Canuck management has been consistent in saying they have not made the $45 mil reported in the media. My guess is the $45 mil is Orca Bay profit which includes numeroud other revenue sources in addition to Canuck revenue.
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tantalum said:
But all revenue is hockey related revenue, apparently.
All your revenue are belong to us!
I in the Eye said:
anyone who doesn't think the players are the product apparently is missing the entire history of sports which is filled with examples of franchises doing poorly until a great player turns around their popularity in the community. this happens repeatedly. Hull in St.Louis, Mario in Pit, Gretz in El Lay, etc. The players, the team as a whole and their talent level, most certainly ARE the product. If you think the NHL could succeed without premium players, you're completely mistaken.
guitaraholic said:
Yeah! I mean no one would watch hockey if Gretzky retired... uh... or if Bertuzzi wasn't allowed to play, hockey would stop!.... maybe... hmm. Hockey is the "product" and players help define the quality of that product with their lesser or greater degrees of skill. Coaches have a huge effect on the "product", and yet they are valued far less than the players...
If you think the NHL would suffer at all without premium players, you just don't understand sports. It's always a comparison between who is playing at a certain point in time anyway. Expectations change as the talent level changes. Pretty much everyone says the speed and ability of players in the last 20 years has risen dramatically, but I never heard my grandfather talk about how crappy the hockey was when Rocket Richard was on the ice.
quat said:
Need I point to any other examples than Chicago, a team that, when competetive, meaning it had marketable players like roenick and amonte, they thrived. withouth them, they're nothing. the NHL is predicated on the idea that these guys are the BEST players in the world. yes, that means they are the product. If they were the 2nd best players in the world, we'd watch another league that HAD the best players.
bottom line? NO FAN EVER showed up to watch an owner. Regardless of what you seem to think.
BM67
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guitaraholic said:
St. Louis had a drop in attendance of almost 1,300 a game from 96 to 97 despite the presence of Brett Hull.
Washington out did Pittsburgh in attendance in Mario's first 4 years. What star power did they have? Mike Gartner?
Attendance dropped in LA every year from 93 to 96 with Gretzky on the team.
Selanne and Kariya couldn't draw people Anaheim road games. Toronto continued to sell out every game even when they sucked. Ottawa has a pretty good team, but they were the worst road draw in the league last year. It takes more than just star players to make the league a success. The players are a large part of the product, but they are not all of it.
You can't say that the players are the only product, it's very much the teams as well. That's why they are called the St. Louis Blues and the Philadelphia Flyers etc. Part of being the community or municipality sports team is a draw just as much as the players that play on it. If you can give your league some credibility where it is viewed as being truely professional sport, then that helps as well. The players are part of the equation, but it's like saying the actors soley sell a movie or theatre, they may be a big part of it, but they are not the total part of it.
If community wasn't a part of the draw, you would a team called the Kings that would play in Los Angeles, San Jose, and Anaheim and you wouldn't need those other two franchises there. That team could go on into Phoenix and Dallas as well and make stops in Utah and Las Vegas.
I've seen the expression, and I paraphrase, "sweater before player" meaning that someone is a fan of their team before they are a fan of the players on that team. So if the whole team was turned over, you are still a fan of that team even if the players you were familiar with are now gone.
If community wasn't a part of the draw, you would a team called the Kings that would play in Los Angeles, San Jose, and Anaheim and you wouldn't need those other two franchises there. That team could go on into Phoenix and Dallas as well and make stops in Utah and Las Vegas.
I've seen the expression, and I paraphrase, "sweater before player" meaning that someone is a fan of their team before they are a fan of the players on that team. So if the whole team was turned over, you are still a fan of that team even if the players you were familiar with are now gone.
I in the Eye
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guitaraholic said:
I don't think that...
But the product is NHL hockey... IMO, the players are the most important product ingredients - or inputs - but the players are not the product itself... The players render a very important service during the course of an NHL game... But when I purchase a ticket, I'm buying what they produce - NHL hockey... I'm not buying the actual player...
Maybe your tickets say Todd Bertuzzi for $85... Mine don't...
Bob Clarke Fan Club
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No player is bigger than the game...Arguments can be made that Gretzky revolutionized the game but the Oilers won Cups without him...Anyone who's watched or played knows it's a great game, no matter who plays it. I think I'll really enjoy watching our local Atoms even more this year.
Bob Clarke Fan Club
Registered User
guitaraholic said:
LOL yeah, that's what I said... people would come to watch an owner.
Instead of being contrary, why not spend a little more time reading the post. Chicago's owner Wirtz is a Dolt among putzes, and you obviously don't know much about the team if you think it's because of lack of talent that Chicago goes no where. Ruutu, Bell, Daze among others are pretty decent players.
The NHL isnt' predicated on the idea that these guys are the best in the world, it's the best league in North America that just happens to be the best in the world at the moment. You are more than welcome to think that Canadians and hockey fans from the US are going to stop watching hockey because several of the "best players" in the world happen to choose a higher paycheck in a Russian league, but I certainly don't. Funny, but after the 72 Summit Series, a whole lot of people realized the huge talent the Russians had, but they still watched the NHL.
