CXLIX - FINAL thoughts on the Arizona Coyotes

[AZDesertKnight]

Yeah, that thing is never going to be built

 

[AZDesertKnight]

Serious question...How many games did you attend at Mullett?

I had a heart issueand wasn't really able to go to live sports events until this year.. but managed to get to one - the atmosphere was great!

The numbers are from the Coyotes marketing data btw.

 

[Boris Zubov]

I had a heart issueand wasn't really able to go to live sports events until this year.. but managed to get to one - the atmosphere was great!

The numbers are from the Coyotes marketing data btw.

Hope you're on the mend. Health is way more important than hockey.

I don't believe any data coming from the Coyotes. They were fine in Glendale until the subsidy was yanked, then Bettman began screaming that there was no path forward in Glendale & the East Valley was the only solution for the franchise. The NHL just wanted someone else to pay the freight, plain & simple. It all came down to their economics, not the reality of the market.

 

[Shwan]

I don't believe any data coming from the Coyotes. They were fine in Glendale until the subsidy was yanked, then Bettman began screaming that there was no path forward in Glendale & the East Valley was the only solution for the franchise. The NHL just wanted someone else to pay the freight, plain & simple. It all came down to their economics, not the reality of the market.

Glendale/ASM was bending over backwards to pretty much make the Coyotes playing at Gila River as close to free as they possibly could.

The lease was about $500,000/year with the Coyotes retaining the vast majority of naming rights fees from Gila River which was projected at $3M/year average.

Office space for the organization was complimentary at the arena and at great detriment to the City's finances ASM would make sure the ice was available for practice to both the Coyotes and visiting teams.

Still wasn't good enough and Meruelo still tried to stiff them with bills.

 

[brentashton]

^^^^^

Oh......

https://x.com/i/web/status/1849082726596383100

Article link (for those who don't like dealing with Elon)

Developers now seeking public financing for $1 billion arena at Reno's Grand Sierra Resort

Developers behind a massive arena project at Reno's Grand Sierra Resort intend to ask the city of Reno for public financing to help pay for the project, a chang

nevadasportsnet.com

EDIT: Pulling this from a link in the article. This is from a page on the CoR website and it summarizes what a TIF is that Meruelo is looking for



My immediate interpretation of all this is Meruelo is seeking the new sales tax the arena (plus whatever the city would approve as a zone around it) generates to pay for building it.

AM is like that dinosaur with short arms.

Dinosaur thinking and arms that can only reach into other peoples pockets. Absolute fraud.

Maybe he can drop a clothing line to pay for the needed arena subsidies.

 

[KevFu]

While I mainly agree with everything you're saying, it turned out there was no "geographic center" to their fanbase. They could barely sell out at Mullett. The TV ratings were atrocious. The market just had no appetite for hockey. Sure there were diehards, but not nearly enough to support an NHL team.

There is a geographic center of the fans, but it's a topography issue. For example, Tampa can't build in the geographic center of their fan base, because that's water. They'd need to make an island with like six bridges.

"Barely sell out Mullet" is absurd. Their average attendance was the exact amount of seats sold for NHL games. (College games can sell another 400 seats because college teams don't appropriate the space for visiting team media, staff and comp tickets).

The east valley-west valley location was always irrelevant. Half the valley would always be bitching, even if the team was still downtown.

That's not true because again, you are ignoring topography. You're acting like "Half the valley" is west of Phoenix and half is east of Phoenix. It's TWO VALLEYS and to get from one to the other, you have to go through one of two routes through Tempe.

You're over-simplifying something that's big, complex, sloppy and messy.

Tempe isn't "The East Valley" and anyone west of it is gonna have just as hard of a time getting there as the East Valley folks have getting to the West. It's a bowtie shape, with Tempe as the knot.

The TV numbers told the real story...even when the team stinks there still should be some fans tuning in. I posted the ratings for either 22-23 or 21-22 in an earlier version of the megathread & it showed they were only drawing 1200 fans per game on TV! That's untenable in a market of 5+ million people.

This is more over-simplifying something that's big, complex, sloppy and messy. Local TV numbers are pretty stupid. Local TV ratings don't reveal anything about the size of a fan base.

#1 - It's a methodology problem. My buddy was a Nielsen rater for a while. We got him into watching Premier League on NBC Sports. And from another friend who worked at a local TV affiliate and was able to provide ratings reports, we mathed out that our friend represented 13,500 people. I'm sure tech has advanced (somewhat) since then, but so has cord cutting and illegal streaming.

