I would not be at all surprised if the Jets failed to make a profit last year. They were at the cap ceiling, and only hosted 3 playoff games. The Jets ownership group even said themselves that they would be a "middle of the pack" team, in terms of spending on the cap. Last year, they spent right to the cap ceiling to hope for a long playoff run.
You have to keep in mind that when the Jets returned in 2011, the salary cap was $20 million less, and the CDN dollar was on par with the US dollar.
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I was reading an interesting article about Mario Lemieux wanting to sell the Penguins to a party that offered quite a lot of money. Mario could not accept the deal and sell, because his partner had majority ownership or voting rights -- "or both have to agree to an offer."
The article went on to say that Lemieux said that the Penguins only make money if they "make the playoffs" and have that playoff money come in.
It's important to understand -- where the "real money" is in ownership--and it's not on the cash flow side from year to year. Where the money is made-- is the increasing value of franchises to buy in. In other words the principal value of the franchise itself.
For example -- Chipman and the Jets bought their franchise at $ 160 million I believe, and it's worth -- $ 500 million today -- which is what Seattle just bought in for. That's the NHL franchise market value now.
So the Jets "real profit" is $ 500 mil --less -- $ 160 mil =
$ 340 million, which covers a lot of annual operating losses. If the franchises were going backwards in value and losing money -- like Lemieux thought they would soon start to -- then you'd see a lot of owners dumping their franchises, because they'd go broke in a hurry.
Although I believe this to be 100 % correct -- I also think all team franchises would like to turn an anuual operating profit on the cash flow side of the ledger --and get it "both ways."