NHL Lockout Fan Apathy Should Scare Bettman, Daly Back to the Table

He might not be laughing at the end of this negotiation

Hopefully, he will be out of a job....

If we were dealing with a negotiation between two parties who actually cared about their sport, maybe this NHL Lockout would never have happened in the first place. Heading into week 6 of the current stalemate, we are no closer to a resolution in their protracted labour dispute then we were almost 2 months ago when the league (in their infinite wisdom) table a proposal that was essentially a slap in the face to every single player currently in the NHL.

After the loss of the entire 2004-05 season, one would think that both the league and the players would be able to come to some sort of compromise rather quickly instead of going through this kind of head-butting over ideology once again. This should have been especially true given the way that the previous agreement was heralded by Gary Bettman as the “Blueprint” to future labour peace. If you recall, at the time, one of Bettman’s talking points was how they were locking out the players in an effort to give the fans a break on ever increasing ticket prices. 8 years later and I’m still waiting to see where those savings promised to the fans are yet to appear, especially given just how much the League won in their 2004 battle with the players.

 After 2004, the League broke the union and caused a ripple effect which led to 

Donald Fehr becoming the current leader

They basically broke the union with the lockout as the players fired Bob Goodenow and replaced him with Ted Saskin (who himself was fired shortly thereafter, leaving the Players Union in complete disarray). Then they got the players to accept  a hard salary cap at a very low starting point (around $39 Million per team as I recall) giving what the League had been screaming for since the start of their labour dispute, their “cost certainty” in player salaries. They were able to get the players to agree to this in exchange for the one small caveat at the time; that if league revenues grew, so too would the salary cap ceiling. Given how the league lost a season, they didn’t see that one small point as something to worry about and it cost them dearly.

 At the time of the 2004 deal, clearly the league was losing money and needed to do something to stop hemorrhaging as much money as they were. Most of those losses were of course due in large part to Bettman himself and his incredibly short-sighted insistence on continuing with the NHL’s Southern Blueprint (which has failed , miserably) but of course at no point was this ever a concern in 2004. Looking back now over the course of the last 7 years, the League has seen revenues skyrocket to the point where the NHL is now a $3.3 Billion a year revenue generating, fiscally solvent corporate entity. But, as seems to happen with all businesses that grow too much, too fast, the league has forgotten about its fans, how to remain loyal to them, even the parts of North America where they have the most of them.

There are several teams that draw flies in the Southern US that could follow the model of the Atlanta Thrashers and move to a Northern city like Winnipeg. Phoenix and Florida (based in Miami) are 2 prime examples of teams that could move to cities like Quebec City and Hamilton and instantly turn from money losers to money makers. But no. We have Bettman and the League basically bending over backwards to ensure that their stupid Southern Expansion blueprint (a colossal failure at the gate) stays in tact as much as possible. It's stunning to me that they actually bent with regards to the Thrashers moving to Winnipeg. Maybe there are chinks starting to form in that protective armor Bettman seems to have on 24/7.

 Could Bettman be planning his exit strategy with long time friend Brian Burke?

Now comes word out of New York that the league has made a “substantial” offer to the players with a number of positive idea included many concepts that fans have been saying would end this standoff. An even split of revenues, no  salary rollbacks included and a full 82 game schedule if things can be agreed upon in a timely manner. If this had just been their very first proposal or possibly if it had been an offer made like say maybe back in September, we would have avoided all of this month long nonsensical lockout that the league says has already cost them $100 million.

Instead we had to endure 31 days (and counting) of a league mandated lockout of its players which has not only hurt the fans, the staff members of the arenas, the surrounding businesses that rely upon the NHL to fill their bars, restaurants and clubs on game days, not to mention the pocket books of both owners and players alike, but has also cast a pall over the integrity of the league as a whole. This is the 4^th labour related issue that we have seen in the league in the last 20 years and the 3^rd initiated by Bettman himself. He is now such a villain to NHL fans (and has been for a long time now mind you) that his presence alone is enough to make the average hockey fan cringe. He is booed in every NHL arena he is seen in whether it is in person or on the screen.

