CXLIX - FINAL thoughts on the Arizona Coyotes
- Thread starter Tom ServoMST3K
- Start date
Did they though? If you believe the public numbers, then the relocation fee was 200 million. How much of that went to the other owners, vs how much went to the league, we don't know. Even if you assume all of it went to the owners, that's still only roughly 6.45 (200/31) million per team. Considering what the owners had to swallow for this team existing in its state for so long, I don't think that will remove their "caring" of the situation, especially since they were probably promised much more than that.
Also there are some people who watch college sports to see who they want their pro teams to draft.
Shwan
Registered User
$200M Went to the owners.
A very large portion of the $1B went to paying off the debt the league has been holding to the Coyotes.
Meruelo walked away with the rest.
The owners were okay with that because servicing Coyotes debt at 6% interest as opposed to 2% would have done some damage to the league.
edog37
Registered User
TheLegend
"Just say it 3 times..."
It’s called….. stopping the hemorrhaging. And to most of the owners that was probably more valuable to them than splitting $200 million into the 31 Baskin Robbin’s flavors.
The deal did several things.
- It preserved the going rate for expansion (with Atlanta in the wings)
- It got rid of a money pit of a debt load.
- It got rid of what could have been another decade’s worth of drama and uncertainty.
Only collateral damage ends up being another fanbase. But it isn’t like that’s never happened before either, so YMMV on that one.
Shwan
Registered User
Tempe/Phoenix IGA case might actually get settled this year. 
All those Coyotes fans thinking the Tempe vote actually meant something, that it was somehow the fault of cat lady bookstore owners, when it was the Tempe City Council that threw Alex under the bus.
Wild times. Craig Morgan absolutely pied piper'd this franchise into the garbage dump lol.
All those Coyotes fans thinking the Tempe vote actually meant something, that it was somehow the fault of cat lady bookstore owners, when it was the Tempe City Council that threw Alex under the bus.
Wild times. Craig Morgan absolutely pied piper'd this franchise into the garbage dump lol.
Thank you. As someone who is new to the thread, I had no idea about the details of the deal.
If enough of them cared, or the ones that did had enough political clout, they'd have forced a sale of the team anywhere from 5 to 10 years ago.
My overall point, was that the 6.5 (rounded) million each team got, in my opinion, was not enough money to satisfy the owners level of "caring", as alluded to in the post I was replying to, which, I believe, is also what you're also saying with the first sentence of your post..
It was partly to limit AM's upside. They weren't going to punish him as much as ASG but they weren't going to let him have a windfall for messing up so badly.
Also who knows if the league actually fully recovered their investment from owning and floating the Coyotes all those years (Glendale didn't pick up losses for the lock-out year), so this might have gone to paying that back.
Llama19
Registered User
Former Arizona Coyotes top executive Xavier A. Gutierrez has big plans for new initiative
To quote:
"Xavier A. Gutierrez saw firsthand how important the Latino sports fanbase is and can be, as president and CEO of the Arizona Coyotes. He made it his mission to seek out communities not typically associated with hockey fandom and welcome them to the sport and to experience an NHL game.
For all intents and purposes, his efforts gained traction as Gutierrez showed up everywhere in the community, from westside neighborhood centers to small businesses to food banks and beyond. He presided over the business side of the club as it transitioned out of what is now Desert Diamond Arena to Mullett Arena, and was front and center in the campaign to get a new arena for the team in Tempe.
But then, it all came to a rather sudden end when the Coyotes were relocated to Utah. Gutierrez's work for the Alex Meruelo family (former Coyotes owners) also ended, allowing him to focus on a new venture.
The first Latino to be an NHL president and CEO, Gutierrez is the co-founder of Latinos in Sports (LiS) and ImpactX Sports Group, the former a multi-strategy platform to elevate Hispanics within the sports industry, while connecting teams, leagues and brands with the power of the Hispanic community.
Looking back on what happened with the Coyotes, Gutierrez said he was disappointed. The departure of the team came quickly and left fans with only days to try to come to terms with the fact that the team would be no longer.
