Tag: records

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Politics

New York AG James says Trump Supreme Court docket tax information case will not have an effect on probe

New York AG James says Trump Supreme Court tax records case won't affect probe

New York attorney general Letitia James said Monday that her office is continuing to actively investigate alleged inflation and deflation of Trump Organization’s real estate values ​​in an effort to evade state tax liability and gain other financial benefits.

James also said the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to allow the Manhattan Attorney’s Office to obtain former President Donald Trump’s income tax return and other financial records for eight years as part of a criminal investigation would not affect their own ongoing civil investigation.

This decision, made on Monday, “does not change the tenor of our lawsuit,” James said in an interview with the New York Times’ DealBook DC Policy Project.

“We will continue our investigation and will announce our results when we are finished,” said James.

James also said the Supreme Court’s decision would not mean that her office would receive Trump’s tax filings from Manhattan DA Cyrus Vance Jr., who is expected to receive it this week from the former president’s accounting firm through a grand jury subpoena.

“There’s a wall separating the two offices,” she said.

The Supreme Court in its decision denied Trump’s motion to hear an appeal against decisions by lower courts confirming the legality of the subpoena issued at Vance’s request.

James noted that “we received information ourselves”.

“We’re reviewing Trump Organization tax information,” said James.

This tax information, which could include property tax records, is different from the former president’s income tax returns, which he always kept secret.

There is an overlap in the focus of the two probes, which are among the biggest legal threats Trump faces a month after leaving the White House.

Both studies examine how the Trump Organization values ​​real estate assets for different types of transactions.

Both offices are known to have a particular interest in the Seven Springs Estate in Westchester County, New York, an area of ​​212 acres.

The company had filed for a $ 21.2 million tax deduction on the property to grant a conservation measure preventing development on nearly 160 acres of land.

James also examines the valuations of Trump real estate in Manhattan, Los Angeles, and Chicago.

“In our investigation, we look at the fact that, based on the testimony of Michael Cohen, who was the Trump Organization’s advocate and Donald Trump, the Trump Organization has increased its taxes to take advantage of insurance companies as well by mortgage companies and then dumped the same fortune to avoid New York state tax debt, “said James.

Cohen, who made these allegations during the testimony of Congress in 2019, is known to collaborate with Vance’s criminal investigation.

While James commented several times that her investigation was civil in nature, she implied that this could change.

“At this point, until we uncover illegal behavior, our investigation will continue as a civil matter,” she said.

James had repeated success in court by forcing the Trump Organization to cooperate with its investigation despite objections.

In late January, a Manhattan Supreme Court judge ordered the Trump Organization to give James’ investigators a series of documents they had requested.

A judge had previously directed Trump’s son, Eric Trump, who runs the company with his brother, to answer questions from James’ investigators before the presidential election, not after what Eric asked.

Trump beat up both James and Vance as well as the Supreme Court, three of which nine members he had appointed, in a statement on Monday.

Trump has called both probes witch hunts and denies any wrongdoing.

“The new phenomenon of ‘headhunting’ prosecutors and AGs trying to defeat their political opponents using the law as a weapon is a threat to the very foundation of our freedom,” said Trump.

“This is being done in third world countries. Worse still are those who run for prosecutors or attorneys-general in states and jurisdictions on the far left and pledge to eliminate a political opponent. This is fascism, not justice – and that is what they are. ” I try to do it with respect for myself, except that the people in our country will not stand up for it. “

When asked by DealBook columnist Andrew Ross Sorkin if she was surprised that Trump did not pardon himself before leaving office, James said, “I am never surprised at the behavior of the former President of the United States.”

“There have been some rumors of ‘secret pardons’,” added James. “I dont know.”

When asked if she personally believed Trump pardoned himself and not made that fact public, James said, “I really don’t know. We’ll see.”

“There’s been a lot of speculation, but it’s nothing but speculation,” she told Sorkin, who is co-anchor of CNBC’s “Squawk Box”.

