On Friday, after the whole embarrassing kerfuffle of Arizona Coyotes owner Alex Meruelo having to wire $1.4 million in back taxes to the state of Arizona after explaining he’d failed to pay it because of “unfortunate human error,” NHL commissioner Gary Bettman chatted up some reporters at the NHL meetings to assure everyone that the team isn’t moving anywhere, definitely, probably:
“Alex Meruelo is committed to Arizona and is working on a plan for a new arena, which is probably what’s agitating the city of Glendale,” NHL commissioner Gary Bettman said Friday after the second day of the NHL’s board of governors meetings…
Bettman said that a new arena would take a couple of years to build. The team is targeting Tempe, Arizona. Bettman said there are “plenty of options” to bridge the gap from Glendale to the new building.
“Alex is committed, Alex has the resources and the Coyotes aren’t going anywhere,” said Bettman, before quickly clarifying, “Well, they’re going somewhere else [in Arizona] other than Glendale.”
This is on-brand for both Bettman himself, who has relentlessly backed the NHL’s expansion into southern states and led the NHL into buying the Coyotes out of bankruptcy to keep them from moving to Hamilton, Ontario, and sports commissioners in general, who are adept at asserting that your team isn’t moving anywhere, so long as you play ball and build them a new home, aka the “non-threat threat.”
Still, one can’t help noticing that the Coyotes are being evicted by Glendale at the end of this season, and Glendale officials show no signs of backing off of that. So even if Meruelo is intent on trying to land a new Tempe arena (with at least $200 million in city tax kickbacks), what exactly are those “plenty of options” that he has in the meantime?
Enter Gophnx.com, or PHNX, or … frankly I’m not sure what the site is called, but it’s clearly focused on Arizona sports. Anyway, it has provided a new rundown of possible options for the Coyotes, and in the words of the site’r reporter Craig Morgan, they “aren’t nearly as plentiful as Bettman suggested”:
- Chase Field: “Playing NHL games at a baseball stadium is not unprecedented,” says Morgan, but he then goes on to list all the scheduling conflicts, from Stanley Cup overlap with baseball season to Super Bowl events to an Elton John concert, that would make it hard to schedule NHL games there.
- Arizona State University/Tucson/Prescott Valley: These three locations each have arenas with sub-7,000-seat capacities, and cue the jokes about how the Coyotes never have that many fans showing up for games anyway. They do have luxury boxes, so maybe Meruelo could finally test the idea of making sports tickets a scarce premium item where you sell as few as possible for the highest possible price, like that Wu-Tang album.
- Arizona Veterans Memorial Coliseum: Morgan covered this in a previous article, noting: “There are no luxury suites, the capacity is low (although it should be fine during the years of a rebuild) and the amenities that pro sports teams and fans expect are lacking. The Coyotes would assuredly lose money at this venue.” Still, it could be a perfectly functional loss leader until a new arena were procured, and Morgan called it “the leading candidate.”
There is also the possibility of a reunion with Glendale, even though city officials have expressed zero interest in granting Meruelo a short-term lease extension and Meruelo doesn’t want to sign a long-term deal so long as he has a shot at a brand-new arena in Tempe. Morgan writes, “There is an internal belief that Glendale would rather have 41 assured dates (plus preseason), than risk entering a concert and show market which multiple promoters have suggested would be fraught with challenges” — he doesn’t provide a source for whose “internal belief” that is (beyond “team and league circles”), as he seems to love uncredited statements almost as much as extraneous commas, so take that with all appropriate grains of salt.
Or the Coyotes could move out of Arizona next season, though Morgan has previously written that “I don’t think that is currently on the table, based on my conversation with commissioner Gary Bettman and” — wait for it — “other sources.” Logically, it makes sense that neither Meruelo nor Bettman will give up on Arizona so long as there’s the possibility of a new arena being dangled; and maybe even if the Tempe plan falls through, since it’s not like there are other terrific options out there, especially ones that wouldn’t require Meruelo to give up ownership of the team (hey there, Quebec!) or Bettman to give up on his Sun Belt Strategy. At some point in the next few months, though, Meruelo is going to have to pick a place to play so he can set a schedule and sell tickets, so he’s likely going to have to pick his poison between an arena without many bells and whistles or one without many seats. It’d be a small price to pay for a shot at landing $200 million in tax subsidies, but still, the Coyotes owner is going to need to figure out which dice he wants to roll.
As someone who loves obscure/footnote stadiums, I’m very excited to see where this goes. A trip to Phoenix may be in the cards soon!
