[Rumour] Coyotes owner put in letter of intent to buy 41 acres of land in Mesa, Arizona

[FlamesAddiction]

I wonder how much that new TV deal is worth.

[TheScorpion]

Originally Posted by nfotiu

Hard to see how they can make much money off of this without the carriage fees.

Have you watched sports on ATSC 1.0 subchannels? It's not even really as good as 1980s SD TV. I suppose it may be better on ATSC 3.0, but who has a tuner for that?

This can't be really spun as a positive for the team and seems unlikely to work out long term.

Well, it's exactly the same thing that the Golden Knights and Suns are doing, so I would imagine it's been vetted pretty thoroughly.

Edit: I believe ABC15 is also available through basic cable packages, I would assume in HD. But it's also available for free over the air as a "base model" type option.

[dissentowner]

Originally Posted by nfotiu

Hard to see how they can make much money off of this without the carriage fees.

Have you watched sports on ATSC 1.0 subchannels? It's not even really as good as 1980s SD TV. I suppose it may be better on ATSC 3.0, but who has a tuner for that?

This can't be really spun as a positive for the team and seems unlikely to work out long term.

I have an LG G2 OLED, it has a 3.0 tuner. Lots of high end tvs do. The problem is nobody is streaming in that format.

[nfotiu]

Originally Posted by TheScorpion

Well, it's exactly the same thing that the Golden Knights and Suns are doing, so I would imagine it's been vetted pretty thoroughly.

Edit: I believe ABC15 is also available through basic cable packages, I would assume in HD. But it's also available for free over the air as a "base model" type option.

Knights and Suns are on the primary channel, not a bandwidth starved subchannel.

Hopefully they would pass a better quality feed to cable.

Nobody has proved there is a way to make money anywhere near what they were getting from their RSN with this model, but they don't have a lot of options.

[nfotiu]

Originally Posted by dissentowner

I have an LG G2 OLED, it has a 3.0 tuner. Lots of high end tvs do. The problem is nobody is streaming in that format.

I think the Phoenix station does, but it is mostly only some 2022 and 2023 tvs that have it built in. And they are dropping them for 2024. https://www.techradar.com/television...-could-be-next

And there are also some messy situations with standards and encryptions where not all tuners work for all stations and programming.

[TheScorpion]

Originally Posted by nfotiu

Knights and Suns are on the primary channel, not a bandwidth starved subchannel.

Hopefully they would pass a better quality feed to cable.

Nobody has proved there is a way to make money anywhere near what they were getting from their RSN with this model, but they don't have a lot of options.

Oh I see what you mean. I agree, I'd be very interested to see what the financial terms of this deal are, but either way I'd venture they'll get far more viewers than they ever did on Bally — ad prices probably way higher, too, wonder if they'd get a piece of that?

[nfotiu]

Originally Posted by TheScorpion

Oh I see what you mean. I agree, I'd be very interested to see what the financial terms of this deal are, but either way I'd venture they'll get far more viewers than they ever did on Bally — ad prices probably way higher, too, wonder if they'd get a piece of that?

I'm still skeptical of how these will work out. The RSNs have generally demanded they are on the most common package for sat/cable. 49% of households have sat/cable, while 22% have OTA. Sure, some may go to the trouble of setting up an antenna to watch free hockey, but not sure how many.

It looks like they will still be on cable (but probably little to no carriage fee), so they may have expanded their potential market by 50% by being available via cable or OTA.

Say they go from about 10k viewers to 20k viewers as an optimistic outlook.

Generally 1 person watching a 3 hour hockey game is worth about $1 to advertisers assuming about 20 ads an hour and about $20 per 1000 viewers.

So, that's only $20k per game in advertising money, and sports broadcasts probably cost in the neighborhood of $40k per game to produce. Probably can share some of that with the visiting team's broadcast, so basically they are breaking even as a best case scenario.

Their old deal is hard to find, but I'd guess they were getting 20-30 million per year for almost no one to watch it.

They call it a partnership, so I am guessing it is something like the liv-CW deal where they broadcast the games for free and they split the ad money. I doubt they get much more than a million/year out of this deal, if that.

[Sidney Crosby's Hat]

Originally Posted by nfotiu

I'm still skeptical of how these will work out. The RSNs have generally demanded they are on the most common package for sat/cable. 49% of households have sat/cable, while 22% have OTA. Sure, some may go to the trouble of setting up an antenna to watch free hockey, but not sure how many.

It looks like they will still be on cable (but probably little to no carriage fee), so they may have expanded their potential market by 50% by being available via cable or OTA.

Say they go from about 10k viewers to 20k viewers as an optimistic outlook.

Generally 1 person watching a 3 hour hockey game is worth about $1 to advertisers assuming about 20 ads an hour and about $20 per 1000 viewers.

So, that's only $20k per game in advertising money, and sports broadcasts probably cost in the neighborhood of $40k per game to produce. Probably can share some of that with the visiting team's broadcast, so basically they are breaking even as a best case scenario.

Their old deal is hard to find, but I'd guess they were getting 20-30 million per year for almost no one to watch it.

They call it a partnership, so I am guessing it is something like the liv-CW deal where they broadcast the games for free and they split the ad money. I doubt they get much more than a million/year out of this deal, if that.

