Thurs 5/12 meeting

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Wetcoaster

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Tawnos said:
"Most of the time was spent going over the league's Unified Report of Operations (UROs), the Levitt Report and team-by-team financial analysis."

???? What the hell??? Didn't they do this months ago??

Unless they're actually trying to define revenue now. But I really swear that they had a meeting where they went over the Levitt Report back in September.

"The good news, though, is that none of the negotiating principals are going to Austria for the world championship and the two sides will get together again on Tuesday."
No, they did not do it months ago - it has never been done.

It sounds like the negotiating is to disclose ALL the financial information - something the owners had steadfastly refused to do in the past and which even Levitt never was given access to.
 

NYIsles1*

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Kritter471 said:
*giggles* Um... you can be thrown in jail for not appearing before Congress when subpeonead (ack, I murdered that spelling). And days off between meetings aren't necessarily going to the beach, it's often meeting amongst themselves, which eliminates the need for taking caucuses in the meetings.
I did not write the NHL should not appear. The NHL has representatives they can send to congress without interupting critical labor negotiations.

I'm also aware both sides are working with what information was disclosed during this time off. That said some urgency is required and four days seems like an extended amount of time for review and caucus, especailly if this is about financial figures available for over a calander year the PA should know cold at this point even if they do not agree with them.
 

Boltsfan2029

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Wetcoaster said:
It sounds like the negotiating is to disclose ALL the financial information - something the owners had steadfastly refused to do in the past and which even Levitt never was given access to.

Sounds like he was for 26 of the teams:


No matter the number of teams, the PA really should have gone over the report with him the first time he offered so that instead of just saying "the numbers are bogus," they could have pointed out exactly how they reached that conclusion. Just would have given more credence to their argument.
 

Boltsfan2029

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NYIsles1 said:
I did not write the NHL should not appear. The NHL has representatives they can send to congress without interupting critical labor negotiations.

That would depend upon the nature of the subpoena. If it's directed to an individual, such as Gary Bettman, he can't send anyone else unless he arranges to do so ahead of time. If it's directed in a "generic" manner, i.e., to the individual with the most knowledge as to a specific area, then they can send anyone who fits that criteria. (For example, we often subpoena a corporate representative with the most knowledge concerning contracts entered into between his company and others.)
 

NYIsles1*

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Boltsfan2029 said:
That would depend upon the nature of the subpoena.
Granted. In fact it seems the leader of each sport (Bettman) may be required to personally appear. That said negotiations have gone on with or without Bettman or Goodenow in the room and it's resonable to say Bettman's testimony before congress would at best be as long as Selig's which is part of one day.

Last summer was still business as usual. The set parameters for a draft, qualifying offers, prospect retention of North American 2003 draft picks are still within the boundaries of the previous cba.

As of June 1st the basic parameters for this business begin to change so every day counts.
 

ALF AmericanLionsFan

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pck21 said:
Yes, as scheduled the pizza party with Bob and Gary is going on as planned today. There were heated debates following the ordering of the new cheeseburger pizza or stuff crust. They did decide on cheese but not extra cheese as to not hit the pizza fund ceiling. Right now hot wings are in the works but the mention of cheesy bread as also been brought up. The players want the wings the owners say they want more cheese. Only time will tell when the delivery guy will get here and how much of the luxery tip he will recieve. Stay tuned for upcoming announcements. :sarcasm:

Sorry that was stupid :) But c'mon I had to do it, I'm really getting sick and tired of hearing nothing from these two.
lol :biglaugh:
 

GSC2k2*

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Boltsfan2029 said:
Sounds like he was for 26 of the teams:

Quote:
The assignment that I undertook resulting in these findings was a very demanding one requiring over 2,000 hours. It entailed a comprehensive review of the financial books and records of each team. It called for all of the teams to be audited except four teams which could not be audited, partially because two of them were bankrupt and two of them, the auditors could not issue ongoing statements about the viability of the teams.

Let me stress once more that I was given absolute total carte blanche to go wherever I wanted, to ask whatever questions I wished to ask and I asked lots and lots of dumb questions.





No matter the number of teams, the PA really should have gone over the report with him the first time he offered so that instead of just saying "the numbers are bogus," they could have pointed out exactly how they reached that conclusion. Just would have given more credence to their argument.

Actually, he was given numbers for all of the teams. The reference to the four teams deals with the fact that, due to their bankruptcy and/or "going concern" qualifications, they could not be given an unqualified audit opinion, which is a term of art in the auditing profession. That does not mean he did not have the numbers.
 
