MGM gave Chen Qiang the box office data for the first week of "Mrs. Minnifer".
"It's so profitable to make movies!" Chen Qiang looked at the box office data and took a breath of air conditioning.
Of course, Chen Qiang also knew that the box office was not the money he could get in the end.
Although Chen Qiang is an investor in the movie, it is already very good that Chen Qiang can get 30% of the box office after deducting the distribution cost and theater costs.
According to the future domestic film sharing, the film company and theater chains will share the shares at about 43% and 57%. At the same time, 3.3% of the value-added tax, 5% of the film industry special funds, and about 8% of the propaganda party. In terms of calculation, the roughly profit of the film producer is about 33%. This 33% is then divided by investors and producers, so the investors' real income ratio is definitely less than 30%.
However, the cost of film distribution in the 1940s was not that high, and the promotional cost was very small, and Chen Qiang's income was much higher than that of later generations.
"I just planned to spend money to buy Esther a character, but I didn't expect to make a lot of money in the end! I guess this investment can make two or three million. No wonder so many people invest in movies, so it's too easy to make money." Chen Qiang said in his heart.
Chen Qiang made 20 million US dollars by shorting stocks, but this opportunity to make money from the United States is not often encountered. The next U.S. stock market crash is an oil crisis more than 30 years later, and the next next is the Internet bubble in the early 21st century. It takes 30 years to wait for a stock market crash, which is really hard to come by.
In comparison, you don’t have to wait that long to invest in movies. There are always a few good movies with box office explosions every year, which can bring huge benefits to investors.
"It seems that investing in movies is a good direction. If you have the right opportunity in the future, you can invest in a few more movies. Unfortunately, I don't know anything about movies and don't know what kind of movies are worth investing in." Chen Qiang was thinking, and the ringtone of the phone rang, interrupting his thoughts.
The person speaking was a lawyer named Lucas, who was responsible for handling the relevant transfer procedures for Chen Qiang in Madison Square Garden. Of course, Chen Qiang could not do such a big deal of more than 5 million US dollars by himself, and it was directly handed over to professionals, which was both trouble and worry-free.
"Mr. Chen, the procedures for Madison Square Garden have been completed. Now the entire Madison Square Garden's extremely related properties belong to you." Lawyer Lucas said.
"Thank you very much, Lawyer Lucas." Chen Qiang thanked.
"Mr. Chen, if you are free now, I will send the relevant documents of this transaction to your office." The lawyer continued.
"Okay, I'll wait for you in the office. I'm ready for your check." After Chen Qiang put down the phone, he took out the financial statements of Madison Square Garden from a folder on his desk in the past few years. He had already obtained this thing a few days ago.
Chen Qiang has read this financial report on Madison Square Garden several times, but every time he read it, Chen Qiang feels a little headache because Madison Square Garden doesn't make money at all, and even loses a lot of operating expenses.
In fact, the Madison Square Garden in the previous two generations was called a failed work, because it was not profitable, and the holders also had to invest a lot of money in it to operate and maintain the venue, so they ended up demolition.
The situation of the third-generation Madison Square Garden is better. Because boxing competitions are often held, it can barely maintain a balance of revenue and expenditure based on tickets. However, for Madison Square Garden owner Ricard, he used Madison Square Garden mainly to develop his boxing and gambling career, and the huge profits of gambling can fully compensate for the operational expenses of Madison Square Garden.
At that time, Ricard spent 4.75 million to build the third-generation Madison Square Garden. After 17 years, it was sold to Chen Qiang for 5.2 million, making 450,000 US dollars. However, considering that it took 17 years to make the 450,000 US dollars, it was actually a loss. The cumulative income in 17 years is less than 10%, and the bank interest is higher than this. In this way, Mrs. Ricard sold Madison Square Garden at a loss.