Lot's of people love watching Junior hockey, and those players certainly don't fit your standard of excellence.
"the NHL is predicated on the idea that these guys are the BEST players in the world. yes, that means they are the product."
Here, I've quoted you again. Nope, read it again and it still doesn't make sense because it completely disregards every other hockey league in the world that people pay money to watch. You've heard of European hockey? Well, I guess those fans are all going to games and watching hockey because they are fans of what exactly?
I do agree that the skilled players or better teams will have a stronger draw for fans, but it's silly to equate that to being the reason fans of HOCKEY watch the game.
guitaraholic said:
I once bought tickets to a Bombers/Argos game to see Gretzky, Bruce Mcnall & John Candy.....
Does that count?
Bob Clarke Fan Club
Registered User
I've never gone to a game to watch an owner but I'm a "hockey fan" and I'd be fine watching young guys get good hockey jobs and not half assing it after receiving a fat contract.
garry1221
Registered User
GoCoyotes said:
this whole 'players are the product' WRONG, players are the assembly line so to speak, which makes the product 'nhl hockey' only instead of a patch on their chest stating FORD or DODGE or CHRYSLER they have a TEAM's logo, therefore players individually ARE NOT the product, but are part of the whole product... in the league right now you've got everything from a beamer to a nova, what bettman and the owners want to do is to put all GM's behind the wheel of something affordable, such as a mercury maurauder or a pontiac gto
me2
Go ahead foot
Diaboli said:If I've understood correctly, the teams wanted a cap at 30 or 35 million, so then it wouldn't limit ones pay, but to 30 or 35 mil. That's the same as in the NBA and NFL. The players can decide what they want to demand, but there might be no team capable of paying them what they want. For example Shaquille O'Neal kept his wage "in a reasonable amount", because he wanted to play in a successful team. That isn't possible in a team with just one good player.
edit: btw do you now how much the NFL and NBA get from TV, ads etc.? A lot more than the NHL teams I can assure you.
from 99 these are projections
Projected to be the fastest-growing sports earner over the next five years.
TOTAL REVENUE (millions)
Sport -- 1999 -- 2006 -- Growth*
NFL -- 4,119 -- 6,524 -- 7%
MLB -- 2,633 -- 4,030 -- 7%
NBA -- 2,656 -- 3,838 -- 5%
NASCAR -- 1,398 -- 3,423 -- 14%
NHL -- 1,528 -- 2,129 -- 5%
Source: Paul Kagan Associates Inc. *Compound annual
NETWORK-TV RATINGS*
NFL regular season 10.9
NASCAR 5.1
NBA regular season 3.4
MLB regular season 2.6
NHL regular season 1.4
Data from leagues and networks *Last season
might be other examples but that looks about right for hockey. I'd even wonder if hockey has reached the 1.4 in ratings lately.
me2
Go ahead foot
thinkwild said:
A cap doesn't nescessarily mean parity. If the NFL is have trouble building star teams under a cap, then it clearly isn't doing it as well as it could. Cap+Draft = boom + bust + boom + bust. The difference is the cycles are shorter but they are still there, and everyone has to cycle not just the poor.. Even a cap without a draft
Numbers crunch salary cap's logic
Andrew Leigh is a former lawyer and a PhD student at the Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University. Justin Wolfers is an assistant professor at Stanford Business School.
August 26 2002
Statistics show that the salary cap has failed to level the playing field and is therefore open to a legal challenge, Andrew Leigh and Justin Wolfers write.
From further research that line is in reference to the Canterbury Bulldogs Rugby League team in Australia who got caught cheating the salary cap by 20% or so. The idea being "its not cheating if it doesn't matter".
With the news that the Canterbury Bulldogs' fortunes have dived quicker than Enron stocks, anger is understandably mounting at the team's management.
But in discussions among football fans, another target is fast emerging - the salary cap itself. The question looms large: has the cap rule served its purpose, or should it be abolished?
First, a little background. For most of its 107-year history, no salary cap has applied in rugby league. In 1988, four years after the AFL put its own cap in place, a league salary cap was introduced. The move towards salary caps occurred not only in Australia, but also in the United States, with the National Basketball Association implementing a cap in 1984 and the National Football League in 1993. A baseball strike is looming as the team owners are discussing schemes similar to a cap.
In league, the salary cap was progressively implemented from 1988-90. By 1995, all teams faced an equal cap, set at $1.5 million. Over the next seven years, the cap has more than doubled to $3.25 million, presumably reflecting competitive pressures from both the failed Super League experiment and the increasing crossover appeal of rugby union.
Yet while any cap is in place, a fundamental question remains: why should those who employ football players - unlike all other employers - be allowed to collectively restrict payments to workers?