Even if Trump pardoned himself and found such a pardon legal under the Constitution, it would not protect him from civil sanctioning by James or prosecuted by Vance or Fulton County, Georgia, DA, who are investigating whether Trump is investigating breaking the law by pressuring the Georgian foreign minister to “find” him enough votes to undo Joe Biden’s victory in the presidential election there.

Presidential pardons apply only to federal crimes, not state crimes.

James had urged the successful passage of a law in 2019 to close New York’s so-called double-exposure gap, which in some cases was seen as a potential obstacle for prosecutors filing criminal charges against a person who had received a presidential pardon.

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Business

Public sale Home Suspends Sale of 19th-Century Jewish Burial Data

Auction House Suspends Sale of 19th-Century Jewish Burial Records

Under National Socialist rule in 1944 around 18,000 Jews were deported in six trains from the city of Cluj-Napoca in what is now Romania to the Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination camp. Almost all of them perished. Jewish homes, offices, archives and synagogues in Cluj have been searched and properties looted, including books and historical records, leaving little traces of a once lively, mainly Hungarian-speaking community.

Today, decades after many of the few Holocaust survivors emigrated, the Jewish community there is only 350 and has little evidence of its history.

But this month a rare relic of Cluj’s Jewish past popped up at a New York auction house. A bound memorial register for Jewish burials in the city between 1836 and 1899 was one of 17 documents that were offered and then withdrawn from sale at Kestenbaum & Company, a Judaica auction house in Brooklyn.

The withdrawal was canceled at the request of the Cluj Jewish community and the World Jewish Restitution Organization, who requested the sale of the funeral register listed in the catalog for the February 18 auction and known as Pinkas Klali D’Chevra Kadisha.

The register, handwritten in Hebrew and Yiddish, with a detailed front page praising the funeral company leaders, was discovered online by a genealogist who alerted Robert Schwartz, president of Cluj’s Jewish community.

“Very little parish membership survived World War II,” says Schwartz. “It’s surprising that the book turned up at auction because nobody knew anything about its existence. We have few documents or books, so this manuscript is an important source of information about the 19th century church. “

Schwartz was one of the Holocaust survivors from Cluj. He was born hidden in a basement after his pregnant mother fled the city’s ghetto. As an eminent chemist, he has headed the Jewish community of Cluj, the fourth largest city in Romania and home to the country’s largest university, since 2010.

Under his leadership, the community has sought to rebuild, celebrate Jewish religious festivals with a wider audience, and hold scientific events in pre-pandemic times. The Neolog Synagogue, the only one of the three synagogues there that is still used as a Jewish place of worship, is currently being renovated and will house a small museum, Schwartz said. “This document could be very valuable as a key exhibit,” he said.

In a letter to the auction house earlier this month, Schwartz described the manuscript – which was estimated to fetch between $ 5,000 and $ 7,000 – as “very valuable to our community’s history” and said it was “illegally appropriated by those who did not were identified. “

He also sought assistance from the World Jewish Restitution Organization, which asked the auction house to stop selling both the Cluj funeral records and a similar register of the births and deaths of Jews from nearby Oradea. In its letter, the restitution organization stated that private institutions such as Kestenbaum were “responsible for ensuring that claims for the recovery of property seized by the Nazis are resolved quickly,” and cited international agreements on the return of cultural property and assets from the Holocaust looted by the Nazis. Time.

“Given the historically sensitive nature of the items we are entrusted with, the title question is of the utmost importance to us,” wrote Daniel Kestenbaum, founding chairman of the Judaica auction house, in an email. “In relation to recently acquired information, manuscripts were withdrawn from our Judaica auction in February.”

The shipper is “a learned businessman who has made enormous efforts for decades to save and preserve historical artifacts that would otherwise have been destroyed,” said Kestenbaum. The seller agreed to further discuss the matter with the refund organization, he said.

Zoltan Tibori Szabo, director of the Institute for Holocaust and Genocide Studies at the University of Cluj, said he was counting on the goodwill of the sender. If it is made available to researchers, the name of the newly discovered register will give scholars the names of the ancestors of the deportees, he said.

