#financial field

[mrjinx87]

I would like to thank everyone who didn’t go see Black Adam for making tonight’s WrestleMania main event happen.

[queenoftheblacksky]

Thank you so much for everything, Tribal Chief! ☝️

WWE WrestleMania 40 (April 6-7, 2024)

[lemonhemlock]

I did not get into Game of thrones when it first started airing. In fact, I waited until it was long past it's heyday (around s6 or 7) to check it out because the marketing and the conversation surrounding it misled me into thinking it was nothing more than "grimdark" bullshit. As one famous YouTuber sarcastically called it "hot fantasy that fucks." So, I avoided Martin's work for literal years due to the impression that I got from online reactors and show-only casuals who did as you and a few others have described as his work being fundamentally misinterpreted.

Fortunately, I overcame my hang-ups, purchased the books (even the supplementary material) and fell down an entire rabbit hole of ASOIAF which led me to recognizing that this world he spent decades creating is far more complex than what had been portrayed onscreen. Regardless of the possibility of the books remaining unfinished (which I am fine with, personally), what George has created is a genuine work of art that I imagine took a tremendous amount of time and energy. So, for so many people online to behave like children and throw tantrums because they feel entitled to him (ew) instead of ushering forth more reasonable conversations and legitimate debates about the nature of his situation frankly makes me look at this fandom with a heavy dose of skepticism.

It is truly baffling to hear even professional critics and see articles describing George as being "ungrateful" or "unprofessional" when it has been well-documented just how often authors get locked out of the adaptation process and left to the wayside as consultants. Look at what happened to Rick Riordan and Christopher Paolini! George R.R. Martin is not the only author to have qualms with how a multimillion dollar studio has mishandled his creative work, and to act like he should remain silent just because he's amassed a certain degree of wealth is quite frankly, ridiculous. He shouldn't have to settle down, be grateful, and stay quiet because the greedy corporate executives and their media drones will get offended by actual criticism that could alter the perception of the adaption being revealed as mediocre for having departed from the source material.

TLDR: authors should be allowed to speak up about their art being sacrificed for commercialization.

Thank you so much for this message, anon! This needs to be talked about more, because I don't think a lot of commentators truly understand the vulgar, late-capitalistic sheen that seems to set in and slowly poison any ASOIAF adaptation. It honestly baffles me how quick some members of this fandom are to rush to the defense of, what is essentially (let's not be kidding ourselves here), a cashgrab by a giant corporation to the detriment of the actual artist and the actual creative foundation behind it.

Why else would "MAX" (if that is even their name) make another (or several other) ASOIAF adaptations? Not to stay true to any philosophical aesthetic vision, as it has become more than apparent with Season 2, but to increase shareholder profits by appealing to the lowest common denominator. Even the basic premise has been shifted in order to address popular trends and satisfy the mindless consumer that doesn't want to engage with anything deeper than their favourite tropes, prettily packaged:

from a story about a doomed ouroborous family superimposed on the pitfalls of feudalism, with villainy and heroism to be found on both sides, it has been simplified and reduced to a narrative that exalts white feminism and disqualifies anyone who opposes its girlboss protagonist. This is Sheryl Sandberg's version of Fire and Blood.

Truly, I think Sara Hess did (unintentionally) outline it the best: "civilians don't matter in Game of Thrones". They don't matter in Game of Thrones, but they matter in A Song of Ice and Fire. The entire heart of the series is contained in Septon Maribald's speech. The writers "kind of", must have forgotten, though.

[theteethofgod]

a prominent queer film theorist was called out for plagiarism, faked his suicide, and was discovered to be alive because he posted nudes on an alt acc. yet I’m the one with imposter syndrome.

[bonegloss]

You're not a failed artist.

After over almost two decades on the internet, entering various art communities and establishing my online presence, I've noticed something.

The persistent idea that you've "failed" as an artist if you get a "real job" will not go away.

