any idiot can buy a hockey ticket

[Benjamin]

We're small market but not bottom 5 small. We got smaller markets spending more or the green light to spend more than us.

Its a lose-lose sitaution. Either this team will NEVER have the ability to spend enough to win or Melnyk is milking the fudge out of the Sens.

 

[LatteLarrys]

Wow so many people drinking the O-Town kool-aid in here.

You all do realize that Ottawa is only slightly ahead of Winnipeg (a team still finding its legs) as Canada's least valuable NHL franchise right??

http://www.forbes.com/nhl-valuations/#page:1_sort:0_direction:asc_search:

You all do realize that as a percentage of capacity filled Ottawa had the worst attendance of all Canadian teams right??

http://espn.go.com/nhl/attendance/_/sort/homePct

You all do realize that Ottawa has far and away the cheapest tickets of any Canadian NHL team right??? (behind such awesome doing teams as the NEW YORK FRIEKING ISLANDERS)

http://www.forbes.com/pictures/fjlg45mhf/15-ottawa-senators-avg-price-137-82/

Get a grip people. According to all those stats, the Sens are the biggest money hole in Canada from an NHL perspective. I don't blame Eugene one bit for this situation. Crappy arena location, fairweather fanbase, inexpensive ticket prices he can't raise because "public sector employees won't pay it".

I mean jimminy christmas would you look at yourselves? Hfboards loves to pile on Florida fans for not showing up to games, even when the product is bad, but wow when the Sens are bad, not showing up is okay?? Makes absolutely no sense to me.

Also good luck finding an owner as patient as Melnyk in a market like Ottawa. Yeesh would you rather have the Gliebermann's back up here looking to make a cheap buck? Can someone please link me with an actual source for someone else in the Ottawa community who would be even close to interested in buying the Senators if Eugene bailed??? Anyone at all???

lol, it's getting depressing to read some of these threads . I wish I was active here during the 1st round playoffs in 2013.

 

[StefanW]

I keep coming back to this thread because I like the thread title so much. If there were posting awards at the end of the season I think this should win the "thread title of the year" award hands down.

 

[StefanW]

Oh, and by the way percentage capacity is a garbage stat. If our arena hypothetically held 50,000 seats and we sold 40,000 our gate revenue would be the highest in the league while percent capacity would be the lowest.

Also, not all seats cost the same. So if two teams have arenas the exact same size, and one is at 97% capacity with only expensive seats unsold while the other has 95% capacity with only cheap seats unsold the gate for the 95% capacity team is likely to be higher.

 

[L'Aveuglette]

I keep coming back to this thread because I like the thread title so much. If there were posting awards at the end of the season I think this should win the "thread title of the year" award hands down.

But it's content is filled with depressing, doom n' gloom posts by people who seem to have oracle powers about the terrible faith that awaits this team...

 

[SensChirp]

Oh wow, that was painful to read. Just an awful piece. I don't disagree with his main points but the way it's presented is pathetic. The team belongs to the Fans and the City? What a sad disillusioned individual. Welcome to capitalism, mate. Poor Chirp. He was fun to follow back in the day.

So you agree with the points but the way it was presented was pathetic? As in, as a blog post on my site? Not sure what you mean.

 

[StefanW]

But it's content is filled with depressing, doom n' gloom posts by people who seem to have oracle powers about the terrible faith that awaits this team...

I suppose. But unless you are an oracle yourself you don't know that what is being said is untrue. Garrioch quoted the 57-58 MM cap figure, and he has sources close to the team. That means team spending remains the same while the cap goes up, TV revenue goes up, and player salaries goes up (increase in cap leads to higher salaries), even though our team did not make the playoffs this time around.

I'm not generally a "sky is falling" type of person, but it is hard to imagine doing well consistently with the current economics of the team. I don't blame Melnyk at all for not having tons of cash to blow on the team, but I do hold him accountable for comments that I think are misleading.

I would rather he said something along the lines of "I will use the TV revenue to make back some of the losses I've incurred over the years, and in 3 years time I will start to increase spending to the point where we spend about 17-20th in the league." Open. Honest. No BS spins.

