[News] New Arena - Plan B - Victoria Park

[Parallex]

Originally Posted by Locke

Sure, but the current council might consider it a favour if CSEC would STFU for a few minutes during the election.

Doubt it... it's a really bad idea to make it an election issue thou. I mean if they make it an election issue and "opposed" wins then they've handed city council the political capital to take a hard "no public money" stance and moreover a mandate to do just that.

They have way more to lose then to win.

[D as in David]

Originally Posted by HotHotHeat

Hey look, Seattle is announcing a new arena.

http://www.king5.com/news/local/aren...tion/446404255

Professional renderings...hmm. What were they thinking?

[Flash Walken]

Originally Posted by CliffFletcher

It's probably a natural part of ageing as fans. People get older and lose their passion.

However, the NHL is concerned about the lack of renewal of their fanbase. They openly admit they need to find some way to get more 20-somethings into the game, and it's not easy.

So if older fans drift away, and younger people aren't replacing them, who's the fanbase of the future? I guess it's the corporate world. Which brings us to relocation threats. Where would the Flames find stronger corporate support for the NHL than in Calgary? In Quebec City? Not a chance. Seattle? Maybe. But why would the NHL let the Flames relocate there in preference to the Coyotes or the Hurricanes?

Originally Posted by nik-

The cost to value ratio is totally broken. I can go to 4 games a year in the second level, or I can take that money and use it on a flight to Europe. I love a live NHL game, but I just can't justify the cost. I'm guessing that will be more common. A $200 ticket to something should be a very memorable night, not just one of 41 home games.

Definitely.

THe cost to value for a live game is completely broken, but the league is also boring AND lacking in integrity. They are losing fans through all mediums.

The NHL is beginning to turn the ship towards addressing their demographic failures, but it's an uphill battle at this point, and I don't think the league is going far enough.



Their demographics in general, are terrible for a league attempting to grow. In the last 16 years, the average age of NHL tv viewers aged by 16 years. Basically, the same fans who were watching in 2000 are teh same fans watching now. There arent enoug new fans to move the needle at all. That might mean there are no new fans. Troubling for a league seeing continually accelerating demographic changes in some of its most profitable markets. I read somewhere that the lower mainland in bc will be over 50% non-white in about 15 years years, and yet the NHL demographics point to it having the whitest fan base of the big 4 sports leagues.

But this is where the cost to value ratio comes in. In a society with increasingly depressed wages, the NHL demographics are overwhelming wealthy. How do you grow as a league when the expectations to consume your product rely on an increasingly more difficult to attain income level? It's proving difficult, and it's starting to alienate the existing customer base:

The NHL broadcast contract is structured so that Rogers paid the smallest annual amount in 2014-15, the first season of the deal. The payments will rise each year over the next 11 seasons. Hendren thinks Rogers has a chance to turn a profit on the deal for two reasons. First, he says, “two-thirds of [Canadians] still watch conventional television,” which means there will still be sizable TV audiences to sell to advertisers. The other is that millennials are still willing to watch games in the conventional way if they have a good reason, such as their teams’ playoff runs.

Jays audiences on Sportsnet, for instance, went from an average of 600,000 per regular-season game in July to 1.61 million during the September stretch drive. The playoffs saw the numbers jump to at least three million with the deciding game in the American League Championship Series, which Toronto lost to the Kansas City Royals, pulling in 5.13 million viewers, a record for Sportsnet.

Hendren thinks the same dynamic will benefit Rogers if Canadian NHL teams become more competitive. “If you get the content right, the potential for sports is big,” he says, adding: “If the Leafs get contending again, they would exceed all numbers.”

A more cautious opinion comes from Mario Mota, co-founder of Boon Dog Professional Services Inc., a research and consulting company in Ottawa. He thinks the numbers of cord-cutters (those who drop their cable or satellite TV subscriptions) and cord-nevers (millennials who don’t subscribe once they live on their own) will continue to grow because, critics say, the telecom companies are passing on the rising costs of sports rights to consumers’ monthly bills.

“If the costs of sports packages continue to rise the way they have been, at some point there is a limit for people, even sports fans,” Mota says.

He does not see the solution in the recent arrival of skinny bundles, which the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission forced on the cable companies. The problem is that the most popular sports networks, Sportsnet and TSN, are not part of the new stripped-down packages, which cost about $25 a month plus the cost of renting a cable box. The total cost of a package that includes both Sportsnet and TSN is more than $70 per month.