Was at Westgate last night and the place was mobbed. Tanger Outlets parking lot was full and traffic was backed up to the 101 trying to get in. Restaurants were packed, the casino was packed and apartment buildings were under construction everywhere. The video board at the Gila River Arena was showing upcoming concerts and events, but nothing about the Coyotes. With even Joyce Clark against the Coyotes, the Coyotes are finished in Glendale. With Jerry Weiers against the Coyotes they are finished in Arizona. Where are the pro Coyotes Arena comments from Tempe? Tempe just held an executive session to get advise from the city attorney. After the Arizona Department of Revenue slapped a $1.3 million lies on the Coyotes, I can imagine how that went.
I am a 3 year Coyotes season ticket holder and my vote is to move the team to Quebec City. They will support a team.
I think Mr Meruelo’s next dice roll will be a seven, craps!
Concerning that coliseum option, Glendale Councilwoman Clark’s blog thinks it is a financial bleeder.
“The Coliseum has major structural problems. The building needs a need roof, new flooring and an additional ice plant for starters. Even with a new roof it can not accommodate a centrally hung scoreboard. There are no suites and maximum attendance would be in the 13,000 to 14,000 range. If the Coyotes do use the building they will continue to bleed financially.”
https://joyceclarkunfiltered.com/the-arizona-coyotes-are-a-hot-messstill/
How much money is Meruelo willing to lose before moving to Tempe? He needs to decide that now, I’d think.
And what if the Tempe option still remains uncertain in a year or two or more? That seems like a distinct possibility – look how long it’s taken Calgary or the Islanders (I’m pretty sure I read about the Islanders trying to build a new arena in the early 90s). Is he willing to lose money just to keep the team in Arizona if it’s actually a bridge to nowhere?
Why would he do that? I’ve heard the whole “but he needs it to have his casino!” He can build a casino/sportsbook in a lot of places. Or get into another line or business. Flushing this much money on one business to take advantage of the regulatory capture for another doesn’t make sense at some point.
As far as I know, no other prospective owner has publicly waived a wad of cash at him offering to buy. But am I right to think that it may have happened privately?
I recall reading that JIm Balsilie failed to move the Coyotes and Preds and Penguins to Hamilton, not only because the other owners didn’t want to move a team from a new market into the Leafs backyard, but because he was kind of a jerk about the whole thing and didn’t follow the country club rules.
So maybe any prospective future owner isn’t going to tell us they’re trying to buy before they buy. Or are there advantages to making that public? Not sure.
I imagine Meruelo will decide to lose as much money as he thinks he can eventually recoup from a new arena with public subsidies. The Coyotes were losing $15-20m a year before Covid, per Forbes, so even if that jumps to, say, $30-40m a year in a crappy temporary arena, he could maybe absorb a couple of years of losses in exchange for a Tempe prize at the end.
If there were another market where he would have guaranteed profits, or would have an equally good shot at a new arena, that would be a lot more tempting. But as we’ve seen before, with the Coyotes as well as with other teams in various sports, owners are willing to be really patient with annual losses so long as there’s a potential windfall at the end of the rainbow.
Thank you for actually looking at the actual numbers.
A rational person would say “why not just invest in something more certain and straightforward?” But I suspect that billionaires that buy pro teams don’t think that way. They want the status and prestige that comes with owning a franchise and so the opportunity costs of their investment don’t matter so much.
The Coyotes will do no better in Tempe than Glendale. Most Coyotes fans live within 10 miles of Desert Ridge, and in the carpool lane it’s only 20 minutes from Desert Ridge to the Gila River Arena at game time on a weeknight. The South Mountain Freeway (just opened last year) makes it much easier to get from the Southeast Valley to Glendale.
Reed: I agree, Meruelo is at least three years away from having a new arena “on deck” even if things go well (and I see little sign that things are going or will go well). His short term bridge options aren’t that short term.
An extension with Glendale is possible, but he is going to pay through the nose for it (I would start at $1m per game if I were doing the negotiating. If he’d rather lose that much at another arena in the area he’s welcome to go).
He certainly may have been approached privately by interests in Quebec, Houston or elsewhere seeking to own the team and move it. We would have no idea about that if he had (many will recall how silently Mark Chipman and his partners pursued the Atlanta Thrashers while all the publicity was on Balsillie and the dead ass Coyotes). I would be very surprised if Peledeau and the Fertitas (or, who knows…) haven’t been in contact with Meruelo and previous ownership.
Balsillie did try to play by the rules when he made an offer for the Penguins. He was rebuffed with prejudice by the league, and then began his reckless pursuit of the Predators & Coyotes and a forced relocation via US bankruptcy statutes.
I’m not saying his approach was right or appropriate, but it is important to mention that he didn’t start out breaking the so called rules.
It’s also true that Bettman held firm on the Thrashers only until there was no local ownership group willing to keep them in place. Then, the team was sold and moved in short order. I would expect the same thing with Phoenix.