 

[Qward]

Wow so many people drinking the O-Town kool-aid in here.

You all do realize that Ottawa is only slightly ahead of Winnipeg (a team still finding its legs) as Canada's least valuable NHL franchise right??

http://www.forbes.com/nhl-valuations/#page:1_sort:0_direction:asc_search:

You all do realize that as a percentage of capacity filled Ottawa had the worst attendance of all Canadian teams right??

http://espn.go.com/nhl/attendance/_/sort/homePct

You all do realize that Ottawa has far and away the cheapest tickets of any Canadian NHL team right??? (behind such awesome doing teams as the NEW YORK FRIEKING ISLANDERS)

http://www.forbes.com/pictures/fjlg45mhf/15-ottawa-senators-avg-price-137-82/

Get a grip people. According to all those stats, the Sens are the biggest money hole in Canada from an NHL perspective. I don't blame Eugene one bit for this situation. Crappy arena location, fairweather fanbase, inexpensive ticket prices he can't raise because "public sector employees won't pay it".

I mean jimminy christmas would you look at yourselves? Hfboards loves to pile on Florida fans for not showing up to games, even when the product is bad, but wow when the Sens are bad, not showing up is okay?? Makes absolutely no sense to me.

Also good luck finding an owner as patient as Melnyk in a market like Ottawa. Yeesh would you rather have the Gliebermann's back up here looking to make a cheap buck? Can someone please link me with an actual source for someone else in the Ottawa community who would be even close to interested in buying the Senators if Eugene bailed??? Anyone at all???

City|Population|Rank|Value|Years in NHL|Ticket Capacity
Toronto|5,583,064|1|$1,150M|97|103.3|
Montreal|3,824,211|2|$775M|97|100|
Vancouver|2,476,145|3|$700M|44|107.2|
Ottawa|1,236,324|4|$380M|22|94.5|
Calgary|1,214,839|5|$420M|34|100.1|
Edmonton|1,159,869|6|$400M|35(not including WHA)|99.9|
Winnipeg|730,018|8|$340M|3(as Jets)|100|

Some things to note. New rules under the CBA prevented teams from giving away tickets and writing them off as an expense. Why is this relevant? Well, before the Senators could give away 2000 tickets and write off the full value of those tickets. They could claim that expense against their revenue and that would be less money that they would have to chip in for revenue sharing. So by giving tickets away, the Sens SAVED money before. They can no longer do that. Some people were used to getting tickets for free. Why pay for something when you get it for free? Now that the team has reduced that, they will be a turn around for some of those people to come back.
All the other teams with the exception of Winnipeg have had their team for years longer than ours. Teams like Montreal and Toronto have generations of fans. Winnipeg is still a new toy. They lost their team and got it back and the smaller arena means the rule of supply and demand raises the cost of their tickets.

Other revenues.
Vancouver, Calgary, Winnipeg, Montreal and Toronto do not have a parking lot. Most NHL teams do not. Because of this, they do not have to report their revenues as part of the CBA. Any money Melnyk makes off that is money in his pocket.
Melnyk owns and operates CTC. Let's say the team makes an extra $7M off the new TV deal. There is nothing stopping Melnyk from raising the rent the Senators pay by $7M.

This team is making more money than Melnyk is letting on. He wants his casino and he should get it. How he is going about it is wrong.

I want to know why the Ottawa City council decided to just give RCR what it wanted without giving Melnyk a chance to present his offer.

Upgrading RCR will create 4-5 new jobs and have a nominal increase in taxes.

Building a new hotel and casino would create a couple hundred temporary jobs and hundreds of permanent jobs and generate tens if not hundreds of thousands of tax dollars annually.

 

[esdoorn]

The few things I find troubling about the team are:

1) Eugene needs to shut up and not speak to the media.....everytime he opens his mouth, he just makes things worse.

2) The Sens have one of the smallest hockey operations depts in the league, so with Tim Murray gone, this isn't going to be helpful because we lack scouts and will hurt the team at the draft and also when making trades.

