Quote:
Originally Posted by Kjesse
Today King said some things that take the bite, a little bit, out of his words.
Here is one thing he was quoted as saying: "[Some people ask], why don't you do the [private-funding] deal that was done in Toronto? Why don't you do the deal that was done in Montreal? If we had five million people, or four million people, we would do those deals," he said.
I think that's a reasonable statement. But there's flip side to this, which is, those teams revenues are greater than the Flames, but not by as large of a margin as I would have guessed. According to Forbes:
Montreal Revenue: $202M
Toronto Revenue: $186M
Vancouver Revenue: $146M
Calgary Revenue: $121M
Edmonton Revenue: $117M
Winnipeg Revenue: $112M
Now that doesn't include the revenue from other events, which I'm sure are very lucrative in Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver, however the multiples of extra millions of people in Toronto and the Montreal greater area do not appear to translate into multiples of revenue. I'm also assuming this counts all Hockey Related Revenue including TV rights payments etc. In that regard Toronto seems low.
Here's the CBC article: http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgar...tics-1.4287118 |
Revenue is one thing to look at, but in fairness you need to also look at their operating income at the end of the day for 2016.
Montreal Operating income - $76.9M (EBITDA) or 38% or revenues (was 23% in 2007)
Toronto Operating income - $68M (EBITDA) or 36.5% of revenues (was 38% in 2007)
Calgary Operating income - $18M (EBITDA) or 14.9% of revenues (was -1% in 2007)
So essentially Montreal and Toronto have 3-4 times the income of Calgary, and walking away with a large chunk of profit year over year which is why they were probably privately funded deals.
I believe that the thought process is that an arena as old as the Saddledome has most likely maximized as much revenue and profit as it can, so by building a new arena they can open up avenues of new revenues that arenas since the late 90's have started doing (more luxury boxes, restaurants in arena etc) so instead of making 14 cents on the dollar, they can make 25-30 cents.