Balsillie said he’d keep them in Pittsburgh if they got a free arena as part of the Isle of Capri (had to look that up) casino proposal, but when the NHL insisted that he agree to keep them in Pittsburgh even if that casino thing didn’t go his way, he pulled out of the deal.
That casino thing didn’t go their way, but it worked out eventually, at considerable public cost, as I recall.
Balsillie says he was never planning to move the team, but he certainly seemed to want that option.
With the Coyotes and Preds, he was definitely going to move them and was pretty open about that.
I don’t know if Bettman and the owners object to him or Hamilton or both.
All I can say about Balsillie’s Penguins bid is that he pissed off Mario Lemieux and if you do that, you erred somehow…
A team could make quite a bit of money in Hamilton, London, Waterloo, or wherever they’d put the presumptive new rink (the 519 is unique, there is a ton of money from the rural areas), it just has the same issues as Quebec as being a negligible add to any of the TV contracts while taking another share, and being a moderate issue with Toronto and a huge issue with Buffalo (the border being semi-closed is killing them now, a team the other direction with an easier drive would make the current situation permanent.
Now I’m really not campaigning for this market in particular, because I don’t have a horse in this race at all, but if they can generate enough resources to lure the Coyotes away I don’t see how it’s too farfetched to see Salt Lake City, Utah sneak into the relocation conversation.
SLC can re-evaluate what they have in the Jazz’s place (Vivint Arena) and see if it can make a conversion into an NHL-friendly arena. During the winter season SLC is an attractive tourist destination for those who love skiing, and I’d rather see SLC handle hockey activities than Phoenix/Glendale/Tempe. Plus, Utah is just north of Arizona. I know this sounds so basic, but it’s worth evaluating.
If they can generate enough resources, which is a big if, then maybe we could talk about SLC. Overall, though, the Coyotes are a mess of an NHL organization and I don’t expect this Arizona circus to go away anytime soon.
That could work if somebody wants to but the team and move it there. I’m sure the NHL owners would prefer to see the Coyotes in their own arena, in Arizona or somewhere else, but if they can’t make that happen in Arizona or Houston, SLC could be in the mix.
It would require the Jazz to be willing partners. I don’t know if that arena is suitable for the NHL in its current state. The trend seems to be for NBA owners to want their arena to be NBA only. In fact, that’s why the Coyotes can’t just move in with the Suns.
But SLC would have the advantage of being a less-crowded sports market than Houston or Phoenix. It also has the advantage of being in the west.
Salt Lake City is smaller (in TV households) than Houston, Atlanta, Orlando, Cleveland, Sacramento, Charlotte, Portland, Baltimore, Indianapolis, San Diego, Nashville, Hartford, San Antonio, and Kansas City. Not saying it’s impossible, but it doesn’t seem like it would be anywhere near the top of the list.
Nashville actually has an NHL franchise, believe it or not.
Damn, I need to read the newspaper more often.
The Salt Lake TV market is the entire state of Utah and population growth is a steady 20% per decade plus any net migration. Baseball would probably be the best sport to add next in Utah.
“which is probably what’s agitating the city of Glendale,” NHL commissioner Gary Bettman said Friday…”
Ahhh, Gary. As an accomplished lawyer, you surely know that proposing an “alternate theory of the crime” is a definite sign of guilt in any defendant…
This reminds me of the time you went on TV to ridicule the notion that Moyes was losing $35m annually operating the Coyotes and suggested that this was very much a case of him using the team as a cashbox for his other businesses… and then the league buying the club out of bankruptcy and then losing $36m and $38m over the next two seasons, respectively.
I can see the TV episode now – Law and Order: Suckered Coyotes Victims
Well, Chris Noth appears to be unemployed again… so maybe? You know if Dick Wolf reads this blog he will definitely sell this show to some network…. it would have been perfect for Versus, but that option isn’t on the table any more…
Why isn’t the Suns arena option?
It was too small for hockey to begin with (the ice had to be skewed way toward one end), and the remodeling the Suns are doing will make it even harder to retrofit. It’s not impossible, but it’s less likely than Chase Field, which is saying something.
They used to play there, but it was not designed with a hockey rink in mind. The floor was just barely large enough to fit a standard NHL rink, forcing the Coyotes to hastily reengineer it to accommodate the 200-foot rink and had a lot of obstructed views.
I went to a game the first year, visiting from Detroit to watch the Wings play the ‘yotes. The floor wasn’t big enough to fit an NHL standard rink; wedging it in required removing all the seats of the lower level on one end, and the end boards were roughly 10-15 feet from the suites. They set up a few hundred temporary seats underneath the suites to sell as ‘ice level’, I think we paid $20-25 a piece.
Only 70-75% of the upper level seats were completely unobstructed. Those on the end where the lower level seats were removed couldn’t see anything closer than the blue line. The game went into OT, and when the Wings scored to win it, they could only watch it on the scoreboard.