Because the TV ratings baed on a cross section of the general population in each market, the local TV ratings are always skewed in favor of places that are more single-male head of household vs family households. That's why the Buffalo Sabres trounce the Islanders in local TV ratings even though the Sabres sucked and the Islanders were good from 2020-2022. Buffalo is like 11% SMHH and Long Island is 3%.


#2 - It's just logically absurd that more people are willing to pay for tickets, travel to the venue (pay for parking? Pay for beer and food) and watch in person than to just click on their TV. But you're suggesting this is accurate for the Coyotes, and therefore the Devils, who also have a lower TV viewership than home attendance.

If local TV ratings are anywhere near the size of a fan base, you'd see road games would be nearly double the viewers of home games to account for the fact that 16,000 people are going to NHL home games.

Hell, you can use the Flyers and Devils average local TV viewership per game, math out to the fact that IF local TV viewership is an accurate measure of a fan base, then the Flyers and Devils have less total fans than the number of people who bought tickets to see them play each other at MetLife Stadium.

So the only logical conclusion is that everyone's fan bases are a lot bigger than their TV numbers, which are a methodological nightmare for hundreds of different reasons and it all adds up to "You can't really tell anything from this information other than 'more is better.'"

So there are two issues with that:

1) If there were hockey fans out east that couldn't get to the games on a regular basis why aren't they tuning in on TV?

2) The theory behind the Southern Expansion was that that the presence of teams in these new markets would create new hockey fans. So why didn't West Valley people become hockey fans in the 19 years they had an NHL team there?

1) They do, it's just how many cannot be adequately measured and fans use data to back up what they believe, and not use data for form their opinions.
2) They did. Which is why there were 13,000+ people in the arena in Glendale even though 3/8ths of the market can't get out there very often.

But if there's only 1200 Coyotes fans in all of Phoenix as the TV ratings have you believe, then who were those other 11,500 people every night for 20+ years?

I don't believe any data coming from the Coyotes. They were fine in Glendale until the subsidy was yanked, then Bettman began screaming that there was no path forward in Glendale & the East Valley was the only solution for the franchise. The NHL just wanted someone else to pay the freight, plain & simple. It all came down to their economics, not the reality of the market.

They were "fine" in Glendale. They were "fine" in a college rink. It's just opportunity cost: It's less than an ideal situation which puts them further behind everyone else.

If only we could do some kind of experiment to see just how few tickets you can sell and remain in business in modern pro sports. Like if some kind of global pandemic prevented leagues from selling tickets, or more than 25% of tickets, for like almost an entire calendar year. I wonder what would happen if any team just sold no tickets for an entire year. How many teams would go bankrupt? Could you imagine? Oh wait. The Blue Jays not only sold no tickets in 2020, but also paid $40m to upgrade Buffalo's stadium so they could play in front of zero fans, and it crushed them financially so much they jacked up their payroll by $109 million over the next two seasons! I wonder where they're going to relocate to?

Fans use data to cherry pick the best argument for their beliefs. Like TV data to say there's no hockey fans in Arizona. Which is just dumb.

 

[TheLegend]

AM is like that dinosaur with short arms.

Dinosaur thinking and arms that can only reach into other peoples pockets. Absolute fraud.

Maybe he can drop a clothing line to pay for the needed arena subsidies.

View attachment 920618

He's replaced Anthony LeBlanc as the BoH poster boy.

 

[Boris Zubov]

There is a geographic center of the fans, but it's a topography issue. For example, Tampa can't build in the geographic center of their fan base, because that's water. They'd need to make an island with like six bridges.

"Barely sell out Mullet" is absurd. Their average attendance was the exact amount of seats sold for NHL games. (College games can sell another 400 seats because college teams don't appropriate the space for visiting team media, staff and comp tickets).



That's not true because again, you are ignoring topography. You're acting like "Half the valley" is west of Phoenix and half is east of Phoenix. It's TWO VALLEYS and to get from one to the other, you have to go through one of two routes through Tempe.

You're over-simplifying something that's big, complex, sloppy and messy.

Tempe isn't "The East Valley" and anyone west of it is gonna have just as hard of a time getting there as the East Valley folks have getting to the West. It's a bowtie shape, with Tempe as the knot.




This is more over-simplifying something that's big, complex, sloppy and messy. Local TV numbers are pretty stupid. Local TV ratings don't reveal anything about the size of a fan base.

