[Jay Random]

Originally Posted by Enoch Root

To the bold: come on, you can do better than that.

Your sneer is noted and irrelevant.

1) do you have any evidence that their revenues are down in any meaningful way this season? I have heard no such thing.

No numbers, since those have not been released to the public. But I have anecdotal evidence from season-ticket holders who are spending less, and (what matters more) from businesses that hold season tickets and can't find anyone to use the seats. Empty seats spend nothing at the concessions, even if the tickets themselves are paid for.

2) regarding next year's season ticket sales: I guess we'll see. But that doesn't impact this year's budget (other than expecting tighter times ahead, which they have no gauge on yet with respect to ST sales)

If you think they have no way of forecasting the effect of the economy on next year's season ticket sales, then I question how much good you can be with hedging. You can't hedge anything without knowing what your risks are.

3) to your main point that alleged declining revenues will stop them from retaining salary: your initial claim was that revenues are down so they don't want to retain salary.

Right. That was and is my claim. I restated it in different words because you appeared not to understand it the first time. Now you appear not to understand that I was making the same claim both times.

At no point have you shown that revenues are actually down.

The numbers have not been released. But the visual evidence is that people are spending less, and we know as a hard economic fact that there is less money in the local economy to be spent. Not hard to put two and two together.

Add to that the fact that the team will get zero rounds of playoff revenue instead of two, and revenues will be very significantly down from last year.

And expenses are actually down. That was my point.

And the owners want expenses to be down, and don't want them to go back up unnecessarily. And that was my point. Why do you feel it so necessary to argue against that?

Hudler and Russell make $6.8M combined this year. Jones' salary washes with Backstrom's. So all they picked up was Jokipakka's $900K.

That's a drop of $5.9M x 40/186 which is approximately $1.27M.

Retaining half of Hudler's contract would have meant that they still saved about $840K USD.

So by not retaining half of Hudler's contract, they saved $430,000 in actual cash in a non-playoff year when the local economy is in the tank. Thanks for making my point for me.

That's a lot of beer sales you think they have lost.

Another sneer, based on cherrypicking one element of declining revenues (concession sales) and phrasing it in such a way as to make it sound as silly and picayune as possible. You know damned well that concessions sell more than just beer.

Meanwhile, I keep receiving email offers from the Flames to sell me game-day tickets at discount prices. So revenue from walkup sales is definitely down, and that's a bigger problem than concessions. If they could sell those tickets at full price, believe you me, they would not be offering them at a discount.

Add that to the aforementioned disappearance of playoff revenue, and yes, revenues are down. By how much, we will never know for certain, because the Flames are not a publicly traded firm and do not have to release their financial data. The best we can ever do is make informed guesses. The magnitude of the change, therefore, is a matter of speculation. The direction of the change is not.