News Article: Arrogance, Foolishness and Incompetence Playing Lead Role In NHL Lockout Saga

[FrozenRoyalty]

Arrogance, Foolishness and Incompetence Playing Lead Role In NHL Lockout Saga

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[Monarchist]

Great article talking about just the owners' mistakes. A comment:

In fact, several teams are losing money, even though the league reported “record revenues†in every year since the adoption of their last CBA.

No one knows this. 30 teams each know whether they are making money or not, and beyond that it's just educated guesses. I don't even know that there is good evidence that Takashi Okubo, onetime owner of the Lightning, is a real person.

The league should untie salaries and revenues. There's no transparency and no trust between owners and players either.

 

[Chazz Reinhold]

For the billionth time, revenues DO NOT equal profit. Guess what the biggest expense is? Yep, players' salaries. There may be record revenues, but that doesn't mean teams are sitting flush with cash.

 

[damacles1156]

Also Record Revenue doesn't mean anything. The U.S government has record revenue every year, is it healthy ?

It cost more today to see a Hockey game than Five years ago.

 

[Whiskeypete]

the use of creative accounting doesn't help either. AEG could easily show a loss if it wants to and cover any profits/losses depending on how they wish to report. the owners that have ownership in the arena and other supporting business ventures, can easily move the money as they seem fit.

how and where it all comes together is entirely up to how they wish for it to occur. parking, food concessions, merchandise and personnel can all be grouped and accounted for in any myriad of fashions. small business to major corporations are equally guilty of 'cooking the books'.

something that has troubled me is the lack of openness of major pro sports when it comes to their accounting. they ask for taxpayer dollars to finance new arenas/stadiums, but don't completely divulge their finances. they want to play with public money in order to get a new arena, then open the books. they talk about how their teams are part of the community, create jobs and bring millions to local economies but then go this route.

the level of greed being exhibited by both sides is just sickening at this point. cities are losing millions per game. people aren't working. small businesses that have struggled to survive the past 5+ years now have to face possibly a larger issue.

at this point the NHL and PA make me sick

 

[kingsfan]

Add to that NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman declaring that unless a 48-game season can be played, there will be no 2012-13 season, we are a little over two weeks from what appears to be yet another embarrassing catastrophe, courtesy of Bettman.

While I don't care for Bettman either, it's erroneous to state the season would be cancelled solely by him. He is advised by owners and other staffers as to if something is a good deal or not and goes based on that. So does the Fehr brothers, Daly, players, etc. If this season is cancelled, is cancelled courtesy a large group of people, not just Bettman.

However, even after acknowledging that the NHLPA bears some responsibility for the current stalemate, all the positives on Bettman’s record have been completely obliterated by three lockouts during his tenure.

If that were true, wouldn't the owners have decided he should go? Apparently, his downside isn't outweighed by what the owners hold dear and thus he's still around. And his job is solely to help the owners just like Fehr is solely for the players.

Even worse, they are complicit in the fact that they failed to get the deal they needed during the last CBA negotiations in 2004-05, even though they held all the cards and secured what would be considered a blowout victory if we were talking about a hockey game. Indeed, the owners forced the players to capitulate, getting everything they wanted.

While I agree Bettman and Co. shouldn't be going through this again after 2004-2005, they never did get 'everything' they wanted. They gave on areas such as UFA age for example. They got a lot but not everything they wanted.

But more glaring is the fact that each of the three major professional sports leagues have some sort of significant revenue sharing in place, and have for a number of years. Meanwhile, the NHL, led by Bettman and the owners, is just barely starting to talk about that in a meaningful way as 2012 comes to a close.

What isn't noted here is that those three major sports leagues have massive TV revenues, unlike the NHL. Additionally, what would be a better test of revenue sharing is to look at it from a percentage basis. Who contributes more percentage wise of the funding they have, the NFL or NHL? It's all fine and good to say the NHL should share more of their revenue because other leagues do, but if those other leagues top teams are recording massive profits (after expenses) and NHL teams aren't, does it make sense to say that NHL teams should have to share at the same level as NFL teams?

 

[kingsfan]

Is there a players side to the lockout coming, or is this all the owners fault?

 

[damacles1156]

Also for like the million time.

You can't have a Revenue sharing model like the NFL.

The NFL gives each team 110 million EACH YEAR...... T.V. dollars folks, the NHL doesn't have it.