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*Official* CBA Negotiations and Lockout Thread


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"We are extremely disappointed in where we and the Players find ourselves," deputy commissioner Bill Daly told TSN. "And from our perspective, we have made repeated moves in the Players' direction with absolutely no reciprocation. Unfortunately, we have determined we are involved with Union leadership that has no genuine interest in reaching an agreement. Regardless of what we propose, or how we suggest to compromise the answer is "no." At some point you just have to say "enough is enough".
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I'm done. Really.

STH for 10 years calliI'ng the Canucks tomorrow to cancel my seats.

I hate greedy billionaire owners who even if they saved 10 - 20% of thier costs won't even think of dropping ticket prices! Makes me want to puke......

I hate greedy players who are crying because they will only make 1.8 mil a year instead of 2.2 mil. Athletes, actors and the like are way overpaid!!!

Schleps like us bustin' our humps to make a living and I am going to spend $8,000.00 a year on filling these whiners pockets?????

People homeless here or starving in war torn countries or living in catastrophic conditions all over the world. And these pigs can't come to grips with how they want to divide up our money????

Pox on all thier houses!

Some poor sucker on the blueline waiting list can have them!!!!!!!! Seriously Vancouver FANS, get a grip. Spend your money on people who deserve and appreciate it!

There I feel better already :-)

Over and out.

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NHL Lockout: Why do billionaires keep buying teams that lose money?

The answer: There is a big gap between “losing money” and actually losing money.

There is a strange dichotomy in NHL ownership. The owners, whether as companies or individuals, are extremely wealthy. Yet many teams reportedly lose money every year, and with few exceptions even the profitable clubs don’t make that much money. Why would phenomenally successful men sink money into a black hole like that? Is it simply a case of viewing hockey teams as luxuries where they can afford to bleed red a little?

While non-financial considerations undoubtedly come into play, the simplest explanation is that the financial picture for various NHL teams is a lot healthier than it is typically reported to be.

Take the Florida Panthers as an example. For many, the Panthers are a great case in point of what went wrong with the NHL’s expansion into the Sunbelt. Attendance has improved of late, but on a percentage basis still easily falls into the NHL’s bottom-third. The team has struggled for respectability on the ice, and off the ice the financial picture is generally seen as gloomy.

Last year, Forbes estimated that the Panthers lost $7 million. Over the last nine seasons, they calculate the Panthers total losses at $68 million, an average deficit of $7.5 million per season.

Interestingly, the picture that Forbes paints is at odds with that presented by Broward County. Broward County was primarily responsible for the construction of the Panthers’ arena, and as a result gets to look at the books of the organization. According to the county auditor, the organization made $117.4 million in profit between 1998 and 2012.

How does a team losing $7.5 million per season rack up profits in excess of $100 million? There are a few reasons, and to find them we need to dig a little.

The Panthers play in BB&T Center. The arena was built for $191 million and opened in 1998, it was financed through bonds issued by the County and repaid through a combination of tax and arena revenues. The County then inked a 30-year operating agreement with Panthers Hockey LLLP (now known as Sunrise Sports & Entertainment, or SSE).

As part of the agreement, SSE essentially controls the arena. They host 41 regular season home games (plus playoff games and any special/pre-season games), and between 70-100 other events in a calendar year. The county receives revenue sharing only if the Panthers organization hits a certain profit level, which was previously pegged at $12 million in a year.

The 2010 auditor’s report, which is available at the county website, shows a company that averaged $9.9 million per fiscal year between 1999 and 2008 (discounting the 2004-05 lockout year, for a moment). Those revenues dipped to just a hair over $1 million in 2005, the year of the NHL lockout. Interestingly, 2005 – due to the lockout – is the one year where Forbes doesn’t provide an estimate that shows the Panthers losing money, and it’s the lowest revenue-generating year the auditor records.

That’s either an incredibly interesting coincidence, or evidence that the Panthers themselves help make the arena as profitable as it is.

