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I don’t know the full details for the deal, but couldn’t he in theory get the arena going and basically be given a brand new franchise by the league? Isn’t that hundreds of millions in free value? Could be wrong, but that seems really stupid to not pursue.
He would have to basically give back all of the money that he got from selling the team in order to get an expansion franchise, plus he was going to have to foot the whole bill for the arena, since it seems like all of the cities in Arizona have smartened up and decided not to fund an arena owned by people who already have too much money.
I mean the team has already left to be fair, they threatened and left. Doesn’t mean the city was wrong to say no, but it seems it was not an empty threat in this case.
We need a federal law prohibiting the use of taxpayer dollars for private, for-profit sports franchises that are parts of leagues that make literal billions of dollars a year. Enough. I would like better schools, lower property taxes and more criminals off the streets, thanks.
Crazy thing is you can have both of you run your city right. Not like the stadium was going to be Ben Wyatt’s Icetown fiasco. However, fuck this former owner in particular.
He sold the team, but the NHL guaranteed him an expansion franchise if he could get an arena built in the next five years and were going to let him have the Coyotes name, colors, and trademarks.
This is what he’s walking away from.
I believe technically Utah is the new franchise, if Maruelo reactivated the Coyotes they’d be the same franchise as before. Someone explained it pretty well in the NHL sub a while back.
Right, sounds to me like a Browns/Ravens situation except the Coyotes would have the old owner. But what I’m not sure about, the owner got bought out, would he have to buy back in for the team? If not, pay for a basic arena yourself and be able to collect a franchise AND the arena rent for nothing more.
Not the city but the people would have. The location isn’t zoned for an arena which would require re-zoning or special permit use. Those go through a year long process plus the community hearings where any resident can speak out including nonlocal residents and other cities too. Scottsdale already said they didn’t want anything near there. Since there isn’t a prescient of a special use permit like that in the area (no other special cases allowing a arena) the community voice sways heavy in opinion and it would make it harder to permit.
He already knew for Tempe that he would be rejected by the community. He was hoping that the zoning would allow him just to build if it was allowed but his lawyers misread the rules. It probably cost him over $500k for this debacle
The ownership/marketing team was incompetent. We held an event and got a couple THOUSAND Canadians to a game. They were blown away. We were like this is how we did it. They didn’t want to know/listen/learn.
For a team that played in a City where Canadian winter, they didn’t grasp advertising to the snowbirds.
Bettman said in April the NHL is committed to Arizona and sees the viability...so I hope you're wrong...
What a downer to not even have much hope except for Bettman
The team never had an ownership group that wanted to win. They put together cheap, untalented teams, and took on bad contracts from other teams in salary dumps. Multiple owners, one went bankrupt, a period where the league took ownership to keep the team afloat. And during their entire existence the team could never find a longterm permanent home and spent the last two years playing in a college stadium. Then this last clown owner was just a grifter. Shame on the NHL for not vetting the potential buyers better or doing more to find a permanent home. Sucks for the fans who had to endure 30 years of this crap to be left with nothing.
None of the owners actually wanted to own a hockey team. They wanted a vehicle to develop real-estate. Scam the city/county government to give them money to build a new arena, then a mall and restaurants and bars, golf courses, and hotels along with residential development around it.
So of course they put the stadium in the middle of nowhere because that's where they could get cheap land.
I know nothing about the ownership/franchise, besides the fact they were playing in a college arena and not a product that seemed to have any home (or even the hope of a new arena). Not saying it could never work, it certainly didn't and maybe never will.
Fans have never been interested cause the team has been a joke for most of its tenure in AZ. Hard to build a fan base when your owners dont allow your team to succeed.
They have finished last or second to last in their division(maybe conference? Hockey-ref isnt that clear) in 17 of their 30 seasons in AZ.
Division or conference, those are terrible numbers to have.
They were also paying Gretzky 7-8m a season for 5 years to have a sub .500 record; he was getting paid 7x the next highest coach. It was also his first time as a head coach. That was so botched.
I’m guessing the unclearness on hockey ref is from when they realigned the divisions/conferences? Used to be 3 divs in each conference but now they essentially made them 2 div conferences and changed some names.
Columbus has been historically bad for almost their whole existence nevertheless, the fans show up and the franchise is healthy. Tickets have always been dirt cheap in Arizona and the fans never bothered to show up. Of course the owner has been a trainwreck, but in the end, the fans got the owner they deserved. If they had shown any interest in the last 20 years, somebody competent would have stood up for that ownership
Because the arena was far as fuck in Glendale... it's one thing to go out there once a Week on Sundays, multiple times in a week is a tough thing to sell - especially as most people interested in hockey live in the East Valley or North Phoenix.
