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The market is good when the local people are in it and believe in it and support it. That's what I want.

Of course, there will be few people who are sympathetic but you don't become a great team overnight, no matter how much money you have at your disposal.

The handwriting is on the wall: if you want to have your franchises viable, then you can't have a situation where New York and Chicago and Los Angeles are doing very, very well, and some other teams are, but, I would say, a significant percentage of the teams in our league are struggling financially.

And historically the owners have used loyalty to a team or a city to hold players as opposed to always paying their worth.

The small-market teams should know I've always been with them.

People talk about loyalty of players to clubs. But in the everyday world, you don't see people being loyal to their company when they're getting offered considerably better deals elsewhere.

If a team needs new facilities, and they've been unsuccessful for a long period of time, and the local community is not being responsive, then I think it's a possibility that team might get a vote to relocate.

We have a broad array of teams. And if somebody asked me whether a team is a good buy, my response is, 'You'd better hurry up, they're going like hot cakes, and they're going to be even more valuable when we get a system that is even more sustainable.'

As far as oligarchs who acquire sports team abroad, and invest money abroad, I wouldn't treat this phenomenon as something bad.

The ability of players to jump teams when their contracts are up has hurt fan loyalty.