Thursday, June 4, 2009

100 Kansas Citians Willing To Buy Into NHL?

It recently came out that the Columbus Blue Jackets have lost $80 million over the last seven years, and premature speculation about relocation immediately started up. It's really a non-story at this point, but buried in an article in a Columbus weekly is a bit of a bomb-shell from NHL21 honcho Paul McGannon: “(NHL21 membership includes) 100 civic leaders who, if asked, would participate if local ownership (of an NHL franchise) was requested.” Wha?! That's huge news if there are really 100 Kansas Citians willing to form an ownership consortium.

2 comments:

Rob S. said...

I think the 100 number is a big exaggeration.

I also tend to believe that a lot of sports teams exaggerate how much money they lose for negotiating leverage so I have a hard time believing the $80M loss number. It is like when Bud Selig testified to Congress during the baseball strike quantifying the "operating losses" experienced by the clubs when there is no strict accounting definition of "operating loss" and very few clubs have to go through an external audit and virtually none release their financial statements.

Aaron Stilley said...

Thanks for checking in Rob. I imagine you're right that 100 is an exaggeration. Just a nice round number to throw out there. But if there is even a small group of rich dudes in town talking about ownership, that would be encouraging.