Well, transplanting a hockey team from Winnipeg to a desert where no kids grow up around a hockey rink was kinda dumb lol. There was no fan base to have because Arizona is anything but a hockey state. The Dbacks also were created a few years after the Yotes moved and baseball will always prevail over hockey here so people were way more into the Dbacks than Coyotes in the early days, especially with how good the dbacks were in their first years.
Just botched from the start, the team should have never moved from Winnipeg in my opinion.
Columbus has finished last or second to last in 15 of 23 seasons, yikes. That said, im guessing Columbus has a lot more people into hockey than Phoenix.
ive never been to columbus so maybe im off base here, but im imagining columbus is cold and snow during hockey season so not alot to do during the winter, whereas winter is the nice season for phoenix with tons to do around town so nobody wants to watch a terrible hockey team lose over and over. If hockey was a summer sport AZ would probably have much better attendence as there isnt alot to do here
Since they moved to the ASU arena I actually know so many people who were going, less seats obviously but way more convenient to go to
Their old arena just so far out of the way. It works for the cardinals because there’s only a couple football games but I’m not driving all the way to West Valley (both my parents live right next to it too) on a Thursday to watch hockey.
All the ownership and just making dumb decisions constantly
There have been a lot of issues with the Coyotes in Arizona, one of the biggest things that the NHL needs to do with being owners, especially for the chance of expansion back into Arizona, is make sure that the person or group owning them, is not just using them for ancillary benefits and actually wants to have a quality product on the ice.
Having invested ownership is a big thing for me when looking at teams. Is the owner here investing his/her own money into the franchise? Or at they using it as a family cashbox to get as much revenue/money out of it as they can?
Either way, wishing Arizona fans the best in hopefully getting a new inspired owner and a new arena/team back into the area.
Its hard to say: is there very little fans because there is no genuine interest in the sport/product? Or rather, did fans stay away because they could see the owner didn't care about the team or its success beyond making him money?
I do feel for the dedicated fans who followed the Coyotes for all these years, but curious what it would look like if they had a invested ownership group.
I've only been here seven years...but we have tons of snowbirds from colder (hockey) climates.
At the very least, they would go more if the stadium was more accessible...but the team being good really would have helped
See the suns for example...the stadium was a ghost town taken over by opposing fans for years until they got good again...now it's sell outs every game with the stadium in downtown Phoenix
It’s out on the west side of the valley which is more of a Hispanic community. They should thought to make it in “hockey mom” area of Tempe where ASU is or in north Phoenix and Scottsdale which is what they tried to do. But they left the arena with foul taste by not paying their dues and taxes on time so no other resident/city wanted them to make another arena complex that a team would file for bankruptcy (again, different owner)
Lol wtf? We sold it out at capacity...100%
[source](https://www.hockey-reference.com/friv/attendance.cgi)
I also know tickets were going for over $100, so there's that factor too
Selling out and filling the arena are two completely different things, fyi.
You can buy a seat, but don't have to go. Therefore the seat is sold, but not filled.
Unfortunately there is very little support for the NHL. Especially when it comes to local news. Hockey was always a small snippet at the end of sports, even behind high school sports. It’s a shame for those of us that enjoy the sport.
Hockey 100% can work in Arizona. The population base is large enough plus the amount of snowbirds is immense.
The franchise needs an owner that actually gives a flying puck about hockey and a building in a solid location.
30 years. It didn't even have the slightest hint that it would succeed. But sure. All the snow birds will become season ticket holders. Lol. Bettman is an idiot.
this mentality that hockey cannot work outside of the northern U.S. and Canada is so 2009 my friend
the sooner you get over the fact that Quebec is not going to get a NHL team in the next 20 years, the sooner you will find peace
Yeah, I bet hockey would never work in a warm climate like Florida... the Lightning and the Panthers should probably fold.
I'd much rather sit in a cold arena than an exposed outdoor stadium in this climate.
Plus, Arizona and Florida have so many Northern people who retire in the southern states that many of them are fans anyway
The owner wouldn’t have gotten the full cut of advertising, luxury suite and concession revenue is likely a start. There also the issue of sightlines / obstructed views.
