Little known secret....WTG was actually the #1 fan of the band "Men Without Hats"....>wearing hats in 2017
Who doesn't...losers do....that's who doesn't
Flames had a "tradition" whereby the "unsung hero" of the game would be given a "fireman's hat". That was of at least a season or two ago - not sure if they continue with that policy.notice how flames players never wear a hat at the draft
I actually don't see anything wrong with a city subsidizing some of the cost of an arena. There is an economic benefit the city receives by having that team there.
That isn't really true.
http://www.macleans.ca/news/canada/calgary-saddledome-arena-ken-king-naheed-nenshi/
I took a couple classes taught by one of the people mentioned in the article, and his expanded work shows pretty clearly that any "economic benefits" are either grossly exaggerated, misinterpreted or simply non-existent.
Interesting article. I did a quick search and read a couple scholarly papers and it seems to be consistent with what you've suggested. I still think there are items like tax revenues generated from that sports team (and the players) that need to be considered, property taxes on homes those players purchased in the area, etc.; however, it does sound like the general consensus is that if there is an economic benefit it's fairly negligible. Interesting.
Most of that was considered in the model. The argument is essentially that while businesses within a proximity of the arena make more profits, it's just taking an essentially fixed household entertainment budget and re-directing it within a centralized area. New homes also aren't built for all of the 30 or so multi-millionaires that a professional team brings in, so property taxes alone change by a negligible amount.
Unless it's an unique situation like Edmonton, a similar proposal to get the arena Kanata to downtown Ottawa/Glendale to Phoenix or one where the city gets a portion of revenues and profits...it's usually a burden on taxpayers that is never re-couped on the aggregate, while the demographic of people that are least likely to use the facilities are impacted even more. Which is disproportionately those who don't have the disposable incomes required to attend NHL games.
Not mentioned in the article, but the more important question in my mind is whether or not the economics behind sports arenas will continue to deteriorate in the future. The entertainment landscape is changing. Watching hockey is not the only thing to do on a Saturday night like it may have been 30 or 40 years ago.
Very good points. Thanks for mentioning this. You've definitely changed my outlook on these arena subsidy deals.
I think what it will come down to is if other cities are willing to subsidize a new arena, does the city of Calgary value the Flames enough to match that? And does ownership value the Calgary market as much as they would Seattle, or perhaps even Quebec? I think they could make as much profit in Quebec, Seattle I'm not so sure.
I think the willingness of cities to start these subsidies is going to decrease rapidly. From my understanding, the City of Calgary has a decent bit of leverage in this situation in that there really isn't a similar precedent of an NHL city subsidizing more than what is already on the table and the Flames don't have any credible re-location threats. That professor I mentioned earlier actually did a feasibility study for the City of Edmonton when Katz threatened to move to Seattle and found that re-location would be a disaster for the Oilers. That report allowed the CoE to tell Katz to **** off and within a couple days he issued an apology in the newspaper hahah. Seattle has obviously changed since then, but Calgary is a bigger market than Edmonton so I can't imagine the situation being entirely different. Not sure about Quebec, and they already have an arena which helps... but that's a significantly smaller market. Houston might have a shot, but it's not certain by any means and the optics of moving a mid-sized Canadian franchise to a non-hockey city would probably be too risky for the NHL to allow.
Unless the Flames are willing to accept what was basically a referendum on public support of a better arena deal, this could definitely drag on for a while. To be fair, I also understand their end of things; who the hell wants to take on the brunt of the costs on a $700m investment that might not break even for decades?
Okay, this piece of **** website is becoming unusable. It's slower than ****, I try to make a post, and something keeps on behaving as though I've clicked off the page, something keeps reloading every time I try to read threads, I keep being logged off for some reason, and embedded tweets still only show halfway down after this problem was briefly fixed.
Xenforo sucks ass.
Yeah, I just dunno. It was fine for a while, but now it's running like complete ass.
SecondedStop looking at porn and you'll have less viruses.
Yes. Several times.Have you tried clearing your cookies and cache for this site?
Done.Seconded
Been there done that.Stop looking at porn and you'll have less viruses.