If you don't think that players risk any money to play in the NHL you are very naive. Do you think that personal trainers work with them for free in the off-season? Do you think the NHL foots the bill?Quote:
Originally Posted by bigfan3
Everyone did, not just the players. Even Bettman admitted that it was only an initial offer that they fully expected to come up.Quote:
They found the 43% offer from the owners ridiculous and yet that is exactly what the owners were getting until now. Call me crazy but if I invest and risk my own money the least I expect to get is the lion share of profits.
Owning a hockey team or any sports team is not a smart investment (except perhaps the NFL) if you are expecting to make a great return year in and year out. Owners invest in sports teams not because of what they will earn annually, but because of what they will earn when they sell. A sports team is an asset that they expect to appreciate in value at a very high rate, against which they can borrow for other business ventures, or they can sell at a huge profit. And guess what, most of the owners are doing more than fine in this regard. AEG for example purchased the kings for $113m. The kings are now valued at $232m, that's a 105% increase in value or over 6.5% per year average (when, I might add, the Kings found themselves in the post season a total of 8 times, and past the second round just twice).Quote:
I would love to know how many of these owners became billionaires because of this league. I say NONE! they are the ones that keep the league going, they are the ones that truly understand whats needed to keep it going.
At this rate you think having or getting to a $200MM cap makes sense? for who? the players! but how?, simply guessing and doing some silly math that revenues will keep going up at the same rate? that is not very smart investment. That is stock market crazy talk. Would you put all your money in a stock simply because it has been doing so well, no research, no facts? That is how people loose their money, fortunes in the stock market. Once that happens, no more money to invest and in this case, bye bye league.
It seems harder for fans to realize that many owners are not risking their money at all. Take for example the most recent travails of the Phoenix Coyotes and their perpetual search for an owner. One of the reasons (among many) for the current delay, has been that Greg Jamison needed to get the money together to purchase the team. That doesn't mean that he has to drive to a bunch of banks across the country and take out a bunch of cashiers checks. No, he has been getting loans from banks and investors. When all is said and done, I doubt that he will be risking much of his own money at all. Put a different way, look at the kings. Their current debt to value ratio is 65%. That isn't debt that Uncle Phil has take on as a byproduct of owning the team. No. The team, not the owner, shoulders the risk. And last time I checked, the players were part of the team.Quote:
I know its hard for us fans but lets be real, if it wasn't for the owners willingness to risk most, part or all of their money into hockey we the fans and the players would have to go get a regular check with no union behind on something else.
Finally, this is a capitalist society. You speak of risk, income, who is entitled to what. You say that the owners invest in their teams and they should reap the lions' share of the profits (which they do under the current CBA and any future one). Afterall, the reason why, despite three lockouts over the last 20 years, ticket prices continue to rise is because that is the market price of tickets. It is what fans will pay. The owners, with the cap, installed an artificial mechanism to dampen the market effects on player salaries. With a scarce resource (world-class hockey players) the price of that labor inevitably will rise. What in the world would happen if the owners were to have a cap on the amount of profits that they were able to make? Armageddon? Believing that the players are not entitled to the full market value of their labor, when you also believe that the owners are entitled to the full market share of their profits is nothing but blatant hypocrisy.