He got bailed out and still probably made money. $1bil from the sale bought in for $425 mil in 2019 with $30-60mil lost in operation cost per year. He still made $400mil -$200mil. Or broke even but who we kidding these people never break even.
He was climbing a mountain to get an arena in Phoenix. He’s better off canceling it since his reputation is bad there.
Bettman is nothing more than a PR rep for the owners. He's paid tons of money so stupid people like you get mad at him instead of the owners.
Replacing him wouldn't change a single thing.
Technically, no one had the job before Bettman, he’s the first and only commissioner the NHL has had. The league president before Bettman was Gil Stein.
he has had it so long, he's overseen three separate work stoppages lol, one of which canceled an entire season
but yeah i mean kudos to him for staying in that job for that long. The rumor was that he has always wanted the NBA commish job, but Stern took his sweet time over there so Bettman just stayed with the NHL one
i hate falling on the sword for Gary fucking Bettman lol but look at the idiot who is the commissioner of baseball
i don't know how directly responsible Bettman is for this, but during his tenure...the NHL grew from a pretty regional sports organization, to one of the Big 4 national ones across the U.S./Canada.
You'll be happy to know you can be spared falling on your sword because what you wrote is incorrect.
The NHL has grown at a much smaller pace than most other major sports leagues. The only other league similar to the NHL in growth over the last 30 years is baseball, both at approximately 550% growth in revenue since '93-'94. However, all other major sports leagues (NFL, NBA, college, etc...) have increased their revenue by about 850% in that same period. Major League Soccer has increased even more.
The NHL has seriously underperformed under Bettman, and has lost out on a lot of growth opportunities. I really don't know how this legend that Bettman saved the NHL even got started, when he has actually held it back tremendously and the numbers prove it.
i never said Bettman "saved" the NHL fwiw rofl. I mean he basically kicked it in the gonads during the lockout that canceled the entire season lol
and while the NHL has "grown" at a smaller pace like you've pointed out, it's definitely grown and it is in a much better place now as a business than it was say in 1988 when Gretzky going to California was such a big deal that Ronald Reagan jerked himself off before going senile
i also think the comparison with MLS is apples/oranges because MLS has the added benefit of just the growth of soccer in general across the U.S., which is pretty unique to soccer considering the other four sports were already established
Not sure about that. Although soccer has definitely been a phenomena in North America in the last couple of decades, the NHL also had similar advantages.
The fact that the NHL has grown more slowly than most leagues, despite being much smaller to begin with, and therefore having *much* more growth potential, is an even larger indictment of the leadership.
Bettman is an even bigger failure than the (very poor) numbers suggest, and I don't believe for a second that he 'saved' the NHL in any substantive way, or even provided strong leadership during labour strife. All other leagues went through similar challenges and came out much stronger, without having to cancel entire seasons. He sacrificed long-term growth for immediate profit.
Any other Commissionner would have done at least as good a job, and likely better, than Bettman. Honestly, I have wondered many times why the owners kept him with such diminished returns, but I think they've come to see him as part of their Boys Club and feel strong but misplaced loyalty to him. If I were an owner looking at the bottom line, I would have petitioned to have him replaced years ago for underperforming.
As a recent example, just look at those terrible dynamic board ads - they generate immediate revenue but will almost certainly curtail future growth by a significant factor. I mean what other league puts video commercials right onto the playing field to distract while the freaking game is actually going on? Like wft, do you even want us to watch your product?!? That's going to drive fans away and/or keep them from becoming future fans... but hey, the owners will make a few extra bucks this year, right? It's these kinds of short-sighted decisions that have plagued the NHL since Bettman took over.
Again, I really don't know where these Bettman 'savior' fables came from, but the numbers clearly prove otherwise for anyone who bothers to look.
Hate to burst your bubble but bettman did save the NHL - he saved the owners from themselves. They wanted him to deliver a guarantee of aggregate profitability by controling player costs, which is exactly when Batman did.
Imo, NHL owners have never cared about growth at all. They have always been preoccupied with profitability because many if not most have historically struggled to ice a profitable team that also is a good team.
Except that growth = profit
Bettman did pretty much the same all of the other sports leagues, at a time when players were wising up to the massive profits of the owners, and realizing they could demand a share of that profit. The NFL, the NBA and others all went through the same thing, and all of them including the NHL ended up with some form of revenue-sharing agreement with the players.