Barclay’s Center had the same experience for the Islanders when they played there.
200 million reasons, plus 2. The Sun’s arena just received a $200 million renovation to upgrade the basketball layout of the Footprint Center. Plus the Sun’s owner and Phoenix (owner of the arena) don’t want anything to do with the Coyotes.
An idea that maybe kinda crazy because it’s not in the state of Az. But for a temporary home. Why not Citizens bank arena in Ontario Ca? 11k capacity. Plenty of parking. I believe there are some luxury suites there.
Correction its called the Toyota center now. Hockey capacity 9800
Not sure the Kings and Ducks would permit another team in their market (even temporarily).
Um, There is a 14,000 seat Arena in San Diego hosting the AHL…
Bettman was sure quick to allow them to move from Winnipeg. But now he doesn’t want to look like he failed.
Time to move them to Quebec City
It wasn’t as quick as you might think. They were losing money in Winnipeg for a long time – maybe most of the time they were in the NHL. They just couldn’t survive in that arena, despite the huge picture of the Queen above the ice, and couldn’t get a new one built fast enough.
https://sports.yahoo.com/blogs/nhl-puck-daddy/bettman-jets-tales-nhl-flight-winnipeg-232407675.html?guccounter=1&guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly9lbi53aWtpcGVkaWEub3JnLw&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAALm4DSnCrx7Uo8yDl5bLDDEfCmQZEnFq6RIKYEGm86_iZWyjaS0V2kJfy-om9_-2ouatnCk_YRruZxxnfkTV8ae1Or2d2EjL6qQoAyVV_Y0lMb3pMQR1VjiVtcTUm9_G_aW6bA6sUHFWQsD0DOZ1kcay7kmFD-8fjQ55aC4mrYMj
With the way the dollar was going and all that in the 90s, it looked like Canada might end up with just three teams. They have seven now, so the “Bettman hates Canada” story doesn’t have much validity. I mean, he might hate Canada, but he could have let it get a lot worse there than it actually did.
IIRC, plan A with the Coyotes was to move them to Minneapolis and share with the Wolves at the Target Center. Not sure why that failed, but it worked out in the long run because the X is way better than the Target Center and it gives St Paul it’s own thing.
Here’s a better link:
https://yhoo.it/3oSwzmg
If you had asked someone in 1997 whether Winnipeg or Stockholm would have a team by 2010, they would definitely have said Stockholm.
For everyone that brings up Quebec, it has to be said 1,000 times: you can’t bring that option up until…
a— all nine lives in Arizona are up and then some (really, who knows what life we are on now…)
b— the league has rattled every chain they can in Houston.
In the Les Alexander days, Houston wasn’t an option. Now it is. That’s not to say it would be a slam dunk that it would be worked out if the Arizona market was dropped, but you damn well better believed they’d exhaust every avenue of figuring that out before they devoted a second of attention to moving a southwestern team to Quebec City.
You may be right about relocation…
INSIDER AFFIRMS BELIEF THAT RELOCATION IS ABSOLUTELY ON THE TABLE FOR THE ARIZONA COYOTES
“During the most recent edition of the 32 Thoughts Podcast, Elliotte Friedman stated that he strongly believes that the league is looking at potential plans to move the team out of Arizona.
“I believe 1000% that they are looking at exit plans if they have to because no commissioner worth anything wouldn’t be doing that,” said Friedman.”
https://www.markerzone.com/news/index.php?no=69578
What I see with QC is Bettman doing his job by being the cover for the Habs’ opposition. They would have to play ball in public and a new rivalry would be fun, but having to share the TV market would be a body blow. They would probably demand the same deal LA got when Anaheim was let in (half the expansion fee).
Quebec is about three hours from Montreal, so I doubt it would change demand for Habs tickets a whole lot. But they would have to make a deal, as you suggest, for the TV rights.
The French language part of it is an interesting wrinkle. Would Rogers/Bell/CBC benefit greatly by having a bit more valuable French content to fill the time and thereby be able to share some of that extra with the Habs? Or the opposite? Or, now that TV isn’t about “channels,” does it matter? I don’t really understand how Canadian TV works. It seems like there are only two companies that own everything.
You’re right about ticket demand not changing, it’s the media market.
There are “national” French rights (which are part of the standard contract) which are owned by by TVA (Rogers) and then rights to Canada east of Bellville, Ontario, which is owned by RDS (Bell) and shared with Ottawa.
A new Nordiques team would arguably drive down the payout for both, be because viewership wouldn’t go up that much and they’d get another share of the national income, and there’d be one network for each team locally.
Thanks
Is sharing a venue with the Oklahoma City Thunder an option?
That is a fine minor league hockey market but too small for 2 major league teams. Small TV market. When the bloom is off the NBA rose in that city, they should return to Seattle.