.L. collective revenues as the New England Patriots or the Los Angeles Rams. The last couple years, the Packers’ annual revenue has been in the neighborhood of $450 million, with profits averaging around 12.5 percent. The current salary cap — the limit a team can spend on player salaries — is about $177 million a year; and a team is required to spend at least 89 percent of that amount. So you might imagine that in a league like the N.F.L. or the N.B.A., with TV revenues locked up well in advance and total labor costs limited by a union agreement, there’s no way for a pro franchise to lose money. That’s what I suggested to N.B.A. owner Mark Cuban.

CUBAN: No, that’s not true at all.

DUBNER: Give me an example.

CUBAN: I can’t throw out names, but yeah.

DUBNER: Well, how many N.B.A. teams in a given year are going to lose money?

CUBAN: More than you think.

DUBNER: Really.

CUBAN: Yeah.

DUBNER: So, even with the revenue-sharing, with all the broadcast and other monies distributed evenly and with a salary cap that guarantees that you don’t have to overspend a certain amount, you’re saying that — how do you lose money? Is it by lacking game revenue?

CUBAN: Enough effort. Yeah. Lacking revenue period. Just like any business.

DUBNER: But what’s the major variable? Is it gate revenue or is it broadcast revenue?

CUBAN: Gate, broadcast, players, all the obvious things.

One obvious difference between the cost of labor in sports versus just about any other industry — except maybe the entertainment industry — is that the employees are the product, which makes them much more visible than employees in a typical industry. And potentially much more valuable. Consider a superstar like LeBron James, who this year is earning $35.6 million. Which sounds absurd — until you try to calculate just how valuable he is to the sport.

EPSTEIN: I mean, if LeBron James was getting what he deserves, he’d make $200 million a year, $300 million a year.

That again is Lawrence Epstein of the U.F.C. His biggest star, Conor McGregor, earned a reported $100 million for that pay-per-view fight against Floyd Mayweather Jr.

EPSTEIN: Oh man, I mean if Conor made $100 million last year, which is probably 20 percent of our revenues. LeBron James, he’s got to be worth 10 percent of the revenues of the N.B.A. He’s got to be. So what is that? It’s 400 million or something? It’s a giant number. Maybe he’s not Conor, which is 20 percent of our revenues, but he’s easily 10. He’s easily 10.

For the record, the N.B.A. produced about $7.5 billion in revenues last season, 10 percent of which would be roughly $750 million. Too bad for LeBron James that Lawrence Epstein isn’t setting his salary. And what about U.F.C. salaries? Before interviewing Epstein, I’d asked the economist Victor Matheson to compare athlete salaries in different sports.

MATHESON: If you’re trying to decide what sport to go into, you probably want to go into baseball or football, where at least you’re going to be earning a pretty big chunk of those television revenues. And man, stay away from U.F.C., because they’re making a lot of revenues but not much of that is going into the athletes. The amount going to the athletes there is about 10 or 15 percent of revenues. So, again, much less.

Why do the U.F.C.’s athletes earn so much less? Keep in mind what Lawrence Epstein told us earlier — that the U.F.C., unlike other leagues, pays its own production costs. Still, you might think that compared to the big team sports, U.F.C. athletes would do pretty well, since team sports require so much more labor to produce. We do know that U.F.C. fighters aren’t unionized, which means they don’t have collective bargaining power, like N.F.L. and other team athletes do. In any case, I asked the U.F.C.’s Lawrence Epstein about this disparity.

EPSTEIN: Well I think first of all, the 15 percent number, I don’t think that’s accurate. I mean there certainly is some fluctuation in the percentage of revenue that goes to athletes. But the reason for that primarily is that we have a variable revenue stream model in our company. So, you mentioned the N.F.L. Let’s assume they’re giving 50 percent of the revenues to the athletes. Well, those revenues are contracted revenues with the largest media companies in the earth: ESPN, CBS, NBC, Fox, and others. The significant part of our profitability still comes from pay-per-view events. Which of course are completely variable in revenue.

And so because we just don’t have those contracted revenues like so many of the other sports leagues do, we’re taking a lot of risk every time we put one of these major events on. I mean you can’t just agree to pay certain people a certain amount of money if you don’t know whether or not that money is going to come in. And of course, the N.F.L. and Major League Baseball and the N.B.A. — multi-billion-dollar contracts with great credit on the other side of those deals.

DUBNER: I’ve read that the median U.F.C. salary is roughly $42,000 a year. We interviewed a fighter, Lauren Murphy, who’s the No. 5-ranked female fighter in her weight class. And she told us she gets about $12,000 per fight guaranteed, another $12,000 if she wins, and a $50,000 bonus if she’s the fight of the night. So she said she’s had years where she’s made just $20,000 and one year where she made around $90,000. Again, for a fighter who is No. 5 in the world in her ranking.

I understand there’s an ongoing antitrust lawsuit against U.F.C. which claims that the U.F.C. used an anti-competitive scheme of long-term exclusive fighter contracts, coercion, and acquisitions of rival M.M.A. promoters to establish and maintain dominance, etc., to suppress fighter compensation. I don’t expect you’re going to open up on that case to me right now, but I’d like you to talk generally to this notion of a league that is making a lot of money, that was bought for $4 billion, and yet one where the people who were doing the actual fighting seemed to be generally compensated much less than the average fan at least would assume.

EPSTEIN: Yeah, obviously can’t get into talking anything specific about the litigation. But, as I mentioned previously, Conor McGregor made about $100 million last year. When you compare the percentage of revenues that we deliver to our athletes, it’s very comparable to other sports organizations of our size, and the fact that both we have to produce the content, which adds additional expense to us, in addition to the fact that still a very large portion of our revenue is variable in nature — we’re very proud of what we pay our athletes and we think it’s certainly consistent with other sports organizations of our size.

