Rumor: Ottawa Senators in for potential Ownership Change

[ChelFan31]

Feels like Ottawa's worst kept secret but there are changes brewing in #Sens ownership.

From SensChirp

Click to read more...

 

[Ser Grogu]

Maybe the other group that made a bid for LeBreton?

 

[Golden_Jet]

That didn't long after you asked for more info in the other thread, why did you leave out the 50% part and insinuate 100%? you know the part that you Bolded.
"
The rumoured buy-in of DevCore (50% share of Sens) can't come soon enough if it's true."

Are you the Ottawa Sun headline writer?
I would move this to a rumour section for now.

 

[Sun God Nika]

This purely speculation I was burned once with this inside info ill wait it out now.

This thread title is very misleading tho, makes it sound like its a done deal could be nothing.

 

[Tuna99]

Cirque de Solei owner Guy Laliberte is super well respected by his workers which is excellent news, and he is literally a gambler so expect Ottawa to shake things up.

The Desmarais family are super well respected and you hear nothing but good things, they are blueblood money, not a ton of ego there either.

And my guess is Alfie is involved in the ownership group. Not a huge ownership % but there as the face of the turnaround.

Please god let this rumour be true.

 

[Do Make Say Think]

I can't wait to see the people who love to bash Melnyk get their dreams shattered when a change an ownership does nothing.

The owner doesn't control the market and the Ottawa market is mediocre.

Reality is going to wreck the delusional posters.

 

[Uchiha]

Bye Melnyk!

 

[Sun God Nika]

I can't wait to see the people who love to bash Melnyk get their dreams shattered when a change an ownership does nothing.

The owner doesn't control the market and the Ottawa market is mediocre.

Reality is going to wreck the delusional posters.

LoL you have always been so silly.

A change in ownership will do a lot.
- Team won't operate at a salary that is 5-6 million below budget
- Team can get best possible coach on market whether or not they can walk on water.
- Team won't skip russians in the draft.
- GMs can be held accountable and lose their job not just coaches
- Team won't waste assets like draft picks and prospects to half teams retain salary or take salary back in trades
- Team would be able to move bad contracts by retaining salary and buying players out.

Besides winning the draft lottery an Ownership change is the best thing that can happen to this team..

 

[Knave]

I can't wait to see the people who love to bash Melnyk get their dreams shattered when a change an ownership does nothing.

The owner doesn't control the market and the Ottawa market is mediocre.

Reality is going to wreck the delusional posters.

My hope for ownership change or adding to ownership to make a group (Melnyk + someone else or an institution) is it secures the build up of LeBreton downtown if that's where Melnyk is struggling right now.

 

[Golden_Jet]

to be fair, if some bloggers rumour of 50% buy-in actually came to fruition, doesn't mean they would buy players out etc.
NCC said an update in January.

 

[Flamingo]

I would add "invest in arena experience" to the potential improvements that new ownership would bring. I had hoped Anselmi would influence things for the better. Some changes to logistics would dramatically improve pre- and post-game experience... get better transit support, make the concourses a little less bunker-like. But I haven't heard of any great changes in that regard. Maybe new ownership/buy-in would influence that.

 

[Ouroboros]

Plot twist: It's MLSE.

 

[Burrowsaurus]

LoL you have always been so silly.

A change in ownership will do a lot.
- Team won't operate at a salary that is 5-6 million below budget
- Team can get best possible coach on market whether or not they can walk on water.
- Team won't skip russians in the draft.
- GMs can be held accountable and lose their job not just coaches
- Team won't waste assets like draft picks and prospects to half teams retain salary or take salary back in trades
- Team would be able to move bad contracts by retaining salary and buying players out.

Besides winning the draft lottery an Ownership change is the best thing that can happen to this team..

TEAM almost certainly will operate on a budget unless gates is. Buying. AND even he wouldnt spend to the max for consumers that won't pa pay for the product and yeah that's it.

 

[Do Make Say Think]

My hope for ownership change or adding to ownership to make a group (Melnyk + someone else or an institution) is it secures the build up of LeBreton downtown if that's where Melnyk is struggling right now.

That is certainly a positive scenario.

However I have a hard time believing Melnyk went into this without absolute certainty that he could pull it off.

 

[danielpalfredsson]

TEAM almost certainly will operate on a budget unless gates is. Buying. AND even he wouldnt spend to the max for consumers that won't pa pay for the product and yeah that's it.

Depends on ownership and their intentions. It's a lot easier for a sound ownership group to commit to possibly losing money year to year. I am not sure how it works in Canada, but it's not uncommon for billionaires to own sports franchises in the states with the intention of leveraging the losses against other forms of positive income, while maintaining the actual franchise as an asset that they can later sell to recoup or gain on their initial investment.

I have a very loose understanding of this, so I'd welcome anybody who is more versed in it to correct me or provide better info.