“When a person dies, they are usually remembered by their community and family,” he said. “But with hundreds of thousands of Jews in Eastern Europe, nothing was left of them – even their documents were robbed and disappeared. You cannot restore a community’s history without documents. We don’t even have a list of their names. “

While historical Jewish community registers are occasionally put up for sale, it’s unusual for so many to be auctioned off at once, said Jonathan Fishburn, a London-based Jewish and Hebrew book dealer. The market is generally limited to museums and libraries, although some private collectors with a connection to a particular region would also be potential customers, he said. Kestenbaum said that of the roughly 30,000 auction lots he has worked on in his career, only about 100 related to records he identified as critical to genealogical research.

“It’s about saving history,” said Gideon Taylor, chairman of operations for the World Jewish Restitution Organization. The newly discovered register “is a treasure and a rare window into the past,” he said. “Every name on this list is important.”

The discovery of these documents was “a symbol of a greater challenge,” he said. “How do we make sure that these pieces of history aren’t traded? We want to make sure we have a roadmap for the future. We will approach auction houses more systematically and look for partnerships. “

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Entertainment

15 Necessities From Johnny Pacheco and Fania Data, the ‘Motown of Salsa’

15 Essentials From Johnny Pacheco and Fania Records, the ‘Motown of Salsa’

Johnny Pacheco’s life told a typical New York Latino story in many ways: He was a Dominican immigrant who played Cuban music for a predominantly Puerto Rican audience. Like many self-proclaimed New York entrepreneurs, he knew he had to take his product to the sidewalk and meet his customers face-to-face to sell records from the trunk of an old Mercedes-Benz in Harlem and the Bronx.

Pacheco had worked on several variations of the son genre at Triton’s nightclub in the Bronx and made a name for himself by adding a hop and flashing a handkerchief while on stage to a hot new one, according to Juan Flores’ book “Salsa Rising.” The style of dancing was called Pachanga. Dreaming of starting his own record label (and in the middle of ending a marriage), he met Jerry Masucci, an Italian-American divorce lawyer with a taste for the Cuban sound. The two got on so well that they started a new record label called Fania, which housed the greatest talents of salsa.

Pacheco and Masucci’s experiment went beyond their wildest dreams. Using the streamlined term “salsa” that had surfaced years earlier in Cuba and Venezuela, Fania Records linked the Afro-Latin fad (think, “I like it that way”) with the remnants of Cuban sounds dulled by the radio silence the embargo after the revolution to create an international dance craze. Fania Records turned Puerto Ricans like Willie Colón and Héctor Lavoe, Cuban diva Celia Cruz, a Brooklyn Jew named Larry Harlow and a Panamanian troubadour named Rubén Blades into stars and spread the new Latin groove from Yankee Stadium to Kinshasa, Zaire.

Here are 15 examples of how Pacheco, who died this week at the age of 85, and his Fania cohort made music history.

From his second album, “Johnny Pacheco y su Charanga”, this is a compelling distillation of Pacheco’s early Pachanga sound that shows the full effect of a Charanga-style Cuban orchestra heavy on flutes and violins. The relentless percussion embellishes texts that tell the story of a woman scratching the percussive Güiro instrument to the satisfaction of the narrator. If you can imagine Pacheco stepping on the downbeat quickly, witness the creation of salsa dance the New York style.

Pacheco’s collaboration with the unrecognized singer Pete “El Conde” Rodríguez (not to be confused with Bugalús Pete Rodríguez) captures a more polished phase of his career. Driven by the guaguancó rhythm that was to become the template for salsa, Rodríguez’s angular, velvety rasp is reminiscent of Afro-Puerto Rican colleagues such as Ismael Rivera and Cheo Feliciano. Pacheco’s arrangements, which created a gentle flow between the piano and horns, quickly became the salsa sound.

Pachecos and Masucci’s coordination of the Fania All-Stars, an inconceivably strong group of the genre’s emerging stars, was perhaps the single most important factor in salsa’s single-handed rise. This recording, which was made at the Cheetah Club, where Bugalú and the first production of “Hair” were shown before the Broadway run, includes long jam songs like “Anacaona”, a tribute to a rebellious Taíno leader powerful vocals by Cheo Feliciano, supported by Willie Colón, Larry Harlow and Ray Barretto, among others.

