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Come hell or high water -- Vegas wants a pro team

Discussion in 'Sports and News' started by Flash, Aug 23, 2007.

  1. Sam Mills 51

    Sam Mills 51 Well-Known Member

    Interpretation: Bettman is making the owners money, bolstering his job security with each dollar - American or Canadian - he brings in.

    See also David Stern, who has watched the NBA turn to absolute goo, but his sharp skills as a marketer has camoflaged that with the truckloads of money he brings in with merchandise and jersey sales.
     
  2. wickedwritah

    wickedwritah Guest

    Again, I really wanna know who would've done "better."
     
  3. Beef03

    Beef03 Active Member

    The thing is you can still have a spine and be a commissioner. He is hired by the owners, but it is his job to whip the owners into shape. It's not neccesarily bringing new and better ideas to the game Also just about every change that has taken place under his regime has been a complete disaster.

    Number 1 with a bullet in recent years, is allowing the TV deal with ESPN to fall through and then signing a deal with a network that has no experience in covering the game and more importantly 90 per cent of the US does not get. kind of a big screw up.

    Another big screw up was pushing the league into lockout mode the summer following the New York Rangers' stanley Cup win in 1994. Killed any chance to capitalize on the major momentum gained by having the Rangers win the cup. that was the league's big opportunity to truly jump into the mainstream of the North American eye, especially considering all of the problems MLB was going through with their strike, the NFL wasn't the empire it is today and the NBA was at that point lower than the NHL on the radar. Then the deal that is eventually scratched out turned out to be a major bust for the owners anyways as he failed to get the cap then that he had promised and was a big reason for his hiring, and helped lead to the gross inflation of NHL salaries over the next 10 years. That was Bettman all the way with the owners following his recently hired ass blindly. (That was actually his second major labour problem in his first couple of years, also suffering an officials strike I believe during the playoffs, forcing the league to bring in scab refs for a game or two, and it turned out so bad that it forced Bettman back to the negotiating table to hammer out a deal)

    Also how about marketing the game about as pourly as one could in the age of 24 hour media. It has only barely improved the last season, but even coming out of the strike with that sudo-ninja warrior add was bullshit. Hell, NHLers have a reputation of being the most approachable pro-athletes in at least North America (there are of course exceptions to every rule), the league should have taken advantage of that to the utmost degree, instead they would rather push cartoonish mascots in areas that are copletely foreign to the game.

    Just the first three reasons that came to mind anyways.



    EDIT: This is what happens when you hire a non-hockey guy to run the NHL. We don't need a return to Zeigler either, They need a hockey guy with a spine and an ability either market the game correctly, or the willingness to hire people to market the game correctly, to run the league
     
  4. Beef03

    Beef03 Active Member

    Actually the NHL does bow to the IIHF to some degree in that regard. In order to raid the Euro leagues the NHL has a transfer agreement deal worked out to that for each player they take, a couple hundred thousand dollars (not sure the exact total) goes back to that players club. it is a big reason they are now having problems getting Russian players to come over when drafted. The Ruskies think NHL clubs should have to pay millions for their stars, very similarly to soccer. And because the Russians canacctually aforred to compete with NHL clubs for some of the players - particularly the younger ones who can only make $900,000 and change in a max deal with an NHL club, there is no such limit on the Russian clubs, so they'll offer the player $2 to 3 million to stay home. And because of this the Russians refuse to sign the transfer agreement. It has resulted in several lawsuits over NHL clubs signing away players like Evgeni Malkin, Alexi Mikinov, and a few others. I believe I heard the Russians are in the process of changing their labour laws so that perople cannot opt out of a contract on two week's notice as was the case before.
     
  5. Flash

    Flash Guest

    Re: the post-lockout marketing

    A beer company did better than the NHL.
     
  6. wickedwritah

    wickedwritah Guest

    Bettman was not the one who forced the lockout in 1994-95.

    Bettman was not the one who forced the lockout in 2004-05.

    He only has as much of a spine as the owners give him. He has zero power. Unlike Stern, who is considered the Second Coming of Commissioners and comes from a league where the commissioner historically had more power, Bettman has no wiggle room.

    By the way, he did not choose to dump ESPN. ESPN offered an impractical, extremely low-ball contract after the lockout. The league needed revenues immediately to get back on its feet, and Comcast provided a much-needed cash infusion.
     
  7. Beef03

    Beef03 Active Member

    AS opposed to practically paying out of their own pocket to put the game on NBC? The league is and almost certainly will forever be a gate-driven revenue league. The TV deal they have with versus is not making them rich by any stretch of the imagination. They would have been far better off taking their lumps with a low-ball deal with ESPN. At least then they have the chance of being seen in the highlight package. To my understanding (as I do not get ESPN in Canada) the NHL recieves next to nothing interms of coverage during Sportscenter.

    And yes Bettman was the one who forced the lockout in 1994 telling the owners he could get them a salary cap. It is why they hired him, on the premise that he could get them a similar CBA to the one he got the NBA. He failed miserably.
    And I would say Bettman was very central in this past lockout, again with the promise of securing a cap. He romanced the Canadian and other "Small market" teams on the idea and pushed it ahead. He only needed a certain percentage of the vote. You think Toronto, Detroit, Philly, NYR, Colorado and so on wanted the lockout? Hells no. They were flourishing in the old system. And I'll fully admit, at the time I was applauding him every step of the way as a fanboy loser of the Oilers. Has this past lockout been a failure I'm not completely sure, it is far to early to tell. Although salaries are already back up to where they were pre-lockout, the Canadian teams are able to survive because of the strong dollar. Where they really screwed up is their post lockout marketing.

    He has been there too long to really start showing a spine. Whoever comes in next has to be able to display the intestinal fortitude of a Stern or Goodell. The league needs it. The old guard won't like it, but they need someone who is not going to be a puppet. It has taken the CFL a couple of decades to figure that out. They ran off the last guy who tried to stand up to them, but then turned around and hired another guy who has some backbone, and thanks in large part to the last commissioner, Tom Wright, the league is as healthy as it has ever been. The new guy, Mark Cohen, will hopefully take that and run with it.
     
  8. wickedwritah

    wickedwritah Guest

    Beef, the owners won't give him the wiggle room to let him tell them to go screw.

    Ultimately, Bettman does as the Board of Governors says.
     
  9. Beef03

    Beef03 Active Member

    Which is why he needs to go. They need to bring in somebody who has power over the board of governors, who has the respect, the knowledge, and the charisma to be an actual leader, which is what the commissioner should be, which is why Bettman has failed, Selig has been a joke, and the likes of Stern and Paul Tagliabue are considered among the best to have held down that position.
     
  10. wickedwritah

    wickedwritah Guest

    Why would the owners hire someone with power over their million-dollar enterprises?

    That horse left the barn a long time ago.

    And as far as Tagliabue, he stumbled into being considered "successful." When it looked like TV revenues were going to take a big hit in the early '90s recession, he nearly got mutinied out of office. Rupert Murdoch is the best thing that happened to Paul Tagliabue.
     
  11. Beef03

    Beef03 Active Member

    Well if they ever want to crack that American market they need someone with that abilioty and vision. Bettman has none.
     
  12. JackyJackBN

    JackyJackBN Guest

    Anyone who doesn't know this site would be scratching his head at where this thread has wound up. I was hoping for a little more on whether the Sonics would wind up in Vegas, and instead I've got a treatise on the travesty that is NHL management.

    Not encouraging.
     
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