#1 - It's a methodology problem. My buddy was a Nielsen rater for a while. We got him into watching Premier League on NBC Sports. And from another friend who worked at a local TV affiliate and was able to provide ratings reports, we mathed out that our friend represented 13,500 people. I'm sure tech has advanced (somewhat) since then, but so has cord cutting and illegal streaming.

Because the TV ratings baed on a cross section of the general population in each market, the local TV ratings are always skewed in favor of places that are more single-male head of household vs family households. That's why the Buffalo Sabres trounce the Islanders in local TV ratings even though the Sabres sucked and the Islanders were good from 2020-2022. Buffalo is like 11% SMHH and Long Island is 3%.


#2 - It's just logically absurd that more people are willing to pay for tickets, travel to the venue (pay for parking? Pay for beer and food) and watch in person than to just click on their TV. But you're suggesting this is accurate for the Coyotes, and therefore the Devils, who also have a lower TV viewership than home attendance.

If local TV ratings are anywhere near the size of a fan base, you'd see road games would be nearly double the viewers of home games to account for the fact that 16,000 people are going to NHL home games.

Hell, you can use the Flyers and Devils average local TV viewership per game, math out to the fact that IF local TV viewership is an accurate measure of a fan base, then the Flyers and Devils have less total fans than the number of people who bought tickets to see them play each other at MetLife Stadium.

So the only logical conclusion is that everyone's fan bases are a lot bigger than their TV numbers, which are a methodological nightmare for hundreds of different reasons and it all adds up to "You can't really tell anything from this information other than 'more is better.'"





1) They do, it's just how many cannot be adequately measured and fans use data to back up what they believe, and not use data for form their opinions.
2) They did. Which is why there were 13,000+ people in the arena in Glendale even though 3/8ths of the market can't get out there very often.

But if there's only 1200 Coyotes fans in all of Phoenix as the TV ratings have you believe, then who were those other 11,500 people every night for 20+ years?




They were "fine" in Glendale. They were "fine" in a college rink. It's just opportunity cost: It's less than an ideal situation which puts them further behind everyone else.

If only we could do some kind of experiment to see just how few tickets you can sell and remain in business in modern pro sports. Like if some kind of global pandemic prevented leagues from selling tickets, or more than 25% of tickets, for like almost an entire calendar year. I wonder what would happen if any team just sold no tickets for an entire year. How many teams would go bankrupt? Could you imagine? Oh wait. The Blue Jays not only sold no tickets in 2020, but also paid $40m to upgrade Buffalo's stadium so they could play in front of zero fans, and it crushed them financially so much they jacked up their payroll by $109 million over the next two seasons! I wonder where they're going to relocate to?

Fans use data to cherry pick the best argument for their beliefs. Like TV data to say there's no hockey fans in Arizona. Which is just dumb.

I appreciate all the effort you put into this reply, but I don't have the time to dissect all of this right now, if ever.

I will say I posted the TV numbers with a link to the Nielson data(or whomever), then using my own math I came up with 12,000 viewers per game, which still sux by the way. However I was corrected by @Reaser who seemed to know WAY more than I did about calculating those ratings. I trusted his math at the time more than mine, but whether he was right or I was right, I don't think it's irrelevant that in a market of 5 million plus that the numbers are so dismal. Does it tell the entire story of the market, probably not, but I disagree if you don't think it tells a very big part of it.

Again this is all the time I have to devote to this today, but I will try to revisit this later on.

 

[brentashton]

He's replaced Anthony LeBlanc as the BoH poster boy.

First winter Ive spent in Phx that I won’t see live, pro hockey. Not gonna lie, feels off. Going to try and hit up an ASU game and/or drive down to Tucson (make my donation to the AM Fund that way I guess). Sometimes in past years I would go to the IceDen and watch youth hockey. Will likely do that again this year.

 

[Reaser]

I will say I posted the TV numbers with a link to the Nielson data(or whomever), then using my own math I came up with 12,000 viewers per game, which still sux by the way. However I was corrected by @Reaser who seemed to know WAY more than I did about calculating those ratings. I trusted his math at the time more than mine, but whether he was right or I was right, I don't think it's irrelevant that in a market of 5 million plus that the numbers are so dismal. Does it tell the entire story of the market, probably not, but I disagree if you don't think it tells a very big part of it.

Not worth your effort. He's repeated the same anecdote about his friend numerous times. I've explained it to him multiple times before, including how it works now. Not interested in doing that again since he ignores and repeats his claims, while conflating ratings & viewership and not understanding the difference between ratings, HHs, average viewership, etc.. All while using the alleged one-time anecdote where he and his merry-band 'cracked the code' and now forever know more about ratings than the multi-billion dollar businesses (NFL, Disney, even Amazon for select events, etc..) that use them.

