League Notes

Las Vegas Motor Speedway Looking To Add Second Nextel Cup Race

SMI Chair Bruton Smith said that “recent discussions of a potential second” Nextel Cup race at Las Vegas Motor Speedway with NASCAR Chair & CEO Brian France “have proved fruitless.” Smith: “We have not been promised that second date. But we ought to ask, ‘Is it better for the sport?’ The answer comes up ‘yes’ every time.” Smith added that he would be “willing to buy an existing venue to secure an established date to expand Cup racing in Vegas” (ATLANTA CONSTITUTION, 3/11). Meanwhile, NASCAR VP/Licensing & Consumer Products Mark Dyer said that the sport’s HOF is not scheduled to open until 2010, but “traveling exhibitions to major markets are expected and Las Vegas ‘would be a great stop for it.’” He added that Las Vegas “has a good chance of landing the road show a year before the [HOF] opens” (LAS VEGAS REVIEW-JOURNAL, 3/13).

NBA: In Boston, Peter May reported Boston photographer Dick Raphael, who has been a regular at Celtics games for decades, has sued the NBA “in what amounts to a charge of copyright infringement.” Raphael said that he and the league “agreed about 10 years ago to share his photographs and sell them.” May noted that when the pictures “started showing up on the Internet, being sold by other companies, and with the NBA logo,” Raphael found out he would not get any money from the sales. Raphael filed suit in U.S. District Court in Boston six months ago and the litigation “is in the discovery phase.” The suit seeks “unspecified financial damages as well as an order to the NBA to stop selling the pictures to other companies” (BOSTON GLOBE, 3/12).

MLB: MLB Commissioner Bud Selig has tapped Cubs President & CEO Andy MacPhail to help MLB Exec VP/Labor Relations Rob Manfred “in the next round of labor talks with the players’ union.” MacPhail “played a major role in the 2002 talks” (CHICAGO TRIBUNE, 3/12).

LPGA: Three Chicago-area groups — the Western Golf Association, Kemper Sports and the owners of the Glen Club in Glenview, Illinois — have “expressed interest in staging an LPGA tournament in the city perhaps as early as” ’07. The last LPGA tournament in Chicago was the Kellogg-Keebler Classic in ’04 (CHICAGO TRIBUNE, 3/13).