OK hows this then:
The Levitt investigators did not look into each individual club's finances, relying instead on the team's own audits. The NHL insists the report made adjustments for discrepancies, but the way they established their benchmarks raised questions.
Take luxury-suite revenue, for instance, a cash cow for NHL clubs. There are more than 2,600 luxury suites in arenas throughout the NHL. With rental fees in the hundreds of thousands of dollars a year, not including the cost of game tickets and concessions, they pull in hundreds of millions of dollars a year -- which might be expected to be reported as hockey revenue.
But in the Saddledome and most other NHL rinks, rental of a luxury suite also entitles the renter to admission to all other events at the facility -- such as Hitmen and Roughnecks games as well as all concerts, circuses, wrestling and other public events using the facility. The Levitt investigators decided not to individually examine the luxury-suite revenues for each club; instead, the report used a sample of eight clubs to create a formula for luxury suite money.
According to Lynn E. Turner, the former Securities and Exchange Commission chief accountant who oversaw most of the work that went into the Levitt Report, they divided the revenue pie based on hockey's share of the total paid attendance -- not per events -- for all arena dates, and it didn't matter whether the box was actually used for any of the other events.
"The fact that a luxury box is physically empty during an event is immaterial," Turner said in a written response to questions by The Eagle-Tribune.
In short, the formula treated all events as equal in the purchaser's mind. But in arenas such as the Saddledome, where the NHL is the real draw for those who rent luxury suites, the suite licence or membership for an NHL game -- diluted by other events -- would have a lower report ed value using the formula in the Levitt Report (of course, in those arenas where the NHL is a lesser draw -- such as L.A.'s Staples Center or New York's Madison Square Garden -- the opposite could be true). In either case, the question is whether the method accurately accounts for actual hockey revenue or for the profitablity of the arena itself.
The Levitt Report used the same method to determine hockey's cut of revenue from premium club seat licences, arena sponsorship and naming rights and building costs, as well as suite revenues. So, the effect of the Levitt formula of mixing all events together could make the NHL's losses appear greater than they are.
Turner would not comment on who chose the paid-attendance benchmark. The Levitt team did not benchmark revenue from concessions and other sources and or general and administrative expenses, instead relying on the league's own in-house audits.
Which only re-opens the gulf of trust and credibility between the sides ever wider.
"Unless they (NHLPA) agree with your definition of hockey revenue, what's the sense of doing it?" Delgaudio said of the Levitt Report. "You're setting up the rules yourself, without the other person or the other entity agreeing, in this case the Players' Association. And then coming up with that number and saying, 'See?'. . . . So the process didn't solve anything. It's one-sided. They used their own rules in coming up with a conclusion."
quoting your own precious sorces you trust so much!
http://www.canada.com/components/printstory/printstory4.aspx?id=db7a2b8d-056c-4c69-a0a4-5009a92ce9d5