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HF2002

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R0CKET said:
The one I have is a Delta IV Heavy on its maiden launch. It has a really large lifting capacity that I don't beleive the Russians and others can match today. Araiane V has a pretty large capacity but I'm not certain if it get that high in payload. The 2 prime vehicle that compete are the Atlas V (Lockheeed Martin) and the Delta IV (Boeing). The 2 American companies just recently announced a plan to creat a new jointly merged Rocket Co that will be based out of Denver where LM Co is today. That should help keep the 2 US guys from competing against each other. So things are kinda in a massive state of flux/crap/whatever.

One thing about US Rockets is that they have a much higher Mission Assurance to go along with their larger price tag.

Is there some specific competition that you are thinking of?
They talked about the competition on the program but I don't remember what it was. They showed a Russian rocket that would have the highest payload once completed but its problem is that it isn't as stable as the American ones.

Why would LM and Boeing merge? Money?
 

AM

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keep it straight...

Wetcoaster said:
No, they did not do it months ago - it has never been done.

It sounds like the negotiating is to disclose ALL the financial information - something the owners had steadfastly refused to do in the past and which even Levitt never was given access to.

The players never wanted to look at the data.
 

Egil

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My guess is that they are negotiating revenues and acounting procedures. Once that is done, then they can go to the background system (UFA age, QO, Entry Level contracts,etc.) or the cap/luxury tax numbers based on the defined and agreed upon revenue numbers. Assuming they can agree on how to define revenue.
 

Wetcoaster

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Boltsfan2029 said:
Sounds like he was for 26 of the teams:



No matter the number of teams, the PA really should have gone over the report with him the first time he offered so that instead of just saying "the numbers are bogus," they could have pointed out exactly how they reached that conclusion. Just would have given more credence to their argument.
All he offered to review was the URO's and the NHLPA was familiar with those. The Levitt Report offered no individual team breakdowns making it virtually impossible to test the claims being made against team information that was available.

It was a review of the URO numbers - it was not a "super audit" as claimed or even a regular audit. It was a review of numbers supplied by the owners.
http://www.eagletribune.com/news/stories/20050102/FP_001.htm

Levitt was blowing smoke.
http://ordinaryleastsquare.typepad.com/dubi/2004/03/reading_compreh.html
 

Wetcoaster

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AM said:
The players never wanted to look at the data.
Sure they did - they wanted to see all the financial information not just the URO's. They get those already. The NHLPA has asked for all the financial information for each team, including the revenues which flow through related corporate entities - that is what the NHL owners refuse to disclose and it was not provided to Levitt.

When the NHLPA did a four team review of the URO's in 1999, the NHLPA found $52 million in undisclosed revenue. And that was without full and unfettered access to the financial information for those four teams.
 

codswallop

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Wetcoaster said:
All he offered to review was the URO's and the NHLPA was familiar with those. The Levitt Report offered no individual team breakdowns making it virtually impossible to test the claims being made against team information that was available.

It was a review of the URO numbers - it was not a "super audit" as claimed or even a regular audit. It was a review of numbers supplied by the owners.
http://www.eagletribune.com/news/stories/20050102/FP_001.htm

Levitt was blowing smoke.
http://ordinaryleastsquare.typepad.com/dubi/2004/03/reading_compreh.html

I've read several articles on the OLS site. When it comes down to the credibility between the writers on that site and reporting of Levitt, there is absolutely no contest. Perhaps those at OLS should consider all information, and maybe try out the lost art of objectivity.

I'm no accounting pro, so I can't really comment on the more in-depth aspects of Levitt's findings. But thank God for specialists; I have a friend who's been in the accounting industry for 25 years. He's done just about everything you can think of in that field. He's also read the Levitt report and the article on OLS, and is damn certain that the OLS article is the one blowing smoke.

Always better to get the opinion of those with expertise, than us fanboys whose knowledge lies in other areas.
 

Wetcoaster

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cw7 said:
I've read several articles on the OLS site. When it comes down to the credibility between the writers on that site and reporting of Levitt, there is absolutely no contest. Perhaps those at OLS should consider all information, and maybe try out the lost art of objectivity.

I'm no accounting pro, so I can't really comment on the more in-depth aspects of Levitt's findings. But thank God for specialists; I have a friend who's been in the accounting industry for 25 years. He's done just about everything you can think of in that field. He's also read the Levitt report and the article on OLS, and is damn certain that the OLS article is the one blowing smoke.

Always better to get the opinion of those with expertise, than us fanboys whose knowledge lies in other areas.
As I understand it Silverstein's background is in economics and accounting.