I'll just quote myself, twice, from these previous Yotes threads:

"The U.S. broadcast partners avoid(ed) Arizona like the plague. For good reason.

Here's the last five regular seasons and how often the Coyotes were on [linear] national broadcasts and the avg viewership # of the games:

2019/20 (1 game)
158k (NBCSN)

2020/21 (1 game)
134k (NBCSN)

2021/22 (3 games)
234k (TNT)
151k (TNT)
142k (TNT)

2022/23 (1 game)
150k (TNT)

2023/24 (0 games)
-

Presuming you're familiar with the NHL on U.S. TV and avg viewership numbers, you'll recognize just how horrible those numbers are: e.g. 2022/23 the least-viewed game in the U.S. was the ONE game the Yotes had.

It's not just the long history of no one watching the Coyotes locally, that also plays into national broadcasts because of the regionalized fanbases in the NHL -- lack of casual fan viewership nationally. Generally the avg viewership for a game is primarily determined by the two markets/fanbases involved, with neutral observers making up the rest. Which with Arizona contributing nothing from their side for all intents and purposes, their nationally broadcast games did horrible numbers.

That's why the U.S. broadcast partners (Disney / TNT Sports) and even previously NBC wanted nothing to do with them."

&

"We have decades of data, that data has the Yotes at/near the bottom YoY, especially on HHs and viewership. It's not some conspiracy against them or a flawed metric that no one uses that's screwing them and only them. It's THE standard and shows a frankly common-sense conclusion."

 

[TheLegend]

More raw meat…. (haven’t watched yet but what heck)

 

[Shwan]

Fans use data to cherry pick the best argument for their beliefs. Like TV data to say there's no hockey fans in Arizona. Which is just dumb.

When Coyotes defenders have used the Phoenix TV market and it's potential ad nauseum for the last decade it becomes fair game.

Again, this all could be very easily resolved if the people that had the data simply released how many people in the Salt Lake City Metro (Population: 1.2 Million) watched the Coyotes vs how many people in the Phoenix Metro (Population: 4.9 Million) last season.

This is data that is available and easily measurable despite your misgivings on methodology. Scripps releases detailed viewership numbers for the Golden Knights, and aren't afraid of telling people about their WNBA numbers but for some reason they kept the viewership for the Coyotes intentionally vague (Hint: the only usual way you can make a number go up "900%" is by having the original number be infinitesimally small.)

Do you really think it was a coincidence that Meruelo dragged his feet on launching the Coyotes' streaming package until he pretty much* knew he was losing the team to sucker out those last few "diehards" out of their change?

The shell game regarding TV viewership numbers are is sufficient for most logical people to have a good feel on the lack of fan base in Phoenix.

 

[Shwan]

Per 2 News Nevada:

The city has reviewed the application and deemed that it meets the criteria to proceed, based on the fact that the project is "expected to enhance economic development in the region" and "projected to generate substantial long-term benefits."


The recommendation from the staff was that the city proceeds with the formal review, does due diligence and third-party feasibility analysis, and to negotiate an agreement with Power Sports Development, LLC for tax increment financing for future Board approval.

The city will be negotiating and likely give Meruelo a decent deal barring issues from the impending economic downturn. I'm confident Alex has a better ability to "read the room" on his home turf in comparison to Tempe.

 

[PredsHead]

Not sure if this clarifies anything or just adds more confusion but here is what I could find on the Coyotes viewership from last October:

The Coyotes have momentum on the air in their local market, where average viewership increased 57% year-over-year last season to 7,839 per game, according to Playfly Sports.

Source: Coyotes' Gutierrez details new Scripps deal. (Paywalled)

 

[Shwan]

Not sure if this clarifies anything or just adds more confusion but here is what I could find on the Coyotes viewership from last October:


Source: Coyotes' Gutierrez details new Scripps deal. (Paywalled)

Good find! This says local viewership has increased 57% YoY on 10/6.

Scripps then says the next month on their Q3 call that Coyotes ratings went up 900% from last year.

Notice how they specifically say local ratings regarding the Golden Knights in the previous sentence but not the Coyotes. Very important given this is a financial earnings call and subject to SEC regulations.

I wonder where the rest of those viewers came from?

