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With the steep economic downturn it was expected that some of the marginal sports franchises would have difficulty. In many cities Major League Baseball teams are drawing spring training sized crowds. The poor New York Yankees in their new band-box, er, stadium are having good sized crowds but can't sell prime-location single-game tickets for a $1000 apiece as easily as they hoped. One professional league, indoor American football, decided not to play at all this year, hoping for better things next year.
Which brings us to the National Hockey League. When I was growing up the league had six teams. almost all the players were Canadians, the games were low scoring and unless you lived near one of the six teams, chances are you wouldn't see more than a couple games a year on TV, usually during Stanley Cup season. When I was in high school the league doubled the number of teams at a stroke, which seemed to work out pretty well. After a flirtation with a second major league things started to get a bit wonky. The New York area decided it wanted three teams in the league; Los Angeles which beyond a few Sonja Henie movies in the 1930's had no particular history of ice skating , let alone ice hockey, decided it needed two teams.
By the late 1980's there were no longer enough Canadians to go around. The raiding of the USSR's Highest League helped bring on the collapse of the soviet system, as more players became interested in North American dollars than in strengthening soviet sport. These days there are 30 teams in the league and, seriously, I can't begin to tell you what cities all the teams are in. I don't know where they are getting all the players. Heck, they probably even have a few native-born Americans playing.
About a dozen years ago when I was still living in St. Louis, which was then considered a balmy-weather hockey town, I heard that the Winnipeg Jets were moving to Phoenix, of all places. The salient characteristic of the Phoenix Coyotes, as they were renamed, is hard to pin down between 'lousy' and 'awful'. Unless the team is the Chicago Cubs, consistently bad teams in any sport tend to draw poorly. The Phoenix Coyotes are no exception. Not too surprisingly the Coyotes had been losing money for years before the economy turned bad. For a couple years they've been behind on their rent and it's amazing that it took all the way till yesterday for them to file bankruptcy. They will certainly be sold. The current high bidder wants to move the team back to Canada, which is fine, to southern Ontario, which may not be so fine with the Toronto Maple Leafs, the Buffalo Sabres and possibly the Detroit Red Wings. The league was apparently on the verge of stepping in when the bankruptcy was filed. The bankruptcy seems to be a maneuver by the current owner to keep more of the sale money and give less to the folks he owes money to. It's not like he's going to make a profit. But still, it's pretty rude. The great, former hockey player, Wayne Gretzky has a stake in the team and is currently the coach. He will probably lose both his job and all his investment.
Which brings us to the National Hockey League. When I was growing up the league had six teams. almost all the players were Canadians, the games were low scoring and unless you lived near one of the six teams, chances are you wouldn't see more than a couple games a year on TV, usually during Stanley Cup season. When I was in high school the league doubled the number of teams at a stroke, which seemed to work out pretty well. After a flirtation with a second major league things started to get a bit wonky. The New York area decided it wanted three teams in the league; Los Angeles which beyond a few Sonja Henie movies in the 1930's had no particular history of ice skating , let alone ice hockey, decided it needed two teams.
By the late 1980's there were no longer enough Canadians to go around. The raiding of the USSR's Highest League helped bring on the collapse of the soviet system, as more players became interested in North American dollars than in strengthening soviet sport. These days there are 30 teams in the league and, seriously, I can't begin to tell you what cities all the teams are in. I don't know where they are getting all the players. Heck, they probably even have a few native-born Americans playing.
About a dozen years ago when I was still living in St. Louis, which was then considered a balmy-weather hockey town, I heard that the Winnipeg Jets were moving to Phoenix, of all places. The salient characteristic of the Phoenix Coyotes, as they were renamed, is hard to pin down between 'lousy' and 'awful'. Unless the team is the Chicago Cubs, consistently bad teams in any sport tend to draw poorly. The Phoenix Coyotes are no exception. Not too surprisingly the Coyotes had been losing money for years before the economy turned bad. For a couple years they've been behind on their rent and it's amazing that it took all the way till yesterday for them to file bankruptcy. They will certainly be sold. The current high bidder wants to move the team back to Canada, which is fine, to southern Ontario, which may not be so fine with the Toronto Maple Leafs, the Buffalo Sabres and possibly the Detroit Red Wings. The league was apparently on the verge of stepping in when the bankruptcy was filed. The bankruptcy seems to be a maneuver by the current owner to keep more of the sale money and give less to the folks he owes money to. It's not like he's going to make a profit. But still, it's pretty rude. The great, former hockey player, Wayne Gretzky has a stake in the team and is currently the coach. He will probably lose both his job and all his investment.
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But the sport and the team here is just an after thought. Neither a good enough team nor good enough marketing to make it work. The league wants to keep the team here. But it will take a different approach to make it successful.