Celia Cruz was already a star with Sonora Matancera when she left Cuba in 1960 and replaced the legendary La Lupe as Tito Puentes singer in 1966. Her collaboration with Pacheco on “Celia and Johnny” was key to making her the queen of salsa. Pacheco’s precise tempo and the evolving wall of sound made this guaguancó a dizzying, onomatopoeic expression of percussion instruments.

Probably the most popular and talented singer in salsa, Héctor Lavoe was in many ways a symbol of the Puerto Rican experience in New York. His wistful, nasal singing style was reminiscent of a compatriot who at the same time lost himself in the big city and celebrated hell out of the city. The emotional power of Mi Gente, written by Pacheco, stems from his ability to bring New York’s diverse Latino community together to celebrate a dynamic self-esteem amid a grave financial crisis. The studio version is great, but the Live at Yankee Stadium version is the classic.

Willie Colón was born and raised in Mott Haven’s gravelly apartments in the Bronx. He recorded his first album at the age of 17, inspired by a sour, derisive tone that Barry Rogers gave to his trombone in his collaboration with Mon Rivera and Eddie Palmieri. Although there are many bugalú here, this is a scaled-down proto-salsa. Colón’s role in the invention of the salsa attitude by the “Malo” persona becomes clear here. The songs, which insist on Spanish-speaking, Latin American dancing authenticity, are filtered through a gangster-like heartfelt in the street fight.

This low budget 1970s film, directed by Leon Gast, has the grainy underground feel that later films like Charlie Ahearn’s hip-hop genesis “Wild Style” and Glenn O’Brien’s reconstructed post-punk fever dream “Downtown 81” has penetrated. The best visual record of Fania All-Stars rehearsals, club gigs, spontaneous Bembés and street party performances is also the African-hippie-fused wardrobe of the salsa dancers of the time. Just a few minutes later, on “Quítate Tu,” you can see Pacheco effortlessly master the diverse chorus of star singers as he conducts horns and percussion.

Ismael “Maelo” Rivera’s sound, known in Puerto Rico as “El Sonero Mayor” (the greatest singer), was born from working with his childhood friend, drummer Rafael Cortijo. The Rivera Cortijo sound recontextualized the rustic bomba and plena genres by adding more instruments and flowed easily into New York style salsa. “Las Caras Lindas” comes from Rivera’s solo time with Fania – it was written by the famous songwriter Tite Curet Alonso and celebrates the beauty of Afro-Puerto Ricans.

Harlow was a unique figure in the salsa scene – he was born and raised in Brooklyn, the son of a mambo musician who couldn’t get the Cuban sound out of his head. As a whiplash pianist, Harlow called himself “El Judío Maravilloso” (The Wonderful Jew) after his hero Arsenio Rodríguez, known as “El Ciego Maravilloso”. “Abran Paso”, sung by his favorite singer Ismael Miranda, is both an invocation of the Santeria mysticism and a metaphor for an aspiring Latino community.

This was a Christmas album with a twist – instead of tarnishing the Fania All-Stars to make salsa versions of “Silent Night” and “Jingle Bells,” Willie Colón and Héctor Lavoe decided to record classic Puerto Rican aguinaldos with some sort of bath Santa Feel New York. This album is inevitable over the holidays, when you’ve expanded the Puerto Rican family and balanced awe of tradition with an incredible sense of swing. A highlight is the first appearance of Yomo Toro, sometimes known as Cuatro’s Jimi Hendrix, a rustic 10-string lute that explodes out of vinyl.

Ray Barretto, the emotional percussive core of the Fania All-Stars, was a remarkably versatile conga player whose career ranged from bugalú to salsa, latin jazz to session work for the Rolling Stones. His mid-period excellence crystallizes in “Indestructible” riding unprecedented waves of frenetic dance energy. The title track describes a promise salseros make to themselves to keep getting up no matter how often they’re knocked down.