 

[Boris Zubov]

Not sure if this clarifies anything or just adds more confusion but here is what I could find on the Coyotes viewership from last October:


Source: Coyotes' Gutierrez details new Scripps deal. (Paywalled)

Thanks for posting this. There's certainly plenty of evidence that the valley simply wasn't interested in the team. Not trying to beat a dead horse, but it was always obvious to anyone who was willing to see it.

 

[Skidooboy]

There is a geographic center of the fans, but it's a topography issue. For example, Tampa can't build in the geographic center of their fan base, because that's water. They'd need to make an island with like six bridges.

"Barely sell out Mullet" is absurd. Their average attendance was the exact amount of seats sold for NHL games. (College games can sell another 400 seats because college teams don't appropriate the space for visiting team media, staff and comp tickets).



That's not true because again, you are ignoring topography. You're acting like "Half the valley" is west of Phoenix and half is east of Phoenix. It's TWO VALLEYS and to get from one to the other, you have to go through one of two routes through Tempe.

You're over-simplifying something that's big, complex, sloppy and messy.

Tempe isn't "The East Valley" and anyone west of it is gonna have just as hard of a time getting there as the East Valley folks have getting to the West. It's a bowtie shape, with Tempe as the knot.




This is more over-simplifying something that's big, complex, sloppy and messy. Local TV numbers are pretty stupid. Local TV ratings don't reveal anything about the size of a fan base.

#1 - It's a methodology problem. My buddy was a Nielsen rater for a while. We got him into watching Premier League on NBC Sports. And from another friend who worked at a local TV affiliate and was able to provide ratings reports, we mathed out that our friend represented 13,500 people. I'm sure tech has advanced (somewhat) since then, but so has cord cutting and illegal streaming.

Because the TV ratings baed on a cross section of the general population in each market, the local TV ratings are always skewed in favor of places that are more single-male head of household vs family households. That's why the Buffalo Sabres trounce the Islanders in local TV ratings even though the Sabres sucked and the Islanders were good from 2020-2022. Buffalo is like 11% SMHH and Long Island is 3%.


#2 - It's just logically absurd that more people are willing to pay for tickets, travel to the venue (pay for parking? Pay for beer and food) and watch in person than to just click on their TV. But you're suggesting this is accurate for the Coyotes, and therefore the Devils, who also have a lower TV viewership than home attendance.

If local TV ratings are anywhere near the size of a fan base, you'd see road games would be nearly double the viewers of home games to account for the fact that 16,000 people are going to NHL home games.

Hell, you can use the Flyers and Devils average local TV viewership per game, math out to the fact that IF local TV viewership is an accurate measure of a fan base, then the Flyers and Devils have less total fans than the number of people who bought tickets to see them play each other at MetLife Stadium.

So the only logical conclusion is that everyone's fan bases are a lot bigger than their TV numbers, which are a methodological nightmare for hundreds of different reasons and it all adds up to "You can't really tell anything from this information other than 'more is better.'"





1) They do, it's just how many cannot be adequately measured and fans use data to back up what they believe, and not use data for form their opinions.
2) They did. Which is why there were 13,000+ people in the arena in Glendale even though 3/8ths of the market can't get out there very often.

But if there's only 1200 Coyotes fans in all of Phoenix as the TV ratings have you believe, then who were those other 11,500 people every night for 20+ years?




They were "fine" in Glendale. They were "fine" in a college rink. It's just opportunity cost: It's less than an ideal situation which puts them further behind everyone else.

If only we could do some kind of experiment to see just how few tickets you can sell and remain in business in modern pro sports. Like if some kind of global pandemic prevented leagues from selling tickets, or more than 25% of tickets, for like almost an entire calendar year. I wonder what would happen if any team just sold no tickets for an entire year. How many teams would go bankrupt? Could you imagine? Oh wait. The Blue Jays not only sold no tickets in 2020, but also paid $40m to upgrade Buffalo's stadium so they could play in front of zero fans, and it crushed them financially so much they jacked up their payroll by $109 million over the next two seasons! I wonder where they're going to relocate to?

Fans use data to cherry pick the best argument for their beliefs. Like TV data to say there's no hockey fans in Arizona. Which is just dumb.

It's funny...out of blind curiosity and sheer inability to turn away from looking at the car crash... I keep popping in here, just to see what you could possibly be talking about......
and it's still the same BS as 2001 when I started to pay attention to the whole mess.
"It's the League, it's the owners, it's politics, it's the location, BLah,BlaH,BlAh.!!!!"

LOL.

Here's some data. Incontrovertible, hard data, with no denying it's context, or predictive value. Data NONE of the az supporters or analysts have EVER been able to answer for or deny..

