The Economics of Michael Jackson

When I first heard that Michael Jackson died, I thought immediately of Chuck Sullivan. I met him once, probably in the early 1990s, after his sponsorship of The Jacksons’s Victory tour savaged his fortune. Unlike the other Moguls I Have Seen, it seemed his reversal of fortune impacted his mood. (More likely, I just caught him on a bad day.)http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=5048766

So I decided to do an AB post about the Victory tour, which was probably the beginning of the end for MJ’s claim to being “the new Elvis,” since it was the last time he toured with his family.

Fortunately, as my Loyal Reader (a loyal Patriots fan) notes, I don’t have to. Chad Finn at the Boston Globe tells the story:

[A] disastrous business venture by the Sullivan family — the founding owners of the franchise — indirectly helped Kraft fulfill his dream of owning the Patriots….Charles Sullivan had used the stadium as collateral to fund the Jackson brothers’ Victory Tour back in 1984. Over-leveraged, Sullivan went bankrupt and was forced to sell the arena.

The rest, as they say, is HIStory.

UPDATE: More discussion of the Victory tour, the Reagan Administration, and the bitter attitude of a future Supreme Court jutice at the NYT blog h/t Greg Mitchell’s Twitter feed).