People keep forgetting the importance of TV markets. Quebec City does absolutely nothing for the NHL in terms of TV market and it's a Habs market on RDS so there will be minimal gains for the next Canadian TV deal. Conversely they lose a large US TV market which likely affects the US deals. I see zero chance they move another US TV market to Canada as they will move to another US TV market.
I agree with you here. An American market is the primary target. The larger the market the more likely it has to being accepted into the fold. Hence the desire to circle back to Atlanta (#8 TV market). Losing Phoenix (#12) is going to be a bitter pill to swallow, but Houston (#10), Portland (#22), Charlotte (#24), Indianapolis (#25), San Diego (#28), and Kansas City (#30), might suffice. Salt Lake City at #33 make sense as well and is a bigger market than Las Vegas (#42).
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Not given the right shot? The team has been failing since 1996, how many decades of trying and failing to draw a fan base is appropriate before we can decide if an area is a hockey market or not? Seems like 27 years should be a significant amount of time to tell the Coyotes are not going to work in Arizona. Do Florida? Florida has an NHL arena. Florida has never defaulted on rent. Florida's average attendance in the past 10 years has been between 14-16 thousand people. Last year Florida averaged over 16,000. Arizona averaged 4000. Before that in Glendale they averaged 11-12 thousand.
Everything you are stating is more a symptom of the terrible management and ownership issues they had...less so that the market itself couldn't support a team if they actually had strong ownership and management.
This was their inaugural season, and it's funny because I remember the discussion around the time being about how successful the Coyotes first season in Phoenix was.
The initial issues with the market started when they could get an NHL Friendly rink in downtown Phoenix, and then it really bottomed out when Jerry Moyes declaired bankrupcy and tried to force the sale to Jim Basille to move them to Hamilton.
They never recovered from that...and really it's tough when everything around the team has been so negative. Constant ownership changes, lawsuits, threat of relocation constantly hanging over the team.
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I debated my brother on this last night. His argument was Regina can fill mosaic ful every night. My counter was 1, the entire provinces population is that of CGY and surrounding area. 2. The only rink close to putting up numbers is sask place and its 4k short of a standard nhl rink. 3. CFL ticket prices are half the price of a standard NHL game, and you have to fill it 3 times more a week.
I'd love for Saskatoon to have a team, but it's just no possible. QC is a far stronger market and it's not close.
__________________ "Everybody's so desperate to look smart that nobody is having fun anymore" -Jackie Redmond
I don't get the big tv market argument, the LA/NYR finals was not a huge draw and was beat by several other finals with smaller markets.
I do think PHX is a good market though, if any other market went through what they have they would struggle too. Heck, there were many empty seats for Habs games this year.
They never recovered from that...and really it's tough when everything around the team has been so negative. Constant ownership changes, lawsuits, threat of relocation constantly hanging over the team.
That's the thing. Conditions like that are almost impossible to build a strong fanbase. I think the Phoenix market has a lot of potential and should be revisited in the future if they can get their poop in a scoop. At this point though, I think that franchise has killed their chances for all the reasons you mentioned. If they ever build an arena in an optimal area, give them an expansion team with a clean slate of goodwill, and I think it would work.
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"A pessimist thinks things can't get any worse. An optimist knows they can."
People keep forgetting the importance of TV markets. Quebec City does absolutely nothing for the NHL in terms of TV market and it's a Habs market on RDS so there will be minimal gains for the next Canadian TV deal. Conversely they lose a large US TV market which likely affects the US deals. I see zero chance they move another US TV market to Canada as they will move to another US TV market.
Feel like this is overstated. Highly doubt Phoenix viewership of national games is changing much with or without the Coyotes. The local TV market in the US is collapsing so its not like you're going to get a big pay check for local TV rights anymore either.
Not surprising at all. Don't underestimate the stubbornness of Bettman, this has become personal for him. There is a good article in The Athletic about that
