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Message: [QUOTE="CONN78SEJ, post: 4478889, member: 10604"] I said OFFCIALS, not referees, meaning timekeepers, technicians, operations, shot clocks, and all sorts of support personnel etc. Bad choice of words on my part. If what you asked were true that would be like making ESPN pay for the refs at the Super Bowl instead of the NFL, it’s an absurd thought. MSG is a special case however, because MSG owns the venue, arena, and all of the television production facilities, sat uplinks, fiber lines etc . To use MSG is an expensive thing to put on for the NIT or the BET, and revenue for these tournaments have been going down in the past few years, it has nothing to do with ticket sales and everything to do with falling ratings, especially for the NIT. MSG wants to help out with costs to put on the NIT with it’s history and tradition but only to a point. An MSG arena sellout is a drop in the bucket for MSG compared to how much they can make off of expected ratings, the higher the expected rating the more they can charge for TV ads, one 30 sec Ford Truck commercial will pay for all the seats in MSG times 1000. My contention is, once UConn leaves the Big East, the BET at MSG will begin approaching the NIT in relevance. Same thing for the Super Bowl, ad sales is everything and it all hinges on ratings. A sellout in ticket sales mean nothing. [/QUOTE]