Quote:
Originally Posted by Groot
|
That was actually for the Covid-shortened 2019-2020 season. The 2020-2021 season had not yet started when that article was published.
I ran those figures into a spreadsheet, and here's what I found:
In 2019-20, the NHL's 31 clubs made an aggregate operating profit of $250.3 million on revenues estimated at $4.4 billion. The league continued to be heavily gate-driven and therefore extremely vulnerable to downturns in attendance:
Quote:
|
Originally Posted by Forbes
Nowadays, jam-packed arenas are a pipe dream, as is the cash from tickets, suites, concessions, sponsorships and parking, which account for more than 70% of total revenue in a typical season.
|
The top three teams I mentioned – Toronto, Montreal, and the Rangers – which, in the year I got my figures from, earned 50 percent of the league's total profits among them – got
69.3 percent of the profits in 2019-20. As the article points out, if you exclude the five most valuable franchises, the rest of the league operated at a $50 million loss.
In fact, the Original Six franchises plus L.A. – the seven most profitable teams – earned $378.4 million among them. The remaining 24 teams lost an aggregate of $128.1 million.
Fifteen teams lost money, including nine that lost $10 million or more. These figures are
after revenue-sharing. For instance, Florida lost $28.9 million, but received a revenue-sharing cheque of $16 million. Without that help, they would have lost about $45 million.
I deliberately did not cite the figures for that year because of the shortened season. The figures for the last year of fully open arenas and normal attendance are bad enough. The figures for 2020-21, when most arenas were closed until the playoffs and a third of the schedule was cancelled, will be utterly disastrous.
The NHL was counting on a rapid bounce back in attendance after the COVID shutdown, like the rapid bounce back from the '04-05 lockout. That has not happened, with attendance figures lower than at any time in the 20 years prior to the pandemic.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Groot
|
Did you see the ‘analyst's’ methodology? They used the Excel forecast function – they admit as much in the article. In other words, a straight extrapolation of the pre-COVID trends, with no actual analysis at all.
The business is not in a healthy condition.