Two days into the brave new world of Glendale terminating the Arizona Coyotes‘ lease, and the first lawsuit has been announced! Let’s listen in:
“What Glendale did is outrageous, irrational and cannot be condoned,” Bettman said.
Wait, sorry, that’s the first Gary Bettman press statement. Let’s see, lawsuit, lawsuit, here we go:
After the meeting, attorney Nicholas Wood said the team would file for injunctive relief and a temporary restraining order, and file a $200 million lawsuit against the City.
Filing for an injunction? Makes sense. TRO? Also makes sense, especially since that’s just another form of injunction. Seeking $200 million in damages? That seems like it was just pulled out of somebody’s butt as a nice round number. (Glendale doesn’t even owe the Coyotes owners $200 million remaining on its lease subsidy deal, and in any event if a judge rules that the lease can’t be broken, the Coyotes still get that money.)
So where did the Coyotes get that number? Here’s a tweet from Wood that doesn’t shed any light on it, and here are articles from Yahoo! and NBC Sports that don’t either, and the Arizona Republic, and — okay, everyone is just repeating the one thing that Wood said without any more information, so we can stop looking now. I’d call the Coyotes myself, but it’s like 3 in the morning there (note: time zones not actually to scale), so it will have to remain a mystery for now.
Let’s see, what else we got today? Any more big round numbers pulled out of butts?
I think one of the consequences could be no NHL expansion team in Las Vegas, at least not in the near term. Same thing with expanding to Seattle. The league presumably would have to add two teams to keep a balanced schedule. After all, how could commissioner Gary Bettman add two more franchises to the 30-team league while there is so much uncertainty over the state of the Arizona franchise?
That could mean the NHL says goodbye to the $500 million expansion fee it was reportedly looking to get for each expansion team. adding a team in Las Vegas. That works out to $33 million per owner down the drain for the time being.
Yeah, that’s the stuff. I feel like I should chime in with some giant numbers of my own — maybe how much the newspaper industry in Arizona will suffer if this Coyotes saga ever finally drags to a conclusion — but the “billion” key on my laptop is broken.
“What Glendale did is courageous, rational and can be condoned,” Bettman said.
Fixed it there for ya, Gary.
So is this the first time ever or just in recent memory that a city has told a pro sports franchise to go away?
Well, Glendale didn’t actually tell them to go away. It just terminated the lease and said they’d have to renegotiate a new one if they wanted to stay.
I can’t immediately think of anything like this happening before, but I’d have to wrack my brains some.
Ozanian (Forbes author) does a fantastic job, but he has been a Coyotes/NHL hater for a long, long time. (And, yes, by calling him a hater as a method of chipping away at his credibility, I am, in fact, engaging in Haterism myself.) The Dogs’ struggles in Glendale are incredibly unlikely to hold up expansion because the Dogs are destined to stay in the Phoenix area, at least for the next couple of decades.
TV money finally matters in the NHL, and so the Phoenix area is going to stay as part of the League. I wouldn’t be surprised if the Dogs eventually have to move to another area in or around Phoenix, but this isn’t a situation where the League needs to keep open markets as a stalking horse when negotiating with Glendale.
Neil, here’s a video of LeBlanc on hockey central at noon yesterday: http://www.sportsnet.ca/590/hockey-central-at-noon/
At least the Canadian media asks some tough questions. I love it when Doug MacLean brings up Columbus and how they paid SMG $260,000 to operate the arena, meanwhile Ice Arizona is getting $15 million. Leblanc brings up how Columbus now has a $4 million subsidy and tells MacLean “I guess you’re not a good negotiator” LOL
@Ben Miller
The Arizona market does terrible with hockey ratings.
http://hfboards.hockeysfuture.com/showthread.php?t=1883821
They are in the bottom 5 with a -32% in avg. rating change this year. Even LA, the defending Stanley Cup champions are in the bottom 5 for US TV ratings. Let’s face it hockey is just not a TV sport in the US, the NHL will always be a gate driven league. That’s why it makes more sense to have a team in Quebec City (which will sellout every game) over Arizona.
Guelph,
You say two true things (PHX and LAX draw low TV ratings today), and then you follow it up with a statement that is, at best, tangentially related (hockey is not a TV sport in the US).
You are also out of date in saying that the NHL is a gate-driven league. It used to be, but today the NBC & Sportsnet TV deals allow teams to avoid being at the mercy of natural fluctuations in arena revenues.
You are also Canadian, so I would expect you to have a lack of understanding about big league hockey. That’s why we win all of the Cups, and you have to settle for recognition from the communist enterprise that is the IOC.
There’s plenty of preposterous to go around here, but the MOST preposterous thing here may be that the NHL is considering expansion.
Plenty of Preposterous to Go Around: The NHL in the Gary Bettman Era
“It used to be, but today the NBC & Sportsnet TV deals allow teams to avoid being at the mercy of natural fluctuations in arena revenues.”
Now they’re at the mercy of cable staying alive. Brilliant……
@Ben Miller
So NBC is going to force the Coyotes to stay in Phoenix no matter what for decades? I’m assuming the same reason why the Atlanta Thrashers failed is because Atlanta is not a hockey hotbed, just like Phoenix. Thrashers were a bottom 5 team as well. http://www.adweek.com/tvnewser/pittsburgh-penguins-top-local-nhl-ratings-again/88492?red=tn
@BenMiller – Not sure what side you are in in this issue, and not sure it matters. But if you are correct that the NHL desperately needs a team to be in Phoenix, PHX should have all the leverage in the world to renegotiate whatever the heck they want and should not cave so easily like the last regime.
This is how they should pick what to do with this franchise.
^ Somehow I knew it was going to be that video, before I even followed the link.
The city council where I live ought to give $tu $ternburg this kind of treatment. That way he’d be free to look for a new stadium site all he wants without paying anything.
Ben Miller; The Cup is won by mostly CDNs playing in a US city…23 teams vs. 7 and a couple of years with a low dollar stopped CDN teams from success in the finals. You can see that is now changing with more CDN teams getting close. The recognition of Canadas performance comes from the world and from beating lesser teams like the US in international play, as opposed to the IOC..you know them, the communist society your country and your corporations bribed at Salt Lake and Atlanta? Still feel righteous?
See hockey just brings out silly arguments like America versus Canada. As if anyone in the universe doesn’t know America wins every time. Hah! Playing a winter sport in the desert is plain loony. Not the Canadian loonie, just… loony! Move the team to Anchorage and be done with it. Football is all that matters. ALL HAIL FOOTBALL!
Mmm sorry, I’ve been dipping into the 100 year old cognac tonight and I’m a bit more nutty than usual!
Hey, quit bringing up the Canada vs American argument or we’ll have to burn down your White House again (historical but accurate joke, Dept of Homeland Security people!). Phoenix is like 15% Canadian in the winter anyways.