The_Admiral

Copyright squatters are one of the lowest forms of life, but I hope something comes of this for the lulz

I don't think they ever intended to. My guess is someone peckerslapped them for listing "we'll spend to the cap" as a condition of getting another bailout, as if they'd hold back otherwise. Days after that report, Tallon emerged from whichever golf course he spends his days on to say oh, no, we're going to spend to the cap right away (despite being in an early rebuilding phase). They'll probably just give 30 over 5 to someone like Matt Moulson and then just be like "hey, we tried other guys."

http://articles.sun-sentinel.com/2014-02-05/news/fl-panthers-money-request-20140205_1_ceo-michael-yormark-florida-panthers-panthers-request

The team is losing millions, and is receiving revenue sharing from the National Hockey League because of its under-average revenues. Though county records show the arena makes money with its concerts and other non-hockey events, when the financial failure of the hockey team is factored in, Yormark said, the operation is losing $20 million to $30 million a year.

Tra la la, what you silly relocationists will never understand is that the Panthers make so much money on their arena! Tally-ho!

Girls would turn the color of an avocado when he would drive down their street in his El Dorado.

Becoming the Arizona Coyotes makes sense for us since we play our games in Glendale and the city is such a great partner of ours.

This reads like a term paper written at 4 in the morning of the due date. "Because this and the something therefore it's evident that it is."

Too bad they couldn't book Tom Cochrane; I can't think of a better state in which to perform "Lunatic Fringe."

Why don't you just have four divisions like the NBA used to have?

•The Panthers would commit to investing in hockey team payroll "at a level competitive with the rest of the National Hockey League.''

Looks like the Panthers got a call on the red phone! Tallon just said the Panthers are going to spend to the cap next year. "Nope, nope, we'll spend money no matter what!" Threatening to suppress payroll was too much even for Count Bettman to abide, evidently.

But with the whole "Panthers can't move" thing, here's where this must be a legendary Talking Heads live album, because it stops making sense: if they're losing so much money on the hockey side that they're having to hit up the county for money, why can't they negotiate with the county and say that they'll just forget the whole hockey thing and focus on other events, which they do better than the hockey, which makes more money for the county, and then we'll sell the hockey team for an absurd amount, which makes more money for the owner? Who there is still so married to the concept of a hockey team spitting distance from the Everglades, really, if it's been proven that it can't exist without huge government subsidies? especially when it appears that you can indeed have a successful arena without a Big Four anchor tenant, as seen in Kansas City?

Oh, Panthers. Panthers, Panthers, Panthers.

http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/broward/fl-panthers-request-public-money-20140109,0,1551120,full.story

The Florida Panthers professional hockey team says it's losing more than $20 million a year and needs more public funds to survive.

The struggling team is asking for a rewrite of its contract with Broward County. Under the team's proposal, the county would use additional tourism taxes to pick up $70 million in BB&T Center costs currently being paid by the Panthers. The team also hopes to develop 22 acres north of the BB&T arena in Sunrise into a casino-hotel, if the state Legislature enacts laws that allow it this spring.

Panthers President Michael Yormark said the deal that birthed the arena in the late 1990s has proven unsustainable.

"I think the community wants a healthy arena,'' Yormark said. "They want a healthy sports team. They want the benefit that a professional sports team and world-class entertainment brings to their community.''

Oh, come on. The Broward County "community" just wants to get a nice dinner at 4:30 and want for maybe their children to CALL ONCE IN A WHILE if it wouldn't be SO MUCH trouble for them just to maybe say CALL AND SAY HELLO and maybe even VISIT US if it wouldn't be asking SO MUCH OF THEM to come here and remember we DIDN'T DIE YET but that's fiiiiine forget we ever said anything we'll just sit by our phones in the dark and WAIT TO DIE ALREADY (and attend Florida Panthers hockey games, apparently).

Yormark said he's seeking the changes immediately, hoping to better compete as an entertainment venue with the Seminole Hard Rock Casino and American Airlines Arena.

The Panthers organization runs Broward's arena in Sunrise, bringing in more money from concerts and other events than from its hockey games, county records show. Financial records show the Panthers make a profit from arena operations. It's the Panthers team that's losing money, Yormark said.

"This organization has lost between $20 [million] and $30 million on an annual basis,'' Yormark said, "and those dollars have been funded by our owners.''

Well, who else should fund them? You run the arena, numbnuts.

The deal hinges on the approval of the nine-member Broward County Commission. County officials said they didn't want to rush to a vote. They'll vet the proposal at a workshop in the near future.

well we've seen how THIS turns out

The changes have "very significant implications,'' County Administrator Bertha Henry said, and would require a rewrite of the existing contract.

County Auditor Evan Lukic said he has just begun reviewing the proposal, but warned that his initial analysis left him wondering if the county would benefit.

Yormark said the 2 percent tourism bed tax created to cover the county's costs for the arena has generated millions more than expected, and it's that pot of money he's eyeing. The tax is levied on overnight visitors staying in Broward hotels.

The $185 million arena, which opened in 1998, was built with public financing for then-Panthers owner H. Wayne Huizenga. Broward leaders were sold on the controversial arena deal with promises that profits would return to the taxpayers. That has so far happened only once.

