Quote:
Originally Posted by DiracSpike
That list certainly puts things in perspective. A top 10 Canadian metro can't even beat out the fourth biggest market in rust belt Ohio. How many of you can even name what state Allentown or Worcester are in? That's the scale QC has on the USA.
If you're looking for a league that fills the market demand for hockey crazed small cities it already exists, it's called the CHL. All those passionate fans can watch the Remparts and pay 10 bucks each for tickets to bring the whole family. The NHL though is for big boys. You can't view the NHL sun belt expansion as anything other than a smashing success that has skyrocketed revenues for the league. For every miss like Atlanta or Arizona, you have tampa, nashville, vegas, dallas. It's a proven strategy, and there's no chance in hell bettman allows a team to leave one big market, skip over huge waiting markets like Houston or even KC, to enter Quebec. His job is to make money for owners, not sentimentally grant franchises to backwater Canadian cities.
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Although it's not a level playing field because there are way more hockey fans in Quebec City than there are in probably all those above-named cities combined.
I think two factors you should consider are the number of hockey fans in the market and the fact that the Canadian TV deal is still more than the US deal(s) -- and also the next one up for expiration. Having another Canadian market helps this.
This report from 10 years ago talks a bit about it. Some factors have changed in the last decade but a lot of the points remain true:
https://www.yumpu.com/en/document/re...re-for-policy-