Advocates of a cap state their case simply. The reason for a salary cap is to ensure the financial and on-field viability of all rugby league clubs. As Steve Mascord put it in the Herald last Saturday, "if there was no salary cap, Andrew Johns would be playing for a rich Sydney club and the Knights would be broke".
Andrew Johns is a star and the Knights are a team in a smaller area without the big financial backing.
Sports economists have noted that salary caps can have other effects - such as reducing the proportion of revenues spent on player salaries, ensuring a more equitable distribution of pay among players and perhaps even encouraging veteran players to retire early.
Yet surely the argument that appeals most to rugby league fans is that the salary cap makes for a closer competition.
But has the salary cap really made league more competitive? To test the theory, we compared the league results for the 13 seasons since the introduction of the salary cap with those for the same period beforehand.
Superficially, the evidence seems to favour the cap: from 1976-88, only four teams held the premiership shield aloft. By contrast, from 1990-2001 (Super League operated in 1997, so that year contained two "seasons"), seven teams have been champions, including relative newcomers such as the Melbourne Storm. However, the fact that the number of teams in the competition rose from 12 teams in the 1970s to a peak of 20 in the mid-1990s explains much of this difference.
Rather than focus simply on the grand final, we turned instead to examining regular season games. If the salary cap worked, we reasoned, then we should expect to see more close games. The answer? In the 13 seasons before the salary cap, 3.3 per cent of all games ended in a draw. Since the implementation of the cap, this has actually fallen slightly, to 3 per cent.
Evidence a cap doesn't nescessarily produce parity.
We also looked at the distribution of offensive and defensive talent, comparing how well the top teams performed relative to those at the bottom. Before the salary cap, teams finishing in the top half of the competition scored 56 per cent of the points. After the cap, this concentration of point-scoring actually rose slightly, to 57 per cent.
In terms of defence, the top teams conceded only 42 per cent of all points scored before the cap was introduced, and 41 per cent following the cap. So there seems to be no evidence whatsoever that the salary cap narrowed the skewed distribution of skill across clubs.
But what would have been far more interesting is a comparison of results Vs payroll. Can you buy a winner if there is no cap/movement player restrictions.
Further research shows many RL teams went broke/into substantial debt in trying to compete with the big spenders.
An alternative test looks for evidence of less stability in the league ladder and more "churning". In other words, there should be a better chance that teams which finished in the bottom half of the ladder one year finished in the top half the next year.
Again, we found no improvement in the post-salary cap era.
Teams that build better from a younger base tended to perform better and for longer. Buying expensive free agents proved unsuccessful under the a cap, even one with no draft.
In sum, it appears that the effect of the salary cap was precisely nothing.
Considering they didn't attempt to correlate success with payroll, they wouldn't know. Major oversight on the authors' parts. Richer teams seemed to dominate the early non-cap years mentioned in this article. One very wealthy team won 11 straight in the 60s.
Unless you believe that the tournament would otherwise have become more lopsided during the 1990s, it is difficult to see that the salary cap made league any fairer at all.
In considering whether to keep the cap, we need to consider other factors as well. Some say that abolishing the salary cap could cause bidding wars to break out, placing a burden on financially strapped clubs. Yet this must be balanced with the fact that by increasing the fraction of league earnings that go back to the players, the game may also find itself better able to attract - and keep - sportsmen who would otherwise have gone elsewhere.
Translation: if the rich clubs poach all of the poor clubs talent (remember there is no draft & every player is a UFA from age 0) and keep it then the talent doesn't go to England looking for more money. Thats great for the player, the rich club and agent and bad news for the poor and medium clubs.
Importantly, whether the salary cap makes league more competitive is not merely a matter for the fans - it may also turn out to be of considerable interest to the courts.
The leading case on the legality of salary caps is the 1991 Federal Court decision of Adamson v NSWRL. Because the case centred around a challenge to the system of trading players, the plaintiffs agreed that they would not challenge the validity of the salary cap.
But the Federal Court did note in passing that a salary cap could only be legal if it could be shown that it was in the interests of the players and the general public. If not, it would be an unfair restraint of trade, and hence illegal.
Now that we have some evidence that rugby league did not become more competitive after the salary cap was introduced, would a court still hold that salary caps are in the public interest?
We don't know about competitive because they didn't test the correlation between wealth and success. It may now be the correlation has switched from wealth=success to scouting/club culture=success.
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me2
Go ahead foot
me2 said:
A little more digging around on AFL
The AFL is another style of football that has a cap and a draft. Franchise players don't move around much in the AFL. Teams rise and fall with time. There are good and bad teams. Perhaps the greatest AFL team of all time was built and maintained under a draft + a cap. They just won the finals 3 straight years (2001-2003) and made the grand final again this year (2004).
The AFL also have a veterans list for discounts on retaining a few of that teams long serving players.
A cap and does work. A cap doesn't have to mean parity and boredom.
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Brent Burns Beard
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me2 said:
correct me if i am wrong, but doesnt the Arena League have turnover of franchises ? ie .. even with a cap they have been unable to gain financial stability.
dr
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