Quote:
Originally Posted by morgin
One of the only issues I have with the idea of the Flames being a have not based largely on the age and inadequacy of their building is that you have to believe that with a new building there is extra money in this city to boost their revenues that they are currently leaving on the table. I’m skeptical of that and based on the way the owners are playing this you have to believe they are too. As many have said, without the numbers clearly laid out this is all speculation anyway, but if I had to fashion a guess, it would be that the rapid rise in the salary cap has exceeded the capacity of this city’s sports entertainment revenue pot. This is especially probelmatic for a mid market team when you also factor in the purported transition from have to have not has also coincided with a recession and rapidly expanding USD player salary line item.
NA sports as a whole are facing a bit of a transition period in terms of fan interest and willingness to spend money. I know this has been covered in the thread, but you have to really wonder if the fact that $ per patron during in game experience decreasing on average along with runaway salary costs to run the team and the city not being anywhere near it’s previous growth curve means a new NHL rink will simply never be viable. If that’s the case I wish they would just come out and say that bluntly though. “We can’t make the math work on a new rink funded entirely by us because we’re a smaller market in the league and we think we’ve already tapped out how much money we can realistically earn per game and this isn’t going to get better”. At least then the question is framed around the issue very clearly - should we use public funds to keep a team in the city that might not otherwise be viable to stay at the league’s current cost structure. You’d still have a lot of detractors, but I think there would be a lot more support if there was the appearance of some intellectual honesty with what’s going on. Like I said, the above is all speculative, but to me it’s seems a lot more likely than some new building being a magic potion to getting the flames back in the top 10 in revenue.
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Spot on ... and I think the "model" is coming down.
Teams that avoid having too many 8 year contracts will be able to adjust when the revenue stagnates or erodes and the cap actually comes down.