For many years, “Siembra” was the best-selling salsa album of all time and the highlight of the Blades-Colón partnership. The album is an attempt to combine a cinematic concept of New York Latino life with the idea of ​​a classic rock concept album, and the performances are unique and immortal. As a songwriting team, the two had no competition; Blades was at the forefront of his singing, and Colón’s arrangements were never more brilliant.

Another anthemic crowd-pleaser, “Plante Bandera,” alludes to the growing sense of nationalism and pride that brought salsa fans together, as well as the growing awareness of the Latino presence in the US and the projection of the salsa genre itself. Chamaco Ramírez’s sometimes overlooked plaintive style hits just the right notes, and the band’s percussive dynamics, punctuated by an insistent horn section, bring the lyrics to their maximum impact.

The multi-talented poet / troubadour / Hollywood actor shines here on his groundbreaking solo album and combines lyrical elements of the Cuban Nueva Trova with lush Colón orchestral salsa arrangements. With songs like “Pablo Pueblo” he defined the Latino theme of the working class, which became disillusioned with urban misery after being promised the American dream. In “Paula C” he recalls a lost love with the skill of a boom novelist of Magic Realism.

Ray and Cruz were one of the most successful internationalization forces of salsa and spread the promise of their sound especially in countries like Colombia. Ray and Cruz are evolving from their Bugalú roots into mainstream salsa machines and have a following of rabid fans. This particular track offers a break based on a Chopin etude that is always a live crowd puller.

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World News

Shares are set to retreat from data to finish the week, Dow futures drop 280 factors

Stocks are set to retreat from records to end the week, Dow futures drop 280 points

Stock futures fell early Friday morning as the S&P 500 and Nasdaq Composite pulled back from the records as investors reassessed the outlook for President Joe Biden’s ambitious Covid stimulus plan.

The average Dow Jones Industrial futures fell 283 points, or 0.9%, while the S&P 500 futures fell 0.8%. Nasdaq 100 futures lost 0.6%. The Nasdaq Composite and the S&P 500 each hit record highs on Thursday. The Dow set a record earlier this week.

IBM shares fell more than 7% in premarket trading after the company reported fourth-quarter revenue that was below analysts’ expectations. Revenue declined 6% on a year-on-year basis for the fourth straight quarter of declines.

Intel stocks were down 4% after falling 6% on Thursday after posting better-than-expected gains just before the closing bell.

A growing number of Republicans have expressed doubts about the need for another stimulus package, particularly one with a price proposed by Biden of $ 1.9 trillion. Meanwhile, Democratic Senator Joe Manchin has criticized the scope of the last round of proposed stimulus checks. The contradiction of both parties carries weight for Biden, who took office with a narrow majority in Congress.

“Washington’s political reality is starting to affect markets and it is becoming increasingly unclear when the Democrats’ ambitious economic targets will become law,” said Tom Essaye, founder of Sevens Report.

Cyclical sectors, which would benefit most from additional stimulus, lagged the broader market this week. Energy and finance have both lost more than 1% in weeks, while materials have also declined.

Tech, whose growth does not depend on reflation, led the indictment. Hopes for a robust earnings season from the country’s biggest communications and technology stocks have kept mega-cap stocks on the uptrend this week, with major indices nearing records during the week of shortened holidays.

Apple and Facebook were up 7.7% and 8.6%, respectively, this week ahead of their quarterly results, while Microsoft was up 5.8%.

With the S&P 500 up another 2% this year and up 16% over the past 12 months, some investors believe the market could outperform itself as problems with the vaccine rollout and economic reopening likely will continue to exist in the future.

“The Covid pendulum, which usually emphasizes the vaccine’s optimism about the harsh short-term reality, is swinging back towards the latter (for now) as epicenter stocks are hit hard in Europe,” Adam Crisafulli, founder of Vital Knowledge, said in a note Friday.

The S&P 500 is up 2.3% in the week so far. The Dow is up 1.2% and the Nasdaq Composite is up 4%.

