2/3 of the league lost money. Only 6 teams made anything you could consider a "killing"... and 4 of those are Canadian cities helped by their surging dollar since 2004.
Places that lost money in 'ill-conceived' markets include:
Pittsburgh, Buffalo, Winnipeg, St Louis, Minnesota, LA, Washington, and San Jose.
Corporate involvement. Suites and advertising. There just isnt enough of that in Buffalo.
If you watch the games, you see the same low-budget 3-6 commercials repeated that include personal injury attorneys, vericose vein treatments, excessive sweating treatments, Labatts, a local healthcare provider, and an upcoming event at MSG.
Then say Boston, you would likely have Coke, Doritos, Budweiser, Verizon, etc...
Same goes for ads in and around the rink.
Ticket prices arent quite as much either, but still pricey. Im in the cheapies and mine are about $34 each per game (STH pricing). Regular price would be like $40 vs Florida on a weeknight vs about $78 vs Toronto/Montreal on a Saturday. They are tiered/variable
Corporate involvement. Suites and advertising. There just isnt enough of that in Buffalo.
If you watch the games, you see the same low-budget 3-6 commercials repeated that include personal injury attorneys, vericose vein treatments, excessive sweating treatments, Labatts, a local healthcare provider, and an upcoming event at MSG.
Then say Boston, you would likely have Coke, Doritos, Budweiser, Verizon, etc...
Same goes for ads in and around the rink.
Ticket prices arent quite as much either, but still pricey. Im in the cheapies and mine are about $34 each per game (STH pricing).
Does Buffalo receive revenue sharing?
I have certain rules I live by ... My First Rule ... I don't believe anything the government tells me ... George Carlin
"Life Is What Happens To You When Your Busy Making Other Plans" John Lennon
In order to do so, they need to raise ticket prices each year a certain % (and maintain attendance levels).
I remember a few years ago Nashville was going to fall short of their attendance requirement and there was a big contraversy because ownership was going to buy up enough remaining seats for the year to push them above the required average to receive R.S.
In order to do so, they need to raise ticket prices each year a certain % (and maintain attendance levels).
I remember a few years ago Nashville was going to fall short of their attendance requirement and there was a big contraversy because ownership was going to buy up enough remaining seats for the year to push them above the required average to receive R.S.
That brings me to my other point...why should a fan in Montreal pay 120 a ticket when in Buffalo that same ticket might sell for 50?...see its not the owners paying revenue sharing, it the fan.
I have certain rules I live by ... My First Rule ... I don't believe anything the government tells me ... George Carlin
"Life Is What Happens To You When Your Busy Making Other Plans" John Lennon
I guess you could look at it as a supply/demand issue in each individual city.
It is a tough question. A very socialized model has worked very well for the NFL and has been big in vaulting the league to the top of the food chain. I believe the home team gets 60% of ticket sales and visitor gets 40%, and the home team keeps 100% of suite revenue.
The league as a whole hurts if/when teams relocate, fold, go bankrupt, cant find owners, etc. That hurts everyone's revenues, NHL television contracts, etc. So it is in best interests to support the 'struggling' franchises which are most of them. Everyone's franchise value increases.
I guess you could look at it as a supply/demand issue in each individual city.
It is a tough question. A very socialized model has worked very well for the NFL and has been big in vaulting the league to the top of the food chain. I believe the home team gets 60% of ticket sales and visitor gets 40%, and the home team keeps 100% of suite revenue.
The league as a whole hurts if/when teams relocate, fold, go bankrupt, cant find owners, etc. That hurts everyone's revenues, NHL television contracts, etc. So it is in best interests to support the 'struggling' franchises which are most of them. Everyone's franchise value increases.
is that how the revenue is split in the NHL?
I have certain rules I live by ... My First Rule ... I don't believe anything the government tells me ... George Carlin
"Life Is What Happens To You When Your Busy Making Other Plans" John Lennon
Fans should make NHL pay if Winter Classic is cancelled
Not to be a contrarian here, but all the gnashing of teeth over the National Hockey League’s reported intention to cancel the Bridgestone Winter Classic later this week is completely misplaced.
