NHL fans have left the building

[FlyerFan]

http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/...b30cc-5abb-4a6f-ac91-1994f0bab068&k=85806&p=1

Click to read more...

 

[Ted Hoffman]

I've ripped on a few of his assertions in the "Darren Dreger says 1/3 of NHL revenues come from Canadian teams" thread, but suffice it to say that Spector needs to go take Economics 101 to learn that a 5.9% increase in price shouldn't lead to a 5.9% increase (or more) in gate receipts, all things being equal.

And like many things, you can't just look at the numbers and draw simple conclusions. You have to look at the situation and say, "why did this happen like it did?" to get things put in context properly. Just saying, "ooh, gate revenue is down 0.1% in St. Louis" or "Nashville's gate revenue isn't 60% of the gate revenue for Calgary or Ottawa" is incredibly misleading when you don't analyze the reasons or normalize everything to put all 30 teams on par with each other.

Finally (yes, I got on a roll), this nugget:

Of course, the teams are not paying players during the post-season, and roughly 20% of gate receipts go to the league.

Well, no - the players aren't getting paid in the playoffs. However, those revenues are still part of the pie that the owners have to split with the players, and it really doesn't matter how much goes to the league because it's all going into the same pool that the players get their percentage from ... so it's not like the old days where the owners made money hand over fist in the postseason when the players got none of that revenue.

 

[Fugu]

Much of this was discussed in the thread on Darren Dreger:

http://hfboards.com/showthread.php?t=342466