And to a certain extent, it is a zero-sum game. And if Conor McGregor is going to make $100 million and Jon Jones and these guys are going to make tens of millions, there’s got to be money there to do it. The guys at the top end, the women on top of the food chain, they’re happy with the ecosystem. That’s for sure.

DUBNER: Does the league provide health insurance and other benefits?

EPSTEIN: So, our athletes are independent contractors, so we can’t provide that type of health insurance that you and I might get with our particular employers. But about seven years ago, we began providing what’s called an accident insurance policy which would cover our athletes for any acute injury that they would sustain while they’re under contract with us. In addition to that, most athletic commissions or federations around the world will require that insurance policies be in place for event related injuries. So when you combine the event-related injuries with the accident insurance policies, our athletes are covered while they’re under contract with us for any acute injuries that they would sustain.

We’ll hear more about these labor issues in an upcoming episode, this time from the athletes’ side and the union’s side. For instance, here’s DeMaurice Smith, executive director of the N.F.L. players’ union:

DeMaurice SMITH: The reality is: they are management, and we are labor. And there are going to be core philosophical differences between us. And I think the challenge becomes, there are people who are unwilling to perceive someone’s life in the other shoes. And frankly I think that’s on both sides of the table.

For now, let’s just say that there is a lot of friction between management and labor in sports. In most organizations, there’s one person whose job is to navigate that friction. A person who’s part of management but who’s also the primary liaison between ownership and the athletes. Not the coach — they’re seldom a part of management. This person is usually called the general manager. Like Daryl Morey, general manager of the Houston Rockets.

And the G.M. of an N.B.A. team does … what?

MOREY: So, there’s the bringing in the coaching staff who then obviously direct the players. There’s the medical performance side, where you’re keeping players performing at the highest level. There’s the scouting side, and then there’s the data-and-information side.

Morey is particularly well-regarded on the data-and-information side. He was a pioneer in N.B.A. analytics, and he recently won the league’s Executive of the Year Award. Unlike most general managers, Morey neither played nor coached basketball at a high level; he took the nerd route to the N.B.A., having studied computer science and statistics.

MOREY: Yeah, I think “the nerd route” is fair.

Morey also enjoys musical theater; he recently commissioned a basketball musical called Small Ball.

MOREY: That is accurate. Yeah.

One character sings the following line: “Your cold calculations. You are ripping the heart from this beautiful game.”

MOREY: Correct. Yes, he sings that multiple times.

As for his day job: Morey admits the N.B.A. has had a tremendous growth spurt.

MOREY: Basketball in the late 40’s and early 50’s was thought of as the red-headed stepchild of sports. No one cared about basketball until maybe even the early 80’s.

And now?

MOREY: The N.B.A. is going to be the dominant sport in the future — along with soccer and e-sports. For me, the top sports are going to be global. The bottom line, just follow where people are spending their time. Especially under the age of 25. It’s all dynamic games on their phones or P.C.’s or consoles. And the fastest growing content that’s watched by far is people watching people playing video games. Both competitive and non-competitive. And it really is just overwhelmingly logical that e-sports is going to be one of the top sports.

Daryl Morey, like the people we’ve been hearing from in other sports, recognizes that the modern consumer has a lot of entertainment options. Just because a sport is dominant today doesn’t mean it’ll even be relevant in 20 or 50 years.

MOREY: I do think the N.B.A. does have a real challenge. We have a golden goose that’s laying eggs. The league would have to take a risk while the goose is laying golden eggs. We’ve done actually more changes to our game than any of these other professional sports, by far. But the reality is it’s sometimes hard to change.

There are a lot of things Morey would like to see changed in the N.B.A. For starters, he thinks they play too many games.

MOREY: Here’s a really simple way the N.B.A. has too many games: when you ask someone, “Should the N.B.A. have more games or less games?,” there’s not a single person alive who says there should be more games.

This is what Morey means when he talks about the golden goose — cutting back on games would cut back on revenues. At least that’s the conventional wisdom. Morey disagrees:

MOREY: Appointment viewing is what drives drives major advertising spend, drives everything, so I absolutely think there should be fewer games in the N.B.A.

His evidence for this argument?

MOREY: The N.C.A.A. tournament is 63 games. They make more TV money than we make in our entire 1,200-game N.B.A. regular season. I would have it be like the Premier League — everyone plays each other twice. Fifty-eight games.

Morey also thinks there are too many playoff games.

MOREY: I would do one-and-done N.B.A. playoffs. I would get byes to the top two teams in each of the conferences, similar to the N.F.L. I would then have a play-in tournament to be the other four teams that then play the two teams with the byes. All the games will be one-and-done.

One big reason he’d want fewer games, including the playoffs, is that N.B.A. games are too predictable.

MOREY: There needs to be more variance. Every good sport, game, board game needs to have a real healthy mix of skill and luck. I’ve seen many papers on this. It’s like 70-30, something like that. One big problem is we are the most deterministic on a single-game level. We know better than any other sport this team is going to beat that team. If we play one of the bottom-feeder teams — I don’t want to mention — we’ll have 90, 95 percent win odds on a home game. That often will create very, very low reason to tune in.

And the worst part of games for Morey is what should be the best part:

MOREY: The ends of N.B.A. games is one of my bugaboos. I just can’t stand the fouls and timeouts and it’s just not a good viewing experience.

There is a proposed solution for that.

MOREY: Yeah, you stop using the clock. So, let’s say you’re winning 85-82 with five minutes to go, now the clock turns off and you play to 92 and you just play regular pickup basketball from that point, and it’s a fantastic way to end games.

This idea — of turning off the clock toward the end of a basketball game and playing instead to a point total — it’s called the Elam Ending, after its inventor, Nick Elam.

MOREY: Yes, I would definitely do the Elam Ending.

