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With big, enthusiastic crowds greeting the Warriors in China last week, the Bay Area’s once-lowly NBA team is starting to rival the sports world’s best-known franchises. Basketball’s worldwide popularity is rising toward soccer-like heights. If the Warriors can maintain their upbeat, multicultural brand — oh, and keep winning — they will tap into a global pool of loyal fans.

This season, the team will sport the name of a corporate sponsor of FC Barcelona — Japanese technology giant Rakuten — on their uniforms. It’s a stamp of credibility because Barça is the only other team Rakuten is sponsoring outside of Japan, and it puts Stephen Curry and Kevin Durant in a league with superstars Lionel Messi and Neymar.

“It’s amazing how the Warriors have come so far so quickly,” said Daniel Rascher, a sports management professor at the University of San Francisco, who said the Rakuten deal reflected the team’s rapid rise.

The Warriors returned Sunday night from a weeklong trip to China, where they’ve become the most popular NBA team. But the star power of Curry, Durant and Klay Thompson, plus two NBA championships in the three dominating years, has also attracted passionate fans in other countries.

Warriors players have fanned out across the world in the off season. In July, Durant traveled to India and helped set a Guinness World Record by treating 3,459 children to the largest basketball lesson ever, although some participated by satellite feed. (In a subsequent faux pas, Durant had to apologize for calling India “20 years behind in terms of knowledge and experience.”)

The team’s courting of international fans is part of a larger strategy to transform the franchise from a regional basketball team into an entertainment and media juggernaut as it builds a $1 billion arena in San Francisco.

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That strategy has worked for FC Barcelona, a multiple-sport business that uses digital and social media to market itself worldwide. The Spanish club’s revenue totaled $770 million in 12 months, the highest in pro-sports history, according to a Forbes magazine report in July.

So far, Bowers said, the Warriors’ number of digital engagements — a measure of online interactions with fans through websites, social media and other technologies — doubled in the past year, putting the team just behind FC Barcelona and fellow soccer powerhouses Real Madrid and Manchester United.

“We are a solid fourth, if not close to third in the world now,” Bowers said. “There isn’t another NBA team that’s even close.” He also said the Warriors rank fifth in digital engagement behind North American sports media companies like ESPN, Bleacher Report, the NBA and the NFL.

That reach caught the eye of Rakuten, a 20-year-old e-commerce firm often compared with Amazon. The company, which runs the digital coupon site Ebates, Kobo e-books, an online bank and messaging app Viber, isn’t well-known in the U.S. but is working to become a household name around the world. It opened a North American headquarters in San Mateo three years ago and also has offices in San Francisco.

On Sept. 12, Rakuten announced a three-year, $20 million-per-year deal to add a small badge with the company’s logo on the upper left of Warriors jerseys starting this season. The deal, which included renaming the team’s Oakland practice facility the Rakuten Performance Center, was worth twice as much as the second-biggest uniform patch deal in the NBA, which began allowing such ads this season.

“The most expensive real estate in the Bay Area is a 2-by-2-inch square,” said Rascher of USF.

Still, it’s modest compared with Rakuten’s four-year, $235 million deal to replace Qatar Airways across FC Barcelona’s uniforms.

“We have a history of using sports as a way to extend the brand and deliver a message,” said Ebates CEO Amit Patel, who represents Rakuten in the U.S. “We’re very mindful of who we align ourselves with. In Barcelona and in the Warriors, you see a similar interest in terms of … how they play the game.”

The Warriors can’t claim a place at the ultra-elite level just yet. Golden State ranks only 20th on Forbes’ annual list of most valuable sports franchises, although its $2.6 billion value is a 37 percent increase from last year. The Dallas Cowboys topped the list at $4.2 billion, followed by the New York Yankees, Manchester United, Barcelona and Real Madrid. The San Francisco 49ers and the San Francisco Giants are also ahead of the Warriors, as are the rival Los Angeles Lakers.

