October 08, 2006
Holiday weekend update: Pens sold, Magic deal still unsettled, A's mull Fremont
Happy Indigenous Resistance Day weekend! And now, the news:
- BlackBerry mogul Jim Balsillie has purchased the Pittsburgh Penguins for $175 million, and the Ontario businessman wasted no time in making two points: He intends to keep the team in Pittsburgh, and he wants a new arena. Balsillie left off the "or else," but NHL commissioner Gary Bettman said it for him, declaring on Wednesday: "We believe the Penguins should be in Pittsburgh, and as long as there's a new building coming, our goal and objective will be to keep the team there." That's why they pay those commissioners the big bucks...
- A long article in the Orlando Sentinel reveals that even though an arena deal for the Magic has been officially finalized, "some details - such as facility naming rights and revenue sharing - are still being discussed." And what was so urgent that the city needed to announce a deal even before agreeing on how hundreds of millions of dollars of arena revenues would be divvied up? Apparently that city officials were worried the team would start talks with a developer who wanted to move the team to just outside the city limits - even though callers to the team's switchboard were threatening to cancel their season tickets if the team relocated to the boonies. "The public debate had become not 'should the Magic get a new arena,' but 'should the arena go downtown or somewhere else,'" Orange County Mayor Rich Crotty told the Sentinel. "That created momentum."
- San Francisco Chronicle gossipmongers Matier and Ross predict that the Oakland A's are getting serious about building a stadium in Fremont, even quietly buying up property around the proposed stadium site. No word on what the A's execs plan to do about Fremont's pay us for cops or take a hike ultimatum.
The stupid part about the Penguins saga is that the team would be far more profitable in the Greater Toronto/Southern Ontario area, but the NHL's territorial restrictions give the Maple Leafs a veto on any team within 50 miles of their arena. Between the Leafs' territorial restriction and that of the Buffalo Sabres, there is nowhere for the Penguins to move to in Southern Ontario. It's a crying shame when you consider that an additional NHL team in Toronto, or in nearby Hamilton, would sell out every night, generate a ton of TV revenue, etc. There is a massive hockey fanbase in that population rich area that is being underserved right now, with scarcity being created artificially by the NHL.
It would be easy to find private financing for a new arena in the booming suburbs north of Toronto, or for a renovation of the existing Copps Coliseum in Hamilton. Getting rid of the territorial restrictions, however, would require the kind of leadership that pro sports leagues are unable to find without the assistance of the legal system.
Posted by Dennis Prouse on October 10, 2006 11:27 AM
Hartford is still without a team - Brass Bonanza could even be resurrected!.
Posted by Jonathan Judd on October 10, 2006 09:44 PM