Cup Winners Still Losers: Why The NHL Needs Economic Reform To Survive
August 5th, 2010 by Cale Loney Leave a reply »This isn't a new phenomenon, plenty of NHL teams are losing money. The only surprise is that the Stanley Cup champions, the Chicago Blackhawks are among the teams operating in the red. After an amazing season and playoffs the Chicago Blackhawks have fallen short of breaking even, even when factoring in the revenue from the playoffs.
According to the Chicago Tribune's Melissa Harris, the Blackhawks ran out of cash several times throughout the season despite setting records in capacity attendance, merchandise sales, television ratings and sponsorship revenues.
Harris also stated that although the Blackhawks are among the have-not teams in the NHL, due to the market size, the Blackhawks are ineligible to receive revenue sharing.
Adding insult to injury, Harris goes on to say that the Blackhawks had to give the NHL at least 50 percent of what the their gate receipts would have been at the United Center during a regular season sell-out out of their playoff revenue for home games.
This has two implications.
First, this automatically means that to make money teams have to raise the price of playoff tickets. ...
Read Full Article at Bleacher Report - NHL
Article written by Cale Loney
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