There have been Pro hockey teams in Arizona since 1967.
57 years of hockey.....
In that time there has been 15 incarnations of an "AZ team" across pretty much every pro hockey league and level that ever existed.

None of them lasted more than a few years, Some didn't even make it to their first game.
Every single one was "shuttered for financial reasons."(went broke).

Of course there are hockey fans in Arizona, always have been...which is why they keep trying to run teams there.... the problem is there aren't ENOUGH fans.

THERE IS NO SUSTAINABLE MARKET for pro hockey in AZ. Never as been. No appetite for tickets, no appetite for TV, no appetite for merch.

End of Story.

 

[KevFu]

Here's some data. Incontrovertible, hard data, with no denying it's context, or predictive value. Data NONE of the az supporters or analysts have EVER been able to answer for or deny..

THERE IS NO SUSTAINABLE MARKET for pro hockey in AZ. Never as been. No appetite for tickets, no appetite for TV, no appetite for merch.

End of Story.

This pretty much sums up the fundamental disagreement here. You're taking "incontrovertable, hard data" -- TV viewers, for which one can very easily point out the flaws of context and predictive value -- and stating your pre-existing opinion as fact.

Your conclusion is just wrong, because it did sustain. For 27 years, the team generated tens of millions of dollars in revenue. The team paid it's players, its staff, ran it's operations and played NHL hockey without going out of business until the sale this past spring. Fifteen years of being a complete cluster compared to every other franchise and still had people buying tickets, people watching and no risk of folding mid-season. The league just found a better situation.

The idea that it's market and not circumstance has always been folly. Which is why no one does the same thing for Winnipeg, Colorado, Minnesota; stopped doing it to Carolina, Tampa and Florida when they started winning Cups. (And where are all the "hockey will never work in Vegas" people? This site has been around for a loooooooong time. We have receipts!).


Using the data that's designed to be an indicator for things doesn't tell you anything more than "Phoenix wasn't as good as other markets" for people watching hockey.

Which everyone knew; and because of the total of about a thousand different variables, is blatantly obvious with simple common sense and not a data dump.

If TV viewers are so undeniable and incontrovertable, please show me the line for which a market can sustain a hockey team, and where it can't. What's the number? How many average viewers?

 

[Skidooboy]

This pretty much sums up the fundamental disagreement here. You're taking "incontrovertable, hard data" -- TV viewers, for which one can very easily point out the flaws of context and predictive value -- and stating your pre-existing opinion as fact.

Your conclusion is just wrong, because it did sustain. For 27 years, the team generated tens of millions of dollars in revenue. The team paid it's players, its staff, ran it's operations and played NHL hockey without going out of business until the sale this past spring. Fifteen years of being a complete cluster compared to every other franchise and still had people buying tickets, people watching and no risk of folding mid-season. The league just found a better situation.

The idea that it's market and not circumstance has always been folly. Which is why no one does the same thing for Winnipeg, Colorado, Minnesota; stopped doing it to Carolina, Tampa and Florida when they started winning Cups. (And where are all the "hockey will never work in Vegas" people? This site has been around for a loooooooong time. We have receipts!).


Using the data that's designed to be an indicator for things doesn't tell you anything more than "Phoenix wasn't as good as other markets" for people watching hockey.

Which everyone knew; and because of the total of about a thousand different variables, is blatantly obvious with simple common sense and not a data dump.

If TV viewers are so undeniable and incontrovertable, please show me the line for which a market can sustain a hockey team, and where it can't. What's the number? How many average viewers?

LOL shifting goalposts and conflating issues and making up shit. LOLOLOLOLOL

I read two lines of your rant and realized you were incapable of actually assessing FACTS.

the 'Yotes NEVER made money. EVER.
yes they made sales and sold tickets and got TV money.... but they never generated a profit. EVER. That's just facts. for 27 years loss after loss after loss....

owner after owner. None ever made moaney. the ONLY reason the yotes stayed after 2009 was the NHL BOG agreed to float the team. hell even the way the sale to Utah went down sure seems to indicate the NHL was still quietly paying the bills and running the team when Murello was the "owner".

Again! There are fans in the Valley...Just not enough to make it a viable business...
multiple locations, multiple owners, onice success and on ice failure aside...the team NEVER made money...just like every team in AZ for the last 5.7 decades.

LET THAT SINK IN
EVERY TEAM IN AZ HAS FOLDED OVER THE LAST ALMOST 60 YEARS.

