RickJay, that was easily one of the best posts I’ve read on this board. I’m not even a hockey fan and the way you wrote that was both fascinating and completely understandable. It’s a shame there isn’t more mainstream sports journalism so well written. Thank you!
Rickjay, are the Dallas Stars really hurting that bad? Or is it more Tom Hicks? The Stars seem to be the one of the few teams, along with the Kings and perhaps the Ducks, that can succeed in the Sun Belt.
I agree. Every time I hear about the latest developments in the Coyotes situation (which is every day, as I live in a “hockey mecca”), I wish somebody could explain it to me clearly from the beginning. Thanks a lot, Rick, that was perfect.
Yes, it’s Hicks. I’ve no doubt the Stars can do fine in Dallas, which has a dedicated fanbase.
But in pro sports, ownership’s everything. There is no reason the Expos could not have succeeded in Montreal; there’s no reason the Colts had to move to Indianapolis. There’s no reason the Browns had to move to Baltimore. There’s no reason the Sonics had to move to Oklahoma City. The Ottawa Senators’ problems were purely the result of ownership, solved when a new owner was found.
You can have lots of potential customers, but if a business is badly run, it’s badly run.
Oh, and thank you for the kind words, all. I didn’t think I did a great job reiterating the original facts. I’d have done better with some more time.
Hmm… that’s very intersting and clear. Jim Balsillie, can you explain a bit more about Jim Balsillie?
There isn’t a lot to tell you. He is the majordomo, and one of the original owners, of RIM and sells BlackBerrys by the zillion. He is preposterously rich, a billionaire several times over and one of the ten richest men in Canada, and RIM’s profits don’t look like they’re going away anytime soon so he’s just getting richer. (the much-publicized patent lawsuits you read about are considered by RIM to be nothing more than an irritating cost of doing business; they grow every year by absurd levels.)
Everything RIM does is known to Balsillie; he is the unquestioned master of his vast domain no matter what the organization chart says. One of the reasons RIM does very little outsourcing - they don’t even outsource tech support - is that Balsillie wants everything done his way, done right, and subject to his personal scrutiny. His employees are extremely loyal to him and the company, and he hires them by the truckload. RIM’s primary quality and process concern is that they literally cannot hire people fast enough to get the work done. So Balsillie is really, really, really, really rich, and getting richer.
Balsillie is a Type A, A, A, A personality, the kind of guy who seems limitlessly possessed of energy and ambition, who will work 14-hour days and somehow still find time to coach his kid’s sports teams (which he does.) He’s also a fanatic athlete and hockey fan. He considers owning a hockey team In Canada to be the pinnacle of human achievement and he will not stop trying until he gets one.
The saga continues…
Ice Edge (the lowball bidder) has pulled out. So now it’s just the NHL and Balsillie fighting for the team’s fate. Balsillie also jacked his bid up to 242.5 million, which I think is a smart move considering he must have more money than God.
Odd bit from the article:
Huh? Like, excuse me? Hi there, I’m going to buy this broke-ass hockey team and you the city are going to give me 23 million dollars a year to keep it here. I take cash or credit. Thanks!
Is this how the world of pro sports franchises actually works? Cities paying millions of dollars to a hockey team so that it can continue to lose money while the guy who makes a bid that is 100 million dollars higher than any other gets told to piss off? Balsillie is offering to take this whole mess off the city’s hands, move the team to where it can actually make some money and pay off the main creditor. But the NHL doesn’t like him because he’s trying to “muscle” his way into a franchise ownership. I still don’t quite grasp what principle the NHL is operating under where keeping a dying franchise in a city that has no interest in hockey is more important than selling it off immediately to the guy crazy enough to offer 100 million dollars more than everyone else thinks it’s worth!
I think this was mentioned above, but most people think it’s not really about keeping a team in Phoenix. The real issue is they want Hamilton for an expansion team. That’s because all the owners make money on an expansion team. They don’t make any money when a team moves in most cases. In this case they are trying to add a “moving fee” so that all the owners will make money on this move.
Phoenix has problems partly because they have been a non-playoff team for a long while. Except in rare cases such as the Cubs, teams ticket sales are very dependent on winning.