Gutierrez always had an advisory role to Meruelo and didn't disparage the former owner, though he completely understood the hurt feelings of fans. He said he was disappointed that the Coyotes couldn't fulfill the vision he and Meruelo laid out for a permanent facility for the team, but he felt the organization did a lot of positive things which he can build on through Latinos in Sports."
Source: www.azcentral.com/story/sports/nhl/coyotes/2024/09/05/what-is-former-arizona-coyotes-president-xavier-a-gutierrez-up-to/75074838007/
To quote:
"Xavier A. Gutierrez saw firsthand how important the Latino sports fanbase is and can be, as president and CEO of the Arizona Coyotes. He made it his mission to seek out communities not typically associated with hockey fandom and welcome them to the sport and to experience an NHL game.
For all intents and purposes, his efforts gained traction as Gutierrez showed up everywhere in the community, from westside neighborhood centers to small businesses to food banks and beyond. He presided over the business side of the club as it transitioned out of what is now Desert Diamond Arena to Mullett Arena, and was front and center in the campaign to get a new arena for the team in Tempe.
But then, it all came to a rather sudden end when the Coyotes were relocated to Utah. Gutierrez's work for the Alex Meruelo family (former Coyotes owners) also ended, allowing him to focus on a new venture.
The first Latino to be an NHL president and CEO, Gutierrez is the co-founder of Latinos in Sports (LiS) and ImpactX Sports Group, the former a multi-strategy platform to elevate Hispanics within the sports industry, while connecting teams, leagues and brands with the power of the Hispanic community.
Looking back on what happened with the Coyotes, Gutierrez said he was disappointed. The departure of the team came quickly and left fans with only days to try to come to terms with the fact that the team would be no longer.
Gutierrez always had an advisory role to Meruelo and didn't disparage the former owner, though he completely understood the hurt feelings of fans. He said he was disappointed that the Coyotes couldn't fulfill the vision he and Meruelo laid out for a permanent facility for the team, but he felt the organization did a lot of positive things which he can build on through Latinos in Sports."
Source: www.azcentral.com/story/sports/nhl/coyotes/2024/09/05/what-is-former-arizona-coyotes-president-xavier-a-gutierrez-up-to/75074838007/
AZDesertKnight
Deactivated Coyotes Fan
Blah, blah, blah.
XG was a piece of trash to staff, and a gutless turd.
I'm sure he got a nice cut of the money.
TheLegend
"Just say it 3 times..."
TheLegend
"Just say it 3 times..."
Shwan
Registered User
Looks like Tyson Nash didn't make the cut for Utah. Man what a deal Scripps got out of this especially if Utah comes out swinging in the league. They could have Vegas/Florida viewership numbers at half the cost for a considerably long time. They didn't say it on their Q2 earnings like I hoped but another piece of the puzzle was that while Coyotes fans were flexing over that "900% increase in viewership" they never actually bothered to ask people like Craig Morgan how much of that was coming from Utah
www.nhl.com
SEG Media Reveals Utah Hockey Club Television Broadcast Team | Utah Hockey Club
Matt McConnell, Dominic Moore, Nick Olczyk, Kim Becker, and Sarah Merrifield to headline club’s TV broadcasts Scripps-owned Utah 16 to air 75 regular-season games locally with comprehensive coverage, including pre- and post-game shows SEG Media announced today the TV broadcast team for Utah...
www.nhl.com
AZDesertKnight
Deactivated Coyotes Fan
How long did this run for? since 08 this series has been going? Pretty sure I had like a 12-13 year posting gap. Wild.
Yeah in 08-09 there were rumblings the team was in trouble. 09 they filed bankruptcy. 2013 it seemed to be resolved for at least 5 years when the out clause in lease agreement kicked in. However in 2015 Glendale voided the lease and it's been non-stop until this year. I joined the boards in 2012. It's been a wild ride.
Fatass
Registered User
- Apr 17, 2017
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It’s been a real struggle on and off the ice for the club. Looks like the team is going to be good on the ice now in Utah. Maybe they’re still in the desert if they had on ice success?
