Can the Coyotes make their loan payments without the money from COG? And where are they getting the money to afford to sue Glendale? The NHL?
I think they need that money to make their LOC work. I have a feeling the banks that back the NHL's LOC are watching closely. They know the league is good for the money, so they're protected, but the teams all have to have valuations that maybe support the level of the LOC (which I think is capped at $120 MM per team).
There is a brain dead simple way to solve this problem.
Get IA to go to the CoG and agree to cut the AMF by half. Do that and the CoG would most likely agree, and everyone will be happy.
But it will never happen. Why you ask? Because, the very fact that IA refuses to re-negotiate the agreement means that every dime of the $15MM is required. IA needs the $15MM and most likely even more if they could get it. This team is not even close to being financially viable without a subsidy.
$25MM in ticket revenue last season when the league average is $45MM....
I tend to agree, in general, but I think they must have banked on COG not having the guts, or votes, to do it. They're still better off getting $8MM vs $0, though managing to cut the cost of their debt in half via the LOC was going to REALLY help, so why would they consider renegotiating when they had such a great deal?
In fact, they may be better off with the city terminating the contract. If they sat down to renegotiate, what else would the city want? They'd probably want that out-clause removed, put in some performance metrics, and reduce the payment. Meanwhile, with the agreement still in force (had it gone that way), they would have no way of terminating it from the team's side.
I don't understand why Ice Age is so determined to stay in Glendale. Aren't they losing money hand over fist even with the massive subsidy? So everyone is losing money on this deal - what incentive do any of them have to stay in Glendale?
We've been asking that question for a long time.
I just want to point out that as discussed in the Westhead thread, the AMF and IA´s financing costs were likely excluded from the year 1 loss figure that has been thrown around for the team.
You are right that IA has no incentive to renegotiate out of a perfect agreement but that is not their actual strategic choice here so that benchmark is irrelevant. The question yesterday (when they refused to negotiate) was whether renegotiation was preferable to vote+lawsuit+possible relocation, taking into account the possibility that the city wouldn't carry through with the threat. The choice is similar today but now the path is clearer, although the big unknown is the city's actual 38-511 evidence, which despite some forumers´ claims of "covering" this story for years, we simply do not know about. So far the only real piece of incriminating evidence is the Tindall email from which we know that the IA lease is at least in part a C&P of the Jamison lease, and that he provided some advice. Whether that's enough to show ´significant involvement' is unaffected by how tough Nick Woods and Tony the Tiger look or by how many s's Michael Bailey adds to "there are ex-employeessssss involved".
I can't imagine COG going this route unless they had a lot of evidence, and well, they have all the former employees files and emails, etc. So if anyone could get that evidence, it's Glendale.