It may strike you that Daryl Morey has an awfully long list of things he dislikes about basketball. After all, it’s the game he loves, the game that employs him. It may also strike you that Morey sounds a bit … grouchy. If so, there may be a reason for this: during his tenure as G.M. of the Houston Rockets, they’ve been one of the very best teams in basketball — and yet, so far, they’ve failed to win an N.B.A. championship. And Daryl Morey really likes to win. This goes for everyone we’ve been speaking with today — you aren’t at this level in sport unless you cannot stand to lose. Just how much does Daryl Morey love to win? When we spoke with him, the N.B.A. season hadn’t begun yet yet begun; he was in Las Vegas with the Rockets’ summer-league team — a rough equivalent of baseball’s spring training. In other words, games whose outcomes are meaningless. But not to Morey.

MOREY: Well, our dominant 4-0 summer-league team — we’re trying to hang another summer-league banner. Four-and-0, and our highest pick on our team is 45, I think, or something like that. So we’ve got our motley crew.

DUBNER: But the reason you have such a motley crew is your fault, right? Because you’re giving away all the high draft picks to get the superstars.

MOREY: Yes, exactly. I was about to mention that. Yeah, some G.M. idiot has mortgaged the future to try and put together our hopeful championship team and because of that we haven’t had a first-round pick in several years.

DUBNER: So it sounds like you care. It’s not just—

MOREY: Oh, I care so deeply and I’m not — and it’s stupid. I have no idea why I care, but I like winning.

DUBNER: What you don’t have yet, as you’ve alluded, is a championship. And I’m just curious what what it feels like overall. I’m guessing when you self-assess, you think, “Yeah, I’m doing a pretty decent job.” I’m sure you work hard, and, again, there is a lot of outcome success, but I’m curious how big a gap the not-having-won-the-championship leaves or what it feels like.

MOREY: It feels like an Ives piece, where it’s just dissonance the whole way but no final chord at the end to satisfy. That’s how feels basically. Stravinsky. Ives.

DUBNER: And then if you win it, it becomes Brahms or Mozart or somebody?

MOREY: Becomes Andrew Lloyd Webber. Just the perfect melody. Just a nice resolved power chord, basically.

* * *

Freakonomics Radio is produced by Stitcher and Dubner Productions. This episode was produced by Anders Kelto, Derek John, and Alvin Melathe with help from Matt Stroup. Our staff also includes Alison Craiglow, Greg Rippin, Harry Huggins, and Zack Lapinski. Our theme song is “Mr. Fortune,” by the Hitchhikers; all the other music was composed by Luis Guerra. You can subscribe to Freakonomics Radio on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Here’s where you can learn more about the people and ideas in this episode:

SOURCES

Mark Cuban, owner of the N.B.A.’s Dallas Mavericks.

Lawrence Epstein, chief operating officer for the U.F.C.

Al Guido, president of the San Francisco 49ers.

Victor Matheson, economist at College of the Holy Cross.

Daryl Morey, general manager of the Houston Rockets.

Kim Ng, senior vice-president for M.L.B.

DeMaurice Smith, executive director of the N.F.L. players’ union.

Stefan Szymanski, professor at the University of Michigan.

John Thorn, historian and author.

Jed York, C.E.O. of the San Francisco 49ers.

RESOURCES

How to Win at the Sport of Business by Mark Cuban (First Diversion Books 2011).

The Economics of Sports, Sixth Edition by Michael Leeds, Peter von Allmen, and Victor Matheson (Routledge, 2018).

EXTRA

“How Sports Became Us (Ep. 349),” Freakonomics Radio (2018).

“How to Stop Being a Loser (Ep. 350),” Freakonomics Radio (2018).

“Here’s Why You’re Not an Elite Athlete (Ep. 351),” Freakonomics Radio (2018).

“Think Like a Winner (Ep. 363),” Freakonomics Radio (2019).

The post Inside the Sports-Industrial Complex (Ep. 364) appeared first on Freakonomics.

from Dental Care Tips http://freakonomics.com/podcast/sports-5/

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The Chase Files Daily Newscap 11/3/2018

Good MORNING #realdreamchasers! Here is The Chase Files Daily News Cap for Saturday 3rd November 2018. Remember you can read full articles for FREE via Barbados Today (BT) or Barbados Government Information Services (BGIS) OR by purchasing by purchasing a Saturday Sun Nation Newspaper (SS).