If the league does it, it won’t be despite the fact that it was Toronto versus Detroit, two storied franchises, a first inclusion of a Canadian team, in all ways a potential bonanza.
It will be precisely because Gary Bettman and his soulless owners — and their crisis management team and the lockout specialists at the law firm of Proskauer Rose and whoever else is advising the NHL on acceptable risks — have concluded that in those two hockey markets, the game is bulletproof, backlash-proof.
Torontonians return to the ticket windows like trained pigs every year, no matter how terrible the Maple Leafs are, how much they charge for a seat and a beer and a hot dog, how many generations go by without any real sense of something good in the offing.
Detroit is Hockeytown, USA. The Red Wings, at the opposite end of the performance scale from the sorry Leafs, consistently reward their intensely loyal fan base with excellent ownership, management, players, and prospects.
Whenever hockey comes back, no matter how shabbily the two sides in this labour war treat them, whatever the fallout might be in lesser markets, Bettman and his henchmen know that Detroit and Toronto will never punish them for their sins. And the casual fan will forget it was supposed to be on, anyway.
Sure, the league will lose the record ticket and merchandise revenue the game at massive Michigan Stadium would have generated, but compared to the cost of wiping out the entire pre-New Year’s schedule, it’s a drop in the bucket.
Indeed, if the Winter Classic is cancelled — and whatever might be announced this week doesn’t make it so, because there is a certain air of scripted-ness to this whole dog-and-pony show that defies accepting at face value anything either side may say — you can be sure the NHL will simply re-schedule it for a year hence. Big House, here we come again. No hard feelings, eh? No harm done.
Only I’m not sure the league has done its calculations correctly on that last bit.
Because if cancelling the Winter Classic — one of the brilliant strokes to emerge from the last lockout, when the league knew it had to come back better and with more fresh new ideas — doesn’t cause harm, and plenty of it, then shame on all of us.
Shame on the media for chasing the non-negotiating committees around the continent, or lining up like groupies at the players’ shinny games to beg for a quote, reinforcing the notion that we are hopelessly lost without them. Shame on the fans for railing at the players and owners, swearing they will never, ever, ever come back this time — and then coming back, anyway. You know you will.
But mostly, shame on the league’s corporate partners, for getting back into bed with an outfit that exhibits an unfathomable arrogance towards its customers and, by extension, takes for granted the customers of those TV networks and car makers and tire manufacturers, those breweries and fast food outlets, those banks and video games.
It’s the “Bridgestone” Winter Classic. Huge investment. It’s on NBC, the network that — after years of watching hockey wander aimlessly in the U.S. television wasteland — paid the NHL US$2-billion over 10 years for rights to air its product, kicking off each season’s slate of network games with the breathlessly-hyped extravaganza on New Year’s Day.
If HBO, whose 24/7: Road to the Winter Classic documentaries have been an enormous boon to the profile of hockey and its players the last couple of seasons, doesn’t tell the NHL to take a hike after this, it will be a miracle.
How happy can NBC — which will pay the league its US$200-million this year, lockout or not — be if it has no sports property on a holiday when hockey is supposed to fill three or four hours of programming time? Thanks for nothing, NHL. How happy can the companies be that were to have advertised on the telecast as part of their overall commitment to hockey, when their best audience of the season is lost?
ESPN.com writer Scott Burnside raised this salient point Wednesday: If you’re a sponsor, why would you touch the NHL with a 10-foot pole late in any CBA?
“And if you’re a sponsor looking for a place to park your advertising or sponsorship monies,” he wrote, “why you would turn to a sport whose signature move every time it’s presented with a labour negotiation is nuclear winter?”
Make no mistake: if the NHL cancels the Winter Classic, it will be for the sole purpose of sending the message that there is nothing it will not sacrifice to break down the players’ resolve. Because the New Year’s Day gigglefest is the NHL’s best property between September and April. Better, and more important, than any all-star weekend.
It will be a demonstration of the owners’ willingness to risk destroying a good deal of what the league has built in the darkest corners of Hockeydom south of the border to prove a point: that it’s their game, not ours, and certainly not the players’.
They know Canadians will never turn on them, and they can probably count on the U.S. Northeast to hang in there and shrug off another body blow. The Bruins, Rangers, Flyers, Penguins … they’re solid.