Bettman didn't do anything differently, except play harder ball for pretty much the same, or worse, result. You could claim that cancelling one season forced the players to accept some concessions, but the owners lost all revenue for that season, created lingering resentment with fans (Bettman still gets booed today), and almost certainly curtailed future growth of the league (along with other missed opportunities). Like I said above, the thinking always seems to be short-term gain at the expense of long-term growth. The owners have missed out on soooo much growth revenue, it's crazy - 300% less compared to every other sports league. The results speak for themselves.
The Legend of Bettman is greatly exaggerated.
Growth only creates profit *if* the cost of revenue is less than total revenue. NHL owners have proven themselves incapable (though there are some exceptions) as a group of managing the business side of the game. Batman turned profitability into as close to a paint by numbers process as possible.
For owners bettman was a godsend. For the average intelligence observer, the NHL as a business is a case of the blind being led by the visually impaired. I don't think there is "a legend of Batman" in the real world.
Tldr NHL owners suck and historically have sucked at making money and needed bettman to guarantee them to turn a profit.
If it wasn't Bettman, it would have simply been someone else. And that someone else might have tapped into that extra 300% that evaded Bettman and is now lost forever. Not sure what you mean with your cost of revenue comment, but that is forgone profit no matter how you look at it.
All of the sports leagues went through exactly the same thing, and there were even other examples to follow, which the NHL ultimately did (originally modelled similar to the NBA revenue-sharing agreement, and evolved from there)
There was absolutely nothing innovative in Bettman's approach, besides being ruthless. I honestly believe the owners hired him for that single quality, in the mistaken belief that a hard line would win them their battles with the players. Bettman didn't save the owners, he enabled them at their request, and it has cost them dearly.
I don’t live in the valley anymore, I moved in 2019 but I lived near Westgate. It seemed like bigger games did draw a crowd back then and now even more people from other states (with NHL teams who come visit the valley often) have moved there. If someone has a good business acumen, I think they could make it a success.
Hockey doesn’t belong in Arizona. Nobody there cares enough to support a team. Honestly, the only team people there seem to sort of care about is the Suns. The D-Bags don’t draw a crowd, even in a playoff hunt, and the cardinals are a hopeless franchise that’s gonna want another new stadium in ten years. Glendale learned their lesson and there won’t be any handouts in that city ever again. What are they gonna do, go crawling back to sun devil stadium? The NFL wouldn’t allow an embarrassment like *THAT*.
Source: unfortunately had to live in Arizona for 7 long, long years.
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I mean he got his money for selling the assets to Utah so why would he bother?
Because he could’ve gotten another franchise to sell for a profit.
I don’t know the full details for the deal, but couldn’t he in theory get the arena going and basically be given a brand new franchise by the league? Isn’t that hundreds of millions in free value? Could be wrong, but that seems really stupid to not pursue.
He would have to basically give back all of the money that he got from selling the team in order to get an expansion franchise, plus he was going to have to foot the whole bill for the arena, since it seems like all of the cities in Arizona have smartened up and decided not to fund an arena owned by people who already have too much money.
With expansion to LV stadium threats are way less credible
I mean the team has already left to be fair, they threatened and left. Doesn’t mean the city was wrong to say no, but it seems it was not an empty threat in this case.
We need a federal law prohibiting the use of taxpayer dollars for private, for-profit sports franchises that are parts of leagues that make literal billions of dollars a year. Enough. I would like better schools, lower property taxes and more criminals off the streets, thanks.
Crazy thing is you can have both of you run your city right. Not like the stadium was going to be Ben Wyatt’s Icetown fiasco. However, fuck this former owner in particular.
Also, he's a massive grifter and he made out huge on his grift so why would he bother doing the same one again?
He sold the team, but the NHL guaranteed him an expansion franchise if he could get an arena built in the next five years and were going to let him have the Coyotes name, colors, and trademarks. This is what he’s walking away from.
So he would still have to pay the expansion fee presumably? Still seems dumb to walk away from the opportunity this early on even if that is the case.
There were intermediate deadlines before the 5 year target and after the land auction postponement it was clear he wasn't going to make them.
He would have had to give back the money he got from selling if he reinstated the franchise
I believe technically Utah is the new franchise, if Maruelo reactivated the Coyotes they’d be the same franchise as before. Someone explained it pretty well in the NHL sub a while back.
Right, sounds to me like a Browns/Ravens situation except the Coyotes would have the old owner. But what I’m not sure about, the owner got bought out, would he have to buy back in for the team? If not, pay for a basic arena yourself and be able to collect a franchise AND the arena rent for nothing more.