For the betterment of the league, he should step down after this deal is done as he has lost the respect of everyone who cares for the game. He is seen as a man who cares only about the bottom line of the game and is seemingly controlled by a small group of penny pinching owners who would like nothing better than to constitute rules into the league that would, essentially, protect owners from themselves.

Maybe all the news reports out of major Canadian cities lately about fan apathy towards the lockout spurred the league to come up with their new offer. Maybe they had this as their fallback option as their best deal and hoped the players would cave towards this position first. Whatever the reason, it seems that the league and its players may have finally started down a road of mutual understanding. Maybe the best news besides some significant movement is that Bettman and the league finally blinked this time. Maybe, just maybe, Bettman’s time is up too.  

 

Time for Major League Baseball to Move the Tampa Bay Rays

 Even with a winning team, the Rays are averaging just over 19,000 a game, worst in Baseball

I don’t know what Major League Baseball is waiting for when it comes to the situation that the Tampa Bay Rays are in right now and have been for the last few years. They have been one of the better teams in baseball for the last 4 years, having been to the playoffs for 3 straight years and to the World Series once, yet they play in a crappy field (Tropicana Field is brutal) to sparse crowds that only seem to swell when the Yankees are in town.

Back in July, even the Commish Bud Selig came out and said the attendance in Tampa was "Inexcusable" and "Disappointing" yet he really can't do much about the situation. When both he and the head of the players union agree that there is a problem and yet they don't know what to do about it, that tells you that maybe its time to look outside the box for some creative way to solve the issue.(Selig and Union Position)

When both the League and the Union agree there is an issue in Tampa but don't know how to fix it...

You have a MAJOR problem 

This isn't a situation like what happened to the Expos. Poor on-field performance and ownership issues ultimately doomed the team. This Tampa team struggled mightily early on with bad players and teams for nearly a decade. Yet the fans support was pretty good for the first few years. Eventually of course, it did lead to poor crowds and the lowest average attendance in the league over the last 15 years.  The good news about their poor performance was that it allowed the team to create a wealth of prospects in their farm system which, over the last 5 years, have helped turn the team into a powerhouse that has a chance to consistently challenge for a playoff position year in, year out. 

But even with some great players coming through their system, because of the fact that they are not playing to big crowds (except when they play the Red Sox or Yankees), the team has not been able to keep them. Carl Crawford is a perfect example of that. He was drafte by Tampa and blossomed into an All-Star with the Rays. However, once he became a free agent, he was lured away with a massive contract from the Red Sox (7 years, $142 million).Even their best player, Evan Longoria, who was clearly Major League ready in his rookie year, was forced to wait 7 weeks in the minors in order to ensure that his Major League time would not begin to count down towards his eventual free agency status (since a players' arbitration eligibility rights are evaluated based on how many days they spend in the Major Leagues). It was a move made by a penny pinching owner to try to delay the loss of a potential star down the road.

With the right conditions now present, why not bring the Expos, and Youppi! back?

If you don’t have the attendance to support your team, then you are in danger of becoming the Montreal Expos of the early 2000’s when Major League Baseball took over ownership of the team and allowed the team to essentially die away. I'm not saying that it will happen as Tampa actually has an owner trying to do what they can to keep the team economically viable in Tampa but the Expos main issues were not all the same as those being faced currently by the Rays. The only real similarity is the stadium as the Expos were never able to have a real home for themselves built in the downtown area, which is the same problem that the Rays have. Ownership in Tampa is much more solid as can be seen by their financial commitments to Evan Longoria and David Price who both signed long term deals. The Expos were used by owner Jeffrey Loria in order to maneuver his way into changing the team he owned, buying the Florida/Miami Marlins and leaving the Expos in limbo.