AXE STALLS – Layoffs at the state-owned Caribbean Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) have been placed on hold, but management has agreed to pay workers the five per cent salary increase which, it was earlier revealed, they were not entitled to. These were two of the main issues emerging this afternoon from some four hours of talks between the employees’ bargaining agent, the Barbados Workers’ Union (BWU) and, management of the CBC at the Pine, St Michael studios. Regarding the retrenchments, special advisor and former General Secretary of the BWU, Sir Roy Trotman said that matter was not discussed because the established process was not followed by the CBC. Sir Roy told Barbados TODAY the layoffs, which were expected to take place by the end of last month, have been put on hold pending the outcome of a meeting next week to specifically address the issue. He said after the state-run broadcaster and the union had first concluded talks on a number of outstanding matters such as salary increases and increments, its management officially informed him it was restructuring. “We made the suggestion to them they should in fact follow more closely the provisions within the Employment Rights Act, and particularly the understanding that we have arrived at regarding the protocol of the Social Partnership,” he said. “The CBC was very conscious that that is something which may not have been done exactly how it should be done. So they agreed that they would hold fire and have further discussions on it among themselves. And we have agreed to come back at 2.30 [pm] on Monday to start looking at the question of rationalization,” Sir Roy added. Asked if the terminations had therefore been put on hold he replied: “Yes. That is what the position is right now.” He also said the two sides have not yet talked about how many of the estimated 260 workforce have been earmarked to go home. “We have not started that discussion in any way whatsoever,” the BWU special advisor stressed. But while the retrenchment talks had gone nowhere, Sir Roy reported better news for all staff with respect to outstanding pay. “The meeting today was not just a question where we discussed just layoffs, we also looked at the matter of some outstanding issues. We had to deal with the matter of the outstanding five per cent. We also had to deal with the matter of outstanding increments, which was a matter that we stood up outside here at CBC for last year…and we have reached agreement on those two matters,” the former general secretary told Barbados TODAY. He noted that the major question left is whether the monies would be paid in cash or bonds. “But we will have that as an ongoing discussion,” Sir Roy said. He was also asked about his meeting yesterday with the Transport Board which is to undertake a full restructuring in phases that involves layoffs as well. “The Transport Board yesterday put a proposal…very specific proposal regarding laying off about 50 persons or so. These are persons who received letters of appointment sometime in April of this year. We have to meet those workers and discuss the matter with them, possibly on Monday,” he revealed. Sir Roy told Barbados TODAY the board management then spoke generally about its plans going forward over the next few years. He said the board’s plans would constitute a full paper which will be presented overtime. Sir Roy disclosed that the chairman of the board, Gregory Nicholls, will address a general meeting next week that includes the United Commercial Autoworks Limited (UCAL). “And we are hoping that at that time, he will have some discussions which will allow UCAL to know, whether UCAL would be in a position to offer some of those people any work,” the special advisor to the BWU told Barbados TODAY. He noted that in terms of specifics, the union only addressed those 50 workers who were appointed in April this year and are earmarked to be sent home. But while Sir Roy said he was not aware of any other layoffs up to the time of this interview, Barbados TODAYreceived reports that management of the state-run Barbados Agricultural Management Company (BAMC), was in the process of retrenching some of the workers at the lone sugar factory at Portvale, St James. There were reports that staff would be cut from 169 to 104. General manager of the BAMC, Leslie Parris, told Barbados TODAY, this was all speculation. “We don’t operate that way. We go through the process. As you are well aware, the Government has cut its budget to the SOE [state owned enterprises] and within that context, we have to look at the resizing of the operation. That process is underway now, and we have not made any decisions. Such decisions are made in consultations with the staff and the union,” Parris said. (BT)

PAY INCREASE FOR CBC WORKERS 5% – The hard blow of inevitable job cuts at the Caribbean Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) has been somewhat softened by the fact that employees there will finally get the five per cent salary increase promised to all public workers. It gets sweeter for them, too, as Barbados Workers’ Union (BWU) advisor to the general secretary Sir Roy Trotman also revealed those workers will also receive the four increments promised to them last year. Sir Roy spoke to the Nation yesterday following a four-hour meeting with CBC management at its Pine, St Michael headquarters. This comes even as some of the 250 members of staff at that state-owned enterprise are expected to be cut as Government continues its mass retrenchment exercise. “We have reached an agreement that the CBC workers will get that five per cent and we are hoping that will be paid to some of them as a matter of urgency,” Sir Roy said. (SS)

CHECK-MATE – Cashing a cheque without an account with the corresponding bank will now cost you $10 – at Scotiabank. Earlier this week, the bank introduced the charge for anyone without an account at the financial institution but wanting to cash a Scotiabank cheque there. This fee, which customers were alerted to by tellers as they conducted business in branches, is the latest fee since there was an $11 increase on user fees for account holders. In September, account holders found out, some via their statements, that the monthly service fee would increase from $5 to $16 effective the end of September. Only last month, RBC Royal Bank, although they did not introduce a fee, also made the decision to cease cashing their cheques for customers who do not have an account with that institution. When queried about the latest charge, a Scotiabank official told The Nation the fee was introduced “because banks charge customers”. (SS)

CENTRAL BANK TO ISSUE NEW SECURITIES – The Central Bank of Barbados today advised that the restructured securities under Government’s new debt offer will be issued on November 15, 2018. The Bank explained that technical and data issues had delayed the process. “The Bank regrets not meeting the original October 31 deadline. We are working assiduously to complete the process by mid-November,” the Bank said. The Bank also reminded investors that they will receive e-statements and not physical certificates for the new instruments. 97 percent of the participants in the debt swap accepted the new offer, which includes a reduction in interest rates, an extension of maturities and selective principal reductions. (SS)

‘NOT SO FAST, ARTHUR’ – Social activist and attorney-at-law Robert Bobby Clarke is suggesting that former Prime Minister Owen Arthur’s support for sale of the Barbados National Terminal Co Ltd (BNTCL) and the Barbados Hilton, was in effect an indictment of a similar decision he made during his administration. It was during a forum hosted by the Women and Development Unit of the University of the West Indies at Cave Hill on Wednesday night that the ex-prime minister made the declaration of support for the sale of the state entities. The recently ousted DLP administration had drawn heavy criticism for attempting to do the same. In his presentation, Arthur said selling the Hilton and the BNTCL was a better alternative to the taxes implemented under the Mia Mottley administration. Arthur said he is aware the sale would be an unpopular decision. He mused that he still bore the scars from deciding to sell the Barbados National Bank (BNB) as Minister of Finance. He said, “We sold it and the BNB is worth three times what it was then and employs twice as many people”. Clarke is contending that Arthur, a leading economist, was admitting to giving away one of the state’s cash cows. He said these companies were paying considerable taxes to the Government before they were sold. “That is a remarkable admission by Mr Owen Arthur former Prime Minister of Barbados. His comment shows that if the Barbados National Bank had not been sold and had continued being the property and the business of the Barbados Government, the present Government would not have had to go to the IMF [International Monetary Fund] to try to put its finances on a better footing,” said Clarke, in a statement released Friday afternoon. Clarke said it was that same mentality that pushed Government to sell the Insurance Corporation of Barbados Limited (ICBL), its interest in the (Barbados) Hilton Hotel and its attempt to sell the Barbados National Oil Company. Clarke said the history of such sales show the monies were never used to improve agriculture and food production which could have reduced Barbados ballooning food bill. “They were not used to improve the fishing fleet and stop the importation of tinned sardines, herring, tinned salmon, salt fish and fresh fish from Trinidad and Tobago. They were not used to develop more means of production to cut down on imports,” he said. (BT)

