The little Lake Union retail shop found $50 million to spend streaming the NFL’s slate of 10 Thursday night game this fall. The same deal last year cost Twitter $10 million.
Author: Art Thiel
Art Thiel
Never having met a metaphor he could not twist beyond recognition, Art has been illuminating, agitating, amusing and annoying Puget Sound sports readers for a long time. Along with Steve Rudman, he co-founded Sports Press Northwest because it didnt seem right that the Google monster should aggregate daily journalism into oblivion without at least a flesh wound from somebody. Thiel and Rudman labored under the Seattle Post-Intelligencer globe until the print edition died an undeserved death in March, 2009. Art continued on at its online successor seattlepi.com while working on SPNWs creation. His radio commentaries can be heard Friday and Saturday mornings and Friday afternoon on KPLU-FM 88.9. In 2003 he wrote the definitive book about the Seattle Mariners, Out of Left Field, which became a regional bestseller. In 2009, along with Rudman and KJR 950 afternoon host Mike Gastineau, Thiel authored The Great Book of Seattle Sports Lists, a cross between historylink.org and Mad Magazine that has become mandatory reading for any sports fan who has an indoor bathroom. A graduate of Pacific Lutheran University as well as two dead papers and a live one, the News Tribune of Tacoma, he has become a fan of entrepreneurial online journalism because it allows him to continue a lifelong passion to take the English language to places it rarely visits willingly, and does not involve the cleaning of kennels or stables.
It’s the 40th anniversary season for the Mariners, but with just four playoff appearances, none in the World Series, feeling the mojo is fleeting. Ask the Astros, who’ve been at it 55 years.
Gonzaga’s skill in international recruiting has been a great asset in getting the program to the national championship game. New Washington coach Mike Hopkins needs to get on plane to Europe.
Pete Carroll says Seahawks have fielded, and spurned, trade offers for Richard Sherman. Burt after last season’s strife, matters need fixing, because Carroll needs to draw a line, even with Sherman.
In November, the Port of Seattle signed a $185,000 contract with a Seattle PR firm to offer support for the Seattle Center site for a new arena, instead of Chris Hansen’s Sodo arena plan.
Tim Leiweke, leader of a company bidding to transform KeyArena, imagines a space partly underground and serviced by old-school Monorail and new-school drones carrying Sonics fans.
From Sonics 1994 loss to Nuggets, to the first firing of Sigi Schmid, to hiring of Pete Carroll to denying Chris Hansen, Tim Leiweke has been all around Seattle sports. Now he seeks to be arena king.
NFL owners voted 31-1 to let Raiders relocate to Las Vegas from Oakland, the third city in two years to be gashed by the NFL. By comparison, Seattle and NBA aren’t looking so bad.
The abrupt renaissance of West Coast basketball, represented by two teams in the Final Four, makes more stark the decay of Washington’s program, which first may have to hit bottom under new coach Mike Hopkins.
Mike Hopkins’ energy and passion were plainly visible Wednesday. But he had to escape the shadow of his former boss, Jim Boeheim, rather than attempt the futile task of succeeding him.