Luxury boxes will be tougher to sell--Newsday

(Newsday): "Clemson University economics professor Raymond Sauer, founder of the 3-year-old "Sports Economist" Web site...found "really stunning" last week's Forbes report that roughly a quarter of pro sports' sponsorship revenue -- about $10 billion annually -- comes from

• financial services companies, the

• same industry most troubled by the current economic chaos.

• The poster company of financial services involvement in sports is American International Group,

its $59-million deal with the English soccer power Manchester United the largest sponsorship contract on the books. With this month's unsettling

• U.S. government bailout of AIG, taking control of 80 percent of the company's stock, observers wonder whether the government will be looking for out-clauses before the AIG-Man U. contract expires in 2010.

"In the short term," Sauer said, "the money that teams thought they'd get won't be so lucrative. The PSLs [personal seat licenses] are going to be harder to sell because the corporate market will be impacted, and

• luxury boxes are going to be much tougher to sell.""

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