“If you’re paying more every year [in rights fees] and it’s increasingly a challenge to earn more and more advertising revenue, and there are people cutting the cord and cord-shaving, meaning your subscriber numbers are going down, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to say that’s going to be a challenging environment for any sports broadcaster,” Mota says.

Between 2010 and 2014, according to the most recent figures published by the CRTC, Sportsnet lost about 840,000 subscribers, a decline of 9 per cent to 8.3 million. TSN’s decline was much smaller, about 1 per cent over the same period to nine million. But the CRTC has not yet published the 2015 numbers, which may show an increase for Sportsnet because it included its first season with the NHL rights.

Despite the loss of subscribers, TSN and Sportsnet saw a sharp increase in revenue between 2010 and 2014 because both networks negotiated an increase in the fees they receive from cable operators that carry them. There was also increased revenue from existing subscribers, because both networks added new pay channels. TSN’s revenue climbed to $452.2-million in 2014 from $267.6-million in 2010 (before the loss of NHL national rights to Rogers kicked in). Sportsnet pulled in $311.9-million in 2014, up from $216.9-million in 2010.

Despite this, both Rogers and Bell said in their last annual reports that the rising costs of sports rights deals held down profit. The companies attributed the hundreds of layoffs at Bell Media and Rogers Media in the past several months to the decline in revenue due caused by cord-cutting.

Are the broadcasters complaints about rights fees a signal of so-called peak TV? Or will rights-holders figure out how to sell digital ads and subscriptions to generate new revenue?

Mota says that, while Bell and Rogers complain about soaring fees, they are unlikely to stop bidding up the prices. “In Canada, you have healthy competition between Bell and Rogers for rights. You can bet when any kind of rights come up for renewal, they’ll be tripping over themselves to outbid each other.

“There’s kind of an irrationality in the market because of this environment. Plus, they need content. TSN has now expanded to five feeds, Sportsnet has four or five, and they’ve got to fill that air time.

“The question becomes: As publicly-traded companies, how long can they keep going, making deals like that and not making the returns their shareholders require and demand, before saying there has to be a better way to do this?”

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/spor...ticle29302445/

There isn't much blood left in the stone.

[sureLoss]

Here is the video of Burke:


Link

https://video.twimg.com/amplify_vide...ZP8WRVTeCs.mp4

[Strange Brew]

Originally Posted by GioforPM

One thing about all of this - it was a Q&A. So if someone asks Burke "Could the Flames leave if they don't get a new arena" what's he supposed to say? He has to say it's possible. At best he could say "no comment" but that'd be taken as a yes anyway.

How about "I can't imagine a realistic scenario where the Flames move from Calgary".

The same organization that emphatically states there was no Plan B for an arena other than Calgary Next, now readily admit there is a plan B as it relates to moving the team.

Absolutely brutal public relations and simply hurting their own cause. Really allinvolved should be smarter than that.

[sureLoss]

King on Burke's comments today:

Lucas Meyer @meyer_lucas
And now... Ken King releases statement regarding Burke's: "He is not our spokesperson regarding a new events centre." #flames #yyc

[Slava]

The Flames are really just bungling this whole thing.

[KootenayFlamesFan]

The Flames need to shut up. All of them.

[Flamenspiel]

nm

[SportsJunky]

That sounds like corporate speak for "Burke needs to shut up" from King. I'm guessing there isn't much love lost between these two strong personalities.

[Tyler]

Hahahahahahahah

[Lil Pedro]

What a great day for CSEG

[CedarMeter]

Flames now in damage control mode. What a mess this is.

[N-E-B]

I'm tempted to not spend another dime on this team as long as that donkey is employed.

[Lanny_McDonald]

Come on Flames, move to Seattle! Please! The meltdown here would be delicious!

[Jiri Hrdina]

Would love to have heard the rather loud discussion between King and Burke this afternoon. As much as King should stay out of hockey stuff, Burke should probably stay out of the broader business stuff.

[chedder]

Originally Posted by Bunk

Mayor's response:

@meyer_lucas

Nenshi on Burke: "Part of the script. We will continue ignoring all this stuff in the media and try and come up with a deal #Flames #yyc

--

Which is the correct reply.

There's a first for the mayor. He must have read Bell's article!

[ricosuave]

I wish King would just go. He's made a mess of far too many things he seems to know nothing about.

[Freeway]

In the interest of great timing, I'm interviewing the lead author of the book Field of Schemes tomorrow for FlamesNation.

[Cecil Terwilliger]

I feel like King missed an opportunity to double down on Burke's comment.