3) All of those afternoon games this year were done for only one purpose and that was to make money. Even though it clearly hurt team competitiveness.

4) This team just did not compete during most games, I gave up spending $300 per game of my hard earned money after going to CTC for four home losses in a row with a bunch of players who were just mailing it in!

 

[FunkySeeFunkyDoo]

....
I want to know why the Ottawa City council decided to just give RCR what it wanted without giving Melnyk a chance to present his offer.

....

This is a question that needs to be answered. We've never heard a logical reason for why it has to be RCR.

 

[FuriousSenator]

This is a question that needs to be answered. We've never heard a logical reason for why it has to be RCR.

Because a tiny segment of the population lacks self-restraint and so to avoid the "social ramifications" of gambling, having two tempting casinos in the city was too much...

 

[Nac Mac Feegle]

Because a tiny segment of the population lacks self-restraint and so to avoid the "social ramifications" of gambling, having two tempting casinos in the city was too much...

Horses.

The racing industry just bleeds tons of money every year (mostly taxpayer money) yet has a very powerful little lobby group that keep our tax money flowing into their little scheme. Because most of the rich & powerful and political elite are part of the horsie set, they got the extended gambling license.

 

[FuriousSenator]

Horses.

The racing industry just bleeds tons of money every year (mostly taxpayer money) yet has a very powerful little lobby group that keep our tax money flowing into their little scheme. Because most of the rich & powerful and political elite are part of the horsie set, they got the extended gambling license.

This too.

 

[Larionov]

In reading Melnyk's comments, he actually made some fair points. What he's trying to say in his own awkward way is that you don't want to be the team outbidding people for David Clarkson, paying Brian Campbell $7 million a year, etc. What he wants is a team full of Kyle Turris, Clarke MacArthur type contracts, with a couple of rookies in there outperforming their entry level deals. (Ceci this year, Silfverberg last year, etc.) It's perfectly understandable, and a pretty good model if you can pull it off.

His problem is that he is a terrible communicator who thinks he's a great communicator. Like a lot of wealthy, self made guys, he doesn't spend a whole lot of time talking to real people, yet there isn't a chance he would ever get some media training from his staff because he doesn't think he needs it. Therefore, he comes across as this highly unlikable blowhard. He reminds me a bit of Ed Snider of the Flyers and Jeremy Jacobs of Boston, two other owners who manage to put their foot in it every time they talk to the media.

 

[FunkySeeFunkyDoo]

Horses.

The racing industry just bleeds tons of money every year (mostly taxpayer money) yet has a very powerful little lobby group that keep our tax money flowing into their little scheme. Because most of the rich & powerful and political elite are part of the horsie set, they got the extended gambling license.

So this is (probably) the real reason that RCR is getting it -- cronyism.

But Watson et al cannot say that; they have to put forth some kind of logical reason - even if it's complete BS - to justify the decision.... which I don't believe they've ever done.

 

[FunkySeeFunkyDoo]

In reading Melnyk's comments, he actually made some fair points. What he's trying to say in his own awkward way is that you don't want to be the team outbidding people for David Clarkson, paying Brian Campbell $7 million a year, etc. What he wants is a team full of Kyle Turris, Clarke MacArthur type contracts, with a couple of rookies in there outperforming their entry level deals. (Ceci this year, Silfverberg last year, etc.) It's perfectly understandable, and a pretty good model if you can pull it off.

His problem is that he is a terrible communicator who thinks he's a great communicator. Like a lot of wealthy, self made guys, he doesn't spend a whole lot of time talking to real people, yet there isn't a chance he would ever get some media training from his staff because he doesn't think he needs it. Therefore, he comes across as this highly unlikable blowhard. He reminds me a bit of Ed Snider of the Flyers and Jeremy Jacobs of Boston, two other owners who manage to put their foot in it every time they talk to the media.

Great post.

