Calgarypuck Forums - The Unofficial Calgary Flames Fan Community - View Single Post - [Rumour] Why Canada May Never Get Another NHL Franchise

curves2000 · 04-10-2019, 10:24 PM

The business of the NHL has really changed over the years and teams have gotten smarter milking fans for more dollars.

I am 34 y$ears old and I recall only being able to get Flames games on tv when it was a 2&7 Game or the odd HNIC game on CBC. The idea for the owners at the time was to encourage the local fans to come to the Dome and spend $30 on a ticket or something like that. A lot of fans didn't wear jerseys to games, look at old footage of any Canadian hockey team and you don't see a lot of jerseys, many years ago in place like Toronto and Montreal, men worse suits and women wore dresses. Now teams are selling $400+ "authentic" jerseys. Adjusted for inflation compared to the 40's, 50's etc, a new jersey should cost like $75.

A lot of NHL clubs have also become more heavily involved in the real estate business in the area around their arenas, that wasn't the case before.

Revenue sharing, especially for the bottom feeding clubs who are at the bottom every year, has really helped some of the poor markets, stay poor.

In markets like Florida, Arizona, Carolina, Anaheim etc the owner might be alright with writing chq's to cover losses if they have the arena management contract or they paid a cheap price for their team and hope the value goes up. Given the choice, I am sure they would want to be a larger, more profitable club that wins and is a big deal in the local sports scene.

In reality what has the NHL really gained in the 10 years they have had Arizona on life support doing absolutely nothing other than being a C** dumpster for every teams bad contracts?? Players in the Hall of Fame, players retired, players living overseas all being on the roster and payroll, this is suppose to be a professional hockey club?

I think the message has been sent to some of these clubs that their time in their market place is limited because sooner or later the NHL needs to move teams to markets that are or at least possibly viable. You can only defy gravity so long before things just need to change.

04-10-2019, 10:24 PM	#5
curves2000 First Line Centre Join Date: Dec 2013 Location: Calgary, Canada Exp:	The business of the NHL has really changed over the years and teams have gotten smarter milking fans for more dollars. I am 34 y$ears old and I recall only being able to get Flames games on tv when it was a 2&7 Game or the odd HNIC game on CBC. The idea for the owners at the time was to encourage the local fans to come to the Dome and spend $30 on a ticket or something like that. A lot of fans didn't wear jerseys to games, look at old footage of any Canadian hockey team and you don't see a lot of jerseys, many years ago in place like Toronto and Montreal, men worse suits and women wore dresses. Now teams are selling $400+ "authentic" jerseys. Adjusted for inflation compared to the 40's, 50's etc, a new jersey should cost like $75. A lot of NHL clubs have also become more heavily involved in the real estate business in the area around their arenas, that wasn't the case before. Revenue sharing, especially for the bottom feeding clubs who are at the bottom every year, has really helped some of the poor markets, stay poor. In markets like Florida, Arizona, Carolina, Anaheim etc the owner might be alright with writing chq's to cover losses if they have the arena management contract or they paid a cheap price for their team and hope the value goes up. Given the choice, I am sure they would want to be a larger, more profitable club that wins and is a big deal in the local sports scene. In reality what has the NHL really gained in the 10 years they have had Arizona on life support doing absolutely nothing other than being a C** dumpster for every teams bad contracts?? Players in the Hall of Fame, players retired, players living overseas all being on the roster and payroll, this is suppose to be a professional hockey club? I think the message has been sent to some of these clubs that their time in their market place is limited because sooner or later the NHL needs to move teams to markets that are or at least possibly viable. You can only defy gravity so long before things just need to change.