MONTREAL, QC.– With the Detroit Red Wings up 3-0 in their series with the Phoenix Coyotes, tonight could mark the final NHL game in Glendale. It’s a difficult time for Phoenix players, the staff of the club and the dozens of passionate hockey fans in the area. It’s hard not to think about the great hockey city of Winnipeg, and the departure of the Jets to Arizona, 15 years ago.
I still have my commemorative key chain distributed at the final NHL regular season game at the Winnipeg Arena between the Jets and the Los Angeles Kings (with head coach Larry Robinson behind the bench.) With the Jets still fighting to secure a spot in the post-season, fans were decked out in playoff white. Bobby Hull, Thomas Steen and “Dancing Gabe” were in attendance to ignite “White Noise.”
The goaltending match-up featured the King’s Byron Dafoe vs. Nikolai Khabibulin in the Winnipeg goal. The Jets line-up included Teppo Numminen, Ed Olyczyk, Keith Tkachuk and a rookie named Shane Doan — Perry Pearn and Randy Carlyle were assistants to coach Terry Simpson. Winnipeg prevailed winning 5-3 with Tkachuk getting his 50th goal of the season into an empty net.
There were three more games played at the Winnipeg Arena that April with the Red Wings eliminating the Jets 4-2 in the first round of the playoffs.
With the Jets on the brink of being moved to Phoenix, there was an impressive grassroots fan effort from the citizens of Winnipeg. Absent was NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman doing back-flips to keep the team in Manitoba as he has been doing full-time for the past two years in Phoenix. At the time, Bettman was only too happy to escort another team out of Canada making false promises to league governors about lucrative American markets.
Bettman and NHL Governors were dazzled by the chance to place a team in the 12th largest television market without stopping to recognize the obvious — the size of the catchment area is meaningless if they aren’t interested in your product. It’s why Canadian toboggan manufacturers, far more wise in economics than the commissioner, didn’t follow the NHL parade to plant an ice-sport in the desert.
But such are the ways of Bettman, who long ago has lost his ability to hide his contempt for hockey in Canada and its rabid fans. He has occasionally raised the spectre of the NHL returning to Winnipeg which has cruelly toyed with the emotions of Jets fans while using their passionate interest to leverage a buyer in Phoenix. Nothing speaks louder to this point than Bettman using every available means including litigation to block a bid of $212.5 million to a potential owner who would have relocated the team north.
The result is that he has been forced to chase buyers who are unwilling to contribute any real money of their own and require major concessions from the league, team and Maricopa county. While Bettman hid behind the claim that the Canadian buyer was circumventing the league’s established process, he has been willing to toss that out the window to seduce disinterested parties who will keep the team in Arizona. Bettman was so confident in his prowess as a marketer that he lost no sleep alienating the greatest player in NHL history, Wayne Gretzky, as the commissioner’s arrogance ran roughshod over anyone who got in his way.
On Tuesday, the NHL unveiled its new 10-year TV deal with fanfare, an arrangement with NBC that will net the league a reported $200 million per year. It is a far cry from the major U.S. broadcast arrangement that Bettman has been pursuing for years and is unlikely to cause a major spike in viewers that would have been possible with ESPN. The NHL had a contract with ESPN from 1999-2004 which paid the league $120 million per year ($160 million in current dollars).
Interestingly, Bettman was only able to increase television dollars by $40 million per year in 12 years, the same dollar amount that the Coyotes are projected to lose this season (coming out of league coffers.) To provide further context, the NBA, which was the fourth major sport when Bettman became commissioner, receives almost $1 billion per season. In a separate arrangement, the Los Angeles Lakers, receive $200 million per season.
So is it smart business by the NHL to pursue a southern strategy driven by flawed media assumptions or is it time to admit that the 40-year experiment to woo indifferent fans in some parts of the United States to hockey, particularly the Sun Belt, has been a colossal failure?
A comprehensive report released last week from the University of Toronto’s Mowat Center for Policy Innovation titled “The New Economics of the NHL” suggests that Canada can support 12 teams in the league. Authors Tony Keller and Neville McGuire point to the fact that the NHL team revenues are mostly dependent on ticket sales which is far different from the other major sports in North America. This attendance-driven model allows the Edmonton Oilers to consistently outpace most American teams in terms of revenue despite competing in the NHL’s smallest market.
In fact, the six Canadian teams generate nearly one-third of league revenues. Keller and McGuire write that through revenue sharing, Bettman’s strategy “has effectively become an effort to subsidize Americans to watching Canada’s national sport. The primary beneficiaries of this scheme are American hockey team owners and a smattering of American fans attending games below cost.”
The report goes on to make the case for possible additional NHL franchises in Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver as well as Winnipeg, Quebec City and one of Hamilton, London or Kitchener-Waterloo. It isn’t unusual to hear a cry for more Canadian NHL teams but perhaps it is the first time that an economic case has been made to support locating teams closer to natural demand. Unfortunately with an obstinate Bettman at the helm, it is unlikely that the NHL will deviate from its current myopic approach.
Tonight though, hockey fans in Manitoba will watch with great interest as the Coyotes take the ice in Glendale possibly for the final time. Their hope lies not in a change of strategy by the league, but, after all other efforts have failed, in necessity. Rather than say ‘I told you so’ regarding the move of hockey to the desert, Winnipeggers will simply embrace the team that shouldn’t have left — and this time, never let go.
On April 12, 1996, it was Winnipeg Jets fans who were chosen as the number one star of the game.