I have spoken with a couple of forensic accountants whose opinons mirror the accountants quoted in the Conway article:
http://www.eagletribune.com/news/stories/20050102/FP_001.htm

Here is what Lyle Richardson (aka Spector/Prince of Pucks) of Fox Sports had to say about the criticism of the Levitt Report by Conway and Silverstein:

The Levitt Report has once again come under criticism, this time by the Lawrence (Mass.) Eagle Tribune.
In a series this past week that was excerpted by the Calgary Herald, Eagle Tribune reporter Russ Conway cites two respected chartered accountants who disagreed with not only the report's findings but Gary Bettman's claim of it as a "super-audit".

For those wondering who Conway is, he's a Hockey Hall of Fame journalist whose investigative reports in the early 1990s into corruption in the NHL hierarchy not only earned him a Pulitzer Prize nomination in 1992 but also aided in sending former NHLPA director Alan Eagleson to prison for fraud.

The CPAs interviewed by Conway noted the Levitt Report was not in fact an actual audit but instead a review of the league's finances, something Arthur Levitt himself stated in the report.

Because Levitt and his team didn't audit all 30 clubs, it's difficult to determine if the league's revenues are accurate, particularly when each club has different reporting criteria and what each considers to be hockey revenue.

Conway's findings concludes the Levitt Report was a vague review of the NHL's finances, particularly the reporting of luxury box revenues, which has been a point of contention between the league and the NHLPA for some time.

That jibes with the findings of Blueshirt Bulletin editor and publisher Dubi Silverstein, who noted the same points and other discrepancies last March in a lengthy dissection of the Levitt Report for his web site.

The NHL continues to cite the Levitt Report as an accurate measure of their financial problems, but it's becoming clear that the more the league's finances are scrutinized the more questions are being raised. The league's unwillingness to address these criticisms merely adds more fuel to the fire.
http://msn.foxsports.com/story/3304648
 

R0CKET

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You know the real issue here when you get down to it is this...if an owner (or corporation etc) has other assets from their own investments that may benefit from also owning a team do the players have a claim to those revenues?

Seems like a fairly straightforward question and IMO the answer is flatly no.

The players will demand their "share" of an owner who also owns parking lots. That was his capital he put up to obtain that right and the lot may well be as much of a complementary product to the franchise as it the other way around. If the lot makes it easier for fans to attend due to convenience then it is boosting the gate and also the salary of the players. The owner chose to make this investment and he should be the one to get the benefit.

A player signs a contract for a fixed firm price, its not a variable contract based on all the complementary investments that his lawyers can find.

The world doesn't work this way...in non-socialized economic societies that is. This is basically a value added tax that the PA is claiming the right to levy upon the owners of the NHL and I feel like they are way out of line.

If the players want that money they should do one of 2 things - include it in their contract language (which no owner will agree to) or make the investments themselves with their own union dues provided cash.

If the players push on this the owners will be forced to divest in their own franchises as to keep from paying the PA their "tax" money and in the long run the players will be hurting the financial success of their own gravy train.
 

Crazy_Ike

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Correct. In fact, some of the "undisclosed money" the NHLPA "found" was in fact revenue from non-hockey related events that just happened to be in the building the owner controlled. And people accuse the LEAGUE of manipulating the numbers! :D

Apparently NHLPA members want to be paid some of the take from operas, NBA games, rock concerts...
 

thinkwild

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Crazy_Ike said:
Correct. In fact, some of the "undisclosed money" the NHLPA "found" was in fact revenue from non-hockey related events that just happened to be in the building the owner controlled. And people accuse the LEAGUE of manipulating the numbers! :D

Apparently NHLPA members want to be paid some of the take from operas, NBA games, rock concerts...

I'm sure you'll provide a link for this.

There is no books for a hockey team. The books the owners looks at are completely different from the representation they make, (to the media only) of what their hockey operations are. The players arent askiing for money from the opera's, they are concerned the opera is being allocated hockey revenues.
 

thinkwild

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R0CKET said:
You know the real issue here when you get down to it is this...if an owner (or corporation etc) has other assets from their own investments that may benefit from also owning a team do the players have a claim to those revenues?

No. And they arent asking for them. Its the owners that want them to accept a claim on those revenues.

R0CKET said:
If the players push on this the owners will be forced to divest in their own franchises as to keep from paying the PA their "tax" money and in the long run the players will be hurting the financial success of their own gravy train.

Hard as it is to understand what you are talking about, the implication here is right on point. The owners can "divest" themselves of revenue streams so that the players cant get a share? Hmm. Wouldnt want to link to those then would they?
 

Wetcoaster

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R0CKET said:
You know the real issue here when you get down to it is this...if an owner (or corporation etc) has other assets from their own investments that may benefit from also owning a team do the players have a claim to those revenues?

