Sports

The New York Rangers (402 words)
Jessie Petrow-Cohen

The lights go out, with one spot light shining down, towels fling around and around creating a sea of white in support and as the New York Rangers skate out on to the ice, Madison Square Garden explodes into cheers of love for their team.

In our culture sports represent not only a competition of two teams but also an experience for the fans that matches nothing else. From cheers, to good luck rituals, from the stadium to couches at homes, the fans of the New York Rangers are part of a community that stick with their team through wins and losses and every fan has their own special way of cheering their team on. Claire and Emma Durney (2014) describe themselves as die hard Rangers fans. "We have a lot of superstitions but we basically have friends come over for every single game. We always sit in the same spots on the couch and we all wear jerseys and hats and all of our Rangers gear. We try really hard to not get up from the couch in the middle of the period and we always high five each other after every rangers goal" explained Claire Durney. Their ritualistic game time experience epitomizes their love for the team and their passion for winning.

This season, the Durney's and Rangers' fans across the country have had quite a lot to cheer for. The Rangers are currently in the National Hockey League playoffs heading towards the Stanley Cup. They beat the Flyers in the first round in a seven game series. Round two was even more dramatic as the Rangers faced the Penguins in what ended up being yet another seven game series, in which the Rangers made an incredible comeback after losing three games in a row. This round was made even more emotional for both players and fans when player, Martin St. Louis, recently traded for Andrew Callahan onto the Rangers lost his mother after the teams third loss. The team seemed to rally as a result of the tragedy and managed to make a comeback and win beat the penguin in the next three games. Currently in the third round of the playoffs, the Rangers' have won two games against Montreal and if they manage to keep the winning streak up will have only one more team to play before potentially winning the Stanley Cup.  With a win that big, the love for the Ranger's will be palbable not only in Madison Square Garden, but everywhere that fans travel across the nation.  

  

The New York Rangers skate onto the  ice in Madison Square Garden in game four against the     Penguins during the 2014 playoffs and are cheered on by a stadium of fans. 

Football on the Trading Floor (456 words)

by Noah Kambili

We have achieved a new level of investment: buying stock in people.

Arian Foster, as part of his contract with Fantex, will pay 20

percent of his earnings to his shareholders

Fantex Brokerage Services, LLC is a relatively new company that operates on an innovative market scheme: turning professional athletes into brands whose shares can be bought and sold by investors. This fresh idea derives from the typical corporation traded on the stock market. A normal corporation sells shares to raise money for its operations, and repays its shareholders with dividends should it make a profit. If the corporation loses money, so too do the shareholders. Fantex follows a similar investment model, but the product that it sells has never been seen before in our modern economy.

By signing a contract with Fantex, an athlete receives a lump sum from the company. This amount is determined by the amount of the athlete’s shares are sold. In return, a percentage of the revenue generated by the athlete’s brand (including money paid from merchandising, endorsements, coaching, and other off-field activities) is paid to Fantex, which is then paid as dividends to investors.

Presently, Fantex has a small number of investment options, all of them in the National Football League. Vernon Davis of the San Francisco 49ers, EJ Manuel of the Buffalo Bills, and Arian Foster of the Houston Texans are the only athletes who have signed contracts with Fantex. Shares of Manuel and Foster are currently available, but trading is closed for Davis, who was Fanex’s first contracted athlete. Once Davis signed a $4 million contract with Fantex, investors were able to buy shares in his brand at a rate of $10 per share. Now, 10 percent of all of Davis’s future earnings will be paid to his shareholders. This is a high-risk venture: if Davis suffers an injury prevents him from playing or retires prematurely from football, shareholders will find that their investments become effectively worthless, as they have no mean of generating additional income. Foster is projected to take on a much larger contract: in return for $10 million, Foster will pay Fantex and his investors 20 percent of his earnings. This appears to be a large cut, but some believe that Foster has the better end of the deal. “Arian still owns 80%, so he’s very much incentivized to continue to build his brand,” says Buck French, co-founder and chief executive of Fantex, in an October 18, 2013 Time Magazine article. “And by the way, we’re incentivized to help him, because we have 20%. That was our whole idea of starting this company, aligning everyone’s incentives properly.” However, the stock market is a place of competition where everyone rarely gets what they want. It will be interesting to see if Fantex is able to flourish with its atypical, yet inventive, system for doing business.