EVERY TEAM.

but yeah YOU must know some secret fan base that can pay a meaningful price for tickets, buy 10000% more merch and 1000% share increase in TV views that nobody before has ever found...

and if you sell that "If only Scottsdale" crap I'll gag. there is not and has never been a single shred of evidence that Scottsdale is a hockey market. A rich Market? sure, a cash rich market? sure....but zero evidence that the people of scottsdale actually want, are interested in or even care about hockey.

Case In point I have family in Scottsdale....they went to exactly ONE coyotes game since 96. ONE. Because I was visiting and made them go with me. they "loved it" ...and then, never went again.

I get it. it's sucks to not have a thing you love succeed the way you want it to...but isn't this Fugu's Business board? because no matter what you say, what leverage, or rumour or hope or hints or arguments you offer? Money has spoken..for nearly 6 decades money has spoken...and the teams have ALL FOLDED.

ERGO... AZ doesn't have any BUSINESS in hockey.

 

[GKJ]

I don't think they thought Meruelo was going to pull off winning the land auction, gaining the approvals, getting the permits, and getting an arena built in 5 years. I don't even think they thought he was going to get it done in 10. My belief is that it was a window left slightly open in case suddenly everything that had not come into alignment in 30 years suddenly came into alignment.

It gave Meruelo a chance to push for something he wanted to do (for reasons beyond the Coyotes), but it was always a shot in the dark. It was a little like buying a lottery ticket: "we won't win, but if we do......." Only this lottery ticket also got them repaid for their expenses in running the team.

I doubt that the league expected it to come crashing down as quickly as it did, but it was a zero-cost bet. If he somehow pulled it off, they are back in the Phoenix market, if not, add them to the list of potential future franchises.

The window was there in case he did manage to do it since the process was ongoing and it got the deal done. This was the easy way, which was done before it became the hard way.

 

[Shwan]

If TV viewers are so undeniable and incontrovertable, please show me the line for which a market can sustain a hockey team, and where it can't. What's the number? How many average viewers?

The line would be wherever the Florida Panthers and Carolina Hurricanes were at from 2010 to 2022 I suppose.

Your conclusion is just wrong, because it did sustain. For 27 years, the team generated tens of millions of dollars in revenue. The team paid it's players, its staff, ran it's operations and played NHL hockey without going out of business until the sale this past spring.

We sure about this one? We pretty much know the league just happened to take about 9 figures off the top of Smith's check for the Coyotes on top of the $200M fee. Is that "sustaining"?

 

[KevFu]

LOL shifting goalposts and conflating issues and making up shit. LOLOLOLOLOL

I read two lines of your rant and realized you were incapable of actually assessing FACTS.

the 'Yotes NEVER made money. EVER.
yes they made sales and sold tickets and got TV money.... but they never generated a profit. EVER. That's just facts. for 27 years loss after loss after loss....

owner after owner. None ever made moaney. the ONLY reason the yotes stayed after 2009 was the NHL BOG agreed to float the team. hell even the way the sale to Utah went down sure seems to indicate the NHL was still quietly paying the bills and running the team when Murello was the "owner".

Again! There are fans in the Valley...Just not enough to make it a viable business...
multiple locations, multiple owners, onice success and on ice failure aside...the team NEVER made money...just like every team in AZ for the last 5.7 decades.

LET THAT SINK IN
EVERY TEAM IN AZ HAS FOLDED OVER THE LAST ALMOST 60 YEARS.

EVERY TEAM.

but yeah YOU must know some secret fan base that can pay a meaningful price for tickets, buy 10000% more merch and 1000% share increase in TV views that nobody before has ever found...

and if you sell that "If only Scottsdale" crap I'll gag. there is not and has never been a single shred of evidence that Scottsdale is a hockey market. A rich Market? sure, a cash rich market? sure....but zero evidence that the people of scottsdale actually want, are interested in or even care about hockey.

Case In point I have family in Scottsdale....they went to exactly ONE coyotes game since 96. ONE. Because I was visiting and made them go with me. they "loved it" ...and then, never went again.

I get it. it's sucks to not have a thing you love succeed the way you want it to...but isn't this Fugu's Business board? because no matter what you say, what leverage, or rumour or hope or hints or arguments you offer? Money has spoken..for nearly 6 decades money has spoken...and the teams have ALL FOLDED.

ERGO... AZ doesn't have any BUSINESS in hockey.

