Can we talk about hockey again? I wrote about the
dysfunctional family that is the NHL several weeks back, stunned that another
season would be truncated or even lost by millionaire players squabbling with
billionaire owners.
You
remember hockey, America’s fourth major sport. But since the election when pot
and gay marriage both won in the polls, aren’t we now, as Bill Maher says,
“Canada with Nukes”? If so, hockey should be our passion and somehow we
grownups should be able to stop these spoiled brats from destroying themselves.
That’s
particularly true for those of us in Philadelphia, where the Phillies finished
a disappointing season, and the Eagles and Sixers are pathetic. We need the
Flyboys back on the ice contending for Lord Stanley’s vaunted cup.
The hope
is that Flyers owner Ed Snider, who also is one of the principals in mega media
giant Comcast, will abandon his support of NHL Commissioner Bettman and force
an end to the lockout. The Flyers,
valued by Forbes at just under $300 million, are one of the most well run and
most valuable franchises in all of sports. They have a passionate fan base and,
in turn, seem the most civic minded and media savvy of Philly’s four sports
teams.
It
doesn’t take an economics genius to know what’s wrong with the NHL; it has too
many failing teams and it’s easy to figure out who they are and what must
happen to them. The ten most valuable
teams, other than Philadelphia, are Boston, Chicago, Detroit, Montreal, New
York and Toronto: the original six NHL franchises. Pittsburgh and Los Angeles,
who along with the Flyers were in the first wave of expansion in the NHL, are
also valuable and successful franchises.
Who are
among the least valuable? The Tampa Bay
Lightning, Carolina Hurricanes, Nashville Predators, Florida Panthers, Columbus
Blue Jackets and Phoenix Coyotes. Really, how many of you actually knew these
were all professional sports teams?
Failing
businesses should be allowed to fail without dragging down the successful teams
and high jacking the sport. The NHL is
the best argument against the position of the NFL in Clarett and American Needle
that sports leagues are single enterprises. Each team is a creature of its own
making and, unfortunately, its own demise.
The owners--including Mr. Snider, whose skills do not include building a business through competition-followed Mr. Bettman's Southern Strategy. They even continued with it after he destroyed any momentum it might have been building by getting rid of 1.5 seasons just as Carolina and Tampa were developing actual fan bases.
Now they have looked up, realuzed revenues are greater than ever and discovered those teams are losing money anyway.
Yet they follow Mr. Bettman. Tell me again how they make money? Oh, right, monopolies.
As someone who recently moved north of the 49th parallel, it's apparent that Canadians just can't muster the same level of Molson-induced insanity for the current CFL playoffs. Perhaps a more apt title for your post might be Oy Canada. We need hockey!
The NHL decided it wanted to have teams in these markets to boost the value of its TV contracts. It is possible that every dollar lost in Anaheim, for example, brings in $2 in league-wide TV revenue. So it's not necessarily a bad business decision.
That said, if this is true, the league should be willing through revenue-sharing to prop up the money-losing teams and not expect the players to do so.
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