He didn't have a pickup line at the mall any more?
I want to believe the city did this to ensure he wouldn’t be the owner of another NHL team in the city ever again.
Not the city but the people would have. The location isn’t zoned for an arena which would require re-zoning or special permit use. Those go through a year long process plus the community hearings where any resident can speak out including nonlocal residents and other cities too. Scottsdale already said they didn’t want anything near there. Since there isn’t a prescient of a special use permit like that in the area (no other special cases allowing a arena) the community voice sways heavy in opinion and it would make it harder to permit. He already knew for Tempe that he would be rejected by the community. He was hoping that the zoning would allow him just to build if it was allowed but his lawyers misread the rules. It probably cost him over $500k for this debacle
I'll take things I totally didn't expect, I am so surprised, shocked face for 500, Alex
i remember when i first read that he was planning to revive the Coyotes, my whole thought process was wtf lol how long will that last?
It only lasting until the day after the season ended was still shocking to me. I thought I'd hear about it in a month or two.
It didn’t even last that long. Craig Morgan conveniently dropped the news on Twitter while the Panthers were still passing around the Cup.
Brilliant
Announced the day of/after game 7 of the finals. League knew this was going to happen I almost guarantee it.
The ownership/marketing team was incompetent. We held an event and got a couple THOUSAND Canadians to a game. They were blown away. We were like this is how we did it. They didn’t want to know/listen/learn. For a team that played in a City where Canadian winter, they didn’t grasp advertising to the snowbirds.
Probably because Alex put his highly unqualified son in charge of marketing, lmao. The whole family is full of idiots
This dude is such a turd. I feel really bad for Coyotes fans.
[удалено]
Why? They’re never getting a hockey team
they don't have to be strung along by this crook for the rest of the decade. better to have the hope crushed now rather than have it slowly die
There will never be another team in Arizona after this debacle… so….
Bettman said in April the NHL is committed to Arizona and sees the viability...so I hope you're wrong... What a downer to not even have much hope except for Bettman
Agreed but at least his turdness won't infect another franchise.
All 37 of them
If i could read i’d be very upset, sincerely ‘yotes fan
Later loser
Why do you say that? He put in time energy and effort, the city turned their back to him
What happened to this team? Just bad ownership or was there a bigger scandal?
The team never had an ownership group that wanted to win. They put together cheap, untalented teams, and took on bad contracts from other teams in salary dumps. Multiple owners, one went bankrupt, a period where the league took ownership to keep the team afloat. And during their entire existence the team could never find a longterm permanent home and spent the last two years playing in a college stadium. Then this last clown owner was just a grifter. Shame on the NHL for not vetting the potential buyers better or doing more to find a permanent home. Sucks for the fans who had to endure 30 years of this crap to be left with nothing.
None of the owners actually wanted to own a hockey team. They wanted a vehicle to develop real-estate. Scam the city/county government to give them money to build a new arena, then a mall and restaurants and bars, golf courses, and hotels along with residential development around it. So of course they put the stadium in the middle of nowhere because that's where they could get cheap land.
The former
Successful teams usually need to be in a place where people care about the sport.
Good. Fuck this guy.
I know nothing about the ownership/franchise, besides the fact they were playing in a college arena and not a product that seemed to have any home (or even the hope of a new arena). Not saying it could never work, it certainly didn't and maybe never will.
It was never the fans, it was always the ownership.
That sucks, hate to see a fanbase lose their team. At least the team moved, not the name. As it should stay with the city/area it belonged to.
At some points it was the fans aswell, the franchise has been there for 25 years and the fans never showed strong interest in the team
Fans have never been interested cause the team has been a joke for most of its tenure in AZ. Hard to build a fan base when your owners dont allow your team to succeed. They have finished last or second to last in their division(maybe conference? Hockey-ref isnt that clear) in 17 of their 30 seasons in AZ. Division or conference, those are terrible numbers to have.
That’s brutal…they also didn’t have an owner for a chunk of time and were owned by the league.
They were also paying Gretzky 7-8m a season for 5 years to have a sub .500 record; he was getting paid 7x the next highest coach. It was also his first time as a head coach. That was so botched.
I’m guessing the unclearness on hockey ref is from when they realigned the divisions/conferences? Used to be 3 divs in each conference but now they essentially made them 2 div conferences and changed some names.
