The world is in turmoil right now as we are trying to survive the Coronavirus pandemic.
Some business may have to cut back to try and survive during these testing times, some shops and restaurants would be expected with less people going out, and even some small sports teams. But a billion dollar NBA team, surely not.
However that is exactly what the Philadelphia 76ers decided to do, a Mark Stein tweet on the 23rd March announced that contracted staff had two days to agree to a 20% wage drop, a follow-up tweet clarified that it was only for those earning over $50k a year.
This is such a horrible decision in two ways, the first is trying to cut staff salaries during a pandemic is never a good PR move, but secondly and most importantly they tried to do it in Philadelphia, literally the worst place in all of America to do it, because if there is anything that Philly hates more than other sports teams, it's their own sports teams.
The response on Twitter was incredible, practically bullying the multi-billionaire ownership group, made up of Josh Harris' $4.2 Billion, David Blitzer's $1.3 Billion, Michael Rubin's $2.9 Billion and many more, to back track on their decision, after being shown up by their own player, with Joel Embiid, who pledged at least $500k to try help those most in need, and after pissing off other owners who realised that they can't get away with these despicable actions.
An apology soon followed, one that seemed actually genuine and apologised for what they done and took responsibility for their actions.
After being cyber-bullied Harris and Blitzer became Bill Gates 2.0, donating to every charity they could to save face. First committing $100,000 to the hunger relief organisation called Philabundance, which they say will "give them the ability to feed 160,000+ families across the Philadelphia region during this time of need" , then donating 10,000 Chrome books to school children in the Philadelphia School District.
See bullying can work, but only when we bully the billionaires.
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