To truly become a global franchise, of course, the Warriors must keep winning. If they don’t, they risk replaying the fate of the Chicago Bulls, one of the great dynasties of the 1990s with Michael Jordan and Scottie Pippen, but which posted a .500 record last season.

The Warriors may have won two NBA championships in three years, but they are still fairly new as a powerhouse. Teams like Barcelona and the Yankees “have been on legacy status for decades,” said Whitney Wagoner, director of the Warsaw Sports Marketing Center at the University of Oregon.

Sustaining a dynasty takes more than a bigger revenue stream, said Joris Drayer, an associate professor of sports and recreation management at Temple University. The NBA’s salary cap and player draft system are created to maintain competitive balance, which could eventually bring the Warriors back to Earth. European soccer clubs such as FC Barcelona and Manchester United do not have a salary cap or a draft that allows the weaker teams to choose players first.

“At some point, this Warriors team will either split up or simply get old,” Drayer said in an email.

If the team does stay on top, it will benefit from the growing popularity of basketball around the world. Like soccer, the sport is becoming embedded in the cultures of other countries.

“If you walk around the streets of Shanghai, you will see pickup street basketball games and you’ll feel like you are in Brooklyn, New York,” Wagoner said. “It is street ball, it is pickup games, it is swagger, with music, with fashion, with self expression.” Some kids wear NBA jerseys and shoes, embracing the “baller lifestyle.”

The Warriors themselves are international: Zaza Pachulia went home to Republic of Georgia capital Tbilisi to meet the country’s president, who awarded the center an Order of Honor as the first native Georgian to win an NBA title.

The Bay Area’s multiculturalism and the team’s obvious joy in being together also play well.

Lee, in South Korea, began following the NBA 15 years ago and became an Allen Iverson fan. But he loves the Curry-led Warriors, who have that “something special that’s different from other NBA teams.”

“Players on this team respect teammates,” he said. “I love the team atmosphere and altruistic mind.”

Chronicle staff writer Connor Letourneau contributed to this report.

Article source: http://www.sfchronicle.com/business/article/Golden-State-Warriors-shooting-to-join-world-s-12262555.php

For the Raiders, the lure was Nevada’s promise of $750 million in hotel tax money to help build a stadium in Las Vegas. But there’s no such taxpayer boost coming for the Warriors as they move to San Francisco, nor for the A’s as they seek to relocate closer to downtown.

Instead, “a lot of what drives these deals is what you can build next door,” said P.J. Johnston, the Warriors’ spokesman for their Mission Bay arena project.

And that’s where the Coliseum comes up short — because while there may be acres of cheap land nearby, it’s the location that counts.

In moving to San Francisco, the Warriors will not only own their arena — they’ll be able to build two moneymaking office towers next door.

More from Matier Ross

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And exiting Oracle Arena for Mission Bay will also let the Warriors tap into San Francisco’s $754 million-a-year convention industry — a business that just doesn’t translate to East Oakland.

“These days, arenas need to be more than just for the sports season,” Johnston said. “They need to be used year-round, which means being close to hotels and easy access for conventioneers.”

It’s a bit of a different story for the A’s. They want to stay in Oakland, but the “no public money” policy by city and Alameda County officials means the team owners have to rely on private financing for a new ballpark there.

And again, it’s easier to secure that financing if you can build attractive developments nearby. The transit access at the Coliseum helps, but the site is still miles from downtown.

And for all the boom in the Bay Area real estate market, money for development in East Oakland is still elusive. We’re told it would cost just as much to build there as it would closer to downtown, where rents could be 60 percent higher.

There are other factors at play in the A’s picking a site next to Laney College for their proposed 34,000-seat ballpark. Even with adjacent development deals, new sports complexes still need millions of dollars from three sources — ticket sales, corporate luxury boxes and advertising sponsorship, including naming rights for the ballpark.

A stadium that’s within easy walking distance of downtown has a much better chance of driving the bottom line of all three revenue streams.