Meanwhile, the Senate is expected to approve former Fed chair Janet Yellen as Biden’s Treasury Secretary by an overwhelming majority on Friday. If this were confirmed, she would be the first woman to head the department.

Categories
Politics

Appeals courtroom sends lawsuit over Trump monetary data again to decrease courtroom

Appeals court sends lawsuit over Trump financial records back to lower court

United States President Donald Trump arrives to discuss the government’s testing plan for coronavirus disease (COVID-19) in the Rose Garden of the White House in Washington on September 28, 2020.

Carlos Barria | Reuters

A federal appeals court on Wednesday sent a lawsuit over President Donald Trump’s financial reports back to a lower court, further delaying efforts by House Democrats to obtain years of presidential personal and business records.

In its ruling, a three-person jury from the US Court of Appeal for the DC Circuit overturned an earlier District Court ruling and joined a Supreme Court ruling over the summer instructing the lower courts to look more closely at the separation of powers in the case.

Two of these appellate judges were appointed by Democratic presidents and one by Trump.

The House Oversight and Reform Committee issued an eight-year subpoena of Trump’s papers from the accounting firm Mazars USA in 2019. The panel’s democratic majority said it had obtained the records as part of its legislative and supervisory duties and as part of ongoing investigations.

Trump’s lawyers have tried to block publication of the records, arguing that Congress was involved in a fishing expedition to politically violate him.

A U.S. district judge and federal appeals body had previously upheld the subpoena. However, the Supreme Court raised concerns in July about the separation of powers between the legislature and the executive.

In their brief ruling on Wednesday, the appellate judges found that they “have no opinion as to whether this case will be in dispute after the subpoena has expired or whether the parties’ arguments are well founded”.

The board of directors announced that Chairwoman Carolyn Maloney, DN.Y., intends to remit the subpoena to Mazars at the beginning of the next convention.

“It remains crucial that the oversight committee – and the House in a broader sense – is able to ensure an immediate enforcement of the subpoena without the risk of investigative subjects thwarting their efforts by delays in litigation,” the attorney said of the committee to the court of appeal in early December.

A spokeswoman for the oversight committee did not immediately respond to CNBC’s request to comment on the appeals court’s ruling. The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

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Business

New York Gov. Cuomo warns a January financial shutdown is feasible as Covid instances soar to springtime information

New York Gov. Cuomo warns a January economic shutdown is possible as Covid cases soar to springtime records

Andrew Cuomo, Governor of New York State, speaks at a press conference in New York City on September 8, 2020.

Spencer Platt | Getty Images

New York’s non-essential stores could be forced to close again in January if the state doesn’t tackle escalating coronavirus cases that have soared in recent weeks to record highs not seen since the spring, Governor Andrew Cuomo said on Wednesday.

“Of course, a shutdown in January is possible,” said Cuomo at a press conference in Albany. “But there is a big but,” he said, spelling the word letter by letter “BUT”.

Whether the state will again impose an economic lockdown depends on what New Yorkers do in the remaining vacation and whether new Covid-19 infections decrease or increase, he said.

According to a CNBC analysis of data compiled from data from Johns Hopkins University, New York has been struggling with an average of 10,294 new infections per day for the past week, up more than 7% from the previous week. That’s more new cases every day than the state did in the spring, when the hospital systems in New York City and elsewhere were overwhelmed with patients.

Cuomo didn’t say what a second shutdown would look like. He imposed another ban on indoor dining in New York City on Monday but said he wanted to keep public schools open and has not yet made a decision on whether to close non-essential stores.

“It’s up to us. What will happen in three weeks? What will happen in four weeks? You tell me what you are going to do in the next three or four weeks and I will tell you what will happen,” he said.

At the current rate of spread of the virus, New Yorkers should be prepared for a second shutdown, similar to the one Cuomo issued this spring when unnecessary shops and schools closed and people were told to stay home to avoid the spread of Covid -19 stop, Mayor Bill de Blasio warned.

He said it was “increasingly necessary to just break the back of the second wave, to keep this second wave from growing, to prevent it from taking lives, not to threaten our hospitals,” de Blasio said during a press conference Monday .