So here’s to you, our American cousins in those markets where hockey is only followed by the few, the brave, the diehards, or in years when the locals are doing well.
Grow a pair, people.
Make these idiots pay. Turn away. Watch something else, and don’t go back when they kiss your butt and promise you an autographed jockstrap and a buy-one, get-one-free hot dog deal. When they say the game’s going to be better and the ticket prices are going to be lower, call their bluff. Because this time, they have no grand plan to make it better, and the ticket prices are never coming down.
Except in Phoenix, of course, where the NHL beat the Christmas rush Wednesday by laying off the Coyotes’ very able manager of media relations. Best of the season to you, Tim Bulmer, from Gary and the gang.
That ought to balance the budget.
The fan won't though!!!
I have certain rules I live by ... My First Rule ... I don't believe anything the government tells me ... George Carlin
"Life Is What Happens To You When Your Busy Making Other Plans" John Lennon
Last night I was so desperate for a sport to watch that I watched women's college volleyball. :shock:
drivingrl: "Will I ever get to meet Gwen Stefani?"
kevinbeetle: "Yes. When her career washes up and her and Gavin move to Galveston, you will meet her at Hot Topic shopping for a Japanese cheerleader outfit.
2/3 of the league lost money. Only 6 teams made anything you could consider a "killing"... and 4 of those are Canadian cities helped by their surging dollar since 2004.
Places that lost money in 'ill-conceived' markets include:
Pittsburgh, Buffalo, Winnipeg, St Louis, Minnesota, LA, Washington, and San Jose.
Its bad for business when they have trouble getting owners to invest in the league.
i would be suspect of these figures ... a lot of owners use sport franchises to bury losses from other ventures ...
Yep. I know a lot of teams aren't doing well, but I don't believe all these reported figures. The Blackhawks claim that they still aren't making money. They have sold out every game for the past 2-3 years, TV ratings have been huge and interest in the Hawks is as high as it has been in decades. If you can't make money with all that, then you should re-evaluate how you run your business. Or your figures are complete bullshit.
I though I read that the NHL would have a bunch of money to pay if they didnt axe the game by the end of the week. Plus they say they want to allow the hotels, convention spaces, etc to book other things.
Im sure posturing is a part of it, but that article did nothing to disprove the above claims by the owners.
So if you guys want, you can come over and watch women's college volleyball next week. BYOB. :fp:
drivingrl: "Will I ever get to meet Gwen Stefani?"
kevinbeetle: "Yes. When her career washes up and her and Gavin move to Galveston, you will meet her at Hot Topic shopping for a Japanese cheerleader outfit.
No hockey this year? Quite possibly? The owners and players are dug for the long haul...
ya gotta figure the winter classic would have been a huge motivating factor ... considering the owners don't want to meet ... it looks like another full year lost ...
No hockey this year? Quite possibly? The owners and players are dug for the long haul...
ya gotta figure the winter classic would have been a huge motivating factor ... considering the owners don't want to meet ... it looks like another full year lost ...
Unbelievable...that's ballsy...too potentially loose another season just 9 years after a lost season.
So very glad that my commitment level for the NHL is very low...may not even watch the playoffs in the future.
I have certain rules I live by ... My First Rule ... I don't believe anything the government tells me ... George Carlin
"Life Is What Happens To You When Your Busy Making Other Plans" John Lennon
No hockey this year? Quite possibly? The owners and players are dug for the long haul...
ya gotta figure the winter classic would have been a huge motivating factor ... considering the owners don't want to meet ... it looks like another full year lost ...
Unbelievable...that's ballsy...too potentially loose another season just 9 years after a lost season.
So very glad that my commitment level for the NHL is very low...may not even watch the playoffs in the future.
Yep, that sums it up to a T. Since 2000, the NHL has been stepping on the hardcore fans to try and usher in the "new" ones. It has backfired.
And so you see, I have come to doubt All that I once held as true I stand alone without beliefs The only truth I know is you.
ffwd to the future - would love to see this in a newspaper ...