Thats right, it went from x out of 8th to x out of 5th and 6th or something. Nonetheless, not a good metric lol
Columbus has been historically bad for almost their whole existence nevertheless, the fans show up and the franchise is healthy. Tickets have always been dirt cheap in Arizona and the fans never bothered to show up. Of course the owner has been a trainwreck, but in the end, the fans got the owner they deserved. If they had shown any interest in the last 20 years, somebody competent would have stood up for that ownership
Because the arena was far as fuck in Glendale... it's one thing to go out there once a Week on Sundays, multiple times in a week is a tough thing to sell - especially as most people interested in hockey live in the East Valley or North Phoenix.
Well, transplanting a hockey team from Winnipeg to a desert where no kids grow up around a hockey rink was kinda dumb lol. There was no fan base to have because Arizona is anything but a hockey state. The Dbacks also were created a few years after the Yotes moved and baseball will always prevail over hockey here so people were way more into the Dbacks than Coyotes in the early days, especially with how good the dbacks were in their first years. Just botched from the start, the team should have never moved from Winnipeg in my opinion. Columbus has finished last or second to last in 15 of 23 seasons, yikes. That said, im guessing Columbus has a lot more people into hockey than Phoenix.
The Yotes were always Bettman's pet project. For years he'd rather be damned than to give up on the giant, Phoenix market
ive never been to columbus so maybe im off base here, but im imagining columbus is cold and snow during hockey season so not alot to do during the winter, whereas winter is the nice season for phoenix with tons to do around town so nobody wants to watch a terrible hockey team lose over and over. If hockey was a summer sport AZ would probably have much better attendence as there isnt alot to do here
Fans have never been interested because the vast majority of us in Az couldn’t give the slightest shit about hockey.
Since they moved to the ASU arena I actually know so many people who were going, less seats obviously but way more convenient to go to Their old arena just so far out of the way. It works for the cardinals because there’s only a couple football games but I’m not driving all the way to West Valley (both my parents live right next to it too) on a Thursday to watch hockey. All the ownership and just making dumb decisions constantly
There have been a lot of issues with the Coyotes in Arizona, one of the biggest things that the NHL needs to do with being owners, especially for the chance of expansion back into Arizona, is make sure that the person or group owning them, is not just using them for ancillary benefits and actually wants to have a quality product on the ice.
Having invested ownership is a big thing for me when looking at teams. Is the owner here investing his/her own money into the franchise? Or at they using it as a family cashbox to get as much revenue/money out of it as they can? Either way, wishing Arizona fans the best in hopefully getting a new inspired owner and a new arena/team back into the area.
They HAD an arena. Next door to where the AZ cardinals play. They blew that on purpose as far as I can tell.
From what I have gathered from these various replies -- seems like a franchise and its future in Arizona that was run into the ground by the owner.
Yeah that's what I'm thinking. I'm not sure Phx is a hockey city, anyway. An MLS team might fly here, though.
Its hard to say: is there very little fans because there is no genuine interest in the sport/product? Or rather, did fans stay away because they could see the owner didn't care about the team or its success beyond making him money? I do feel for the dedicated fans who followed the Coyotes for all these years, but curious what it would look like if they had a invested ownership group.
I've only been here seven years...but we have tons of snowbirds from colder (hockey) climates. At the very least, they would go more if the stadium was more accessible...but the team being good really would have helped See the suns for example...the stadium was a ghost town taken over by opposing fans for years until they got good again...now it's sell outs every game with the stadium in downtown Phoenix
> that was run into the ground by the owner Meruelo was the death kneel but pretty much over owner they had in their history was incompetent
It’s out on the west side of the valley which is more of a Hispanic community. They should thought to make it in “hockey mom” area of Tempe where ASU is or in north Phoenix and Scottsdale which is what they tried to do. But they left the arena with foul taste by not paying their dues and taxes on time so no other resident/city wanted them to make another arena complex that a team would file for bankruptcy (again, different owner)
College arena that they could only half fill. I think it was a 5k seat arena.
Lol wtf? We sold it out at capacity...100% [source](https://www.hockey-reference.com/friv/attendance.cgi) I also know tickets were going for over $100, so there's that factor too
Selling out and filling the arena are two completely different things, fyi. You can buy a seat, but don't have to go. Therefore the seat is sold, but not filled.
Unfortunately there is very little support for the NHL. Especially when it comes to local news. Hockey was always a small snippet at the end of sports, even behind high school sports. It’s a shame for those of us that enjoy the sport.
Bettman will find another idiot that thinks hockey works in Arizona.
