MGM sent the box office data of the first week of "Mrs. Minifer" to Chen Qiang.

"Making movies makes so much money!" Chen Qiang looked at the box office data and gasped.

Of course, Chen Qiang also knows that the box office is not the money he can get in the end.

Although Chen Qiang is an investor in the movie, after removing the distribution cost and theater cost, Chen Qiang can get three achievements at the box office.

According to the future domestic film account, the film company and the theater chain will probably be divided according to 43% and 57%, and at the same time, 3.3% of the value-added tax, 5% of the special fund for the film industry, and about 8% of the promoter's share will be shared, and the approximate income of the film producer will be about 33%. The 33% is then shared by the investors and the producer, so the real income ratio of the investors is definitely less than 30%.

However, in the 40s, the cost of film distribution was not so high, and the cost of publicity was very little, and the income obtained by Chen Qiang was much higher than that of later generations.

"I was just going to spend money to buy a role for Esther, but I didn't expect to make a lot of money in the end! It is estimated that this investment can make two or three million, no wonder so many people invest in movies, and it is too easy to make money. Chen Qiang said secretly in his heart.

Chen Qiang made $20 million by shorting stocks, but this kind of opportunity to make a fortune in the United States is not something that can be encountered often. The next U.S. stock market crash is the oil crisis more than 30 years later, and the next time is the Internet bubble at the beginning of the 21st century.

In contrast, investing in movies does not have to wait so long, and there will always be a few good movies that explode at the box office every year, which can bring huge benefits to investors.

"It seems that investing in movies is a good direction, and there will be a suitable opportunity to invest in a few more films in the future. It's a pity that I don't know anything about movies, and I don't know what kind of movies are worth investing in. Chen Qiang was pondering when the ringtone of the phone interrupted his thoughts.

The speaker was a lawyer named "Lucas", who was in charge of handling the transfer of ownership of Madison Square Garden for Chen Qiang. Of course, Chen Qiang could not do this kind of big deal of more than 5 million US dollars by himself, and directly handed it over to professionals to be responsible, saving trouble and worry.

"Mr. Chen, the formalities for Madison Square Garden have been completed, and now the entire Madison Square Garden extremely related property belongs to you." Lawyer Lucas spoke.

"Thank you very much, Attorney Lucas." Chen Qiang opened his mouth to thank him.

"Mr. Chen, if you are free now, I will send the documents related to this transaction to your office." The lawyer continued.

"Okay, I'll be waiting for you in the office. Your check, I've got it ready, too. After Chen Qiang put down the phone, he took out the financial statements of Madison Square Garden for the past few years from a folder on the table, which he had obtained a few days ago.

Chen Qiang has read this financial report of Madison Square Garden several times, but every time he reads it, Chen Qiang feels a little headache, because Madison Square Garden is not profitable at all, and even loses a lot of operating expenses.

In fact, the first two generations of Madison Square Garden were called failures, also because they could not make money, and the owners had to invest a lot of money in the operation and maintenance of the venue, so they ended up being demolished.

The third-generation Madison Square Garden fared better, and thanks to the frequent boxing matches, it was able to barely make ends meet with tickets. However, for Madison Square Garden owner Rickard, he uses Madison Square Garden mainly to develop his boxing betting business, and the huge profits from gambling can fully compensate for the operating expenses of Madison Square Garden.

At the beginning, Rickard spent 4.75 million yuan to build the third-generation Madison Square Garden, and 17 years later, he sold it to Chen Qiang for 5.2 million yuan and earned 450,000 US dollars, but considering the 17 years of time, making this 450,000 US dollars is 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. Rickard's sale of Madison Square Garden was really a loss.

However, for the Ricard family, this can also be regarded as selling off non-performing assets and recovering funds. It's like the garbage contracts in the NBA, where teams often take advantage of potential players in their playing years or draft picks in the next few years in order to get rid of those garbage contracts. From a business point of view alone, the players who were signed with high salaries had to be sold with draft picks, wouldn't it be a waste of money at the beginning, no matter how you say it. But from the perspective of the team's development, throwing out the garbage contract at a loss and seeking development space for the team's future is actually earned.

Mrs. Rickard did the same thing, throwing off the burden of Madison Square Garden at a loss in order to win the family's Las Vegas casino.

Now that Madison Square Garden is in Chen Qiang's hands, the problem of Madison Square Garden's profitability has become a headache for Chen Qiang.

The profitability of large stadiums is a worldwide problem, even in the United States in later generations, the entertainment and sports industry has been very developed, and the utilization rate of large stadiums has been very high, but not all stadiums can make money. For those big stadiums, it's hard to make a profit without a team from the big four leagues.

However, in the forties, the entertainment and sports industry in the United States was not as developed as in later generations, and 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 stadiums in the United States were established during Roosevelt's New Deal, these were public facilities, owned by the U.S. government, since they were public facilities, they were naturally operated and maintained by the government at their expense, and the financial allocation to operate the stadiums did not need to be considered for profit.

In contrast, private sports facilities are mostly for-profit establishments, such as gyms, indoor swimming pools, golf courses, bowling alleys, etc. It is in a big city like New York that there are private individuals who build large stadiums like Madison Square Garden.

In terms of sports, Chen Qiang is a professional, and he has also read a lot of information and research on the operation of sports venues, and he knows that there are many ways to make a large stadium profitable.

For example, inviting celebrities to hold concerts, such as holding some exhibitions, and of course, the most important thing is to hold competitions.