Looking at the Panthers numbers, I think two things stand out:

1. NHL teams are gateways to favourable arena deals, and thus greater revenue.Sunrise Sports & Entertainment would never have received their current sweetheart deal with Broward County without the Panthers. Even in a year where the Panthers lose money, owning the team allows SSE to make profits overall, thanks to their arena deal and the non-hockey events they collect revenue from as a result.

2. Hockey-related revenue is defined in such a way so as to maximize the appearance of losses on the hockey side. I expected to see that the Panthers were making good money on their arena deal; I was surprised to find that what was far and away their worst fiscal year coincided with the NHL lockout. If the Panthers were losing money but the arena business was profitable, we would not expect to see a major drop in SSE revenue in 2005; instead we saw a significant dip. (Note: judging by the email commentary I’ve received, this point is being missed by many readers. If the Panthers were acting as a drag on revenue, the 2005 lockout year should have been quite profitable for SSE; instead it was easily their worst fiscal year of the decade – JW.)

Perhaps I should not have been surprised, because hockey-related revenue is defined in such a way as to show losses: owners have generous deduction allowances – in some cases, as with television broadcasts, the owners can deduct up to 100 percent of revenues as a “direct cost” – and certain forms of revenue (including many of the government subsidies teams receive) are not included in the calculation.

The bottom line is that the Panthers’ current ownership did not get into hockey to lose money, and according to the county auditor they haven’t lost money. Florida, commonly presented as one of the league’s have-not teams, and an example of the dangers of over-expansion, is nothing of the sort: it’s a healthy business, carefully presented to appear like a money-losing operation.

Unfortunately, it is impossible to know what the situation is in other NHL cities. NHL teams are private companies, and have no obligation to divulge their financial data. But the fact that the Panthers are seen as one of the poorest clubs in the league suggests that the vast majority of NHL teams are doing just fine.

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Excellent article! And it proves exactly what I and others have been saying - that NHL owners are being dishonest about their true financial situation. I believe Florida is just one example of how some teams are pretending to lose money while actually making a lot of money, banking on fan gullibility to help them win the PR war.

EDIT: You know what, that's actually the best case AGAINST team revenue sharing that I've seen. No wonder the NHL wants to create a committee to decide which teams get the team revenue sharing money, because they would likely know which teams are actually losing money as opposed to which ones just claim to be.

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That would explain why Forbes values even the worst handful of teams in the NHL in the range of a billion dollars.

The contradictions from the ownership position have been obvious - and patronizing.

The NHL is losing a lot of money in this lockout - and imo, Bettman just pulled one of his patented bluffs.

If I were the NHLPA I sure as hell would not fold at this point - and as a fan, there is nothing I'd like to see less than Bettman vindicated for his go-to lockout powerplay style of 'negotiation'.

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People keep saying that and I'm curious, where did this idea come from? What kind of business model allows an owner to personally take home more than all of their employees collectively? None that I've ever heard of.

A Google search can illustrate the point that the players' collective percentage is not completely out of line with other industries so heavily dependent on people, especially people with highly specialized skills, rather than physical products.

Source: http://smallbusiness...roll-18985.html

Source: http://secondwindcon...ted-to-payroll/

And remember, those percentages are based on gross revenue, meaning all revenue before other costs are deducted. The NHL doesn't pay the players' percentage against gross revenue, but an artificially constructed number known as HRR which is certain revenue MINUS certain allowed deductions.

According to a 2008 study,

Source: http://www.shrm.org/...ingExpense.aspx

Source: http://www.ehow.com/...ross-sales.html

And of course the most fair comparison is with other professional sports leagues.

Source: http://espn.go.com/b...ng-a-la-nba-nfl

So, yes, they are all disgusting overpaid when compared to what other people get for doing work far more valuable. (Most firefighters are volunteers after all.) But can we please stop promoting the false idea that the players are somehow taking advantage of the hapless owners by insisting that, as the employees and product of the business, they get a decent percentage of the HRR?

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