Plus, there’s a bit of a signage conundrum at the Coliseum that could hamper the A’s.

A few years back, the Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum Authority allowed several large electronic billboards to go up in the parking lot along Interstate 880. The idea was to help pay down the $20 million-a-year public debt from the 1990s stadium overhaul that brought the Raiders back from Los Angeles.

They’ve helped the taxpayers, but the billboards would also be competition for the A’s efforts to sell their own advertising and naming rights around a new ballpark.

That said, the A’s move still faces a number of hurdles, including concerns that the ballpark and accompanying development could gentrify the adjacent neighborhood — always a touchy subject in Oakland.

And if the downtown move doesn’t work out, said Coliseum Authority chief Scott McKibben, “we are still ready to talk and work with the A’s.”

Third time the charm? Former City Councilman Ignacio De La Fuente is adding some early spark to Oakland’s mayoral sweepstakes, saying he plans to challenge incumbent Libby Schaaf in 2018.

“When I was in government, I made things happen,” De La Fuente said.

De La Fuente has been a fixture on Oakland’s political landscape for three decades, most of it spent representing the Fruitvale district on the City Council.

“Look around — cars being broken into, the infrastructure is crumbling, the homeless problem — I don’t think you see things getting done,” De La Fuente said. “Libby Schaaf and Oakland have been lucky with the economy doing so well, but let me tell you, the next four years could be a lot different.”

De La Fuente’s gruff, “tell it like it is” persona made for good quotes in the press and for a commanding presence at City Council meetings. But it didn’t always go over well with voters outside his district.

He was among a crowd of candidates who were buried in the 1998 mayor’s race by Jerry Brown. Then, eight years later, he lost to Ron Dellums.

De La Fuente left the council in 2013 and is now serving on the Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum Authority board.

Schaaf’s chief political consultant, Ace Smith, didn’t sound particularly worried about De La Fuente’s comeback bid.

“It’s a democracy, so anyone can run, but I don’t think everyone is going to be lining up for a backroom wheeler-dealer,” Smith said.

Interesting to note that Schaaf got her political start working as an aide for De La Fuente when he was on the council. So this match-up may be more than a political test — it could get personal as well.

San Francisco Chronicle columnists Phillip Matier and Andrew Ross appear Sundays, Mondays and Wednesdays. Matier can be seen on the KPIX-TV morning and evening news. He can also be heard on KCBS radio Monday through Friday at 7:50 a.m. and 5:50 p.m. Got a tip? Call (415) 777-8815, or email matierandross@sfchronicle.com. Twitter: @matierandross

Article source: http://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/matier-ross/article/Why-Oakland-Coliseum-site-doesn-t-work-for-12260865.php

For the Raiders, the lure was Nevada’s promise of $750 million in hotel tax money to help build a stadium in Las Vegas. But there’s no such taxpayer boost coming for the Warriors as they move to San Francisco, nor for the A’s as they seek to relocate closer to downtown.

Instead, “a lot of what drives these deals is what you can build next door,” said P.J. Johnston, the Warriors’ spokesman for their Mission Bay arena project.

And that’s where the Coliseum comes up short — because while there may be acres of cheap land nearby, it’s the location that counts.

In moving to San Francisco, the Warriors will not only own their arena — they’ll be able to build two moneymaking office towers next door.

More from Matier Ross

• 
  
  
  

  De La Fuente to challenge Schaaf for Oakland mayor in 2018

• 
  
  
  

  SF parking meters could go as high as $8 an hour in new plan

And exiting Oracle Arena for Mission Bay will also let the Warriors tap into San Francisco’s $754 million-a-year convention industry — a business that just doesn’t translate to East Oakland.

“These days, arenas need to be more than just for the sports season,” Johnston said. “They need to be used year-round, which means being close to hotels and easy access for conventioneers.”

It’s a bit of a different story for the A’s. They want to stay in Oakland, but the “no public money” policy by city and Alameda County officials means the team owners have to rely on private financing for a new ballpark there.