Seems like a fairly straightforward question and IMO the answer is flatly no.

The players will demand their "share" of an owner who also owns parking lots. That was his capital he put up to obtain that right and the lot may well be as much of a complementary product to the franchise as it the other way around. If the lot makes it easier for fans to attend due to convenience then it is boosting the gate and also the salary of the players. The owner chose to make this investment and he should be the one to get the benefit.

A player signs a contract for a fixed firm price, its not a variable contract based on all the complementary investments that his lawyers can find.

The world doesn't work this way...in non-socialized economic societies that is. This is basically a value added tax that the PA is claiming the right to levy upon the owners of the NHL and I feel like they are way out of line.

If the players want that money they should do one of 2 things - include it in their contract language (which no owner will agree to) or make the investments themselves with their own union dues provided cash.

If the players push on this the owners will be forced to divest in their own franchises as to keep from paying the PA their "tax" money and in the long run the players will be hurting the financial success of their own gravy train.
It is anything but a straightforward question given the interlocking corporate ownerships and differences in financial reporting which vary from team to team as can be seen from the URO's filed with the league. Here is what Ted Saskin told The Sporting News on this issue commenting upon the results of the four team review the NHLPA conducted in 1999:
"We went and requested further information that spoke to a lot of the related entities and disclosed a lot of revenue sources that clearly were not being counted in the URO process," NHLPA senior director Ted Saskin told The Sporting News. "Just on those four teams alone, we saw a swing of $50 million toward profitability. That's only on four out of 30 teams.

"We've always said it's not an accounting issue of making sure the numbers add up," Saskin said, "but a much more complex task of how one defines the revenues in a business with many related parts and complicated corporate structures. There's no way to tell because they continue to refuse to give you individual team financial information."

"The financial reporting you get from the National Hockey League is only as good as the information they get from each team in what is an unaudited and voluntary submission. And the old adage 'Garbage in, garbage out' is unfortunately an apt description of the current system they have in place. We have numerous examples of teams simply putting down 'zero' for luxury suites, concessions and other items. You can't take that kind of reporting seriously."

It is not just hockey that is faced with these problems.

The NHLPA is simply seeking the same thing as the other major pro sports. They are trying to negotiate a definition of Hockey Related Income. But first they have to be given the financial information so the negotiations are informed. In the NFL it took almost 18 months for the NFLPA accounting specialists to go through the information before they were in a position to actually negotiate. This is very complex stuff. The Levitt Report was based on the URO's and it provided no individual team information.

In the other sports the owners disclosed all team financial information as well as the information of related or associated corporations. From that a formula was negotiated. However that does not end the matter as the other sports have found - it is an ongoing issue.

There are significant differences between the revenue definitions between basketball and football and baseball uses a third formulation.

BTW last year the NFLPA went through the financial information supplied by the NFL teams and found millions of dollars in undisclosed revenues which was used to up the cap levels for all the teams. Without full disclosure this would not have been possible. It is this full disclosure that the NHL owners have adamantly refused to provide.

Also the NFLPA has indicated that a major issue in their upcoming CBA negotiations will be changing the definition of Designated Gross Revenues (DGR).
The salary cap, which this season is set at $80.6 million, is determined by the players' share of what are commonly known as designated gross revenues. The DGR comes from the cache of shared revenues, such as money from the NFL's network television contracts, but that pool does not include items like local broadcast rights, some luxury and club seats, and other stadium-generated monies.

Upshaw contended that 10 years ago, when the salary cap was introduced, the players did not share in about 30 percent of teams' revenues. That has ballooned, Upshaw suggested, to about 37 percent as leaguewide revenues have skyrocketed to $6 billion.

"We're not out to kill the golden goose, believe me, but things have changed and there is a need to revisit a lot of these things and move them forward," Upshaw said.

Later in the evening, when asked about Upshaw's remarks to the owners, commissioner Paul Tagliabue -- whose close working relationship with Upshaw has helped the NFL to avoid the pitfalls experienced by other sports loops -- disagreed. While he was not in the meeting, Tagliabue made it clear Upshaw has made the same arguments to him.

"I know what [Upshaw] is saying, but I don't necessarily agree with his characterization, no," Tagliabue said.
http://sports.espn.go.com/nfl/columns/story?columnist=pasquarelli_len&id=1910854

BTW if the deal is not signed shortly although the CBA runs through 2008, the 2007 season would be uncapped. Gene Upshaw has stated that if the cap is gone after 2006, it will not be coming back to the NFL.
It is important that a new deal is in place a year before the current one expires. If not, the salary cap would disappear in the final year of the collective bargaining agreement and owners would be free to spend as much as they wanted on player costs. On the flip side, in an "uncapped" year, players would have to accrue six seasons, instead of four, to gain the right to unrestricted free agency.