Gary Bettman Fired
Reports out of New York is that Gary Bettman has resigned from his position as NHL commissioner. Although, he was given the dignity of resigning from his position, it was widely speculated that his dismissal was inevitable. After over 20 years serving as commissioner of the NHL, Bettman oversaw 3 major work stoppages including 2 full lost years. After the most recent lost season and subsequent collective bargaining agreement, the NHL has found it difficult to win back fans. Attendance is down over 45% from the 2011-2012 season. Merchandise sales, season tickets and corporate sponsorships have all suffered since the 2012 lockout. An anonymous owner was quoted as saying "he said they would be back (the fans) and that we could break the union like we did in 2004 and that they would come back - well, it looks like he was dead wrong". Although, Gary Bettman was responsible for a major expansion into non-traditional hockey markets; the olympics and the winter classic - he will mostly be remembered as the commissioner who killed hockey.
I didn't realize this.....I saw some friends arguing about the degree of blame Bettman deserves, and they brought up this provision from the previous lockout:
the league's governors voted to give Bettman the right to unilaterally veto any union offer as long as he had the backing of just eight owners.
So the owners don't even need a frickin majority to reject these offers? Only 8 get a say and it's back to the drawing board? :fp:
I didn't realize this.....I saw some friends arguing about the degree of blame Bettman deserves, and they brought up this provision from the previous lockout:
the league's governors voted to give Bettman the right to unilaterally veto any union offer as long as he had the backing of just eight owners.
So the owners don't even need a frickin majority to reject these offers? Only 8 get a say and it's back to the drawing board? :fp:
That's messed up...
I have certain rules I live by ... My First Rule ... I don't believe anything the government tells me ... George Carlin
"Life Is What Happens To You When Your Busy Making Other Plans" John Lennon
Comments
i would be suspect of these figures ... a lot of owners use sport franchises to bury losses from other ventures ...
i mean - how is buffalo losing money? ... they've got a waiting list for season tickets and they are like top 10 in attendance ...
If you watch the games, you see the same low-budget 3-6 commercials repeated that include personal injury attorneys, vericose vein treatments, excessive sweating treatments, Labatts, a local healthcare provider, and an upcoming event at MSG.
Then say Boston, you would likely have Coke, Doritos, Budweiser, Verizon, etc...
Same goes for ads in and around the rink.
Ticket prices arent quite as much either, but still pricey. Im in the cheapies and mine are about $34 each per game (STH pricing). Regular price would be like $40 vs Florida on a weeknight vs about $78 vs Toronto/Montreal on a Saturday. They are tiered/variable
Does Buffalo receive revenue sharing?
"Life Is What Happens To You When Your Busy Making Other Plans" John Lennon
In order to do so, they need to raise ticket prices each year a certain % (and maintain attendance levels).
I remember a few years ago Nashville was going to fall short of their attendance requirement and there was a big contraversy because ownership was going to buy up enough remaining seats for the year to push them above the required average to receive R.S.
That brings me to my other point...why should a fan in Montreal pay 120 a ticket when in Buffalo that same ticket might sell for 50?...see its not the owners paying revenue sharing, it the fan.
"Life Is What Happens To You When Your Busy Making Other Plans" John Lennon
It is a tough question. A very socialized model has worked very well for the NFL and has been big in vaulting the league to the top of the food chain. I believe the home team gets 60% of ticket sales and visitor gets 40%, and the home team keeps 100% of suite revenue.
The league as a whole hurts if/when teams relocate, fold, go bankrupt, cant find owners, etc. That hurts everyone's revenues, NHL television contracts, etc. So it is in best interests to support the 'struggling' franchises which are most of them. Everyone's franchise value increases.
is that how the revenue is split in the NHL?
"Life Is What Happens To You When Your Busy Making Other Plans" John Lennon
Fans should make NHL pay if Winter Classic is cancelled
Not to be a contrarian here, but all the gnashing of teeth over the National Hockey League’s reported intention to cancel the Bridgestone Winter Classic later this week is completely misplaced.
If the league does it, it won’t be despite the fact that it was Toronto versus Detroit, two storied franchises, a first inclusion of a Canadian team, in all ways a potential bonanza.
