This is going to be a good case study for this board. The argument has gone back and forth whether winning is enough to make a team financially successful in a non-traditional market.
If Meruelo can relaunch the team, can he turn it into a "success" like the Predators? Forbes has them listed as being worth $170m more than the Coyotes, so the financial incentive is there.
As I have said before. This isn't a good case study in anything.
The reality is that as long as the current bull market and sports teams bubble continues, along with extremely cheap credit.... the team can keep losing tens and tens of millions every year, no problem.
The problem is that when we next enter a recession, credit tightens, investors see the glass as half-empty instead of half-full, and the amount of money people are willing to pay for teams collapses....
Defying the law of financial gravity by losing tens of millions every year will no longer be sustainable for the Coyotes.
Until then, nothing will happen.
A handful of more fans at games won't raise the fact the team makes very little local TV money or from games.
PS/Edit: I will add that the Coyotes are a great example that proves the correctness of economist Frederich Hayek when he said (and I paraphrase here) that: "Unemployment and idle resources stem from a previous unsustainable episode of easy money and artificially low interest rates."
This is what the Coyotes prove! Thanks to easy money and low interest rates plus the bull market... they are able to defy (and laugh at) the law of economic gravity and lose tens of millions every year without consequence! But there will be a reckoning for them of course. One day the bull market will end, and the jig will be up.