Personally, I want my team to be on a budget. I want them to be forced to invest in scouting, draft well, sign college FAs, and eventually give the young players a chance. I love following the career of a guy like Mike Hoffman for a few years in the AHL, and finally get to see him play some games in the NHL. Way more interesting than seeing them sign 30 year old UFAs to bloated contracts.

The only thing I don't like is when personnel decisions are made for obvious budget reasons instead of sound, long term hockey reasons.

 

[Hossa18]

Ah ok, so we don't know.

Hey bud where you at? Here is another article for you.

http://www.senatorsextra.com/main/gordon-fans-tiring-of-ottawa-senators-budget-message

 

[Quo]

A Maserati has a relatively fixed rate of performance. Hockey players do not.

Investing in the right hockey players to build the team equivalent of a Maserati is much different than buying a ready made car and doesn't happen overnight.

There is a greater risk when determining if a particular player fits the overall team vision or not. A Maserati does not perform great in one locale only to fail miserably under similar conditions in another. Players do. A Maserati doesn't arbitrarily decide to alter it's effort level from drive to drive, it doesn't decide to go 50mph when you're trying to make it go 90mph. Players occasionally do.

It's more of a custom build. It's not as simple as saying "hey, we spent everything we had, now on to victory."

Wake me when we actually start losing more than our 40+ former captain because of money.

 

[ColinM]

In reading Melnyk's comments, he actually made some fair points. What he's trying to say in his own awkward way is that you don't want to be the team outbidding people for David Clarkson, paying Brian Campbell $7 million a year, etc. What he wants is a team full of Kyle Turris, Clarke MacArthur type contracts, with a couple of rookies in there outperforming their entry level deals. (Ceci this year, Silfverberg last year, etc.) It's perfectly understandable, and a pretty good model if you can pull it off.

His problem is that he is a terrible communicator who thinks he's a great communicator. Like a lot of wealthy, self made guys, he doesn't spend a whole lot of time talking to real people, yet there isn't a chance he would ever get some media training from his staff because he doesn't think he needs it. Therefore, he comes across as this highly unlikable blowhard. He reminds me a bit of Ed Snider of the Flyers and Jeremy Jacobs of Boston, two other owners who manage to put their foot in it every time they talk to the media.

There is a lot of truth to this. Melynk behaved the same way during the Erik Karlsson injury. Remember ferenzick (sp?) evidence he had on Matt Cooke

 

[Larionov]

I prefer to mentally block out Melnyk's reaction to the Karlsson injury, because it makes me want to drink bleach. God, that was embarrassing. It was pure tin foil hat stuff, reminding me of the crazy 9/11 Truthers you run into once in a while. ("How did Tower 7 fall on its own, huh? Tell me. TELL ME!!!") There's being a passionate fan, and then there's bat @#$# crazy.

Our one saving grace is that Euge is definitely a fan. He cares deeply how this team does on the ice, and wants to win. This isn't just another holding for him. That's a double edged sword, as we learn regularly, but he isn't ever going to pull a Charles Wang and let this franchise become the Islanders. His methods drive you crazy sometimes, but the fact that he wants to win will make him spend when he has to.

 

[JD1]

If you look at the revenue streams over the next 12 years

TSN deal reputed to be worth $400M
National rogers deal reputed to be worth $17M per annum * 12 = 204M
Ticket revenue = 18500 * 75 * 41 * 12 = $682M (inflation adjustment on ticket price)

That totals = $1,286 billion

Team salary 80M * 12 = 960M (and we are obviously nowhere near 80M a year right now)

that is 326 M in operating profit in 12 years counting just basic revenue sources minus team salary.

Sure it costs a lot to operate and NHL franchise, but I didn't count the following revenue:
advertising in arena
arena naming rights
parking
concessions
merchandising
pre season ticket revenue
post season ticket revenue

Parking alone is worth $50M at an average price of 13 bucks over 12 years. Suppose we average 4 playoff home dates over 12 years = 48 dates = > $100M

The bottom line is simply this: at an average payroll of 80M over the next 12 years this entire operation will be very profitable.