Cuomo urged New Yorkers to take “personal responsibility” in order to slow the spread of the virus, especially during the holiday season. The state is now concerned about what the governor calls “living room sprawl”. This is because nationwide contact tracing data has shown that nearly 74% of new Covid-19 cases are from households and social gatherings.

“Nobody knows what New Yorkers will do until Christmas or how they will behave during Christmas week,” said Cuomo. “The numbers are not predestined. The numbers reflect what we are doing.”

The governor also urged that state hospitals move into “crisis management mode,” which means that health systems must work with neighboring hospital systems to “share” the burden of patients and provide resources to hospitals in areas with high Covid-19 Transfer installments.

According to a CNBC analysis of data from the Covid Tracking Project run by journalists from The Atlantic, the New York average is more than 5,400 people hospitalized, an increase of more than 25% from the previous week.

“Balance the load so hospitals aren’t overwhelmed by what we’ve seen in the past,” said Cuomo.

The state has started delivering its initial allocation of Covid-19 vaccines to frontline health workers. The state has received 87,750 doses of Pfizer’s Covid-19 vaccine so far and plans to receive an additional 80,000 doses in the next few days, Cuomo said.

“That goes for residents of nursing homes,” said Cuomo. New York could receive an additional 346,000 doses of vaccine from Moderna if the U.S. Food and Drug Administration clears the emergency for emergencies this week.

“Slow down the spread, manage the hospitals, give the vaccine,” Cuomo said.

Categories
Business

Ladies’s soccer set viewership data in 2020, paves approach for growth

Women's soccer set viewership records in 2020, paves way for expansion

Orlando Pride midfielder Bridget Callahan (22) shoots the ball during the NWSL soccer game between the Orlando Pride and the Washington Spirit on October 5, 2019 at Explorer Stadium in Orlando, FL.

Andrew Bershaw | Icon Sportswire | Getty Images

Women’s football had a great 2020 even in the middle of a pandemic, thanks to broadcast and streaming deals that brought the sport to more viewers than ever before.

Finding viewers outside of a dedicated core fan base and delivering games on a handful of consistent platforms will be key to further growth in 2021. Women’s sport is a feel-good story, but the next phase is about hitting the hard numbers, attracting new broadcast partners and corporate sponsors.

In the summer of 2020, the National Women’s Soccer League was the first U.S. professional sports league to return to activity, breaking its attendance records by nearly 300%. The first and last games of the Challenge Cup, which were the only ones to be shown on CBS and not on the subscription service CBS All Access, drew 572,000 and 653,000 viewers, respectively, on par with an English Premier League game that week and Major League Baseball Game on TBS broadcast in the same time slot. Last year’s NWSL final, which aired on ESPN, only drew 166,000 viewers.

Company sponsors also got on board. The NWSL signed contracts with Verizon, Google and Procter & Gamble before the Challenge Cup.

“The league has done strangely well,” said Lindsay Barenz, VP of Business Development for the NWSL, during the pandemic.

Multi-year partnerships with CBS Sports and Amazon Twitch were “game changers,” added Barenz. For regular playing time, CBS showed some games on its main network, 14 on the CBS Sports Network and the majority on CBS All Access. Twitch would stream all of the games internationally and a handful of free games domestically.

Even as more sports leagues returned to competition in the fall, the NWSL averaged 383,000 viewers for its fall series games, which aired on CBS. According to the league, the games, which were also streamed globally on Twitch, averaged just over 732,000 live views, and the most watched hit hit 1,000,000.

These deals came after the U.S. women’s national team won the 2019 Women’s World Cup and sparked new interest in the sport. In previous seasons, most games could only be streamed online, be it on Google’s YouTube, on teams’ websites or on Verizon’s go90. TV coverage for a handful of major games jumped between Fox Sports’ secondary channels and Disney subsidiary ESPN in various years. And NWSL’s multi-year contract with A&E Networks to broadcast games for life failed when A&E left in 2019, one season earlier. The NWSL only reached another TV deal after the World Cup when ESPN recorded 14 remaining games between ESPNews and ESPN2.

