More Genius From The National Hockey League?

Quebec City-trekearth

Uh, oh yes, definitely needed. I get them confused all the time...

Nucksmisconduct.com-I think he has been sort of lucky at times. Lucky not to be fired.

si.com: August 26-27, 2014

Cited

'Apparently Las Vegas isn't the only city on the National Hockey League's expansion team radar: Seattle, Toronto and Quebec City will add franchises as well with a target date of 2017, according to a tweet from SportsBusinessNews' Howard Bloom.

Bloom said the four-fold expansion, which would increase the number of NHL teams to 34 and the number of Canadian team to nine, could raise $1.4 billion in expansion fees.'

fivethirtyeight: Auguest 28, 2014

Cited

'Half Of The NHL’s Rumored Expansion Cities Don’t Make Sense'

Cited

'In our study, Toronto easily had the largest number of avid NHL fans; with a shade over 5 million, their total was double that of any other metro area in North America. Even if the new Toronto franchise lures just 20 percent of the area’s hockey enthusiasts away from the Maple Leafs, the expansion club would instantly have about as many devotees as the Chicago Blackhawks, Los Angeles Kings or Calgary Flames. It’s clear that Toronto has the fan base to support a second NHL franchise.'

The same can be said of Quebec City, albeit to a lesser extent. Our research found that an NHL club’s operating income (as estimated by Forbes) is closely correlated to the number of avid NHL followers in its media market, and that the break-even level of local fandom for a profitable franchise was about 300,000 to 400,000 fans. According to our estimates, Quebec City, the former home of the Nordiques, has about 530,000 NHL fans. So, a good comparison for Quebec City would be Winnipeg — another Canadian market that lost an NHL franchise in the 1990s, only to see the league return in recent years. Winnipeg has roughly 560,000 NHL fans, and despite the area’s relatively minuscule population, the franchise has turned a profit in each of the past two years (per Forbes’s data).'

Cited

'Teams in markets with fewer than 300,000 hockey fans, however, have tended to lose money, and that’s where the wisdom of adding franchises in Seattle and (especially) Las Vegas gets iffy. We estimated that Seattle contains about 240,000 NHL fans — fewer than that of Phoenix and Florida’s Tampa Bay, home to two franchises that have struggled to turn a profit for many years. And if Seattle is an enigmatic choice by this metric, Las Vegas would be a disaster. According to our estimates, there are only 91,000 hockey fans in the Vegas media market, which is nearly 40 percent fewer than even Nashville, Tennessee, the least-avid current NHL city, has.'

Cited

'As the reports stand, though, the NHL is instead sticking with what we originally argued was a suboptimal distribution of teams.'

End citations

Well stated, I like that...

Again, and as I have noted on both blogs, this is a philosophical example of a religious like, cultish like idea of growing the National Hockey League in non-traditional markets; when in reality more new avid fans and more money would be made growing the brand in traditional markets without a club or by adding a second club or third club, for example, in Southern Ontario.

Sad to state, I have come to the philosophical conclusion that much of this, and I am definitively and definitely not anti-American, is that the League has 23 US teams and 7 Canadian teams and simply wants to grow the game in the predominant country where most of its franchises and owners are located, and has since the 1960's, regardless of much of the financial reason involved.

Good or bad, financial reasons.

It is a form of philosophical blindness.

The 'growing the game' and 'financial gain' arguments in the United States at the expense of stronger Canadian markets, or stronger traditional American markets, do not stand.

The predominant country being the United States of America and this is why in my mind most of the emphasis is on American expansion and franchise relocation.

The idea of making it a national sport, when in reality it is primarily regional.

Toronto and Quebec City make sense as markets for making money and for franchise values, Seattle is a decent market and I think will likely receive good fan support, but will be down the list of sports, after the National Football League, Major League Baseball, National Basketball Association and the NCAA.

Therefore, I reason, Seattle would be like Saint Louis which receives good fan support, but struggles financially according to Forbes values and I question how profitable the team would be.

I also reject outright, the recent attempt over the last few years, largely I deduce by Vancouver hockey fans that want to travel down to Seattle to see Vancouver play road games, the argument that the 'Pacific Northwest' is a huge and great hockey market.

One, Vancouver is not part of the Pacific Northwest, but is part of the Lower Mainland.

Two, Washington State and the Seattle area has a vastly different sports culture and history than does British Columbia and the Vancouver area. It is not a fluke the Seattle has not been involved in the NHL since 1917. It is because it is not a particularly strong hockey market. 

Las Vegas is very questionable because of lack of fan support.

One must also consider the anti-Eastern bias against Ontario and Quebec by people in the Vancouver area that may blindly favour franchises in Seattle and Las Vegas over ones in Eastern Canada for those reasons.

Yes, I do not like how the Canadian Broadcast Corporation dominates its Hockey Night In Canada coverage with the Leafs and Canadiens at the expense of the other Canadian clubs at times, but at the same time, I still reason the better markets should have clubs.

Same for the other national networks.

But let's not be blinded by Canadian bigotry....

Where is a second Toronto team supposed play? New arena? The potential arena is Markham appears a dead deal.

Media speculation is that perhaps Rogers (Sportsnet) and Bell (TSN) could end their ownership partnership with the Toronto Maple Leafs and one of these corporations could own the new second team in Toronto and also play at the Air Canada Centre.

If the rumour from this article is basically true, I will give the NHL this much, at least there will finally be nine teams in Canada which there should be and under a reasonable and good financial system for them thanks largely through the television deals from Rogers and TSN.

Frankly, I would rather see Hamilton receive a team and the return of the Montreal Maroons than two more mediocre American markets. But as always there needs to be suitable arenas.

These teams would be far more valuable financially than Seattle and Las Vegas.

There is also the possibility of transferring weaker American franchises to Canada.

For balance, I will state that I think Brooklyn, should the New York Islanders land there, as it looks like they will, is a fine upgrade from Long Island. An American city, as in New York, with a proven hockey history and a very large population.

The Star.com

April 2, 2016

In light of reading and listening, I provide this additional perspective as well:

I still reason the hockey business favours hockey markets, but reading and listening to more on building ownership I will add the following: Basically it seems, if a sports team has a good stadium ownership or lease deal, it can stay in place even with a mediocre club and/or mediocre market for that sport. This allows a sports league to place teams in markets that are mainly theoretically good image wise markets (large population, large television market, corporate support), even if not very successful entities in the sport. Bad news if you are in locale or country that is not considered good image, even while a potentially profitable market. So with the NHL, Quebec City is considered by most observers a more profitable hockey market than Las Vegas, but I could see the reasonable possibility that Las Vegas being a major city for travel would have the more profitable arena. I would rather own the arena in Las Vegas than in Quebec City.