As an aside to this excellent thread, what is the standing of Tom Hicks and George Gillett as NHL owners? I ask as a football fan - the pair bought Liverpool FC a few years ago and are widely perceived to have fucked things up beyond all expectation. Whether they actually have is another matter, but it is a fact that they have received death threats and are unable to attend matches in Liverpool for their own personal safety. Are they incompetent in the NHL?
I don’t know about Hicks, but Gillett was rather well respected as owner of the Canadiens, largely because he was pretty hands-off. There was a lot of grumbling when an American bought the team (the only thing worse would have been a Torontonian! :P), but I think Montreal was satisfied with being able to keep being themselves. Gillett attended a lot of games, and I don’t recall hearing anything about death threats or anything else of the sort. There is, of course, a lot of bitching because the Habs didn’t win the Stanley Cup with Gillett as owner, but they didn’t win in the previous 8 years either!
Other than a few technicalities left to deal with, the team has been sold to the Molson brothers, along with the Bell Centre and the Gillett Entertainment Group for about $550 million.
Possibly. But they’ve turned Hamilton down before. And the NHL themselves have said they’ll move the Coyotes if things don’t turn around - Hamilton likely would not be their first choice, but one never knows.
What has become a critical issue here, irrespective of Balsillie’s financial means or the suitability of Phoenix as a market, is the right of a sports league to determine who its owners will be. All major North American leagues hold as inviolate the notion that they are a club by invitation only and that they have the total right to accept or deny membership. That’s why the NBA, NFL and Major League Baseball have all sent in their own lawyers in support of the NHL; they don’t want the precedent to be set that someone can force their way in to a pro sports league.
Neither the Canadiens nor the Stars are doing too well at the moment, but the problems have more been at the GM level. The owners aren’t perceived to be meddling too much.
Something else that was brought to my attention from my hockey-loving Canadian friends, is that if the team gets moved to Hamilton, it’s basically guaranteed to begin generating a profit. While we all agree that’s a “good thing”, the NHL’s CBA has language in it that ties the Salary cap, as well as the Salary floor, to league revenues. I grant that this was all being explained to me from the standpoint of a cynical and jaded Leafs fan, but the idea put across is that the owners want to keep the status quo simply because they don’t want to be forced to spend any more on their clubs than the absolute minimum (the Salary floor). I’m not sure how many teams meet the floor and nothing higher, and how many approach the cap, but I’m willing to wager that more teams are closer to the floor than to the cap.
Thank you! This was the part that I wasn’t getting, the reason why Balsillie’s buckets of money are doing nothing but pissing people off. I guess there really are some things that money can’t buy.
If you want to know which teams are close to the cap and which are not this is a very good site
It also has the salary for every player in the league. And it has future salaries for as long as their contract lasts. It even includes amounts for players who were bought out.
Is Balsillie pronounced “Balls, silly”? Because if anyone has been wondering what this guy has got between his legs… he just offered the city of Glendale $50 million free and clear if they’ll keep quiet about him moving the team. The other bidder wanted the city to pay them 23 million a year!
The whole thing is rather insane, isn’t it? $100M more than the NHL is offering, money to all the creditors, and a near guarantee that this team will fill the stadium and rake in boatloads of money, and that isn’t ok? The NHL doesn’t want a successful team? It’s crazy.
I so want Balsillie to win this, just because he’s clearly so much more awesome than Bettman!
It gets even more bizarre. The coach isn’t showing up to training camp.
That whole Westgate complex is a disaster. “Let’s build the ugliest stadium in history and put it in the asshole of nowhere where no one wants to go.” The only time I’ve ever been there the place was a ghost town. We saw maybe 20 other patrons there and for those that don’t know, this is a place that’s more or less supposed to be an entire miniature city, with stadiums, condos, bars, hotels, restaurants, shops, etc.
Edit: The ugliest stadium in history. That thing is a pox on our landscape. I can see it when I climb the mountain behind my house and it makes me want to spit every time.
RickJay & others, have their been any developments, updates, etc worth mentioning? The NHL season is right around the corner and Phoenix is still in the league at the moment, though I suspect that the odds on them winning the Stanley Cup are longer than they are for the Detroit Lions to win the Super Bowl.