I may be the only one who simply doesn’t care about other markets doing well.
What does it mean for me, as a Flames fan, if Arizona or Carolina become stronger organizations? It means more demand with fixed ticket supply, which means higher prices, which means higher revenues and cap, which means it continues to get harder as a fan to afford NHL hockey.
We have already seen this in Calgary after watching the cap go from $39MM USD in 2005 to now what- $80MM USD this year? And ticket prices and the in game experience have continued to climb. It simply leads to millionaires getting more millions and franchise equity growing more in hundreds of millions to billionaire owners. Yay?
Why do we care about this? Who gives a rats ass if Joe Blow in Arizona goes to a game or likes it. Calgary will always be more of a passionate market, more of a dedicated market, but we aren’t as big of a market. Meaning we have less people on average that will have the kind of long-term incomes to support continued revenue growth for the NHL. Look at the arena debate, it ties into all of this. Now we need a new arena to stay competitive and seriously have issues as a city debating whether or not we can or want to afford subsidizing the owners.
So we subsidize the cost of arena, get higher prices and continue to prop up the Arizona’s of the world through revenue sharing while things continue to get unaffordable? No thanks. I’m okay if Arizona and Florida don’t fill their building. Need more money in revenue sharing, and make it tougher for the NHL to continue growth. The players and owners don’t need more money.
|