Sgt Schultz
Registered User
It's a fair question. There were at least three things that didn't happen: an NHL arena near where the fanbase was centered, decent (or better) ownership, and sustained success on the ice. Would solving the last of those potentially solved the first and then solved the issue of attendance? I have my doubts, but I guess we will never know.
My doubts are more based on getting anything major done in the Phoenix area than anything else. I lived there in 88-89 and things were not any easier then.
Thats the subject of several thousand posts. If they were a perennial Stanley Cup contenders maybe but being just a team that gets to the playoffs about half the time I doubt it.
Shwan
Registered User
I would have argued that a consistent playoff team would have done it.
The problem (one of many) was that the team was just so boring to watch under Tippett and Tocchet even when they were being successful in stretches it would be a grating experience.
If the team was just entertaining it would have gone a very long way to getting people to go to Gila River Arena, or at least get more people to watch games on TV.
Other other issue was with the team being dirt cheap you had some of the worst churn and would never have any popular players stay. Couldn't keep Domi, or Garland, or Stone, or etc. etc. etc. most of these guys weren't asking for much but ownership still couldn't afford it. Maybe it was intentional to get us suckers with disposable income to keep buying new merch
Shwan
Registered User
AZ's Event Wagering report for June dropped, Saharabets last full month of operation netted approximately $40k revenue, which definitely does not cover operating costs.
Saharabets was a flaming wreck from start to finish that Coyotes fans wilfully lived in la-la land about for 2 years, and some still to this day believe think was the golden goose Meruelo was after.
One of the last lies Craig Morgan spewed before slinking away to a Utah hockey podcast to pretend this never happened was that ASU and Coyotes apparently had an tentative plan to build a full size arena but Meruelo declined because he wouldn't be able to put a physical sports book in the Arena because it would be on-campus.
This farcical tale can easily be debunked by looking at the physical book numbers on the AZ DOG site. For instance in June the Draftkings and FanDuel books took in a $1.5M and $1.7M handle, but had wildly divergent results with Draftkings making $32k and Fanduel capturing $214k.
Likewise BetMGM and Caesar's books took $566k and $479k in-person for June. BetMGM lost all their cash and Caesar's kept $70k.
No one, even Meruelo, would have decided that such a wildly inconsistent income stream was more important than securing a proper home for your team.
Saharabets was a flaming wreck from start to finish that Coyotes fans wilfully lived in la-la land about for 2 years, and some still to this day believe think was the golden goose Meruelo was after.
One of the last lies Craig Morgan spewed before slinking away to a Utah hockey podcast to pretend this never happened was that ASU and Coyotes apparently had an tentative plan to build a full size arena but Meruelo declined because he wouldn't be able to put a physical sports book in the Arena because it would be on-campus.
This farcical tale can easily be debunked by looking at the physical book numbers on the AZ DOG site. For instance in June the Draftkings and FanDuel books took in a $1.5M and $1.7M handle, but had wildly divergent results with Draftkings making $32k and Fanduel capturing $214k.
Likewise BetMGM and Caesar's books took $566k and $479k in-person for June. BetMGM lost all their cash and Caesar's kept $70k.
No one, even Meruelo, would have decided that such a wildly inconsistent income stream was more important than securing a proper home for your team.
There was never going to be enough business for that many sports books, especially once the novelty of legal sports betting wore off. Its the same thing that happened when casinos expanded outside Vegas and Atlantic City
I could be completely off on this, as a very casual very outside observer. The impression I get is it is the laws and politics which is more the issue than ownership, fan support, arena location, etc.
Shwan
Registered User
It's always been the other way around. The "laws and politics" have been in response to the abhorrent behavior from the team.
You had a parade of owners who never spent above the bare minimum on making the team serviceable on ice, racking up mountains of debt assuming interest rates would stay near zero forever to service it, and continually trying to screw over local governments without considering the consequences because it's a "sports team" and assumed they'd always find someone in the Valley to take them in.
Meruelo was the icing on the cake and exhausted the last amount of patience from the sane people of the valley.
Then you add a propagandist like Craig Morgan to keep the fan base insulated and feeling ostracized, making it easy for the community paint the issue being "everyone else's fault" without taking responsibility.
