If Bettman can look past Atlanta folding twice, he can look past 10,000 empty seats.
As we both know, Bettman has NO interest in adding a team in Canada and the seating in QC is irrelevant. QC could sell out both games and have a 20,000 season ticket waiting list and Bettman would yawn.
Like I said before, foall the money Sportsnet/TSN pays to televise NHL hockey, they should pressure the NHL to add a Canadian team. If Sportsnet/TSN said, "We want another Canadian teams to make the NHL Canadian package profitable and we're not buying in until we get a guarantee of an 8th team", Bettman would start the process of adding another Canadian team tomorrow.T
Currently, TSN pays no money to the NHL. They do pay money to a few individual teams for regional rights.
Can the NHL guarantee an 8th team in Canada? Would there be enough competition for that franchise to guarantee that the expansion fee will be high enough to not reduce franchise values of all teams? For how long is the NHL guaranteeing 8 NHL teams in Canada? If a Canadian teams becomes unviable, is the NHL forced to only allow it to move to a Canadian market and if so, what impact will that limitation have on franchise valuations?
Is such a move worth it for Canadian broadcasters? Are there enough additional national advertising to pay for the production of ~30 new national broadcasts? Are there enough additionalregional advertising dollars to pay for the production of ~50 new regional broadcasts? And what impact will have this new team have on their current regional advertising dollars..
The Canaidan national TV deal is worth ~350M a year to the NHL. The US national TV deals are worth ~650, almost twice as much. Surely if the US broadcasters got together in the same way and demanded fewer Canadian teams, then the NHL should start forcing Canadian team owners to relocate or fold their teams, right?
Just a few of my thoughts on attempting such a move.