This, for the longest time, permeated my electronic meat slab and nestled in deeply MUCH to my detriment . For years I fought with myself over this idea. Self-flagellating and noisy, negative thoughts were almost suffocating because I was unable to Do Art As A Job consistently and efficiently enough to maintain a living off of it. Between navigating life for almost 30 years not knowing I was autistic (and all that entails) and trying to turn something I love into something I could make a living off of, it was a vicious and repetitive cycle of trying something new, getting burned out, entering a depressive state, climbing out of it, rinse and repeat. This is clearly unsustainable, especially now that I am more independent in my adult life; bills aren't going to wait for me to get out of my depressive funks. Even having jobs and still making art on the side today, this idea is still nestled in there, nagging me sometimes.

Would I like to make a living off of my art? Of course! Would it be even better if I was supported from making stuff from my own IP's? You fucking bet. But I know how I operate, I know I can't personally do that (yet? maybe?). Now, I realize not everyone can just go get a job, and I don't want this to come off as a rally cry to Just Go Out and Work (I know many creative people are disabled or have other reasons they cannot work), but I do want to stress that its okay if art needs to remain more of a hobby than a job. It is okay if you cannot sustain yourself solely as a living artist. Over the years, I've burned myself out so god damn hard and have watched others work themselves to (near) death or can barely scrape by because of this incessant feeling that we need to be doing art 100% of the time to have "made it". It is hurting us both physically and emotionally to keep this shit up.

Going forward, we have to do better. There is no shame in having an income that is not dependent on the things you make. I think that it can help alleviate a lot of stress and fatigue that can become associated with creating (and thus, making it hard to do something you love). We need to learn to be kinder to ourselves and unlearn comparing our experiences to what we see from other creative peers on social media. Its hard, finding work sucks ass, and no job will be perfect, but if it can help you survive a little easier and rekindle your relationship for creating the things you love to make, it'll make a world of difference.

You are not a failed artist. You're doing what you can so you can keep doing what you love.

[plushiious]

It's really sad seeing so many artists I follow announce that they won't be doing art fight this year because they feel like they dissapoint so many people by not attacking back. The purpose of art fight is to have fun drawing other people's oc! It's not supposed to be a month-long art trade!!!

[binders-and-beanies]

Next person that reminds me social workers don’t make much money im going to kill them with my bare hands. I knowww I know I know I promise you i did not make it 6 years into social work education without ever hearing that it’s a low paying field. I’m scared of my future every day im scared of being homeless with a masters degree im scared of not even being able to afford having a job. I know. If you must remind me of that future that im so scared of can you at least like acknowledge the tireless work that’s gone into it and the much needed things I’ll bring to the social work field. Can I go about my day without someone richer than me laughing about how im going to be poor forever. Or am I the only one who’s not allowed to acknowledge that concern

[astarlightmonbebe]

the whole point being that taeoh, for all his intelligence and strategies, might still have made it to kangoh, but he would never have a chance to actually grab power without using inha’s ‘insider’ status, which inha seems to be ‘realizing’ these episodes. because at the end of the day, taeoh is still kangoh’s tool. he has no authority. he’s something for the chairman to use, never more than that.

[berryesque]

not gonna lie. looking at university applications kind of make me want to tear my hair out and jump into a well

[phoenixyfriend]

Ko-fi prompt from Becky:

I actually would love to hear where ticket/concession/merch money for concerts go. If someone has already asked about that, can you do something similar for a sports game of your choice?

Already got a request for concerts, but I can do the sports game!

So, let's go with... baseball. I've been to professional baseball games ('twas the Ducks), even if it's been a Very Long Time, so that's the one I have some perspective on. Who is in control of the money any given game (as in, who owns the stadium and the home team) varies by place and sport, so let's use the Mets and Citi Field as our example when we need a specific.

Mostly, this is because I'm in New York and so it's down to either them or the Yankees, and between the two... the Mets, through a wholly owned subsidiary, Queens Ballpark Company, are the ones that actually own their ballpark, which makes a few things easier and includes a Fun Fact about the naming. It also means that I can treat the team and the stadium as one singular entity instead of waffling over who gets to be the Main Character of this simulation. It's not exactly uncommon for teams to own their own stadiums, but it's not most of them.