If Melnyk has the revenue sources to be spending a lot more, he should. And if he doesn't and we have a so so team so that he can make a lot of money.....he should just sell the thing now and take his money

Forbes valuing the team at 380 M in the fall of 2013 was prior to these new TV deals and the massive increases in revenue they provide. These new deals likely place the value of the franchise > $500M.

 

[The Fuhr*]

Melnyk is having financial troubles he just sold 2.5 million shares of stock in his failed woman's Viagra company.
http://www.stockhouse.com/companies/bullboard/t.trl/trimel-pharmaceuticals-corporation

Sens are his only profitable revenue stream

 

[Quo]

If you look at the revenue streams over the next 12 years

TSN deal reputed to be worth $400M
National rogers deal reputed to be worth $17M per annum * 12 = 204M
Ticket revenue = 18500 * 75 * 41 * 12 = $682M (inflation adjustment on ticket price)

That totals = $1,286 billion

Team salary 80M * 12 = 960M (and we are obviously nowhere near 80M a year right now)

that is 326 M in operating profit in 12 years counting just basic revenue sources minus team salary.

Sure it costs a lot to operate and NHL franchise, but I didn't count the following revenue:
advertising in arena
arena naming rights
parking
concessions
merchandising
pre season ticket revenue
post season ticket revenue

Parking alone is worth $50M at an average price of 13 bucks over 12 years. Suppose we average 4 playoff home dates over 12 years = 48 dates = > $100M

The bottom line is simply this: at an average payroll of 80M over the next 12 years this entire operation will be very profitable.

If Melnyk has the revenue sources to be spending a lot more, he should. And if he doesn't and we have a so so team so that he can make a lot of money.....he should just sell the thing now and take his money

Forbes valuing the team at 380 M in the fall of 2013 was prior to these new TV deals and the massive increases in revenue they provide. These new deals likely place the value of the franchise > $500M.

The Sens are well ahead in valuation, true. Any outstanding debt could theoretically be recouped by selling the club outright even with a $10M loss each year.

If Forbes' numbers are anywhere close to true, solvency wouldn't be an issue. Still at a better than 2:1 ratio of value to debt.

($380MV - 39%D= $231.8M in owners equity, $148.2M in debt)​

Likely better now with the TV deals.

That's enough for the banks or banking consortium's to front some cash.

Now factor in the reported loss of approximately $110M over the stretch since Melnyk has owned the club: $231.8M - $110 = $121.8.

Now minus the purchase price: $121.8M - $92...

Melnyk would profit $29.8M if he were to sell last November using Forbes best guesses. That kind of money disappears fast in a business like hockey. Could already be gone and then some with building renos.

Granting the benefit of the doubt, Euge has been fighting against the current.

Rogers money

The Rogers deal will bring in roughly $17-20M per year to the Canadian clubs. That's great for the Sens, probably tips the scales into the black a touch in addition to increasing the overall value of the team.

TSN money

The financial terms of this deal have not been disclosed. The Sens could make close to $400M total over the 12-year term of the deal according to Garrioch.

That's up to an additional $26.3M per year over what they were previously making with Sportsnet ($33.3M/yr total).

The fact that we're dealing with rougher than rough figures makes it very hard to predict how much more the Sens would be making per year above what they were previously drawing from SN (ie. is Garrioch's source correct? Could the number be higher or lower depending on certain markers such as team performance or ratings?).

Unquestionably, it should be more.

Add the Canadian Tire money, the help that will come from the new CBA...should be sitting pretty.

Is that enough to justify massive increases in player payroll? Theoretically, it definitely should help a touch and I hope and expect that the team will make a determination on what their budget should be based on where they believe they stand from a hockey standpoint. That very well could mean retaining everyone and exceeding the unsourced number floated by Garrioch.

 

[sam2020]

It does sound like they want to develop some of the land around the Ctc if thats does happen it should bring in some big money.

 

[AchtzehnBaby]

Throw all the money to buy a team... Sounds a lot like the leafs strategy. I think if you relax and wait a bit for our prospects to grow, then spend when you know all the cards are in place... 1 more year... Wait for it