[powderjunkie]

Originally Posted by DiracSpike

How about how most of the owners could sell for 10X their original investment and not have to deal with this anymore.

Originally Posted by DiracSpike

It has worth because it's a 1/31 share of the NHL. They're not losing money hand over fist but they could decide to forego all the headaches that come with owning a team and realize their tidy capital appreciations. I won't fault them for that, any of us would do the same.

Owning a hockey team really is an onerous task. Headaches? Seriously? Wake me up when they're losing money. They have the privilege of owning one of the scarcest properties out there. If that makes life too hard, then good riddance.

Originally Posted by GranteedEV

Having seen the storied Seattle Supersonics become the Oklahoma City Thunder, I don't think it's crazy to think the Flames could move without a new Arena. However I'm confident an arena deal will get done so it's a moot point.

How has that worked out? IIRC the new buyers were OKC folks. How does the franchise valuation and operating revenue compare now? We'll really find out how good that decision is once they lose Westbrook and recede to the basement of the standings.


From the FlamesNation interview:

NSFW!

you really have to look closely at the financial details and make sure that everything, not just in terms of the construction split but also how the lease works out, is worked out in advance, because we’re seeing more and more cases where the headline number (in terms of they get this much money in public subsidies) is dwarfed by the amount of hidden costs. Judith Grant Long, who’s a researcher at the University of Michigan, did a book a few years ago where she broke down the full costs and found that the average hidden cost, things in terms of tax kickbacks and maintenance and operations expenses that are on the public and things like that, all of that came to about 40% over and above what the actual public cost was of construction, and that number’s going up.

This is a big thing for me that I hope is scrutinized as things move forward.