New ownership won't fix the primary issue with this market, which is that we do not have adequate corporate support and have a very fragmented population to draw from due to the large amount of older Canadiens/Leafs fans in the territory. So essentially, supply and demand is very skewed. We have to sell more tickets to a smaller overall population than probably all other Canadian teams. Unfortunately, numbers for each Canadian (or NHL) team's corporate isn't available, but the two numbers we do have via Wayne Scanlan show us that the Senators are able to sell 4000 season tickets via corporate support, Toronto on the other hand 13000. In Toronto's case, the GTA has a population of around 6M versus Ottawa with a population of around 1M. So, per game the Leafs have to sell about 4k tickets to a 6M population, the Senators about 13k tickets to a 1M population that is heavily fragmented by having older pre 1990s Leafs and Canadiens fans who mostly aren't going to go to neutral Senators games. This is obviously the most extreme comparison, and I only use the Leafs because it is the only numbers we have, I'd be very curious to see the corporate support numbers for the other Canadian teams.

With that said, in the short term, I think a change in ownership would be something that would energize the market since a lot of fans have a negative view of Eugene Melnyk and carry the sentiment that the team is being handicapped by him being the owner. The marketplace isn't going to change just because there are new owners, but the right ownership group might be in a better position to weather money losing seasons, which would remove some of the financial handicaps management has (supposedly) had when constructing this team over the last few seasons.

 

[Pierre from Orleans]

Is Melnyk losing money a real thing? I remember reading something about the money he gets from other revenue sources actually contradicts his money issues?

 

[TheNewEra]

This excites me more than the duchene rumors before we got him

 

[Do Make Say Think]

Who is going to buy a team with

Is Melnyk losing money a real thing? I remember reading something about the money he gets from other revenue sources actually contradicts his money issues?

This market can only provide so much support.

With the cap ceiling going up all the time we get screwed. The market's ability to spend hasn't kept up because we have so few big compagnies in Ottawa. Then you have the Phoenix pay system: the biggest employer in the city is having a hell of a time paying it's employees properly.

The market is essentially tapped out. Something is going to have to give.

 

[UnHappyDude]

Can new ownership bring back zibanejad and Turris?! And buy out Ryan?

 

[Pierre from Orleans]

Who is going to buy a team with


This market can only provide so much support.

With the cap ceiling going up all the time we get screwed. The market's ability to spend hasn't kept up because we have so few big compagnies in Ottawa. Then you have the Phoenix pay system: the biggest employer in the city is having a hell of a time paying it's employees properly.

The market is essentially tapped out. Something is going to have to give.

But he also gets revenue from concerts etc though no? TV revenue? NHL revenue sharing? Hard to imagine he's losing money with everything else that's coming in. I have no idea though

 

[danielpalfredsson]

But he also gets revenue from concerts etc though no? TV revenue? NHL revenue sharing? Hard to imagine he's losing money with everything else that's coming in. I have no idea though

"Melnyk insists he has lost $94-million to $110-million (numbers have varied) since buying the Senators. As Blue Jays president Paul Beeston, an accountant by training, once quipped: You can make a loss into a profit and vice versa quite quickly in sports accounting."
(Eugene Melnyk helped Senators slide further into mediocrity)

The books aren't public, so nobody without access to them really knows. I recall hearing a Melnyk quote about how the Senators need to make the playoffs to turn a profit, but I can't recall when or where he may have said it.

 

[Nac Mac Feegle]

LoL you have always been so silly.

A change in ownership will do a lot.
- Team won't operate at a salary that is 5-6 million below budget
- Team can get best possible coach on market whether or not they can walk on water.
- Team won't skip russians in the draft.
- GMs can be held accountable and lose their job not just coaches
- Team won't waste assets like draft picks and prospects to half teams retain salary or take salary back in trades
- Team would be able to move bad contracts by retaining salary and buying players out.

Besides winning the draft lottery an Ownership change is the best thing that can happen to this team..

.......IF the new ownership (if this happens) decides to put more money into the Sens than Melynk.

I do believe there was a Forbes article not long ago that had Ottawa solidly in the black in terms of revenue/profits, so I don't think our "tapped out" market is that bad. A new arena downtown and the businesses within it should be a solid bet to make a profit.

For all we know, that other group might care more about the housing/businesses attached to Lebreton than the hockey team & arena.

If a new owner appears, and that group invests in the team...hot damn! But there is a lot of ways this could turn out as more of the same...or worse for the Sens.

 

[Flamingo]

This team can be profitable and competitive, they just have to get through Phoenix pay system after-effects and a stale arena experience to fix.

 

[Karl Prime]

"Melnyk insists he has lost $94-million to $110-million (numbers have varied) since buying the Senators. As Blue Jays president Paul Beeston, an accountant by training, once quipped: You can make a loss into a profit and vice versa quite quickly in sports accounting."
(Eugene Melnyk helped Senators slide further into mediocrity)

The books aren't public, so nobody without access to them really knows. I recall hearing a Melnyk quote about how the Senators need to make the playoffs to turn a profit, but I can't recall when or where he may have said it.

From that article .... "The Senators will miss the playoffs for the second straight year." Then the run happened. Thanks Mr. Simpson for that amazing jinx!

 

[The Lewler]

Whenever this finally happens, the stuff we will hear about what was happening with the teams finances will likely be quite... frustrating .. as a fan.