One point that really honks me off about the Tennessean piece is that the fact that paid attendance is actually up by ~750 per game is overlooked. It’s likely that the owners won’t have to shell out $$$ to hit the 14K mark, considering the typical trend in attendance now that football season is over.

Last year at this time, average paid was 12,975, finishing the season at 13,429.
This year they’re at 13,744, which leads me to believe that 14K is certainly attainable.

As to owners engaging in these types of schemes, it’s certainly odd, but not uncommon. NFL teams do this often in order to get a “sellout” so that they can air games on local television.

1) As many of us were saying during the second Bettman lockout; Before the owners start to ask the players for consessions, etc, they may want to first get together among themselves and get their own house in order with respect to revenue sharing, etc,
2) Now that salaries are directly tied tio revenues the players can’t be happy with the struggling franchises now using loopholes to stay afloat.
3) Can’t imagine that buying own’s own tickets can be allowed. There should also be a limit on the number of ‘comped’ tickets distributed. Total joke if true.

One thing to remember here is that from the players’ perspective, this could be a short-term bonus. Tickets purchased = more “hockey related revenue”, of which they get their 50%+ cut. Comped tickets handed out by teams don’t have that effect.

Again, I doubt they’ll even have to resort to this step to reach 14K.

I do agree that the NHL needs more of a long-term approach to revenue sharing. Rather than the two schemes we’ve seen so far (the propping up of Canadian teams in the 90’s, and the small-market boost of today) I’d think a more straightforward, gate-revenue sharing model would achieve multiple goals at once; it would unite the interests of the owners towards league-wide growth, it would help spread out the currency risk rather than have that burden solely rest on the Canadian clubs when the Loonie declines vis a vis the Greenback, and it would also support small-market teams to some extent. It’s done in many other sports, and there’s no reason it couldn’t work in hockey.

To me, the biggest structural problem the league has is that it acts more like 30 fiefdoms squabbling, rather than a single federated organization like the NFL or MLB.

The sheer gall is apalling.

I fully understand ownership’s desire to prop up the team but geez….the Jeremy Jacobs’ of the world aren’t going to stand for this.

From a competitive standpoint, I’m very much in favour of revenue sharing. I have no desire to go back to an era where a handful of teams were perennial contenders in large part due to their financial advantages (not that it helped the Leafs or Rangers much).

Certainly, however, this current situation is a joke. Especially if you consider the proposition that the current ticket-selling difficulties are in large part caused by the dismantling of a roster that was a contender a few years ago, in order to shed contracts and bump short-term revenue and make the team more attractive to sell, despite the fact that it was eventually sold for much less than the largest bid, while incorporating the ridiculous Del Biaggio in the ownership group, and meanwhile the original owner who caused this mess received an inside track on acquiring stake in a different franchise.

On one hand it looks like Nashville really does deserve to be denied revenue sharing, but on the other hand all of this activity was league-sanctioned and in some cases league-encouraged, so it might as well be league-paid for.

This reminds me of the 49ers buying blocks of tickets so there games will not be blacked out on television. The Raiders? There is no pretense, there home games are always blacked out.

Another side issue: If the Preds average 14,000 tickets, doesn’t the ownership group have the right to buy out Boot’s share? To the NHL, it might be worth letting this slide to avoid a bankruptcy judge getting involved with ownership rights in the team.

And they are right about kicking teams when they’re down. Perhaps a more stepped, sliding scale disincentive is needed, so teams who are 98% to guidelines don’t get docked all the way to 75% payments.

Another point to take from this story is that the poor teams have ways to exploit the CBA just like the rich ones do. A team like Philadelphia or the Rangers can out-bid and over-pay to capture the top UFA prize (Briere, Gomez, Drury, etc) with the knowledge that if the player suffers a decline they can send that player to the minors and pay them “off the books” salary cap wise.

I want a NHL where the most astute GM is rewarded for making intelligent offers to UFA each summer. The current system provides a “opps” fudge factor for some teams but not others.

Now the poor clubs have figured out how to engage in their own questionable behavior to give them a better shot. I don’t like the idea of buying your own tickets but if the CBA allows it (as it allows the hiding of UFA mistakes in the minors) then they should take advantage of this.

I would like to see BOTH of these issues addressed in the NEXT CBA. I’m not at all surprised that there are holes in the current CBA. The thing is very long and written very quickly. Hopefully the next labor negotiations will be more about tweaking the existing agreement to fine tune things—rather than say starting from scratch.