{"id":493,"date":"2004-01-18T02:11:31","date_gmt":"2004-01-18T07:11:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wordpress\/2004\/01\/skating_on_thin_ice\/"},"modified":"2004-01-18T02:11:31","modified_gmt":"2004-01-18T07:11:31","slug":"skating_on_thin_ice","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/2004\/01\/skating_on_thin_ice\/","title":{"rendered":"Skating on Thin Ice"},"content":{"rendered":"

I don’t devote much attention to the state of hockey. In fact, this is my first hockey post. But the Washington Post<\/i> has a good piece<\/a> on the ailing financial health of the NHL:<\/p>\n

According to the league’s figures, NHL teams could lose an estimated $300 million this season. Twenty clubs are losing money, according to the latest Forbes magazine analysis. Two teams filed for bankruptcy last season before new owners were found, and at least one franchise, the Mighty Ducks of Anaheim, has been for sale for years without finding a buyer even though the team came within one game of winning the Stanley Cup last spring.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The article covers some of the NHL’s well-documented problems: (over?) expansion into sunbelt markets, limited T.V. appeal and revenue, but the thing that gets me is the giant leap in player salaries:<\/p>\n

NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman says the sport’s business model is broken, and he has staked the health of the league on achieving a labor agreement that he believes will be an economic cure-all by capping player salaries. Salaries have tripled from an average of $558,000 in 1993-94 to $1.79 million last season, overwhelming the growth in league revenues, which will reach about $2 billion this season.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Inevitably, this gets passed on to the fans:<\/p>\n

The lack of big television money has always forced the NHL to rely more heavily on arena-generated revenue than the other leagues, all of which have a greater amount of revenue sharing among teams than hockey. But with the NHL’s average ticket price at $43.57, or about as much as an NBA game, NHL teams are hard-pressed to squeeze new money out of ticket sales.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Yeah, I know, that’s the free market and people will pay to see a winning product, be it hockey, baseball, or any other sport. But it seems that sooner or later people would say enough’s enough and stop feeding the professional sports monstrosity.
\nAs I said, it seems<\/i> like that should happen.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I don’t devote much attention to the state of hockey. In fact, this is my first hockey post. But the Washington Post has a good piece on the ailing financial health of the NHL: According to the league’s figures, NHL teams could lose an estimated $300 million this season. Twenty clubs are losing money, according […]<\/p>\n<\/a>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-493","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-uncategorized","7":"h-entry","8":"hentry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/493","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=493"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/493\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=493"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=493"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=493"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}