COMMISSIONG DEFENDS GOVERNMENT’S HANDLING OF JOB CUTS - Ambassador to CARICOM and Attorney at-law David Comissiong says Government was well within the parameters of the Employment Rights Act when it began staff cuts at several state-owned entities as the roll out of the Barbados Economic Recovery and Transformation (BERT) programme continues. He said the position of the National Union of Public Workers (NUPW) and the Barbados Workers’ Union (BWU) that Government had circumvented the six-week consultation provision under the legislation did not hold water. “Some are behaving as if the General Secretary of the BWU [Toni Moore] has not spoken publicly about how long and involved the consultations with the Government has been, or that out of such consultations emerged agreement on the principle of last in first out,” Comissiong told Barbados TODAY. The outspoken social activist also accused the unions and some sections of the media of “behaving as though the Prime Minister has not spoken several times about the plans to involve many of the displaced workers in near future work contracts or private sector employment…. In other words, Government has addressed all of the issues stipulated in the Employment Rights Act.” Section 31 of the Employment Rights Act of Barbados stipulates that “where it is contemplated that the workforce of the business of an employer (inclusive of a statutory corporation) will be reduced by ten per cent or any other significant number, before dismissing an employee, the employer shall: Carry out consultations with the affected workers or their representative (that is, their Trade Union). Commence the consultations not later than six weeks before any of the affected workers is dismissed.” The Act also says the consultations must determine the proposed method of selecting employees who are to be dismissed, the proposed method of carrying out the dismissals, as well as the period over which the dismissals are to take place. The legislation also covers measures the employer might take to find alternative employment and mitigate the effects of the dismissals. On Wednesday, the retrenchment of 55 workers at the Barbados Agriculture Development Marketing Corporation (BADMC) aroused the ire of the NUPW. At the same time the BWU was up in arms over a letter demanding the management of the Rural Development Commission (RDC) cut staff that same day. NUPW Deputy General Secretary Delcia Burke accused the Government run agencies of attempting to blindside the union while Assistant General Secretary Wayne Walrond said the development was tantamount to “starting a war.” Comissiong has rejected the notion of callousness in the manner in which Government has gone about the retrenchment exercise, pointing to Government’s plan to setup a household mitigation unit to stem the fallout. “Government has a correct understanding of its duty to defend and uphold the general welfare of our populace, he said. (BT)

ENTREPRENEURSHIP THE WAY FORWARD – Barbados’ youth minister says there is a brave new world of opportunity opening to the country’s young people. In his feature address at the opening of Global Entrepreneurship Week, Minister of Youth and Community Empowerment, Adrian Forde, said the BLP is taking a new approach to enterprise development with the establishment of Trust Loans and that youth could benefit. “The recently launched Trust Loans will provide $10 million per year for each of the next five years to seed a Trust Loans Fund to assist existing small businesses or potential small business startups, in assessing security free loans of up to $5000 each,” Forde said, adding that these loans will lead to increased entrepreneurial activity. “Increased entrepreneurial activity will go a long way in building more entrepreneurial citizens and excite our young people about getting involved in business, a borderless world where the technology opens new opportunities that were unavailable to previous generations,” he said. Global Entrepreneurship Week was launched at Sagicor Cave Hill School of Business with the theme, Building A Productive Economy Through Resilient Entrepreneurs on Friday morning. General Manager of Barbados Youth Business Trust Cardell Fergusson, said this year’s theme was chosen to tie in with national initiatives that foster economic activity. “We therefore believe that by providing the young persons with the skills and resources that are needed to start a business, as well as support, we will be creating a class of persons who are able to contribute toward economic growth [as] we all have a part to play in the recovery and growth of the economy. Our part is the creation of productive entrepreneurs who stay the course,” Fergusson said. Senior Business Development Officer The Barbados Agency for Micro Enterprise Development Limited (Fund Access) Karen Sue said that since the organization started in January 1998 to the present date has approved loans totaling 60.8M. “From inception in January 1998 to October 31, 2018, Fund Access has approved loans totaling 60.8 million dollars to 1, 522 clients. Of these 724 were new businesses and 798 were expansions. Also approved for this period were 134 additional loans and 257 refined loans. 2313 jobs were created,” she said, adding that their business development officers work closely with businesses to ensure that closures are minimized. “Our business development officers work assiduously to ensure business closures are minimized through close monitoring of said business, provision of technical assistance and of course training and development. All this speaks to our continued commitment to entrepreneurship, which we see as the backbone of our economy while emphasizing integrity in lending, as any young person can walk into the offices of Fund Access and be judged solely on the quality and viability of their application and nothing else,” Sue said. The official start of Global Entrepreneurship Week begins on Sunday, November 11 with a church service at Christ The King Anglican Church at 8 a.m. and ends on Sunday, November 18 with a hike to Bath, St John. (BT)

