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Originally Posted by Jay Random
Anyway, while I am quite sure that an NHL team in Markham could sell out every night, it would have a mighty rough time in other respects. First off, the corporate presence in Toronto is just that — it's in Toronto. There is great prestige and PR value for a company in owning a suite at the Air Canada Centre; a suite at a barn in the suburbs would be distinctly second-best. It would therefore sell for its actual value as entertainment, not much more — certainly nothing like the price of ACC suites, which have enormous amounts of snob value built into the price.
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Have you been to Markham and the other cities in the York Region? It's not exactly McKenzie Towne when it comes to corporate presence.
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Secondly, the Leafs would move heaven and earth to keep the Markham team off the air and out of the local media; and since Rogers and Bell jointly own the Leafs, that means no Markham team on TSN or Sportsnet. Remember when Molson was the primary sponsor of Hockey Night In Canada, and Carling O'Keefe owned the Nordiques? You never saw Nordiques games on HNIC (though it's true, La Soirée du Hockey was another matter). Multiply that feud by 100 gazillion (because this is the Leafs, and the one thing they know how to manufacture is soap opera) and you get some idea how hard they would try to make a Markham team fail.
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I think they'd go in the other direction these days. They'd broadcast games of a Markham team on Sportsnet Ontario and (a new) TSN Toronto station. Then they'd move all the Leafs games to Leafs TV so that Leaf fans have to pony up big money to pay for it each month.
Not broadcasting an NHL team is the one thing that would give another company a chance to break into the sports tv duopoly in this country.