The NWSL was difficult to follow for avid fans and difficult to stumble upon for potential fans. The new rights contracts should ensure consistency and high quality production for the coming seasons.

Then the pandemic hit.

It was far from clear that women’s football could save the year, but it probably helped to be the first to come back with little athletic competition. The NWSL’s month-long Challenge Cup, played in a “bubble” in Utah, began June 27, two weeks before the men’s Major League Soccer returned and a month before the National Basketball Association launched its bubble at Disney World.

When it comes to growth, there is a tradeoff between maximizing sales and reaching the widest possible audience. Under the current contract, most NWSL games are only available through CBS Sports Network or CBS All Access, which are paid subscription services.

But the choice was “part of maturing as a league,” said Barenz. “Part of the maturity of our fans is that there is an economic exchange of values ​​to get access to our games.”

In order to get access to all games in other leagues like the Women’s National Basketball Association and male colleagues, a paid subscription is also required, Barenz emphasized. The NWSL, the longest running professional women’s soccer league in the United States, is now entering its ninth season (as the WNBA will hit its big 25).

Alyssa Naeher # 1 of Chicago Red Stars hits a loose ball during an NWSL soccer game between the Chicago Red Stars and the Orlando Pride at Orlando City Stadium on September 11, 2019 in Orlando, Florida.

Alex Menendez | Getty Images Sports | Getty Images

Go international

A new business model could help increase more broadcasters’ interest in women’s football. This is where the startup Atalanta Media comes in.

Atalanta acquires media rights for smaller women’s sports leagues and offers them to broadcasters free of charge, along with fully produced games. In return, the company retains sponsorship opportunities so that it can also make money. This fall, Atalanta partnered with NBC Sports to bring the FA Women’s Super League, England’s premier women’s league, to a US audience for the first time.

Atalanta aims to break the frustrating stalemate between skeptical investors and leagues in dire need of more investment.

Broadcasters want “more evidence” before buying the rights themselves, said Esmeralda Negron, co-founder of the company and former professional footballer. “But there is no proof of that [women’s soccer has] has never been available week after week on premium channels. “

“If we don’t do that,” Negron said of buying the rights to leagues like WSL, “it wouldn’t be available.”

With the Atalanta partnership, NBC Sports will broadcast 50 WSL season games from September 2020 through Spring 2021, either on the NBC Sports Network channel, the NBC Sports app, or the NBC Sports website.

The first eight WSL games on NBC Sports Network had an average of 63,000 viewers, and the most viewed game reached 100,000 viewers, according to the network. A network manager told CNBC how important it is to tie women’s football to Premier League coverage in order to raise awareness. Given that the US games usually air weekend mornings (given the time difference) and are in an unknown league, this is a good place to start.

NWSL match ball during the 2020 NWSL College Draft at the Baltimore Convention Center on January 16, 2020 in Baltimore, Maryland.

Jose Argueta | Getty Images Sports | Getty Images

Next year

2021 will bring new tests and possibilities. As more sporting leagues prepare to return for the full season and people get more outdoors to do, women’s sports can become more difficult to interest. However, if the Tokyo Olympics go as planned, a strong performance from the U.S. women’s team could also raise awareness of football at the club level.

Next year the NWSL plans to host the Challenge Cup again, followed by a full season. What was originally conceived as a means of saving the year has become valuable property.

The league is also adding teams, including a Louisville club that will play in 2021 and a Los Angeles team that will join the following year. LA club Angel City FC will be majority-owned by women and will be supported by all-star investors like Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian and actress Natalie Portman.

There are also growth opportunities in existing deals. The goal of women’s football is likely to be to show more games on flagship networks like CBS and NBC, not just their sports networks or apps.

“Premium broadcasting plays an important role in enhancing the visibility and profile of leagues and players at the club level,” said Negron. “That never really happened on the women’s side.”

Women’s football needs to benefit from its increased visibility this year or else it risks losing its hard-won momentum. As Negron said, “Audience is what drives everything in this sport.”