And again, it’s easier to secure that financing if you can build attractive developments nearby. The transit access at the Coliseum helps, but the site is still miles from downtown.

And for all the boom in the Bay Area real estate market, money for development in East Oakland is still elusive. We’re told it would cost just as much to build there as it would closer to downtown, where rents could be 60 percent higher.

There are other factors at play in the A’s picking a site next to Laney College for their proposed 34,000-seat ballpark. Even with adjacent development deals, new sports complexes still need millions of dollars from three sources — ticket sales, corporate luxury boxes and advertising sponsorship, including naming rights for the ballpark.

A stadium that’s within easy walking distance of downtown has a much better chance of driving the bottom line of all three revenue streams.

Plus, there’s a bit of a signage conundrum at the Coliseum that could hamper the A’s.

A few years back, the Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum Authority allowed several large electronic billboards to go up in the parking lot along Interstate 880. The idea was to help pay down the $20 million-a-year public debt from the 1990s stadium overhaul that brought the Raiders back from Los Angeles.

They’ve helped the taxpayers, but the billboards would also be competition for the A’s efforts to sell their own advertising and naming rights around a new ballpark.

That said, the A’s move still faces a number of hurdles, including concerns that the ballpark and accompanying development could gentrify the adjacent neighborhood — always a touchy subject in Oakland.

And if the downtown move doesn’t work out, said Coliseum Authority chief Scott McKibben, “we are still ready to talk and work with the A’s.”

Third time the charm? Former City Councilman Ignacio De La Fuente is adding some early spark to Oakland’s mayoral sweepstakes, saying he plans to challenge incumbent Libby Schaaf in 2018.

“When I was in government, I made things happen,” De La Fuente said.

De La Fuente has been a fixture on Oakland’s political landscape for three decades, most of it spent representing the Fruitvale district on the City Council.

“Look around — cars being broken into, the infrastructure is crumbling, the homeless problem — I don’t think you see things getting done,” De La Fuente said. “Libby Schaaf and Oakland have been lucky with the economy doing so well, but let me tell you, the next four years could be a lot different.”

De La Fuente’s gruff, “tell it like it is” persona made for good quotes in the press and for a commanding presence at City Council meetings. But it didn’t always go over well with voters outside his district.

He was among a crowd of candidates who were buried in the 1998 mayor’s race by Jerry Brown. Then, eight years later, he lost to Ron Dellums.

De La Fuente left the council in 2013 and is now serving on the Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum Authority board.

Schaaf’s chief political consultant, Ace Smith, didn’t sound particularly worried about De La Fuente’s comeback bid.

“It’s a democracy, so anyone can run, but I don’t think everyone is going to be lining up for a backroom wheeler-dealer,” Smith said.

Interesting to note that Schaaf got her political start working as an aide for De La Fuente when he was on the council. So this match-up may be more than a political test — it could get personal as well.

San Francisco Chronicle columnists Phillip Matier and Andrew Ross appear Sundays, Mondays and Wednesdays. Matier can be seen on the KPIX-TV morning and evening news. He can also be heard on KCBS radio Monday through Friday at 7:50 a.m. and 5:50 p.m. Got a tip? Call (415) 777-8815, or email matierandross@sfchronicle.com. Twitter: @matierandross

Article source: http://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/matier-ross/article/Why-Oakland-Coliseum-site-doesn-t-work-for-12260865.php

SAN FRANCISCO — With all the persistent ranting about the housing crisis — how intractable it is, how it’s driving middle class and poor people from the Bay Area, and how there are no solutions in sight — one might think an affordable housing conference would collapse under the weight of all that collective pessimism.

Nope.