(The Mets, btw, are owned in large part by a hedge fund manager. Like, 95% of the team stock is owned by this one guy. Why can't more sports be like the Packers and just belong to the city.)

In this case, I will be referring to the Forbes article on Citi Field's revenue for 2022 as a guide or framework, as they have an actual image of the financial report; they don't do much explaining of the actual data, though, so my part will be explaining the less-obvious things and doing some maths. A few other articles will also be cited as they come in useful.

I'll also note that the Mets are a very expensive team operating at a loss, but they still work for our purposes.

MONEY COMING IN:

Tickets, most obviously

To quote the wiki article on Major League Baseball:

"MLB is the second-wealthiest professional sport league by revenue after the National Football League (NFL). [...] MLB has the highest total season attendance of any sports league in the world; in 2018, it drew more than 69.6 million spectators."

I didn't know that until I started researching for this post, but it makes sense. After all, baseball is "the American pastime." The Forbes article cites average attendance of 33,000 per home game. The stadium seat about 41,900, so we're looking at roughly 79% attendance. This is fine, because attendance is not the only stream of revenue.

Advertising

If you have seen a professional sports game in the past however many years, you have seen that, depending on the type of court, they are plastered in advertising. Let's take a look at Citi Field:

(Image Source: MLB website)

The Forbes article states that the stadium makes about $48.5 million per year from advertising. About $28.5 million of that comes from the various 'temporary' and long-term ads, the Nikon and Geico and Toyota and Coca Cola, etc.

$20 million of it comes from one company. I'm going to quote Wikipedia again:

The naming rights were purchased by Citigroup, a New York financial services company, for $20 million annually.

This is not uncommon! ESPN has an article about it, and some standout examples are Bank of America Stadium, Coors Field, Delta Center, FedEx Field and FedEx Forum, General Motors Place, Gillette Stadium, Heinz Field, and the list just goes on. I'm not even sure if the list is up to date, because I'm seeing even more articles elsewhere with higher figures.

Concessions

The financial report that Forbes cites has $22mill in concessions. This is not entirely surprising. Going by this page, we're looking at... 84 home games in that 2022 season. Let's assume that 33,000 average cited earlier. That's 2,772,000 attendees over the course of the season. So, what, a little under $10 per attendance tick? Entirely plausible. A hot dog plus a soda is $15, so... that tracks.

Parking

Apparently parking is, collectively, about $13mill annually. That's... genuinely a little concerning to me, for uh. Reasons. Also parking is $40.

(A lot of people go to games via train, if anyone's interested.)

Luxury Suite Premiums

I had to google this one, but uh. Turns out those fancy private box seats are even fancier and more private than I thought, bringing in over $10 mill a year.

Other Revenue - Stadium, undefined

"Other Revenue" and "post season revenue" are not given any further information, but they're about $16.5 mill so. They're definitely doing their part? Wish we had more information.

One guess is that there are events in the vein of the Citi Field Spring Carnival that contribute to the revenue through either fees to the stadium (if this is a carnival that rents the parking lot) or concessions and tickets (if the stadium rents a carnival).

Other Revenue - to the team that is not direct operating income of the stadium itself

Not counting the "other revenue" section of the financial statement, the Forbes article tells us that:

National broadcasting deals with Fox, ESPN and TBS that pay over $60 million a year to every MLB team, as well as the local cable fee the Mets get from SNY, which is over $80 million a year.

That's another $140mill in addition to the $244mill that the financial report cites.

Merchandise - not direct stadium revenue.

Get your Mets hats here! And your jerseys! And your logo bats! And your commemorative plushies! And--

MONEY GOING OUT

Operations

This one's easy: you have to pay wages to your employees, from the players themselves to the food sellers to janitorial to security to field maintenance, etc. Also, you have to pay for utilities (those billboards and floodlights aren't cheap), product to sell (frozen hot dogs), supplementary materials for products you sell (plastic cups, paper for the ticket machines, bags for garbage cans, and so on), and repairs/maintenance for the stands themselves (can't imagine they get through a season with all 41,900 seats intact).