The problem with your non-sense is that the same facts exist for Winnipeg moving, Minnesota moving, Quebec moving, etc, but you don't apply your facts the same way you do to anywhere in the south.

I'm not shifting goal posts on Phoenix - my stance is pretty clear: Saying a market is bad is just stupid because it's not the market, it's circumstance. And I've been saying the same thing consistently for about 25 years now on this site, wherever the non-sense relocation chatter rears its ugly head.

I said the same thing when there was a thread about Winnipeg's attendance. You know, the thread where you said "Attendance is meaningless" but now in this one you're intent on pointing out a low amount of fans in attendance or TV means the market isn't a viable market.

In Winnipeg, it's just the situation, the circumstance, you can see evidence of Fans everywhere. (Which is why I was on Winnipeg's side in that thread).

For all your talk of facts (which you're posting facts and then making an asinine conclusion that's just opinion from those facts), I'm asking you for something really, really, really simple:

What's the line of a "market can't work" vs "market can work, they're just gonna be near the bottom of the league" ?

Tell me what it is. X revenue? X percentage of revenue compared to everyone else? X TV viewers compared to everyone else?

Let's see the facts on X dollars isn't enough for a team to survive, or X viewers means no one is interested and the team isn't viable.

 

[Skidooboy]

My reason for Winnipeg not moving is the ownership group of the team stating they have never lost money, have no intention of moving the team, and will not move the team.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/winnipeg-jets-hockey-operations-profits-1.7171250#:~:text=True%20North%20has%20lost%20money,money%20in%20our%20NHL%20years.

the Yotes? " filed for bankruptcy in 2009 after incurring several hundred million dollars of losses since their move to Phoenix, Arizona from Winnipeg, Manitoba"

Phoenix Coyotes bankruptcy and sale - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

the 57 years of money losses and failure in AZ is NOTHING LIKE ANY OF THE MARKETS YOU MENTIONED.

The fact you have to pointless repeat your fact free take on the history of the Yotes for the last 25 years is an indication of your mistaken ideas not anyone else's....

 

[KevFu]

The line would be wherever the Florida Panthers and Carolina Hurricanes were at from 2010 to 2022 I suppose.


We sure about this one? We pretty much know the league just happened to take about 9 figures off the top of Smith's check for the Coyotes on top of the $200M fee. Is that "sustaining"?

You mean what they went through was the bare minimum you'd need to have to rally and rebound? I could buy that. I'd love to see what those numbers are.


As for the other one, sure. Did the league help them survive? Common parlance, yeah; literally speaking, I'd say no. And the same can be said in lots of cases.

Look at baseball, where the New York Mets have the highest payroll in the league right now, bring in $390 million in revenue. They have always been "profitable" in the important sense (not in the silly ways we use it here so frequently).

#1 - MLB loaned their owners a sizeable amount of cash because of a liquidity problem after the Madoff scandal helping them survive.
#2 - The Mets last year, per Forbes, had an operating income of -$292 million dollars. So amid a thread of all-caps NEVER MADE A PROFIT, I ask... why does that really matter if a New York City baseball team can casually be $292 million in the hole?

B-b-b-but that's baseball, Phoenix is different! Okay, my Islanders from like 1985 until UBS opened were an absolute financial gong-show of hemmoraging cash. But we're still blowing late leads and sucking on the power play for the 40th straight season (which opened against Utah BTW).

NYC had the #1, #14 and #29 revenue teams at the same time. The old Islanders owner said he lost $400 million owning the team. How can the New York market be the best hockey market, the average hockey market and the second worst hockey market all at the same time? The only logical conclusion is that looking at attendance and TV viewers and year-to-year profit loss and saying "That's a bad market" is just foolhardy and dumb. Islanders open UBS and instantly everything is golden. (Which is the same thing that happened in Winnipeg, Minnesota (and God-willing, Quebec).

It's not market, it's circumstances and conditions. And anyone saying otherwise has an agenda. (Like, bitterness they once lost their team to that city for example)

 

[KevFu]

My reason for Winnipeg not moving is the ownership group of the team stating they have never lost money, have no intention of moving the team, and will not move the team.

And that was my argument against the fear mongering pointed at Winnipeg.

So what you're saying is that things can look bad, but a good owner with a suitable venue can be committed to making it work, and that team will survive as long as that's the case. I fully agree.

But when the arena is old and needs replacement and the owner doesn't want to keep fighting, the team may relocate. And that has nothing to do with the market, that's just the circumstances Winnipeg was in. I agree with that, too.

I just apply that logic to everywhere, and you only apply it where you want to.