In addition to hosting boxing games from time to time, Madison Square Garden is also the home of the New York Rangers of the Major League Hockey, but the ice hockey games in this era cannot be played a few times a season, and the popularity of ice hockey is far less than that of later generations.

The first sport that Chen Qiang thought of was, of course, basketball, after all, in the future, Madison Square Garden would be the "mecca of basketball".

"If you want to grow Madison Square Garden into what it will be, you have to bring basketball to Madison Square Garden." Chen Qiang already had a direction in his heart.

"Madison Square Garden is the home of the New York Knicks, and while not as impressive as the Celtics and Lakers, it's 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.

Of the four major sports leagues in the United States, Chinese fans are most familiar with the NBA of basketball, but in 1942, the NBA league had not yet been established, and even the predecessor of the NBA, BAA (National Basketball Association), was only established in 1946.

Although the NBA was founded relatively late, its development speed is not slow. In the 60s, Wilt Chamberlain and Bill Russell's duel attracted a lot of American attention to the NBA, making the NBA one of the four major sports leagues in the United States. Then "Big Bird" Bird and "Magic" Johnson once again continued the mode of the double-evil duel of their predecessors; The birth of Michael Jordan successfully promoted the NBA to the world, followed by the Kobe era and the James era, and the birth of superstars finally made 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 being matched by the other three major leagues.

The other three major leagues, the NHL of ice hockey, are relatively non-existent. Although the NHL league was born as early as 1917, due to the characteristics of ice hockey, it was destined that the sport would not be easy to promote.

If it is in the north of the United States, it is better to say that you can play ice hockey if you find a frozen lake in winter, but in the south there is no ice at all, and if you want to play ice hockey, you must go to a special indoor venue, which greatly limits the promotion of ice hockey.

Compared to the other three major leagues, ice hockey is still on the niche side, so ice hockey has always been at the bottom of the big four leagues. Of course, this "niche" is just a relative comparison, if the NHL in the United States is compared with the Chinese Super League, all aspects of the NHL can complete the Chinese Super League.

The NFL of football will be the boss of the four major leagues in the United States in the future. The NFL's predecessor, the National Football League, NFC, was founded in 1920 and renamed the National Football League (NFL) in 1922.

In the 40s, although football was very popular with American audiences, the number one sport in the United States was not rugby. In 1966, the NFL merged with another football league, the AFL, to form a new NFL league and usher in the Super Bowl era. Rugby slowly developed into the number one sport in the United States.

Before the 80s, football was not the number one sport in the United States, but baseball. And MLB is also one of the most popular sports leagues 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. For more than 100 years since the birth of baseball leagues, baseball has always been the "boss" of professional sports in the United States.

In the 80s, with the rise of the NFL Super Bowl, sports and entertainment were perfectly combined. The influence of the Super Bowl has made football gradually catch up with baseball, especially after Mike Jackson appeared in the Super Bowl, football has begun to surpass baseball.

At this time, MLB also died on its own, causing a general strike of players, and the long-term shutdown made MLB lose a lot of fans, and since then football has successfully surpassed baseball and become the largest sport in the United States, while MLB of baseball can only be relegated to second.

At the beginning of the 20th century, in the United States, the NBA of basketball and MLB of baseball were still indistinguishable, but the international influence of the NBA was far greater than that of MLB.

In order to make the pace of basketball faster and the game more exciting, so as to cater to the tastes of the audience, the future NBA has made drastic changes to the rules, even at the expense of the health of the players.

MLB, on the other hand, is getting farther and farther away from death. In the past, a baseball game only took two hours, which is similar to basketball, but now in MLB, three or four hours of a game is considered fast, and it is common to play five hours. For example, in the third game of the MLB World War in 2018, the Dodgers played against the Red Sox, the game played for 7 hours and 20 minutes, and the key was not exciting at all, and the audience fell asleep.

No one is going to watch an old lady's footcloth-like, smelly, long game, so it's no surprise that MLB is abandoned by the audience.

Although baseball was overtaken by football and basketball in the future, baseball was still the most popular sport among Americans in the forties.

However, in 1942, Major League Baseball also encountered a small crisis, caused by World War II.

The outbreak of World War II did not affect professional sports in the United States, and Europe, Asia, and Africa were all at war, but the United States was still running, dancing, and playing balls. For example, the four major tennis tournaments, 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, such as the America's Cup in basketball and the America's Cup in football.

The domestic sports leagues in the United States have not stopped, and the leagues of baseball, football, and ice hockey have also been held as scheduled, but the excitement has dropped a lot.

For example, in Major League Baseball, almost all good pitchers are drafted into the U.S. Army and then trained as grenadiers. These baseballs are strong and accurate, and they must be good seedlings for throwing grenades, and if trained, they may be able to throw grenades into the machine gun holes of enemy bunkers.

Baseball, all the pitchers run to throw grenades, and the spectacle of the game is naturally greatly reduced.

Rugby is similar, because rugby has relatively high requirements for physical fitness, so those rugby players have long been valued by the U.S. military. These physically fit rugby players went to the Army, and the Air Force and Navy rushed to get them.

The large number of rugby players enlisted in the military also made the rugby league difficult to look at.

However, Chen Qiang feels that the decline in baseball and football is a good opportunity for basketball to develop. While baseball and football are in decline, it's time to promote basketball!

At this time, Chen Qiang had a bold idea in his mind: "Otherwise, I will simply establish a new basketball league, which will be called the NBA!" ”

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