It will be precisely because Gary Bettman and his soulless owners — and their crisis management team and the lockout specialists at the law firm of Proskauer Rose and whoever else is advising the NHL on acceptable risks — have concluded that in those two hockey markets, the game is bulletproof, backlash-proof.
Torontonians return to the ticket windows like trained pigs every year, no matter how terrible the Maple Leafs are, how much they charge for a seat and a beer and a hot dog, how many generations go by without any real sense of something good in the offing.
Detroit is Hockeytown, USA. The Red Wings, at the opposite end of the performance scale from the sorry Leafs, consistently reward their intensely loyal fan base with excellent ownership, management, players, and prospects.
Whenever hockey comes back, no matter how shabbily the two sides in this labour war treat them, whatever the fallout might be in lesser markets, Bettman and his henchmen know that Detroit and Toronto will never punish them for their sins. And the casual fan will forget it was supposed to be on, anyway.
Sure, the league will lose the record ticket and merchandise revenue the game at massive Michigan Stadium would have generated, but compared to the cost of wiping out the entire pre-New Year’s schedule, it’s a drop in the bucket.
Indeed, if the Winter Classic is cancelled — and whatever might be announced this week doesn’t make it so, because there is a certain air of scripted-ness to this whole dog-and-pony show that defies accepting at face value anything either side may say — you can be sure the NHL will simply re-schedule it for a year hence. Big House, here we come again. No hard feelings, eh? No harm done.
Only I’m not sure the league has done its calculations correctly on that last bit.
Because if cancelling the Winter Classic — one of the brilliant strokes to emerge from the last lockout, when the league knew it had to come back better and with more fresh new ideas — doesn’t cause harm, and plenty of it, then shame on all of us.
Shame on the media for chasing the non-negotiating committees around the continent, or lining up like groupies at the players’ shinny games to beg for a quote, reinforcing the notion that we are hopelessly lost without them. Shame on the fans for railing at the players and owners, swearing they will never, ever, ever come back this time — and then coming back, anyway. You know you will.
But mostly, shame on the league’s corporate partners, for getting back into bed with an outfit that exhibits an unfathomable arrogance towards its customers and, by extension, takes for granted the customers of those TV networks and car makers and tire manufacturers, those breweries and fast food outlets, those banks and video games.
It’s the “Bridgestone” Winter Classic. Huge investment. It’s on NBC, the network that — after years of watching hockey wander aimlessly in the U.S. television wasteland — paid the NHL US$2-billion over 10 years for rights to air its product, kicking off each season’s slate of network games with the breathlessly-hyped extravaganza on New Year’s Day.
If HBO, whose 24/7: Road to the Winter Classic documentaries have been an enormous boon to the profile of hockey and its players the last couple of seasons, doesn’t tell the NHL to take a hike after this, it will be a miracle.
How happy can NBC — which will pay the league its US$200-million this year, lockout or not — be if it has no sports property on a holiday when hockey is supposed to fill three or four hours of programming time? Thanks for nothing, NHL. How happy can the companies be that were to have advertised on the telecast as part of their overall commitment to hockey, when their best audience of the season is lost?
ESPN.com writer Scott Burnside raised this salient point Wednesday: If you’re a sponsor, why would you touch the NHL with a 10-foot pole late in any CBA?
“And if you’re a sponsor looking for a place to park your advertising or sponsorship monies,” he wrote, “why you would turn to a sport whose signature move every time it’s presented with a labour negotiation is nuclear winter?”
Make no mistake: if the NHL cancels the Winter Classic, it will be for the sole purpose of sending the message that there is nothing it will not sacrifice to break down the players’ resolve. Because the New Year’s Day gigglefest is the NHL’s best property between September and April. Better, and more important, than any all-star weekend.
It will be a demonstration of the owners’ willingness to risk destroying a good deal of what the league has built in the darkest corners of Hockeydom south of the border to prove a point: that it’s their game, not ours, and certainly not the players’.
They know Canadians will never turn on them, and they can probably count on the U.S. Northeast to hang in there and shrug off another body blow. The Bruins, Rangers, Flyers, Penguins … they’re solid.
So here’s to you, our American cousins in those markets where hockey is only followed by the few, the brave, the diehards, or in years when the locals are doing well.
