[BCTed]

Originally Posted by matt602

Isn't that exactly what is happening here though? Ontario Sports Solutions is building the stadium for the Pan-Am games. When it's complete, it's turned over to the City of Hamilton and then the Tiger-Cats pay a fee to the city to use the stadium. They make money off the tickets, merch, ads, etc. That's why OSS has been responsible for paying the Ti-Cats for the missed games, not the City (who doesn't own it yet). As far as I know, the City hasn't been responsible for anything other than the capital that they initially put in (which was still a lot more than the Ti-Cats paid). The cost overruns and screwups were made by the province. All the City has been responsible for thus far was the building permits, inspections and occupancy permit(s).

Don't get me wrong, I do think that this whole thing was heavily mis-managed through cost overruns and ridiculous deadlines and the bullying and flip-flopping from the Ti-Cats over the location definitely killed some opportunities but this is a largely a screw-up at the provincial level. There are gonna be a lot of politicians walking away from these games with some very heavy pockets, for sure.

Not sure who should get the blame, but this whole thing has certainly been quite a debacle. I never would have believed that the Tiger-Cats would ever play multiple regular season games in a 6000 seat stadium or that a stadium would open in the condition that Tim Hortons Field did if these things had not actually already happened.