Player salaries (and a few others, like the coach) aren't actually included in stadium revenue, but since the stadium is owned by the team, we're bundling them together for the sake of this case.

Payment in Lieu of Taxes

So this is an interesting one, and while the Forbes article does touch on it, there's a bit more detail to the story.

Citi Field was built in 2009, and the process cost $850 million. Of that, $615 was public subsidies. A lot of this was municipal bonds, which the Mets have to pay back with interest for the lifetime of the park; those municipal bond repayments are an offset, and in return for paying tens of millions in municipal bond repayments each year (the 2022 report shows about $43.5 mill), Citi Field does not have to pay property taxes.

Wikipedia only cites property taxes, but the financial report doesn't include any other taxes, so I'll assume the only other taxes they're on the hook for are sales and payroll, which aren't displayed in the financial report.

Parking

Right, so, parking as a bundle is about $7.5 mill in expenses, which means that parking alone has a marginal profit of about 42.3%, given the earlier figure of $13mill in parking revenue. I'm not finding any solid information on where that money goes, but it seems very like that New York City's taxes on land use for parking is not included in the property tax exemption we discussed above, and that most of the $7.5 mill is in that regard.

Post Season Expenses

I'll be honest, they don't define this $1.8 mill, but given what is and isn't included in the other sections, I'm going to hazard a guess that this may be about upgrades (more than maintenance) or replacement of physical billboards that are also not included as regular maintenance but require a lot of manpower to get up and set if complicated enough.

General and Administrative

This is the other possible allocation of the utilities and related payments. This is also where back of house activities like accountants, lawyer fees, payroll clerks, facilities managers, and so on are bundled in. It's about $5.5 mill.

Publicity and Promotions

This one's easy, it's just marketing that doesn't fall into General Mets Things and is rather for home games specifically.

Depreciation and Amortization

Bit trickier, but you know how a car loses value the second you drive it off the lot? That is depreciation. You paid $20,000 for a car, but two years later it's worth $16,000; on a financial report, you put that down as a $4,000 loss to depreciation. Amortization is similar, in that it lowers values of various assets in relation to time and relative value to what it was when new.

Interest Expenses

Expenses related directly to interest rates tend to get their own line separate from regular debt repayments. This isn't really relevant beyond 'loans are more expensive than when you first get them.'

Travel and League Expenses

Since this is a traveling team, being professionals, and a Major League Baseball Team in particular, money has to be spent on the plane rides, team bus, and of course, the league fees. I wanted to end that a bit more pithy, but it turns out it's not easy to find league fees for the MLB.

(A new team joining would have to pay about $2.2 billion, according to one article, while previous new additions were a couple hundred mill, so... 100 mill? Maybe?)

Hope that answers your question!

[nicollekidman]

are you wearing the - the i ❤️ infidelity and gay sex bracelets? yeah i am ❤️❤️

[queenoftheblacksky]

Behind the scenes of WrestleMania 40 (April 6-7, 2024)

[cesium-sheep]

she's starting to get into tarot now too, and I think I get prickly about her picking up interests I already picked up for myself (or tried to) because like. I have very very little self, between how I grew up and how sick I've been. she gets to have a career and a passion and a self and a gender and all this shit I don't. so it bugs me when she starts to step into these surface level things because I don't really. have anything else.

[strohller27]

.

[referencees]

My unpopular opinion is that a lot of Americans who are constantly bitching about ‘the economy’ make enough money to live a comfortable life. They just don’t understand how budgeting works and spend it on dumb shit. If you’re making six figures and claim to be living paycheck to paycheck odds are you just have bad financial skills. They could get a $50k raise and still not have enough money with how poorly they budget it.

Obviously this doesn’t mean that a huge portion of the population isn’t under paid because they are. Those people probably do have a really strict budget because it’s the only way to make ends meet. But the number of people in their 20s and 30s I meet who make $150k+ and think the economy is falling apart just because they’ve put themselves in hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt and can’t afford to pay it all off really drives me nuts.

[popentertainment-concertphotos]

P!nk – Lincoln Financial Field – Philadelphia, PA – August 18, 2024

Photos by Emma Fox © 2024