However, for the Ricard family, they can also sell off bad assets and recover funds. This is like the garbage contracts in the NBA. In order to deal with those garbage contracts, the team often takes advantage of potential players in their play years or draft picks in the next few years. From the perspective of business, players who have signed high salaries have to buy draft picks and sell them. Wouldn't it be a waste of money at the beginning? It's all a loss. But from the perspective of team development, it's actually a profit to throw out the garbage contracts at a loss and seek development space for the team's future.
Mrs. Ricard did the same thing, losing the burden of getting rid of Madison Square Garden to win the family’s development in Las Vegas casinos.
Now that Madison Square Garden has been in Chen Qiang's hands, the profit problem of Madison Square Garden has become a headache for Chen Qiang.
The profitability of large stadiums is a global problem. Even in the later United States, the entertainment and sports industry has been very developed, and the utilization rate of large stadiums is already very high, but not all stadiums can make money. For those large stadiums, it is difficult to make profits without teams of the four major league level.
However, in the 1940s, the entertainment and sports industries in the United States were not as developed as those in later generations. Even in New York, there were not so many concerts and sports competitions, so the large stadiums in the United States were vacant most of the time.
At that time, many of the sports venues in the United States were established during the Roosevelt New Deal period. These were public facilities and the owner was the US government. Since they were public facilities, they were naturally operated and maintained by the government. If the fiscal allocation of funds to operate sports venues, there was no need to consider profit.
In comparison, private sports facilities are mostly profitable business places, such as gyms, indoor swimming pools, golf courses, bowling stadiums, etc. Only in big cities like New York can privately establish large sports venues like Madison Garden Plaza.
In terms of sports, Chen Qiang is a professional. He has also read a lot of information and research on the operation of sports stadiums in later generations. He knows that there are many ways to make a large stadium profitable.
For example, if you invite celebrities to hold concerts or hold exhibitions, of course, the most important thing is to hold competitions.
In addition to hosting boxing matches from time to time, Madison Square Garden is also the home court of the New York Rangers of the Hockey League. However, in this era, there are not many ice hockey games in a season, and the popularity of ice hockey is far less than that of later generations. With those ice hockey games in winter, it is obviously not enough for Madison Square Garden to operate.
The first sports that Chen Qiang thought of was of course basketball. After all, in the future, Madison Square Garden will be a "basketball holy place".
"If you want to develop Madison Square Garden into the same way, you must bring basketball to Madison Square Garden." Chen Qiang already had a direction in his heart.
"Madison Square Garden is the home court of the New York Knicks. Although this team's record is not as dazzling as the Celtics and the Lakers, it is definitely one of the most popular teams in the NBA."
Chen Qiang began to recall the information in his mind about the four major sports leagues in the United States.
Among the four major sports leagues in the United States, the most familiar thing for Chinese fans is the NBA basketball. However, in 1942, the NBA league was not established, and even the predecessor of NBA (American Basketball Association), was established in 1946.
Although the NBA was established relatively late, its development speed was not slow. In the 1960s, the double-devil showdown between Wilt Chamberlain and Bill Russell attracted many Americans to pay attention to the NBA, making the NBA successfully join the four major sports leagues in the United States. Then, "Big Bird" Bird and "Magic" Johnson once again continued the two-devil showdown mode of the seniors; Michael Jordan's emergence successfully pushed the NBA to the whole world, followed by the Kobe era and the James era, and the birth of superstars one by one, finally making the NBA the most well-known sports league in the world. It can be said that the internationalization process and international influence of the NBA are far from comparable to the other three major leagues.
In the other three major leagues, the nhl of ice hockey is relatively unpresent. Although the nhl league was born as early as 1917, due to the characteristics of ice hockey, it was destined that this sport was not easy to promote.
If it is in the north of the United States, it is okay to find a frozen lake in the middle of winter to play ice hockey, but it is not frozen in the south. If you want to play ice hockey, you must go to a special indoor venue, which greatly limits the promotion of ice hockey.
Compared with the other three major leagues, ice hockey is still relatively niche, so ice hockey has always been the bottom of the four major leagues. Of course, this "niche" is just a relative comparison. If the NHL in the United States is compared with the Chinese Super League, the NHL can completely beat the Chinese Super League in all aspects.
