PeaSouper
Registered User
This also kills the Buffalo TV market. How do you regain that for the NHL?
But if the Buffalo/Rochester keeps shrinking and in absolute terms fewer and fewer people live there, the market becomes less and less significant.
I'm from Buffalo and live in Austin. There's a reason Austin isn't on the radar for a major sports team. The Icebats couldn't afford to keep playing. Sure the Stars are moving a farm team here, but we'll see how that goes. The arena is way out leander way a lovely hour+ long traffic jam away from the city itself.
I'm not trying to say that Austin should have a major sports team - the joke around here, of course, is that we do have a pro football team, except they play on Saturdays. The City of Austin will never do anything that threatens the Longhorns. Hell, that's why that AHL arena got built out in Cedar Park.
This is neither here nor there - the point that I was making is that when you say that the Buffalo is much larger than it appears because of nearby Rochester, the same can likely be said for every potential destination for an expansion or relocated pro sports team - i.e. Hamilton, which has only 700,000 in its statistical metro area, but is in a larger market of roughly 10 million.
Buffalo is making money. It's profitable. Why would you move a profitable team that's making money? Why would you move a team into direct competition into a market you know can't support two teams. There's no *reason* to move the Buffalo franchise to Hamilton.
You might want to spend some more time on thinking about it.
Buffalo is fine today. The fact is, though, the market is on a trend towards being not fine as far as having two major pro sports teams go. Like I said earlier, it's debatably the smallest market in North America with two pro sports teams.
If you're of the opinion that the "Golden Horseshoe" market of ten million or so people can't support two NHL teams, I think you're in the minority. While many people in this debate are anti-Balsillie for one reason or another, I've yet to hear one of them justify their objection by seriously suggesting that the Southern Ontario market cannot support two NHL teams.