ICAB PAST PRESIDENT APPOINTED TO GLOBAL ACCOUNTING BODY - Immediate Past President of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Barbados (ICAB) and Partner with EY Lisa Padmore, has been successfully appointed to the Board of the International Federation of Accountants (IFAC) at its Council meeting in Sydney, Australia on November 1, 2018. IFAC is the global organization for the accountancy profession dedicated to serving the public interest by strengthening the profession and contributing to the development of strong international economies. IFAC is comprised of over 175 members and associates in more than 130 countries and jurisdictions, representing almost 3 million professional accountants in public practice, education, government service, industry, and commerce. Lisa was nominated by ICAB, who has been a member of IFAC since 1981. She was the 4th female President of ICAB between May 2015 – May 2017, and prior to her appointment to the Board of IFAC, served on the Professional Accountancy Organization (PAO) Development Committee of IFAC as the representative of The Chartered Professional Accountants of Canada (CPA Canada) from January 2017 to October 2018. On accepting the nomination to the Board, Lisa commented: “I am humbled and honoured to be nominated by ICAB to serve the profession at this global level, and to be able to bring the challenges and concerns of our region to the attention of the leaders of the global profession. The accounting profession globally is at a cross-road, and IFAC as an institution has to adapt and evolve to not only manage the current hurdles, but anticipate the future trends and be an organization that is ready to serve a future-ready profession.” (SS)

GRASS PIECE IN THE VALLEY – The state of the area around The Valley Resource Centre in The Glebe, St George, has become a cause for concern by users of the facility. The waist-high grass, neglected plants and garbage in the bush belie the fact the centre is located next to the parish post office and an automatic banking machine and across from the police station. Classes and programmes are still being held there. Resident Kenmore Brathwaite said it looked like a place for grazing animals.“This is supposed to be a lawn, not a grass piece for goats and sheep. How can this be a community centre? Somebody is not doing their job,” he said. Cuthbert Nicholls said the situation was “not commendable” and could be a breeding ground for pests and vectors. (SS)

EARLY CLOSURE AT CHARLES F BROOME – Parents and guardians of Charles F Broome Primary School were summoned to collect their children just after 1 p.m. Some of the parents said, they were informed by way of a Whatsapp group message which stated that the school was closing early due to environmental concerns. A Nation News team was just in time to see parents collecting their wards. However the Principal denied to give any comment on the matter. (SS)

ABRAHAMS NOT BOTHERED BY POTENTIAL LEGAL BATTLE OVER GSC – Minister of Energy and Water Resources Wilfred Abrahams is not fazed by the possibility of legal challenge by a minor opposition party over Government’s use of the Barbados Water Authority (BWA) to collect the Garbage and Sewage Contribution (GSC) tax. In an interview with Barbados TODAY, Abrahams said he was confident Government was standing on solid legal footing and welcomed the declared intent by the Lynette Eastmond – led United Progressive Party (UPP) to test this. “The UPP is free to approach the court over this if they wish to because that is what the courts are there for. No citizen should be afraid of approaching the court to get a ruling on what is fair and just and legal. But I stand behind the Government entirely on this one. So they would do what they have to do,” said Abrahams. While the BWA moves to ramp up disconnections as result of ongoing customer rebellion against the tax, the two-year-old UPP has revealed that its “legal team is reviewing this situation and will escalate to the courts if required. “As far as the UPP can determine, under the BWA Act there is no penalty for the non-payment of the tax as is typical in tax legislation. Government should never require a Social Services Act to do the work of a Taxing Statute,” the UPP said in a statement The UPP argues the BWA has now been made into a Government tax collector, but outside the purview of the Barbados Revenue Authority (BRA). In addition, the UPP contends that such an approach runs counter to the United Nations General Assembly (UN) Resolution 64/292, of which Barbados is a signatory. In it, the UN explicitly recognizes the human right to water and sanitation and acknowledges that clean drinking water and sanitation are essential to the realization of all human rights. The resolution calls upon UN member states and international organizations to provide financial resources, build capacity and transfer technology to help countries, in particular developing countries, to provide safe, clean, accessible and affordable drinking water and sanitation for all. However in his response to the UPP’s charge, Abrahams said that the humanitarian component of the argument was non-starter. He said the UPP was misleading the public into thinking that Government had imposed on the basic human rights of Barbadians. “In the same way that you paid for water before, you are still paying for water now. Government must contemplate access not free access. Even the vulnerable in Barbados through the mechanisms of Government still access these things. So these rights are not denied to anyone,” he said. The Minister said that the measures were not intended to be permanent and that Barbadians needed to decide if they were willing to sacrifice in the short term to fix this country failing infrastructure, which included the compromised south coast sewage system. “The alternative is sewage back on the street and we do nothing about the poor garbage collection. At some point people need to decide if we are serious about getting Barbados back on track,” Abrahams said. The Minister strongly disputed the UPP’s assertion Government’s approach to collecting the GSC was out of touch with the economic hardship facing Barbadians, noting that special provisions had been made for those with extenuating circumstances to apply for relief from the levy. Last Friday, BWA Chairman Leodeane Worrell revealed that customers were flat out refusing to pay the GSC tax, which has resulted in revenue at the BWA plummeting by 40 per cent between August and September. Worrell said the BWA was merely the conduit for collecting the $1.50 per day tax. This meant that even though customers were paying their bill minus the levy, the BWA was still obligated to take the GSC from the amount paid. At the press conference summoned by Minister of Energy and Water Resources Wilfred Abrahams in the Committee Room of Parliament, Worrell revealed that on average the BWA hauls in $10 million in monthly revenue. Since the introduction of the tax on August 1, the intake for the cash-strapped public water company dropped to about $6 million. The situation threatens to worsen the company’s outstanding arrears, which to date run to $15 million. (BT)

