Lady Stanley
Registered User
- May 26, 2021
- 727
- 538
As my husband will tell you, 8 teams means you can bring back the north division.Yes google gave me something about 7 years, still the current Canadian deal is approximately 43 million American per team/year vs the 25 million per team/year of the ESPN deal.
The argument could be made if there were more teams in Canada there would be bigger Canadian TV deals to be had, or does that argument only work south of the border?
Inspite of the horrid repetitiveness of no interdivisional play(honestly something I'd argue bothers more established fan bases more), it was a huge success for rogers/bells/rds/tvas.
Every year you'd get 3 rounds of Canadian hockey. I get regular fans would melt if Canadian teams were gifted the 4 playoffs spots + a 3rd round ticket, especially when 5 of 8 are on a rebuild, but the reality is bell/rogers/rds/tvas would offer up a billion dollars over a decade for that.
Maybe an extra $100 million a year would be too much, you want to argue it'd only be $25 million a year in added value but even that you're talking about $250 million over a decade. The narrative Gary has irrational support for the south is misleading. It was all means to an ends to capture the current American tv. Now that this base is covered Gary isn't gonna ruin his reputation with a floundering Canada deal. In addition is seems unlikely ESPN is dying for a first round matchup like they had with the Jets-Knights. It benefits both sides of the border if there are no wild cards. It gives broadcasters some degree of scheduling certainty.
All this talk about supposed growth, the reality is Canada is gonna have a Houston worth of potential new fans over the coming decade. Between the 4.5 million immigrants set to come and the children of immigrants.
Getting QC believe it or not would have massive ramifications for the league television contracts.
Honestly I'm just so tired of this double think.
QC has the arena, we have a team without an nhl caliber arena. 5 years ago everyone argued that you'd need a team without an arena, you have now have that the back tracking is absurd.
The rockets owner hasn't shown a true interest in a Billion dollar fee Kansas etc are barely bigger than QC with no established fan base.
Even if you go in those types of markets you can always wait for a new team with an expansion draft, as the risk of having 5+ years without playoff hockey would be insane in one of those markets. I'd argue Austin with an Arena is the real market that needs to be focused on when getting a new team.
QC can weather a bad team storm better than anywhere else.
I'd also point to the low population growth in both Toronto and QC. These two things are interconnected. Toronto is running out of land that can be developed, a lot of land is not available due to environmental protection laws. The result of this is a mass exodus of people from the area. This is already spilling over to Montreal and Halifax, and QC is the last man standing as an affordable place to live.
Before work from home became the norm QC wasn't viable. But so many young people with the ideal season ticket holder incomes will now be moving to QC to exploit the low cost of living(already has happened in halifax). In addition Trudeau has announced staunch support for unnaturally high immigration rates, this guaranteed QC will likely be growing by 2-3 percent per year.
All the alignment issues are largely mislead. 48 games would be against american teams. 34 left over means Toronto would play Ottawa-habs-QC 6 times and the western teams 4 times each. You throw in the fact that 4 times means you can do doubles. Especially useful if you have people coming into Vancouver for the weekend just to see a game or to of the habs. The ability to do doubles could reduce make travel actually go down for Canadiaan teams.
The narrative QC would split Montreal is unfounded. TVAS only has 1.75 games of montreal hockey a week. You can't make money when the tv isn't on.
Again so many of the things being claims are just unfounded. They're based on outdated stereotypies and are bordering on bigotry. Canada is a country of legal immigrants. We have "the tap is on" policy which means we'll see real opportunities for growth. Even removing QC from the equation, simply making a better TV audience, would be well worth it when you're trying to capture the new fandoms of 5 million immigrants per decade.
Again QC doesn't have to happen, but please don't base your arguments on something drummed up 30 years ago. We're a faster movie country compared to the US, and we're a much more limited market. Immigrants have to go to NHL markets unlike in the US where there's always another NHL free city to move to.(i.e. austin)
It's very likely QC will have a million people in the metro by 2030+, thanks to immigration. Again the argument that Canada doesn't have room to grow is incredibly unfounded. Playoff runs rapidly capture new fans. Again don't use double think, the same rules that apply to the South apply to the North with the stipulation Canada already has a base that doesn't exist in the south.
QC will have great demographics(Trudeau has basically written that into law) and it gives the option of revamping the television contracts.