Yeah OK then, the league has never been been better, he protected small markets and grew the league like no one ever has in NHL history.
I could get banned from showing how wrong you are so I'll just let you sleep it off.
Small Canadian markets rebounded due to timing of Cdn $ increasing and the fact taht people actually watch hockey in those markets, nothing to do with Bettman. Small hockey markets currently are mostly in trouble, and the nhl has no plan to grow league revenue in the future to compensate for fading legacy revenue streams. So yeah, please educate me on what an awesome plan the nhl has to maintain and grow themselves. :-)
Canadian dollar or not, the Flames would be dead without a salary cap, or not competitive anyway. Teams like Toronto and NYR could easily afford $120m-150m payrolls, and the best players would make near $20m per year. There's no way the Flames would keep up with it. If you like the current system, you should have no qualms with what it took to get it.
Let me warm up for the next SEVEN Stanley's Cup presentations: BOOOOooo!
If the Stanley Cup is ever awarded in Calgary I would hope our fanbase would be classy enough not to boo him. It's petty, childish, and embarrassing for Bettman and our sport. Easily my least favourite part of the Stanley Cup celebration.
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1995 was a completely pointless venture. Accomplished absolutely nothing and entrenched both sides further...resulting in the giant lockout in 2005 and a completely lost season.
2005 was essential. I don't think anyone could argue against it.
2013 was a bailout for the owners who made a giant mess of the 2005 CBA and needed to make some big changes to keep them from harming themselves.
So 1 of the 3 was needed, at least IMO. Bettman has presided over 2 lockouts that could have been avoided, and I disagree with your assessment that they needed 3 attempts to get it done. 1 time should have been enough, but the issue was dragged over 20 years and 3 separate work stoppages. Financially, things are in decent shape for the league now, but I think it came at a pretty hefty cost. Maybe in another 20 years under a different commissioner we will all look back at this current era a little differently. Perhaps I will look at it more favorably and Bettman's supporters will look at him a little more negatively. I think he's done some good and bad things, but he's made a lot of missteps along the way to his good things, so it tempers how I feel about those good things. Ultimately, I think the league is due for a new voice, and that, more than anything, is why I'd like to see a change.
Whatever it took, I'm glad it happened. Both the Flames and Panthers would either not exist or would be essentially farm teams without the cap. Disagree that 1995 was 'a pointless venture'. A majority of the owners saw the problems on the horizon and wanted a cap but the big markets did not care/agree. Unfortunately the NHLPA was more united and the owners didn't have the stomach to do what needed to be done. 2005 fixed all that but I would argue that 1995 set the stage. The owners just couldn't get the job done because the players were stronger, that doesn't mean they shouldn't have tried. Also, this shouldn't all be pinned on Bettman and the owners. Each lockout was 50% the players fault, there's lots of blame to throw around. It should also be remembered that Bettman is essentially front man for the owners, he's their employee and does what they want. He's not some nefarious puppeteer pulling the strings on a bunch of helpless pawns.
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Small Canadian markets rebounded due to timing of Cdn $ increasing and the fact taht people actually watch hockey in those markets, nothing to do with Bettman. Small hockey markets currently are mostly in trouble, and the nhl has no plan to grow league revenue in the future to compensate for fading legacy revenue streams. So yeah, please educate me on what an awesome plan the nhl has to maintain and grow themselves. :-)
Bettman has been the commissioner for 23 years, I dare you to show me another leader who has done better in any professional league over that kind of time.
A blind monkey could lead the NFL, NBA is a complete joke with it's leaders and MLB only cares about the big markets.
Dispite his personality Bettman has been great for the NHL, sorry to say but anyone who thinks otherwise is a complete idiot!
Bettman has been the commissioner for 23 years, I dare you to show me another leader who has done better in any professional league over that kind of time.
A blind monkey could lead the NFL, NBA is a complete joke with it's leaders and MLB only cares about the big markets.
Dispite his personality Bettman has been great for the NHL, sorry to say but anyone who thinks otherwise is a complete idiot!
Carry on though!
All professional sports league are very prosperous at the moment. They've all cashed in on the cable sports bubble and the NHL has also benefited from a dramatic improvement of the exchange rate in a currency that accounts for a substantial amount of league wide revenues and very little league wide expenses.
Your comment about the MLB demonstrates you really don't have any idea about the recent economics and competitiveness of small market mlb teams. So I won't really bother with that conversation.
The NFL and MLB have actually done a lot of interesting and innovative things to reduce their exposure to the impending collapse of a lot of current revenue streams. The NHL, as usual has their head in the sand, and it is pretty much inevitable that there will be a lot of franchises in trouble in the 5-10 years.
It was cute you called me an idiot. I think I'll manage to get over it though.
1995 was a completely pointless venture. Accomplished absolutely nothing and entrenched both sides further...resulting in the giant lockout in 2005 and a completely lost season.
2005 was essential. I don't think anyone could argue against it.
2013 was a bailout for the owners who made a giant mess of the 2005 CBA and needed to make some big changes to keep them from harming themselves.
So 1 of the 3 was needed, at least IMO. Bettman has presided over 2 lockouts that could have been avoided, and I disagree with your assessment that they needed 3 attempts to get it done. 1 time should have been enough, but the issue was dragged over 20 years and 3 separate work stoppages. Financially, things are in decent shape for the league now, but I think it came at a pretty hefty cost. Maybe in another 20 years under a different commissioner we will all look back at this current era a little differently. Perhaps I will look at it more favorably and Bettman's supporters will look at him a little more negatively. I think he's done some good and bad things, but he's made a lot of missteps along the way to his good things, so it tempers how I feel about those good things. Ultimately, I think the league is due for a new voice, and that, more than anything, is why I'd like to see a change.