“Standing Together” — the title of Friday’s 38th annual conference sponsored by the Non-Profit Housing Association of Northern California (NPH) — was the biggest one of these events yet. Fueled by Gov. Jerry Brown’s signing last week of a dozen bills aimed at addressing the state’s affordable housing crisis, about 850 affordable housing advocates — policy wonks, finance wizards, architects, grassroots organizers, contractors, tenants, public office holders — crowded lobbies and conference rooms at the Hilton San Francisco Union Square hotel.

At 8:30 in the morning, the place was teeming — abuzz with affordable housing believers, slurping down coffee and gearing up for an event that was as much a rally as it was a double-down work session.

On the rally side was Amie Fishman, NPH’s executive director, meeting and greeting and talking about “passion and urgency and commitment.” Affordable housing at last has emerged as “the critical issue for the Bay Area” — there is no more awareness problem, she said; the public gets it, and her organization now will help lead an “all-out push” toward passing the statewide 2018 bond measure for affordable housing that Brown and legislative leaders have agreed upon.

On the work-session side was Matt Schwartz, president and CEO of the California Housing Partnership Corporation. He moderated a panel on “Federal Housing Policy in the Trump Administration: Is the Best Defense a Good Offense?”

It got into the weeds about tax reform and the status of Low-Income Housing Tax Credit expansion legislation. He and the panelists gave nuts-and-bolts advice to attendees about how to find and assemble whatever money is available to bring a project to fruition — complicated stuff, as “you typically have to mix a dozen different sources to make any development work,” Schwartz explained after the session.

At a packed workshop about “Building Quality Housing for Less,” a contractor on the panel was asked to list the most unpredictable items in a typical affordable housing construction project.

“The skin,” answered Guy Estes, vice-president of San Francisco-based Cahill Contractors.

Say what?

“Simplify the skin,” he advised, meaning that the exterior details that distinguish a building — and leave a developer’s personal stamp upon it — tend to eat up construction budgets in unexpected ways. Make it a little less pretty, or quirky, and you’ll stay on budget, was the message.

There were a couple dozen workshops. One was titled “Integrating Health and Housing Strategies: Lessons from the Field,” another was called “Bringing 21st Century Digital Literacy to Affordable Housing Residents,” another “Gatekeeping: Steps to Protecting Immigrant Residents.”

Some sessions were plain old practical: These local funds have been allocated as a result of local bond measures — close to $2 billion in affordable housing funds were recently approved in several Bay Area counties — and this is who’s entitled to the funds and here’s how to apply to get them.

“We want to be able to make quick loans” to take advantage of opportunities in a fast-moving real estate market, Linda Gardner, director of housing and community development in Alameda County, told the 60 or so attendees at her workshop.

There was a surprise announcement at the plenary session: JPMorgan Chase is giving $3.5 million to Housing Trust Silicon Valley and Genesis LA Economic Development Corp. as part of a pilot program to encourage homeowners to build accessory dwelling units — granny units — and other small-scale affordable homes to help ease the housing crunch. The program will be called “Small Housing, Big Initiative.”

The keynote speaker at the session was Tiffany A. Manuel, kind of a rock star in the affordable housing world, who has been writing lately about the ways in which language can backfire and impede the affordable housing movement.

Don’t just talk about tax credits and leverage.

Get personal, tell stories — and emphasize that when teachers and child-care givers can afford to live in a neighborhood, that benefits the whole neighborhood, said Manuel, who is vice president for knowledge, impact and strategy at Enterprise Community Partners, a nonprofit that partners to finance, build and advocate for affordable housing.

“We want to talk about ‘home,’” said Fishman, boiling down Manuel’s message. “We want to talk about people and not about units.”

Article source: http://www.mercurynews.com/2017/10/06/on-a-roll-affordable-housing-advocates-pack-a-san-francisco-hotel-and-say-theyre-winning-the-battle/

The share of Bay Area households that rent their homes has grown significantly over the last decade — by about 5 percent — while the share that own their homes has declined in kind.