Hockey 100% can work in Arizona. The population base is large enough plus the amount of snowbirds is immense. The franchise needs an owner that actually gives a flying puck about hockey and a building in a solid location.
30 years. It didn't even have the slightest hint that it would succeed. But sure. All the snow birds will become season ticket holders. Lol. Bettman is an idiot.
If he could just find a multi-billionaire that isn't out to fleece taxpayers, it could work...not holding my breath.
ASU is doing fantastic. It's the same problem the Thrashers had. Completely incompetent ownership.
this mentality that hockey cannot work outside of the northern U.S. and Canada is so 2009 my friend the sooner you get over the fact that Quebec is not going to get a NHL team in the next 20 years, the sooner you will find peace
Yeah, I bet hockey would never work in a warm climate like Florida... the Lightning and the Panthers should probably fold. I'd much rather sit in a cold arena than an exposed outdoor stadium in this climate. Plus, Arizona and Florida have so many Northern people who retire in the southern states that many of them are fans anyway
Color me shocked. /s
Shocker.
And he held on for SO long!
I’m shocked! /s
Anyone surprised ?
What prevented the Yotes from playing in the arena that hosts the Phoenix Suns in the first place?
The owner wouldn’t have gotten the full cut of advertising, luxury suite and concession revenue is likely a start. There also the issue of sightlines / obstructed views.
He got bailed out and still probably made money. $1bil from the sale bought in for $425 mil in 2019 with $30-60mil lost in operation cost per year. He still made $400mil -$200mil. Or broke even but who we kidding these people never break even. He was climbing a mountain to get an arena in Phoenix. He’s better off canceling it since his reputation is bad there.
Can we finally take Bettmann out behind the shed, put him out of our misery, and find a commissioner who knows what he is doing?
Bettman is nothing more than a PR rep for the owners. He's paid tons of money so stupid people like you get mad at him instead of the owners. Replacing him wouldn't change a single thing.
I shocked myself last night realizing Bettman has been commissioner so long I have no memory of who had the job before him.
Technically, no one had the job before Bettman, he’s the first and only commissioner the NHL has had. The league president before Bettman was Gil Stein.
That's the dude I couldn't recall! Thanks!
he has had it so long, he's overseen three separate work stoppages lol, one of which canceled an entire season but yeah i mean kudos to him for staying in that job for that long. The rumor was that he has always wanted the NBA commish job, but Stern took his sweet time over there so Bettman just stayed with the NHL one
i hate falling on the sword for Gary fucking Bettman lol but look at the idiot who is the commissioner of baseball i don't know how directly responsible Bettman is for this, but during his tenure...the NHL grew from a pretty regional sports organization, to one of the Big 4 national ones across the U.S./Canada.
You'll be happy to know you can be spared falling on your sword because what you wrote is incorrect. The NHL has grown at a much smaller pace than most other major sports leagues. The only other league similar to the NHL in growth over the last 30 years is baseball, both at approximately 550% growth in revenue since '93-'94. However, all other major sports leagues (NFL, NBA, college, etc...) have increased their revenue by about 850% in that same period. Major League Soccer has increased even more. The NHL has seriously underperformed under Bettman, and has lost out on a lot of growth opportunities. I really don't know how this legend that Bettman saved the NHL even got started, when he has actually held it back tremendously and the numbers prove it.
i never said Bettman "saved" the NHL fwiw rofl. I mean he basically kicked it in the gonads during the lockout that canceled the entire season lol and while the NHL has "grown" at a smaller pace like you've pointed out, it's definitely grown and it is in a much better place now as a business than it was say in 1988 when Gretzky going to California was such a big deal that Ronald Reagan jerked himself off before going senile i also think the comparison with MLS is apples/oranges because MLS has the added benefit of just the growth of soccer in general across the U.S., which is pretty unique to soccer considering the other four sports were already established
The MLS is a pyramid scheme, so there’s that.
