Why then are small market Canadian teams like Edmonton and Ottawa not taking advantage of this model? I think there’s plenty of evidence that, even in Canada, you need a population (including surrounding area) of at least one million people to make an NHL team viable.

One correcton: Rod Pedersen is from sports radio in Regina, not Winnipeg

Just looking at the revenue hierarchy in the league, I wouldn’t be surprised if they’re in the red a little bit should the team not pull in playoff revenue. About half the teams in the NHL lose money, so it’s not a huge indictment of their revenues to say that.

I believe Laforge because it’s consistent with what’s happening elsewhere in the league.

The Oilers and Sens are midrange revenue generating teams, and in this league, that puts you about break even most of the time. Drop those teams into significantly smaller markets, and what have you?

BPG, do you have a list of GDP for all 30 NHL markets as well as the top prospective ones?

It’s been a bumpy ride for them, though.

Calgary and Edmonton have grown incredibly the past 15 years, too, and between 2001 and 2006 were the fastest growing large cities in the country. There’s a lot of wealth there due to the oil boon, too.

There has to be some sort of a cutoff for what qualifies as a successful franchise in the league, and I just think that the Edmonton/Ottawa type cities in terms of sheer population and wealth should be considered the minimum. Quebec City likely could out earn some of the NHL minnows in troubled American markets, but is there any reason to think they’d be more successful than the Oilers or Senators? And if you accept the premise than Edmonton and Ottawa aren’t rolling in dough but are more midrange teams, why then should the league add a team that would potentially struggle to reach even that mark?

The league really should only have 24 or 26 teams. I guess if you have to have 30, and some of the markets in the U.S. are truly going to fail (in the Coyotes sense), maybe then you turn to Quebec City. Long term, however, I don’t see that working out.

James, everything you write is true, but when you ask, "And what’s changed?", but why doesn’t all that apply to Edmonton? If you’re arguing that a team in Quebec City or Winnipeg that was losing perhaps $10 million/season in the mid-90s would probably lose just as much or more today (and it sure sounds like you are), why are Edmonton and Calgary much more viable today, even though salaries have basically quadrupled or quintupled for those franchises, too?

Population and money.

Winnipeg had a metro population of 683,500 in 1996, 716,000 in 2006, and a 2009 estimate of 742,000 with projected growth into the future of around 6-8,000 people per year. (link)

Calgary had a metro population of 906,000 in 1996, 1,188,000 in 2006, and a 2009 estimate of 1,278,000 with projected growth of around 22-30,000 people per year. (link)

Edmonton had a metro population of 883,000 in 1996, 1,034,945 in 2006 and a 2008 estimate of 1,102,000 – no estimate on future growth, but likely similar to Calgary. (link)

Personal disposable income in Alberta is far, far higher than Manitoba (and the rest of Canada), and has seen significant growth since 1996. Wages have grown significantly above average compared to the rest of the country, and a greater percentage of the population of Alberta is active in the workforce as compared to the rest of the country. (link) In short, there is a hell of a lot more money in Alberta than there is in Winnipeg/Manitoba, and the gap has widened dramatically since 1996.

Yet it’s what leads people to want to own those teams.

Absolutely there are a lot of U.S. teams in trouble. I just don’t think having nine Canadian teams is necessarily the answer. From a fan interest perspective it is, and it’d be great to see, but with the amount of revenues NHL teams need these days, I think Quebec and Winnipeg would be losing buckets just like the weak sisters we’ve got now.

which have all of those competing events in their markets and more. But so do San Jose (that’s 2 football teams, 2 baseball teams, 3 D-I college football programs) and Dallas (multiple NASCAR races, too much college football to count), and no one is having any bake sales for them.

Check here

And, for comparison’s sake…you shoulda known I would post this.

Let’s not just speculate yet about the return of the NHL in Quebec City.

Gee, there certainly seems to be a lot of that going on already.

I know the economics of the NHL these days, so I feel qualified to speak on them. And when I see the Senators and Oilers in precarious positions when the dollar’s under 85 cents, I wonder how even smaller Canadian cities are going to compete.

Actually, 72 cents then and 93 cents now, but who’s counting? ;)

Quebec City is increasingly affluent and has a population base that could well support a team. On the latter point (though it’s admittedly difficult to quantity without more precise market survery and analysis) I refer not simply to total size but also the percentage of population that is interested in hockey and might be counted on to attend NHL games consistently. Add to that there are media conglomerates in the province prepared to back a team to the hilt and I think there are, if nothing else, legitimate grounds for argument on the basis of potential economic viability.

As someone who has argued this, let me say that the threshold, for Canadian teams (similar levels of hockey interest and all) seems to be about 1M people. Edmonton and Ottawa seem like they are right on the cusp, and I’d be hard-pressed to think Quebec City has more interest or wealth than either of those two cities.

The people who seem to argue against population as a factor seem to think that others are comparing Quebec City with Nashville and simply throw inherent hockey interest out the window. That’s not the case at all.

The question, then, turns to what to do with those teams. Are they contracted (as James suggests should happen) or do they move? If the latter, then where are they moved to? The answer to that question would be a relatively safe market where there is a dependable source of gate revenue and corporate support.
Once we look at this way, then we can see clearly that Quebec (and, likely, Winnipeg) have the former. The question that remains to be answered is whether they have the latter.

I would agree with this, except I don’t see either Winnipeg or Quebec as “relatively safe”. Their populations makes a dependable source of gate revenue and corporate support legitimate question marks. Winnipeg had attendance problems when they had a team. (Quebec did ok when they had a team, but still drew in the bottom 1/3 of the league).
Edmonton and Ottawa have both, at times, not been a dependable source of either, and their markets are 30% bigger.

One common theme I see developing in the pro-Quebec/Winnipeg camps is the assumption that because Quebec and Winnipeg are hockey mad, that means that if you just throw a team out there you’ll get 17k people a night. Evidence from the most comparable markets (Edmonton, Calgary, Ottawa and Winnipeg, and Quebec City when they had teams) makes this assumption incredibly tenuous, at best.

I think Quebec and Winnipeg represent moderate-high risk, but very low reward. While some of the weaker current markets are high risk, but high reward.

But how and why is Quebec producing the same level of success as Ottawa with significantly fewer people to do so?

But what else would he possibly say in a Radio Interview in Quebec City, for the Quebecois?

A few weeks ago Betteman was asked a similar thing and he said Hamilton, Seattle KC and Winnipeg were at the top of the list.

They might, might, just be pandering.

A politician using an emotional ploy to win support and votes? Never happens.

/sarcasm

I think you may have hit this nail straight on the head. All politics is local, and this may be a ploy by the politicos to win votes among the Nordique faithful. It sucks that the Nords had to leave, but the reality is what it is, and the team is now in Denver making money, where it was losing money in Quebec. Sure not every team in the US makes money, but no one in their right mind would want a team in Quebec even if a sell-out was guaranteed every night at a beautiful new arena if there was no chance the team could make a profit.