Quote:
Originally Posted by jayswin
Yep, American sports owners have gone absolutely crazy in holding cities hostage with threats of their teams leaving to get hundreds of millions in handouts. And Canadian cities by proxy and being part of major American sports leagues get brought into the craziness as well.
I wonder if everyone in here has watched this segment with Jon Oliver? Nenshi was awesome for how he stood up to these guys, so much so that he was making the news in the US during the last round of negotiations with the Flames. Frustrated American cities took notice and loved it, as all municipalities need to start saying enough is enough.
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This is one of the few times that I dont really agree with Oliver.
He takes a bit of a hard-line stance that just doesnt seem reasonable. The fact of the matter is, as I alluded to in a previous post, there are benefits to having professional sports teams around. They do 'spread the wealth' albeit in a very difficult to quantify way.
But you cant be held ransom by them. There are a lot of ways that municipalities or jurisdictions benefit from Pro sports teams and they can facilitate that benefit through cooperation, but the revenue model has to be revamped and I think significant importance should be placed on standardizing subsidization deals.
Like a hard 'Salary Cap' on Government aid to sports teams.
You cant have places shooting money out of a T-Shirt cannon at sports teams and then having every other team in every other jurisdiction expecting the same.
It sucks to say, and its just purely my opinion, but the worst thing to happen to the Calgary Flames' arena proposals was the Edmonton Oilers' arena deal.
It was just so, so sweet and the Flames/CSEC wanted the same deal and in no reasonable universe were they going to get it.