Grow a pair, people.
Make these idiots pay. Turn away. Watch something else, and don’t go back when they kiss your butt and promise you an autographed jockstrap and a buy-one, get-one-free hot dog deal. When they say the game’s going to be better and the ticket prices are going to be lower, call their bluff. Because this time, they have no grand plan to make it better, and the ticket prices are never coming down.
Except in Phoenix, of course, where the NHL beat the Christmas rush Wednesday by laying off the Coyotes’ very able manager of media relations. Best of the season to you, Tim Bulmer, from Gary and the gang.
That ought to balance the budget.
The fan won't though!!!
"Life Is What Happens To You When Your Busy Making Other Plans" John Lennon
kevinbeetle: "Yes. When her career washes up and her and Gavin move to Galveston, you will meet her at Hot Topic shopping for a Japanese cheerleader outfit.
Next!"
:fp:
Yep. I know a lot of teams aren't doing well, but I don't believe all these reported figures. The Blackhawks claim that they still aren't making money. They have sold out every game for the past 2-3 years, TV ratings have been huge and interest in the Hawks is as high as it has been in decades. If you can't make money with all that, then you should re-evaluate how you run your business. Or your figures are complete bullshit.
love the ass-smacking in that sport ... :oops:
Im sure posturing is a part of it, but that article did nothing to disprove the above claims by the owners.
gonna say, there are a lot worse things to watch
fuck ann arbor.
:twisted:
can't believe this ... another year without hockey ... fuck bettman ...
So if you guys want, you can come over and watch women's college volleyball next week. BYOB. :fp:
kevinbeetle: "Yes. When her career washes up and her and Gavin move to Galveston, you will meet her at Hot Topic shopping for a Japanese cheerleader outfit.
Next!"
Go fuck yourselves
DEGENERATE FUK
This place is dead
"THERE ARE NO CLIQUES, ONLY THOSE WHO DON'T JOIN THE FUN" - Empty circa 2015
"Kfsbho&$thncds" - F Me In the Brain - circa 2015
Yep. Fuck all of them.
A second-rate sport sabotages itself further into obscurity. What a fucking joke.
They did say the game would be played in 2014...does that mean the lockout will be over?
"Life Is What Happens To You When Your Busy Making Other Plans" John Lennon
"Life Is What Happens To You When Your Busy Making Other Plans" John Lennon
ya gotta figure the winter classic would have been a huge motivating factor ... considering the owners don't want to meet ... it looks like another full year lost ...
Guess I'll follow the NBA more closely. Just look at it like you are saving both time and money this year, and put it towards something better.
All that I once held as true
I stand alone without beliefs
The only truth I know is you.
Unbelievable...that's ballsy...too potentially loose another season just 9 years after a lost season.
So very glad that my commitment level for the NHL is very low...may not even watch the playoffs in the future.
"Life Is What Happens To You When Your Busy Making Other Plans" John Lennon
All that I once held as true
I stand alone without beliefs
The only truth I know is you.
Gary Bettman Fired
Reports out of New York is that Gary Bettman has resigned from his position as NHL commissioner. Although, he was given the dignity of resigning from his position, it was widely speculated that his dismissal was inevitable. After over 20 years serving as commissioner of the NHL, Bettman oversaw 3 major work stoppages including 2 full lost years. After the most recent lost season and subsequent collective bargaining agreement, the NHL has found it difficult to win back fans. Attendance is down over 45% from the 2011-2012 season. Merchandise sales, season tickets and corporate sponsorships have all suffered since the 2012 lockout. An anonymous owner was quoted as saying "he said they would be back (the fans) and that we could break the union like we did in 2004 and that they would come back - well, it looks like he was dead wrong". Although, Gary Bettman was responsible for a major expansion into non-traditional hockey markets; the olympics and the winter classic - he will mostly be remembered as the commissioner who killed hockey.
the league's governors voted to give Bettman the right to unilaterally veto any union offer as long as he had the backing of just eight owners.
So the owners don't even need a frickin majority to reject these offers? Only 8 get a say and it's back to the drawing board? :fp:
That's messed up...
"Life Is What Happens To You When Your Busy Making Other Plans" John Lennon