Pens NOT being sold to $100 m. + Investor William 'Boots' DelBiaggio

............ apparently it was Penguins ownership who backed out, for good reason. The franchise suddenly became worth much more than Boots had offered. First with a new CBA structured better than anyone had a right to hope for owenrship-wise, and then Crosby really boosted the Pens value. So not really bad news per se. Boots also apparently is remaining in the mix, as an investor, but only throwing $20 m. or so in according to the article. He may still buy the Pens, but not for his original $100 m. offer. This could explain though why the Pens only jumped part way into the free agent market. They have more cash for sure from Crosby sales of 150,000 + (21% of all the tickets available for sale in the arena for the whole year) in the two days after the lottery and then all the tickets sold after (not to mention before), but not that $100 millionaire infusion of new owner new toy money:


Apparently, negotiations weren't complete before the events of July 22.

But that date changed the fortunes of the Penguins in every sense.

That Friday, the NHL Board of Governors ratified a new collective bargaining agreement with their players, a contract that brought both revenue sharing and cost certainty to a flagging league, which had claimed two of every three of its 30 teams were hemorrhaging money.

That new document alone, and the economic security it provided, caused front-office officials of another NHL club -- one with a relatively new arena -- to calculate that their franchise value immediately increased by 30 percent. The lowest-assessed NHL club, in Forbes' most recent analysis, would have jumped from a roughly $90 million worth to $117 million by that estimate.

http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/05218/549754.stm

 

I cant blame them. I wouldnt sell now either. But you know this will be a thread full of people using this as proof that Lemieux is a greedy evil man.

 

Actually the article says that it was not Mario, but the others in Pens' ownership, that nixed the deal.