As well, the Expos mess really was the culmination of several things including the value of the Canadian dollar having sunk to $0.62 US. When you are paying out your player salaries in US dollars and bringing in revenue in Canadian, at that time, it was almost an untenable situation and for some Canadian teams, it led to their moving South (Quebec and Winnipeg left for Colorado and Phoenix in the NHL, Vancouver Grizzlies left for Memphis in the NBA and the Expos became the Washington Nationals in 2004). Given how much of a turnaround has happened in the value of our currency over the last 8 years, the time is right for several failing US based teams to be brought back north of the 49^th Parallel. One of which should be the Tampa Bay Rays moving to Montreal as the re-born Expos.

 In  their heyday, both the team and their fans were something special

From all accounts, Quebec has rejuvenated itself and become once again a prosperous Province with a lower unemployment rate average then the rest of the country and many primarily Quebec based companies having turned into giants (Rona, Desjardins Financial and Quebecor come to mind). With their economic base growing and interest in bring back the Quebec Nordiques at an all time high (with construction already underway on a new Colisee in the city of Quebec), the time is right to start focusing on bringing back the Expos.

Quebecor has been the driving force behind the potential return of the Nords, pledging money and willing to be the owners of any potential new team in the city. They are a multi-media giant in the province, owning cable TV stations TVA and the Sun Media chain of newspapers all across the country. They are chomping at the bit waiting for the opportunity to arise where they can pounce on a troubled US based NHL team and move them to Quebec City because of the content that an NHL team can drive for their other businesses. An NHL team in that city would spawn both English and French based reporters to set up base there. It would drive up local ratings for their stations that cover the team, it would create more content to be covered by their newspapers in the area and their websites would attract more hits on stories about the team.  In essence, investing in a team by a multi-media giant is ideal in that it drives up business for all of its other areas.

Fan groups still number in the thousands and former players still remember fondly their

time in "La Belle Provence" 

To me, this means that a company like Bell would be the ideal fit to purchase the Tampa Bay Rays and move them to Montreal even as early as next year. I know that there isn’t a deal yet in place to build a baseball specific facility in Montreal but that is primarily because there is no need. No team means that there is no need to concern yourself with such an issue. But, if Bell can see the value of having purchased 37.5% ownership over MLSE in conjunction with their biggest rival, Rogers, then clearly they understand what I just discussed about how a sports team drives content. Rogers owns the Jays as well on their own as well as Skydome (Rogers Centre) which should show the people at Bell that there is money to be made and content to be delivered to many waiting customers and fans.

There are still thousands of Expos fans all across the country and particularly in Montreal. They didn’t abandon the team because they stopped enjoying the sport, far from it. They turned on the team when Loria made it abundantly clear that he would not spend on them and had given up any hope of trying to jointly work on any proposal for a new stadium. The Expos logo and colours are still incredibly popular as Expo caps are the 3^rd highest seller across Canada, only behind the New Jays caps and the Yankees traditional cap.

There are thousands of fans on Facebook groups supporting the Expos and a possible return and some groups have even organized themselves and made their presence felt by attending Major League games decked out in full retro Expos gear. The people would come back to watch Expos games, of that I have no doubt. All you have to look at for proof of that is by looking at the average attendance the year before Loria took over the Expos ownership, 1998. The team averaged close to 19,000 fans in the cavernous Olympic Stadium, the same number as the Rays today, but had hardly any corporate sponsorship support nor did they have an actual season ticket base. That is also the same average number of fans that the Blue Jays averaged between 2007 and 2010. Once Loria took over, their attendance began to drop because it became clear that Loria had no interest in either being the owner of the Expos or spending any of his own money on a team he had no real interest in owning long term.

Bell would not be the best suited to own the team but given the pre-occupation that Quebecor has with getting and NHL team back in Quebec City, and the fact that Bell could copy the Rogers model on how they have gone coast to coast with their promotion of the Blue Jays, they are the ideal potential owners for a Major League team to return to Montreal.