The 1995 lockout could not have been avoided. Though you are right that it didn't fix anything. By the mid 1990s, the economic landscape in all of sports was changing. The pendulum, which favoured the owners for so long, had swung and was starting to both favour players and the largest market teams at the expense of everyone else. Borne out of this was the NHL's 1992 strike, and MLB's catastrophic 1994 strike. These events taught the NHL two things: From 1992, the league learned it needed a much stronger leader than the the absentee President John Ziegler if it was going to counter Bob Goodenow. From 1994, the NHL learned that you don't start a season without a CBA, or very bad things happen.
1995 was pointless, but not because of Gary Bettman. 1995 was pointless because the NHL's ownership was developing that strong big market vs. small market discord. The players ultimately destroyed the owners in that negotiation because the owners had no unity.
And what that taught Gary Bettman was that he needed the power to not only negotiate with the union, but to control his own table. Nfotiu says Bettman lacks vision? I disagree. Bettman knew what was going to happen in 2004. And he convinced his owners to give him the veto power that would ensure the seven or eight large teams could not fold the way they did in 1995. Bettman then realized that - painful as it was to do so - the NHL needed to be willing to cancel the season to convince the union of how dire the situation had become. Bettman outmaneuvered Goodenow, and got us the salary cap that Bob had spent 15 years proclaiming would never happen.
2013 was unnecesary in some respects, but necessary in others. The system still required some tuning and balancing, and even an NHLPA led by a moderate would have struggled to agree with going from 57% to 50%. However, all the bitter hardliners in the union had installed a man in Don Fehr who pathologically hates sports owners. Once that happened, another lockout became inevitable. The players refused to even open negotiations until a lockout. And there was no way in hell that the owners would ever begin a season without a CBA when the guy on the other side of the table was the one who cancelled the World Series.
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Business side: In the 90s/early 2000s he ompletely igored the fact that there was big money in local and national cable sports contracts while doing everything he could to go after a broadcast contract. He lucked out by jumping on board some of that money late in the game. However, they've put themselves in a position where they are relying on that money while the cable sports bubble is getting ready to implode. And they've done absolutely nothing to try to offset that collapse.
I don't think there is a cable sports bubble, but rather a cable TV bubble and sports are among the strongest things keeping it afloat. The demand for live sports viewership is not declining, and the NHL has been no worse (perhaps better in some ways) than any other league in moving into the new reality.
Quote:
Originally Posted by nfotiu
He's never been able to demonstrate anything resembling vision, strategic thinking, or creativity.
The wins he did get were all either a result of bullying, luck or reactionary. Nothing he has done has persuaded me that he is a talented executive.
As with your previous post, you're saying everything good that has happened he deserves no credit for, but everything bad was all his fault. Gotcha.
I don't think there is a cable sports bubble, but rather a cable TV bubble and sports are among the strongest things keeping it afloat. The demand for live sports viewership is not declining, and the NHL has been no worse (perhaps better in some ways) than any other league in moving into the new reality.
The problem is that viewership has been irrelevant in all cable sports contracts for the last decade. Advertising revenue for NHL games is not a significant revenue stream. RSNs, ESPN.etc have been making billions of dollars from carriage fees paid by subscribers who don't watch their channel. The sports channels carriage fees are exponentially higher than the non-sports channels and are in line to fall dramatically. For evidence, look at what is happening to Disney's stock solely based on ESPN losing subscribers to cord cutting/cord trimming.
Based on nothing but my personal perception - I think that while NHL has stagnated over the last couple years; it has really taken off since the lockout after the the Flames run.
Hard to not give the commish at least a portion of that credit.
Now I am sure someone can back it up/debunk it with average attendance and TV ratings over a certain period of time, or even cooler, NHL TV ratings divided by the average TV rating for a game of the 4 major sport leagues in the states over the last 20 years.
Location: Chicago Native relocated to the stinking desert of Utah
Exp:
Quote:
Originally Posted by Dion
Has had 2 lockouts on his term
Dion...3 lockouts.
As to Bettman's "vision", or "savior of small market Canadian teams" & etc...The running joke in the desert, rather than allowing a Canadian interest to take over what was originally a Canadian franchise, even as it was a "ward of the league"...forcing franchises into US Southern markets, where any down swing in performance might mean abandonment of the town...(I suspect that Sunrise, FL., will lose it's team sooner than later, and have my doubts for Raleigh or Nashville, down the line)...this fixation on Las Vegas, a Fail market that even the NFL, MLB, and NBA, have recognized shortcomings as a fan base, rather than Seattle or Quebec, or Hamilton, all better "hockey" markets, IMO. All these, I feel, reflect stubbornness and poor judgment on Bettman's part.
__________________ "If the wine's not good enough for the cook, the wine's not good enough for the dish!" - Julia Child (goddess of the kitchen)
Last edited by thefoss1957; 02-01-2016 at 01:55 AM.
Bettman gets paid millions to make hundreds of millions for billionaires. Hate him if you want but he is insanely good at the job that he gets paid to do.
Never forget that Bettman works for the owners and their interests.
Bettman entirely broke his workers union, twice, in lockouts, resulting in new CBAs that made his bosses (the owners) far, far, far more profitable. If the CEO of any other company did that, he would be crowned as the "All-Time King of Market Capitalism Forever and Ever and Ever".
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Would HAVE, Could HAVE, Should HAVE = correct
Would of, could of, should of = you are an illiterate moron.
Last edited by vanisleflamesfan; 02-01-2016 at 02:23 AM.
the league has never been been better, he protected small markets and grew the league like no one ever has in NHL history.