That change in lifestyle – part of a national trend – is pinpointed by a new study of rental patterns in the 53 largest U.S. metropolitan areas. It also shows that the San Jose and San Francisco metro areas have the nation’s highest median rents and renter household incomes, that their rental populations have increasing numbers of high-income and college-educated members – and that the burden of paying rent here is considerable, nonetheless.

In the San Jose metro area, 45.1 percent of all renter households are “rent burdened,” meaning that more than 30 percent of their pre-tax income goes to paying monthly rent, according to the report by New York University’s Furman Center for Real Estate and Urban Policy.

But the burden increases for renter households in the San Jose metro area earning less than $50,000. Among those households, 83 percent are “rent burdened” — and 56.5 percent are “severely rent burdened,” meaning that housing eats up more than 50 percent of their income.

The figures are similarly dramatic in the San Francisco metro area, which includes Oakland, as well as all of Alameda, Contra Costa, San Mateo and Marin counties. There and throughout Silicon Valley — and most of the country — there is “a change in rent composition,” said Sewin Chan, a professor of public policy who co-authored the study. “There’s more renters and more of them have high income and higher education. So that’s sort of masking an affordability problem for people at the lower end” of the income spectrum.

The study, which looks at U.S. Census data from 2006 to 2015, does not identify specific reasons for the change in composition of the renter population. But it adds a new layer of evidence that more Americans are opting for apartment living.

That may partly be due to the fact that many homeowners went into foreclosure during the Great Recession and haven’t been able to get back into the real estate market, especially in a place like the Bay Area where the median price of a single-family home now tops $1 million in several counties. But it may also be because so many people — millennials, in particular — have come to prefer the rental lifestyle, where it’s easy to pick up and move to the next job and the next city.

“Maybe there’s just less of a stigma to renting than there was before,” said Stephanie Rosoff, a project director for the new report, titled “2017 National Rental Housing Landscape: Renting in the Nation’s Largest Metros.”

In the San Jose metro area, which includes Santa Clara and San Benito counties, 43.7 percent of all households rented their homes in 2015, up from 39.2 percent in 2006. In the San Francisco metro area, there was a similar jump: to 46.3 percent in 2015, from 41.5 percent in 2006.

During the same time period, the share of households that owned their own homes fell from 60.8 percent to 56.3 percent in the San Jose metro area and from 58.5 percent to 53.7 percent in the San Francisco metro area.

Among the report’s other findings is that when renters change apartments in the San Jose and San Francisco metro areas — or move from outside the area to an apartment here — they in effect pay a “premium” on their rent.

For instance, in 2015, the median rent for a two-bedroom unit in the San Jose metro area was $1,850. But recently available two-bedroom flats — those that had new occupants within the previous 12 months — had a median rent of $2,460. In other words, moving to another two-bedroom flat meant coughing up an extra $610 a month. In the San Francisco metro area, the “premium” was $470.

Among the 53 metro areas in the study, those are the two with the most costly “premiums” for switching apartments. And in both of those metros, there was a sharp drop in the share of lower-income households that can afford to move to recently available apartments.

“Recent movers are paying higher rents than people who haven’t moved,” Chan said. “And we’re seeing this is more of a problem in high-rent cities. It’s kind of what you would expect when rents are going up rapidly in a metro — landlords are going to be charging higher rents as they change their tenants.”

In the San Jose metro area, the share of renter households earning 120 percent or more of the area’s median household income was 29.2 percent in 2015, when the median was $100,000. That share of high-income households was up from 21.8 percent in 2006, when the median was $93,820. During the same period, the share of renter households with a college degree rose from 45.5 percent to 53.1 percent.

Paradoxically, the share of “burdened” renter households rose over the course of the decade in the San Jose metro area — but dipped between 2012 and 2015 when the tech-fueled economy was helping to drive up housing prices.

It’s “because wealthier people are renting,” Rosoff explained.

Article source: http://www.mercurynews.com/2017/10/05/lifestyle-switch-more-bay-area-residents-are-choosing-to-rent-than-ever-before-and-theyre-paying-through-the-nose/