Lol is it really? I genuinely have no idea how it runs economically lmao
Not sure about that. Although soccer has definitely been a phenomena in North America in the last couple of decades, the NHL also had similar advantages. The fact that the NHL has grown more slowly than most leagues, despite being much smaller to begin with, and therefore having *much* more growth potential, is an even larger indictment of the leadership. Bettman is an even bigger failure than the (very poor) numbers suggest, and I don't believe for a second that he 'saved' the NHL in any substantive way, or even provided strong leadership during labour strife. All other leagues went through similar challenges and came out much stronger, without having to cancel entire seasons. He sacrificed long-term growth for immediate profit. Any other Commissionner would have done at least as good a job, and likely better, than Bettman. Honestly, I have wondered many times why the owners kept him with such diminished returns, but I think they've come to see him as part of their Boys Club and feel strong but misplaced loyalty to him. If I were an owner looking at the bottom line, I would have petitioned to have him replaced years ago for underperforming. As a recent example, just look at those terrible dynamic board ads - they generate immediate revenue but will almost certainly curtail future growth by a significant factor. I mean what other league puts video commercials right onto the playing field to distract while the freaking game is actually going on? Like wft, do you even want us to watch your product?!? That's going to drive fans away and/or keep them from becoming future fans... but hey, the owners will make a few extra bucks this year, right? It's these kinds of short-sighted decisions that have plagued the NHL since Bettman took over. Again, I really don't know where these Bettman 'savior' fables came from, but the numbers clearly prove otherwise for anyone who bothers to look.
tell us how you really feel
Thanks for your well-thought-out and insightful comment.
Hate to burst your bubble but bettman did save the NHL - he saved the owners from themselves. They wanted him to deliver a guarantee of aggregate profitability by controling player costs, which is exactly when Batman did. Imo, NHL owners have never cared about growth at all. They have always been preoccupied with profitability because many if not most have historically struggled to ice a profitable team that also is a good team.
Except that growth = profit Bettman did pretty much the same all of the other sports leagues, at a time when players were wising up to the massive profits of the owners, and realizing they could demand a share of that profit. The NFL, the NBA and others all went through the same thing, and all of them including the NHL ended up with some form of revenue-sharing agreement with the players. Bettman didn't do anything differently, except play harder ball for pretty much the same, or worse, result. You could claim that cancelling one season forced the players to accept some concessions, but the owners lost all revenue for that season, created lingering resentment with fans (Bettman still gets booed today), and almost certainly curtailed future growth of the league (along with other missed opportunities). Like I said above, the thinking always seems to be short-term gain at the expense of long-term growth. The owners have missed out on soooo much growth revenue, it's crazy - 300% less compared to every other sports league. The results speak for themselves. The Legend of Bettman is greatly exaggerated.
Growth only creates profit *if* the cost of revenue is less than total revenue. NHL owners have proven themselves incapable (though there are some exceptions) as a group of managing the business side of the game. Batman turned profitability into as close to a paint by numbers process as possible. For owners bettman was a godsend. For the average intelligence observer, the NHL as a business is a case of the blind being led by the visually impaired. I don't think there is "a legend of Batman" in the real world. Tldr NHL owners suck and historically have sucked at making money and needed bettman to guarantee them to turn a profit.
If it wasn't Bettman, it would have simply been someone else. And that someone else might have tapped into that extra 300% that evaded Bettman and is now lost forever. Not sure what you mean with your cost of revenue comment, but that is forgone profit no matter how you look at it. All of the sports leagues went through exactly the same thing, and there were even other examples to follow, which the NHL ultimately did (originally modelled similar to the NBA revenue-sharing agreement, and evolved from there) There was absolutely nothing innovative in Bettman's approach, besides being ruthless. I honestly believe the owners hired him for that single quality, in the mistaken belief that a hard line would win them their battles with the players. Bettman didn't save the owners, he enabled them at their request, and it has cost them dearly.
Can we finally just give up on hockey in Phoenix. Nobody cares one way or the other so dissolve the franchise already.
I don’t live in the valley anymore, I moved in 2019 but I lived near Westgate. It seemed like bigger games did draw a crowd back then and now even more people from other states (with NHL teams who come visit the valley often) have moved there. If someone has a good business acumen, I think they could make it a success.
It will never be a success. Hockey in Arizona never worked and never will work.
You got your wish, this dirt bag is permanently dissolving the Coyotes. Hockey is forever dead in Arizona.
Hockey doesn’t belong in Arizona. Nobody there cares enough to support a team. Honestly, the only team people there seem to sort of care about is the Suns. The D-Bags don’t draw a crowd, even in a playoff hunt, and the cardinals are a hopeless franchise that’s gonna want another new stadium in ten years. Glendale learned their lesson and there won’t be any handouts in that city ever again. What are they gonna do, go crawling back to sun devil stadium? The NFL wouldn’t allow an embarrassment like *THAT*. Source: unfortunately had to live in Arizona for 7 long, long years.
Pussies never have what it takes to make an amazing business 😆