Quote:
Originally Posted by nik-
Maybe when we get a replacement team someday they won't be run like the clown show we currently have. Probably a blessing in disguise.
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Don't count on ever getting a replacement team. The Saddledome isn't magically going to become a profitable venue again, and the economics of building with private money aren't magically going to change, either.
We're stuck with what I call ‘Peter Spear syndrome’. Peter Spear was an old drama teacher of mine, way back in the dawn of civilization. Back in the 1980s, he quit his teaching job to start his own live theatre company, Aurora. Unlike all the other theatre companies in town, he was determined to make a go of it without public subsidy – which meant that he would not have to put on the plays that a bunch of shiny-bottomed bureaucrats in Edmonton or Ottawa wanted to ram down the public's throat.
But his competitors did not take kindly to his presence in their market. Being subsidized, they could afford to ‘paper the house’ with cheaper tickets, below Mr. Spear's break-even point. He fought valiantly to compete, even going back to his teaching job so he would not have to pay himself a salary. The burden of working both jobs – full-time for the school board, more than full-time for his own business – was too much for him. One Christmas, he went to visit his family in B.C. On his way home he felt ill, checked into a motel along the highway, and never checked out again. The cause of death was given as pneumonia, but it was overwork that killed him. Sheer exhaustion left his immune system too weak to fight off the disease.
It's almost impossible for a fully private business to compete in a field where all the other players are receiving public subsidies. The Flames aren't competing with other NHL teams for revenues, but they have to pay competitive salaries – and the CBA
forces them to pay a certain amount. I doubt whether they can do that and also pay the full carrying costs of an arena. The Rangers and Leafs pay their own carrying costs, but those are the two biggest and most valuable hockey markets in the world (with all respect to Montreal). Most of the other teams are benefiting from sweetheart arena deals involving various amounts of public money.
I don't like the idea of public money being spent so the Flames can stay in town. If it has to be spent, I'd like to see it kept to a bare minimum – perhaps in the form of transportation infrastructure and a dollar-a-year lease on the building site. But it's unrealistic, the professional sport industry being what it is, to expect that it can be kept all the way down to zero.