Upshaw repeated during Super Bowl week that, if the salary cap ever disappears for even one season, the league will never be able to restore it.
http://sports.espn.go.com/nfl/columns/story?columnist=pasquarelli_len&id=1992603

Tagliabue is having difficulties with some of his high revenue owners and said in March 2005:
Normally, NFL commissioner Paul Tagliabue is upbeat when he addresses owners to open the annual spring meeting. On Monday, he was down, saying negotiations for a new collective bargaining agreement have "exhausted themselves" and are "at a dead end."
http://sports.espn.go.com/nfl/columns/story?columnist=clayton_john&id=2018691

The NBAPA has said the definition needs to be changed (and in the case of the NBA the % needs to be upped) and it is a huge issue in Major League baseball as well. Does this sound familiar????

While the (NBA) owners and front-office executives are griping about the impact of long-term guaranteed contracts, the players are railing about how hard it is to switch teams or find long-term security because the luxury tax has curtailed spending leaguewide. TV rights fees, meanwhile, have declined for the first time in history, while ticket prices are constantly rising.

You would think that there's no chance the owners and the players would subject themselves to another work stoppage, after the damage done in 1998 and with the catastrophe waiting to happen in the hockey world ... but then you hear from a league source who insists that "half or more of the owners will make more money if they lock the doors for a year and don't have to pay players."

Uh-oh.


That's why the forthcoming negotiations figure to be as challenging as they've ever been. The salary cap saved the NBA, but the next CBA has to keep the league going and growing. Which is far from a slam dunk, even though the sides are exchanging ideas far earlier than they have before. You wonder, for example: If the players make concessions on guaranteed contracts, will luxury-tax restrictions be eased to their satisfaction? And if luxury-tax restrictions can be eased to everyone's satisfaction, can small-market teams still compete? And if salaries indeed go down, with the players compensated some other mysterious way, would the teams really pass on the savings to the ticket-buyers? That's just a few of riddles Stern will be combing through.

All the NHLPA is asking for is what the other leagues have already granted - full financial disclosure so that a definition of Hockey Related Income can be negotiated. It is the absolutely essential pre-condition if you are going to insist upon linkage between revenues and salaries. Other sports have done this why not the NHL?
 

Wetcoaster

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Crazy_Ike said:
Correct. In fact, some of the "undisclosed money" the NHLPA "found" was in fact revenue from non-hockey related events that just happened to be in the building the owner controlled. And people accuse the LEAGUE of manipulating the numbers! :D

Apparently NHLPA members want to be paid some of the take from operas, NBA games, rock concerts...
Source????????????
 

mooseOAK*

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The NHLPA has had about a year to dissect the Levitt Report and expose to the public that is was just a scam to make the owners' numbers look bad but they haven't.

It is a non-issue then, obviously.
 

Drury_Sakic

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How could they if they did not have access to the real numbers...?


anyone who thinks that the owners did not put some revenue off to the side to hide it and make it look worse than it is, well, is as stupid as Goodenow.....


I believe there were some clubs in the NHL that lost tons of money, and there does need to be changes to the economic system...

But so did the NBA, NFL, and MLB.
 

thinkwild

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mooseOAK said:
The NHLPA has had about a year to dissect the Levitt Report and expose to the public that is was just a scam to make the owners' numbers look bad but they haven't.

It is a non-issue then, obviously.

I guess Wetcoaster's post had too many words. Imagine if one of the owners was going through a divorce. And he creates a report showing what his personal revenues are. he ha none, because the team pays him no salary. He draws up a budget but refuses to show any of his paycheques to support it. But says look, i drew up a budget separating what are my personal revenues from my business ones. You can llok at these numbers. Make sure they add up. But you cant see my tax receipts or paycheques to prove it.

And then you say, its a non-issue, he already drew up a budget and said the wife could look at it and ask questions.
 

Boltsfan2029

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Wetcoaster said:
All the NHLPA is asking for is what the other leagues have already granted - full financial disclosure so that a definition of Hockey Related Income can be negotiated. It is the absolutely essential pre-condition if you are going to insist upon linkage between revenues and salaries. Other sports have done this why not the NHL?

If memory serves, didn't one of the league's offers include hiring independent auditors/accountants/whatevers (chosen by both the league & the PA), jointly determining what will & will not be considered revenues, and those auditors/accountants/whatevers would then monitor the teams very closely to ensure they reported the numbers correctly within the guidelines that had been mutually agreed upon? There were some very stiff penalties included for teams that tried to hide money.
 
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