DOMINICA HINTS AT LEGAL ACTION AGAINST ROSS UNIVERSITY – Prime Minister Roosevelt Skerrit said his administration is prepared to take legal action against the US-owned Ross University regarding the ownership and occupation of buildings on lands that had been leased to the off-shore medical institution that has since re-located to Barbados. Earlier this year, Ross University left Dominica under controversial circumstances after having been on the island for the past 40 years. The university later defended its decision to re-locate to Bridgetown saying it had been taken “after considerable deliberations, including a review of our academic and infrastructural requirement and future plan”. The Skerrit Administration said it had informed the Ross University School of Medicine that it could have resumed its operations on the hurricane struck island even before the start of the January semester in 2019. In a July 9, three-page letter to Wardell, Prime Minister Skerrit had indicated that plans were advanced for the resumption of classes in Portsmouth, north of her Skerrit, speaking at a meeting with Dominicans residing overseas, said that Dominica had entered into an agreement for the lease of the land in the north of the island where the university had located its campus. “The campus belongs to the state. A lease agreement was entered into Ross University and the government of Dominica leasing the 27.2 acres to Ross and in that lease it states very clearly and even our existing laws make it very clear also, that if you are leasing property and anything they build upon it, it will belong to the owner.” “So we really want Ross to hand over these buildings to us sooner rather than later. The Attorney general (Levi Peter) is in discussions with them and the sooner they can get out, the better for us. “If they do not want to move when we want them to move we will take them to court as simple as that,” Skerrit told the meeting. He told the visiting Dominicans that the government is in discussions with at least four entities for a replacement to Ross University. He said another entity is due here later this month “to look at the possibility of setting up a medical school here. “Out of this four there is one that we can literally sign right away with but we want to ensure that have an interest the opportunity to come into Dominica, to look at the campus and to engage us and to see which is the best one we want to pursue it with”. In August, Skerrit said he had also appointed a task force, headed by prominent cardiologist, Professor Gerald Grell, to assist in the engagements with the parties. (SS)

POLICE CONSTABLE CHARGED – Police Constable 1042 Richard Toppin 48 years of Salmonds St. Lucy has been arrested and charged for the offence of inflicting serious bodily harm on Ryan Taylor. This incident occurred around 3:50 p.m on October 11 at a shop at Waverly Cot St George. Richard Toppin is expected to appear in the District ‘A’' Magistrate Court today Saturday, November 03. (SS)

POLICE PROBING A SHOOTING AND STABBING – Police are currently on the scene of a shooting incident at Princess Royal Ave. Pine St. Michael. One man was reportedly shot and another stabbed multiple times. Both victims were taken to QEH by ambulance. (SS)

STUDENT CAUGHT WITH DRUGS – Mercy pleas of a police prosecutor-turned-defence barrister are all that stand in the way of a 17-year-old high school student gaining a criminal conviction ahead of CXC certificates after fellow students were caught smoking cannabis at school. Attorney-at-law Neville Reid today urged a Bridgetown magistrate to intervene after the teen was caught yesterday with 23 grammes of the herb in his school bag and an apparatus to weigh the drug. The first-time offender was called to the principal’s office after five students from first, second and third form were caught smoking marijuana on the school’s compound, with two scissors and a knife in their possession. They revealed that the teen was their supplier. The police were called and when the boy, who is not known to the law courts, was asked to account for the cannabis he initially said he found it outside the school, according to Sargeant Edwin Pinder, the prosecutor. He was told that this was the second time that he had given such an excuse when found in possession of the illicit drug. But the boy’s lawyer questioned why the necessary steps where not taken after the first incident to help the teen who is in the process of writing his CXC exams. “It is not a pretty picture if this is the second time he was found with drugs. Why were steps not taken to stop him from going down that path?” Reid, a former station sergeant, queried. The defence attorney then informed Magistrate Kristie Cuffy-Sargeant that the student was “doing pretty well in school” and currently resided with his 74-year-old grandmother having lost his mother five years ago. He further submitted that the elderly caretaker was “shocked” at the charge, as the teen was “not known to give any trouble”. “Some intervention [such as] counselling is needed from the Probation Department . . . . The scissors and the knife were not found in his possession . . . but he has taken responsibility for the drugs. “I believe, Ma’am, that this is one of the cases that the court could intervene and save him from a life of crime and from going down the wrong path. The fact that he is still in school at 17 years old [pursuing] his CXCs shows that all is not lost. I believe that he can benefit from counselling . . . I believe the circumstances need to be fully investigated [in the form] of a pre-sentencing report,” the attorney added. The magistrate agreed to the probation report and granted bail to the student who pleaded guilty to charges of possession, trafficking and intent to supply. He will know his fate when he returns before the No. 2 District ‘A’ Magistrate’s Court on February 8. (BT)

ANTHONY GETS COURT’S LENIENCY – A 50-year-old who habitually picked up bottles on the property of a Hastings, Christ Church hotel, landed in trouble with the law when he came across and assaulted a security guard. Now Rodney David Anthony, of St Matthias, Christ Church, must adhere to the conditions of a three-months bond if he wants to avoid paying a $500 forthwith fine or spending the alternative of four weeks at HMP Dodds. Magistrate Kristie Cuffy-Sargaent imposed the sentence on the unemployed man after he pleaded guilty to assaulting Ja-mar Howell on November 1 as well as stealing two cases and 48 bottles worth $32 belonging to Calypso Caribbean Resorts. Sergeant Edwin Pinder revealed that Howell received information that someone was seen on the hotel premises. When he went out to investigate he came across Anthony who had the items in his possession. However as Howell tried to stop him, Anthony pulled a scissors and swiped at him while uttering threatening words, which resulted in Howell shouting for help. Attorney-at-law Kadisha Wickham told the court that her client was “sorry” for the incident and had given the undertaking not to return to the property. She further submitted that although he was known to the court, Anthony was the sole caretaker of his 80-year-old mother and added that to impose a custodial sentence on him at this time would render him incapable of caring for her. Wickham also revealed that her client and others were in a habit of “picking up bottles” on the property and the security guards were familiar with them. However, Howell, she explained, was unknown to Anthony and the situation deteriorated from there. (BT)

