Good little write-up in the Freep today.
Quote:
The yes vote by Glendale council authorizes city manager Ed Beasley to try and satisfy the NHL. Beasley must now make attempts to secure the financial mechanisms (a bank note or line of credit) to meet the NHL's demand that Glendale be on the hook for any future Coyotes losses.
Only a certified financial agreement will satisfy the NHL. Glendale must make a contract with a financial institution to cover these losses that have been estimated in the $30-million range.
However, Beasley will not have much time to satisfy those demands and he's already failed on at least one attempt to negotiate on these matters with the league.
Beasley reportedly asked the league to guarantee that Phoenix would participate in league revenue sharing regardless of meeting the criteria set forth in the NHL's collective bargaining agreement.
The NHL turned down this proposal.
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OK, let's summarize:
1. The team has never made a profit in 14 years. In fact, it's lost more money than it would have in Winnipeg.
2. No one is willing to buy this team and keep it in Phoenix without major concessions, because of #1.
3. Because of #2, the NHL is basically having to beg someone to take this stinker off their hands.
4. Because of #3, it's taking far too long to negotiate even a sweetheart deal.
5. As a result of #4, the NHL has basically admitted they fully expect another $25+ million loss next season, and they're unwilling to fund that themselves.
6. And because of #5, the CoG has a gun to its head to fund that somehow.
And the whopper of it all....
7. The CoG knows just how bad this is going to be, and wants revenue sharing monies EVEN IF THE TEAM ISN'T ELIGIBLE FOR THEM. They expect things to be so bad that they in effect want the NHL to fund part of the team no matter what. After all, revenue sharing comes directly from the other owners, ie: the league. Edit: I should add that this is probably not the "if you lose too much money" clause, and more likely the "you have to at least sell X number of tickets to qualify for revenue sharing" clause. See, you can't just tank your team and expect the NHL to keep you in the dough. You have to at least come to some minimum amount of support. This is why several teams recently have been essentially giving away massive amounts of cheap tickets, it helps get them closer to qualifying for revenue sharing. What the CoG is saying is that they expect to not sell anywhere near enough tickets.
The NHL, the CoG, Reinsdorf and Ice Edge have all but admitted that they expect this team to be a colossal failure next season, and for many to come. This isn't just wacky Canadian media, this is every single party involved basically saying "yeah, we expect catastrophic losses".
This is madness. Sheer madness. If the NHL had spent 1/10th of this effort keeping the team in Winnipeg, we'd still have the Jets.
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You do realize that last night's vote is no guarantee that the team is staying, right?
you nailed it!
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