This is the entire point. Not enough people want it bad enough to support a team due to a little bit of traffic. It’s pretty simple. It takes time to get there. Sure. Sunrise. Kanata. You can’t get anywhere in Toronto in an hour. Fans of teams paint their faces and dig out seats in snow storms and save up for a month to take their kids to games.
There aren’t enough people after 30 years to go through traffic if there isn’t fun shops?
2.) it’s not about what the fans want. It’s about the population. The population didn’t vote for it. They could have. Has any other team lost a referendum like that in the NHL?
The point is that the will of the people was not to have the team there. Which is fine. They don’t have to. Pretending they do is crazy
3.) if AM is such a saavy busines man with a plan. How did they lose the vote?
If you need things to do before or after the game. You don’t really want to go that bad. Which is totally fine. But ultimately the team is not supported by the population.
That’s the only fact that matters.
Comparing Canada hockey to most of the states is not apples to apples and you know and I both know it. If you want to use Canada, where hockey is more than just a game than yes, Yotes fans are not as diehard. I am not familiar with Sunrise, Kanata and I will not comment on it as such. Similar to my argument with you and Arizona. You can't just pick certain parts of the argument as factual or a reason. It's the sum of the crap.
The entire point is, the organization has not had the stability to breed a consistent winning team with revenue to continue making them relevant. Fans have rarely been given a chance in their existence to have a reason to want it badly. It doesn't mean they aren't fans. It just means that until they know they are going to have a team to root for long-term, who wants to build a winner, they don't want to invest financially and emotionally. Again it doesn't make them lesser fans, it makes them realistic. And in a town where there are several options, that are permanent, you can understand why (maybe not a Canadian hockey fan because it's live and die for hockey). For the past 10+ years its been that they are leaving or they are a poverty franchise. We finally have an owner doing the right things. We have a top notch scouting department for the first time in the organization. We have a GM who is competent and created a plan that he is actually sticking to.
Tempe should have gone through. It was good for the city and the residents who would have been affected. The site was going to essentially be on the northern line of Tempe where the majority are students and professors. The NO vote essentially will put Tempe in to bankruptcy at some point when the EPA declares the landfill an issue (it's toxic, it has caught on fire) and makes Tempe pay $250m to clean it up which they can't afford. Something Meruelo was going to do in his proposal.
The big money advertisers and corporate boxes/seats aren't going to be purchased at an arena where they don't have the reach. Scottsdale will have that reach. Tempe would have had that reach. That's revenue the team can use to promote and market. To make improvements to the team. But the team has been handcuffed for more than a decade.
2) The whole population didn't get to vote. Tempe voted. Yes the site is in Tempe, but super close to the airport and centrally located to the majority of the wealth. That being said, population all over the country doesn't want to pay more taxes for billionaires toys/businesses. That's a really fair feeling. Meruelo wasn't doing this. But he was painted to be doing so. It fired up the NO vote. It is what it is. It's politics and ultimately it didn't go in their favor. But not because the project wasn't worth it.
3) Certainly a misstep but I believe it was just because it was a new area of expertise that they were not prepared for. I don't think that makes him less savvy. I know the person who ran their campaign. They were told from the get go that the polling was overwhelmingly in their favor. Most of the fans were on board and never even had a thought that it wouldn't go through. It made so much sense. The mayor, the city council, former mayor that became a senator were all on board.
Tim Cook f'd up on the Apple Car development and ultimately ended up canceled but does that make him a bad businessman or a bad CEO? No.
I don't need things to do before and after. But I have a family. I work hard. If I was a season ticket holder, which I plan to be at the new site, I am going to have little time to get my wife and kid and then get to the arena site. I don't really want to always eat at arena. I'd like to be able to take my wife and kid to a place where we can sit down before. I can do that pretty much everywhere there is a sports team with the exception being Glendale. It doesn't make me less of a fan. It makes me practical.
I have no problem admitting you are probably a bigger fan than I am when it comes to our respective teams and really it doesn't have anything to do with it. But I have seen this town support the Yotes before the instability set in, in less than optimal situations. Literally at the games. I have seen what it was like pre NHL here. The coliseum had good attendance.
It's not as black and white as you make it out to be. And you shouldn't be making it out to be anything because you don't know anything factual about the state. It's shown. And a point of yours that you don't need facts is a smoking gun in relation to you being completely incorrect here. Much like I don't tell you how big of a fan you are as a fact or talk about your arena situation as a fact, you shouldn't tell Yotes fans what they are. If you don't know the situation, find out before you speak about it.