YARDE PAYS FORTHWITH FINE – A labourer had to part with $1,000 of his hard earned money today after he had a change of heart and pleaded guilty to four-year-old drug offences. The forthwith fine which was imposed by Magistrate Douglas Frederick carried a three-month prison sentence and Akeyle ILike Yarde, Sealy Land, Gall Hill, Christ Church, who admitted that he had the quantity of marijuana in his possession on August 16, 2014, paid the amount. Station Sergeant Carrison Henry told Magistrate Douglas Frederick that police were along Kellman Land, Black Rock, St Michael when the accused who was the pillion rider on a motorcycle was seen. However, on approaching the police the driver of the cycle lost control and both parties fell. Yarde was subsequently seen fidgeting with his pocket, a search was requested and 82 wax paper wrappings containing the illicit substance were discovered. (BT)

SPREE ENDS – Crusher Site Road, St James resident Andre Shamar Freeman today revealed that he returned to his criminal ways after he lost his job at a construction site. The 31-year-old made the disclosure after he pleaded guilty to burglarising five places before Magistrate Douglas Frederick. Freeman who is known to the court since 2004 admitted to entering CM Motors as a trespasser between April 14 ad 19 and stealing a $300 angle grinder; a $1,200 cooking set; five sanding disc pads worth $75 and 15 t-shirts worth $75 belonging to Jeffery Chandler. He also pleaded guilty to entering the home of Che Cumberbatch as a trespasser between July 15 and August 31 and stealing a $300 drill, two cellular phones worth $4,300, BDS$400 and US$1,500 cash as well as the home of Rehana Horton on August 30 and stealing two tablets worth $400 and US$60 cash. Cumberbatch, who is known for committing burglaries, also pleaded guilty to entering the home of Vicki Roach on October 1 and stealing a $400 cellular phone and three bottles of Vita Malt worth $12. He also threw in the towel to entering the home of Michelle Barrow between October 10 and 11 and stealing a $1,300 play station, four electronic games worth 716, a $150 gold ring, a $100 gold anklet, two pairs of gold earrings worth $150, two silver rings worth $80 and a pair of silver earrings worth 20. Some items were recovered and Magistrate Douglas Frederick granted a restitution order for the items to be returned to the rightful owners. Station Sergeant Carrison Henry said in all cases the complainants returned to find their places compromised after leaving them secured. However, Cumberbatch’s troubles with the law are far from over as he returns before the No. 1 District ‘A’ Magistrate’s Court on November 29 accused of committing two indictable burglary offences. (BT)

BOA IN BOXING’S CORNER – The Barbados Olympic Association (BOA) is fully behind providing funds for the development and advancement of local boxing but its hands are currently tied due to an internal issue with the international boxing federation. This was revealed by president of the Barbados Olympic Association, Sandra Osborne, while speaking to the Nation yesterday. “The position that we find ourselves in with boxing is that the International Olympic Committee (IOC) has mandated all national Olympic committees not to support any athletes in the sport of boxing through Olympic solidarity or Pan Am Sports funding, because of an issue that they are having with the president of the International Boxing Association. “We cannot spend money we have received from the IOC because there has been a ban created worldwide. So funding that we would normally assist athletes with, we are unable to apply towards boxing,” she said. (SS)

BEACH WRESTLING TOMORROW – The third annual Barbados Beach Wrestling International Cup has graduated from eight to 75 competitors this year, says president of the Barbados Wrestling Association, Rollins Alleyne. The two-day event scheduled to commence tomorrow at Pirates Cove as part of the Barbados Olympic Association’s (BOA) Independence Invitational Games will feature grappling, freestyle wrestling on Saturday and will conclude Sunday with beach wrestling. According to Alleyne, marketing and advertising as promised by the BOA for this event were not enough, and he added that hard cash was needed to stage an event of this magnitude that attracted international competitors. (BT)

TROUBLING NUMBERS – The issue of non-communicable diseases (NCDs) continues to be a priority for the Ministry of Health and Wellness and it has put a significant level of resources and effort into addressing them. Acting Chief Medical Officer Dr Arthur Phillips stressed Government’s commitment to controlling and preventing NCDs today when he delivered the feature address during the opening ceremony of the annual Health Fair, at the Samuel Jackman Prescod Institute of Technology (SJPI). Pointing out that NCDs were a burden on individuals and society, Dr Phillips continued: “More than 25 per cent of adults (25 years and over)… live with one NCD. And more than three quarters of our adult population have at least one risk factor. In terms of what the health system sees, more than six out of every ten visits to our primary care or outpatient settings are for NCDs and about 70 per cent of our deaths are attributable to NCDs.” According to him, NCDs had been included in the world’s sustainable development goals and there was a target of 25 per cent reduction from the baseline by 2025, or 30 per cent reduction by 2030. “Unfortunately, the reality in Barbados right now is that we are projected, if we continue on our current path, not only to miss the 25 per cent reduction but to increase by 11 per cent. That is the reality on the ground; that we are going in the wrong direction in terms of the levels of these illnesses in Barbados and therefore in terms of the impacts on us as individuals and the country… This is a very, very, very serious issue and while there are reasons to be optimistic, there are no reasons to be complacent,” he stressed. Dr Philips said Barbados had been allocating resources, including time, effort and funds, to address non-communicable diseases. “And while we have not yet received the full level of return on that investment that we need to see, the reality is that our efforts have not gone unnoticed,” he pointed out. He noted that the country recently received an award for its work in seeking to prevent and control NCDs. The acting Chief Medical Officer said the main categories of NCDs were cancers, cardiovascular disease (hypertension and strokes), diabetes and chronic respiratory diseases. He pointed out that these groups made up the largest burden of illness around the world and unfortunately, the patterns were similar in Barbados. He explained that the diseases were driven by four key risk factors and highlighted them as an unhealthy diet, physical inactivity, tobacco consumption and harmful use of alcohol. He added that these modifiable risk factors then contributed to other risk factors – increased blood pressure, high blood sugar levels, high levels of fat in the blood, overweight and or obesity. Dr Phillips lauded the SJPI for hosting the health fair for the past ten years, saying it created an environment that would help persons focus on their health. (BGIS)

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