Friedman mentioned $14 million per year: https://www.sportsnet.ca/nhl/article...-of-governors/

I don't think they can make all that money back but it's a low enough target that theoretically making games more available could end up in extra ticket revenue. The problem, of course, is they have no capacity in their current arena to take advantage of that.

[Jordan!]

Originally Posted by nfotiu

Knights and Suns are on the primary channel, not a bandwidth starved subchannel.

Hopefully they would pass a better quality feed to cable.

Nobody has proved there is a way to make money anywhere near what they were getting from their RSN with this model, but they don't have a lot of options.

Huh? AZ Family is a lesser known channel than ABC 15.. Maybe im not understanding this comment.

This will soon be the norm for most smart organizations who are looking to grow their fanbase, the Suns recently gave away HD antenna's to thousands of fans. Why gatekeep your product behind paid services in your local market? Makes no sense, you will NEVER add fans that way.

I'm glad it's a 4 year deal.

[nfotiu]

Originally Posted by Jordan!

Huh? AZ Family is a lesser known channel than ABC 15.. Maybe im not understanding this comment.

This will soon be the norm for most smart organizations who are looking to grow their fanbase, the Suns recently gave away HD antenna's to thousands of fans. Why gatekeep your product behind paid services in your local market? Makes no sense, you will NEVER add fans that way.

I'm glad it's a 4 year deal.

The games won't be on the main ABC affiliate feed, they are on a subchannel, and apparently they already have the CW affiliate on the subchannel, so unless they change things up, it will be a 480i feed. Some insight here...

https://www.avsforum.com/threads/pho...#post-62864912

I suspect local MLB/NHL/NBA eventually end up pooled into something like the MLS/Apple TV arrangement. There's not much money in the OTA game.

[Strange Brew]

Originally Posted by Sidney Crosby's Hat

Friedman mentioned $14 million per year: https://www.sportsnet.ca/nhl/article...-of-governors/

I don't think they can make all that money back but it's a low enough target that theoretically making games more available could end up in extra ticket revenue. The problem, of course, is they have no capacity in their current arena to take advantage of that.

$14 million per year to that franchise sure seems like lot, I don't see how they can earn that back. It also shows how the regional networks model was likely doomed as there is no way those rights were ever worth that.

[Jay Random]

Originally Posted by Strange Brew

$14 million per year to that franchise sure seems like lot, I don't see how they can earn that back. It also shows how the regional networks model was likely doomed as there is no way those rights were ever worth that.

Twenty years ago or so, RSNs were willing to pay silly amounts for rights to second-tier sports because they had too much airtime to fill and not enough local content. They could afford it because cable companies were willing to pay silly amounts to add channels so they could brag about the size of their bundles.

The cable companies didn't much care if channel 492 was showing the Uruguayan tiddlywinks quarter-finals, as long as it was showing something. What mattered is that there were channels all the way up to 492 and they weren't showing test patterns. This helped them rope in new subscribers; if those subscribers eventually cancelled because there were 492 channels and none of them worth watching, that was someone else's problem down the road. The quarterly financials looked great even though the business model was unsustainable.

Now cable is dying and the silly amounts of money have migrated elsewhere. There's a storm brewing. The weird thing is that the NHL, which has always taken flak for being too gate-dependent and not cashing in on broadcast rights, is probably in a better position to weather that storm than the other major team sports.

But the Coyotes had better find themselves a real arena fast if they want to survive.

[sureLoss]

https://twitter.com/user/status/1710790257866596768

[jayswin]

I would love a Dallas/Houston rivalry.

[Ped]

A volcano could literally erupt from Arizona and make ice impossible, and Bettman would be insisting the NHL can still work there if they just iron out a few wrinkles.

[butterfly]

Originally Posted by jayswin

I would love a Dallas/Houston rivalry.

Dallas should not be the most isolated NHL team.

[Strange Brew]

Fertitta had removed the ice plant to put in a new club area. This reno is IMO a fairly clear signal that he has renewed interest in an NHL team.

It's obvious Bettman and the league far prefer expansion but as has been said countless times, Phoenix would be better served as an expansion market in a few years with a different ownership group and some tangible arena plans.

[Locke]

Originally Posted by Ped

A volcano could literally erupt from Arizona and make ice impossible, and Bettman would be insisting the NHL can still work there if they just iron out a few wrinkles.

Its actually kind of hilarious. It makes you wonder..."whats it going to take?"

[Jay Random]

Originally Posted by Ped

A volcano could literally erupt from Arizona and make ice impossible, and Bettman would be insisting the NHL can still work there if they just iron out a few wrinkles.

Bettman made the owners several hundred million dollars by making the Coyotes stay put while Vegas and Seattle paid through the nose for expansion teams. I imagine they're quite happy with that, and don't want any teams relocating while there's a chance of getting more expansion money.

(The Thrashers' move to Winnipeg isn't really an exception. Nobody was going to pay $500 million or more to put a team in Winnipeg, so the owners didn't mind stashing an otherwise unwanted team there.)

[mjk123]

Take the Coyotes out of Arizona. This is getting ridiculous!