Beatnik said:
Surely there would be a war. I assumed in my post that the players would win it.
During the war both would lose but a win after a season or 2 it COULD be extremelly good for the players. 100% of the revenus is better than 53%.
do they have a chance to win? I think yes. I don't think every building is own by the NHL teams. Also some owners could want to join the new league after a season or two instead of paying for empty arenas.
There is no interest in the minor leagues now, I don't think the fans would suddently be excited by those players only because they got NHL shirts.
First off, they wouldn't gett 100%, they would have to pay for arenas, marketing, uniforms, equipment, travel, hotels, etc. But just for arguement's sake lets say you're right and they get 100% ...
100% is not always better then 53%. 53% of 2.1 billion is 1.113 billion, given 82 games and 30 teams (2460 games) in the NHL that works out to $452,439 / game for the players. Assuming a 15 team league and 70 games for a season (both reasonable estimations for a startup league imho) that is 1050 games. So to equal the 1.113 billion offered in the NHL, they would have to take in 1.06 million / game. So that means assuming an arena of 15,000 fans, that would be an average price of $70.67 ticket price. And that is assuming they can sell 15,000 tickets every game.
You gonna pay that? of course not! So lets assume $50 average ticket price. At 15,000 fans ( a HUGE number of fans for a startup league to draw) that would be 787.5 million in revenues, or 37.5% of the 2.1 billion the NHL makes. So how again is that a better deal for the players?
Also I don't think you'd have owners crossing the line as that is the EXACT opposite of the intent of the league, which is to let the players be owners. Plus , remember that the the owners would be playing replacements, so the arenas wouldn't be dark.