The current arrangement has the county paying $8 million a year toward the debt for arena construction. Another $2 million comes from state funds, and the Panthers pay $4.5 million. The Panthers organization also pays for maintaining and insuring the facility.

Okay so here's where I'm having trouble. The county paid to build the arena and has to service most of that debt. The Panthers pay for some of it and also maintenance and insurance. In exchange for this, which should still come out to less than the $10 million coming from taxpayers, they get to run the building and make money on all the events. So how exactly is this unsustainable for THE PANTHERS? If anything, it should be unsustainable for everyone else.

Under the proposed change, for the 14-year balance of the current contract:

•The Panthers would shed the $4.5 million annual payment; it would be picked up by the county.

WELL

•The county would contribute $500,000 a year toward maintenance, and would pay any of the property insurance tab that exceeds $1 million.

•The Panthers would swap the land it has rights to build on, 12 acres south of the arena, in favor of 22 acres on the arena's north side, where the Panthers hope a casino-hotel or some other development could be built and brought onto the tax rolls.

•The Panthers would immediately repay $10.6 million in loans the county granted them in recent years.

•The Panthers would continue contributing $500,000 a year to the Convention and Visitors Bureau.

•The Panthers would commit to investing in hockey team payroll "at a level competitive with the rest of the National Hockey League.''

So if you do the napkin math, yeah, they pay $10.6MM up front, but they stop paying $4.5 a year, which means it pays for itself pretty fast. They also get to trade 12 acres for 22 acres. Unless the 10 extra acres are swampland, that's not really what I'd call a trade. Of course, neither was Michael Frolik for Jack Skille, wocka-wocka.

It goes on like this but it just keeps making me mad. So damn tired of hearing "tut-tut, the team is just a loss leader for the sweet arena management contract" when apparently it's still not sweet enough for them and they have to go ask the government for even more free money. I hate the way this great nation is heading to socialism.

I still maintain that Glendale will default before five years are up. They're bleeding like Ric Flair here.

In addition to the hockey debt, Glendale will pay $17.5 million next year in debt service for the Camelback Ranch Glendale spring-training ballpark, which is located in Phoenix.

This seems uniquely stupid, even for them.

The city borrowed $200 million to build the ballpark, but commercial development at the sprawling property west of the Loop 101 — and the hoped-for tax revenue — never materialized.

Expected ballpark revenue next year is just over $130,000.

You know, for all the talk about the Coyotes, it might be the baseball stuff that sends the city into Chapter 9.

There are plenty of excellent reasons to not put an NHL franchise in Las Vegas (and count me among those who think it would be a horrid idea, though it could become a comedy of errors if the Maloofs get in on it). "They can't fill their arena for their minor-league team" is not really a relevant argument. The Moose only got MTS Centre about 60% full, anyway.

Is Wolves attendance down a lot this year? I watched a few games on 26.2 and it was awfully empty there. One was a game against Rockford.

The CBA took 7% off the players' share, and there are few if any NHLers making eight figures a year. You know what's scary? The going rate for middle relievers. NHL players make money as a function of revenue. There are enormous systemic problems with the NHL; player salaries aren't one.

College basketball doesn't really exist anywhere in Illinois right now. What's the best team right now? The Illini? Woof.

Usually it seems like college basketball fans are amenable to mid-majors getting involved whereas it's the football fans who get giant alien space bugs up their asses if anyone deemed unworthy dares to break their circlejerk of Traditional Prestigious Institutions. Silence, you glorified junior college!

Count Bettman ‏@CountBettman 8h

Excellent news! Its snowing in Cairo Egypt! We will play an outdoor game there once the civil war is all cleared up.

Sun Belt hockey is his legacy, his singular contribution to the sport (sure isn't labor peace).

You prefer to see a league with certain numbers with an unbalanced schedule than to have a well-fit quantity of teams per division with a well-balanced schedule? Damn! But I won't blame you for that because it's your opinion, after all.

Are you familiar with the economics of major-junior hockey?

That would be awesome. Find a lake in rural Minnesota (no great feat) and set up some temporary bleachers. Unforgettable scene.

That would be awesome. It's time to take a new tack with the outdoor games. Football/baseball is played out.

I like your WHL proposal, monkeypower. I don't like adding more teams. 22 is more than plenty for a regional league, and it's not like they're leaving a lot of big cities on the table while committing to Prince George and Swift Current. Bellevue and Tacoma are bad ideas with one team in Kent and another in Everett already. Fort McMurray is connected to the rest of the world by little planes and one road; that it even exists in the condition it does is something of an abomination.

I only knew the last logo and figured a rock cat was a mountain lion. Mea culpa.

Because the "rock" in "Rock Cats" presumably means stone, so in other words, "mountain lion," more or less. The "rock" in "rock and roll" is a separate word meaning "to sway," so going in both directions at once destroys whatever precious little semiotic integrity "Rock Cats" could possibly have. But that's kind of Brandiose's schtick, to have one degree of separation too many between the name of the team and the iconography. It would be like if they made the Charlotte Knights' logo a moon wearing sunglasses like the old McDonald's logo, because it's night (Knight) time.