The NFL of football is the leader among the four major American leagues in the future. The NFL's predecessor, NFL, was founded in 1920 and renamed the NFL League (NFL) in 1922.
In the 1940s, although rugby was very popular among American spectators, the largest sport in the United States was not rugby. It was not until 1966 that NFL merged with another rugby league AFL to establish a new nfl league, and opened the Super Bowl era. Rugby gradually developed into the largest sport in the United States.
Before the 1980s, football was not the largest sport in the United States. In that era, the largest sport in the United States was baseball. Major League Baseball MLB was also the most popular sports league among Americans.
As early as 1871, the predecessor of mlb, the National Baseball Association, was established, so the Baseball League is the oldest league in the United States. In more than a hundred years after the birth of the Baseball League, baseball has always been the "boss" of professional sports in the US stock market.
In the 1980s, with the rise of the NFL Super Bowl, sports and entertainment were perfectly combined. The influence of the Super Bowl made football gradually catch up with baseball, especially after Mike Jackson entered the Super Bowl, football has begun to surpass baseball.
But at this time, the Major League Baseball MLB also committed suicide and caused a major strike for players. The long-term suspension caused MLB to lose many fans. From then on, football has surpassed baseball and became the largest sport in the United States, while baseball MLB could only rank second.
Later, NBA continued to internationalize and continuously created superstars, but instead came from behind. By the beginning of the 20th century, in the United States, NBA in basketball and mlb in baseball were still incomparable, while NBA's international influence was far beyond mlb.
In order to make the basketball pace faster and the game process more exciting, so as to cater to the tastes of the audience, the NBA will make significant changes in the rules in the future, and even sacrifice the health of the players.
However, mlb is just the opposite. They are getting farther and farther on the road to death. mlb's game has become more and more procrastinating. In the past, a baseball game only took two hours, which is similar to basketball. However, now mlb plays for three or four hours in a game, and it often appears after five hours. For example, in the third game of mlb World War in 2018, Dodge vs. Red Sox, the game lasted for 7 hours and 20 minutes. The key is still a little bit but not exciting, and the audience was all asleep.
No one would go to a game where an old lady's foot binding was like a stinky and long, so it was natural that mlb was abandoned by the audience.
Although baseball in the future has been surpassed by football and basketball, in the 1940s, baseball was still the most popular sport among Americans.
However, in 1942, Major League Baseball also encountered a small crisis, which was World War II.
The outbreak of World War II did not affect the professional sports in the United States. Europe, Asia and Africa were fighting, but the United States still ran, danced, and played the ball. For example, the four major tennis matches, Wimbledon, French Open and Australian Open were all suspended due to World War II, but the US Open was held as usual. The same is true for other sports, the Copa America of Basketball and the Copa America of Football were also held as usual.
The domestic sports leagues in the United States have not stopped, and the leagues of baseball, rugby and ice hockey were also held as scheduled, but the excitement has dropped a lot.
For example, in the Major League Baseball, almost all excellent pitchers were recruited by the US Army and then trained to become grenades. These baseball pitchers have strong arms and accurate throwing, and are definitely good seedlings of pitching grenades. If trained, they may be able to throw grenades into the machine gun hole of the enemy bunker.
In baseball, you can watch pitching and hitting. All the bowlers run to throw grenades, and the ornamentality of the game will naturally be greatly reduced.
Rugby is similar. Because rugby has high requirements for physical fitness, those rugby players have long been valued by the US military. These rugby players with extremely high physical fitness are a waste of going to the army, and the Air Force and the Navy are rushing to ask for them.
A large number of rugby players join the army, which also makes the rugby league unsightly.
However, Chen Qiang felt that the decline in the viewing of baseball and rugby is a good opportunity for basketball. Taking advantage of the decline of baseball and rugby, it is just right to promote basketball!
At this time, Chen Qiang had a bold idea in his mind: "Or I might as well set up a new basketball league, called NBA!"
Chapter completed!