A Pepsi and a Smile

It’s been an entertaining couple of days, wondering what’s going to happen at the Pepsi Center, next week.

Right now, the NBA’s Western Conference Finals are scheduled to be played there on Monday. Meanwhile, World Wrestling Entertainment says it has the arena booked for the night. But Nuggets owner Stan Kroenke plans to see basketball.

“Quite frankly, it’s my view that Stan Kroenke should be arrested, should be arrested for impersonating a good businessman, because he’s not a good businessman,” said WWE chairman Vince McMahon to ESPN.

This is far from the first time a stadium has booked one event, then another. Here in Utah, a similar situation happened with the Utah High School Activities Association and Rio Tinto Stadium. The UHSAA claimed it had dates booked this spring and fall for sports events at Rio Tinto, but was upstaged by the Eagles concert, and later the U.S. women’s national team and a home match for Real Salt Lake.

“As much as we wanted to go there, and while it would give us a big-game feel and would elevate soccer, I don’t know that it’s a reliable place to even do business with,” said UHSAA assistant executive director Bart Thompson, in March.

RSL said there were no signed contracts and it couldn’t pass up lucrative deals based on handshake agreements.

I don’t know what the UHSAA plans to do, but I know what WWE should do – move the event to Boulder at the Coors Events Center, or a similar venue in Colorado. Pro wrestling is mostly TV driven anyway. Though 10,000 tickets have reportedly already been sold for the “Denver Debacle,” the CES holds 11,064 people.

Why not collect a check from the Pepsi Center for breach of contract, then move it to Boulder? It would be a nice financial windfall for WWE.

Meanwhile, WWE can milk this controversy for all it’s worth – which is much of McMahon genius in the first place.