Pacers bailout no slam dunk

Call it March Madness-NBA style.

The Indiana Pacers franchise needs $15 million a year beginning in 2010 — presumably from the public — to fund
the
operation of
Conseco Fieldhouse. The franchise says it can’t afford to operate the venue, where it claims to have lost money every year
but one since moving in 10 years ago.

That’s madness. We have a hard time understanding how the franchise could be such a money loser. The Pacers pay essentially
no rent on the publicly owned fieldhouse but benefit from the more than 200 ticketed events held there every year —
everything
from basketball games to rock concerts.

We appreciate that the team hasn’t issued any ultimatums in this latest round of troubles, but it’s frustrating that taxpayers
are once again being asked to subsidize a private enterprise that’s already getting a pretty good deal in the form of free
use of a state-of-the-art entertainment venue.

That doesn’t mean the city can or should give up on the Pacers.

Losing the team would cast the city in a negative light and would be counter to efforts to bolster the city’s tourism and
convention business. Worse, it would leave taxpayers holding an 18,000-seat arena with no anchor tenant. Operating the arena
might cost less without the Pacers, but only because it would be empty most nights and not generating sales — and tax
revenue — at
downtown restaurants, hotels and shops that rely on downtown foot traffic.

The generosity of Pacers owners Mel and Herb Simon shouldn’t be forgotten, either. The brothers rescued the team in the early
1980s, have donated millions of dollars to Indiana University and its school of medicine, and took on the complicated and
expensive development of Circle Centre mall, which made downtown a destination for conventioneers and locals.

But if the city can find a way to take on the expense of running the fieldhouse, the Simon family should offer a few things
in return.

For starters, the public needs to know what succession plans exist for the Pacers. Mel and Herb are not young men, and the
franchise has been coy about who might step in to own the team in the long term. It would be foolish to sign off on any taxpayer-funded
effort to save the team without knowing who, whether a member of the family or not, has been identified to guide it into the
future.

And because Indianapolis has so much invested, why wouldn’t the Pacers give the city a cut of the upside? The Simons bought
the team for $11 million back in 1983. A year ago, Forbes magazine valued it at more
than $300 million. If the city is truly
a partner, it should be rewarded if sometime down the road the franchise changes hands.

Whether that ever happens depends in part on the strength of the league itself. The NBA — with a third of its teams
losing
money — isn’t
the picture of health. Is the league, in its present form, viable in the long term?

Should the city try to save the Pacers? The answer is an emphatic yes. But not without asking — and getting some answers
to — a
few fundamental questions.

___

To comment on this editorial, write to ibjedit@ibj.com.