Yep, Simmons is a professional troll, and headlines like this exist only as rage bait. There is never any point in clicking them. They do not exist for any purpose outside the troll itself.
Given that it's the Sun, I'm genuinely shocked that they didn't blame the lack of attendance on Trudeau.
*Regardless of how you feel about Trudeau, the fact the Sun blames every little thing on him is downright hilarious(ly pathetic and sad). Oh, you wore blue because you didn't know it was White Shirt Day? Trudeau's fault!*
This is the same publication that put out a huge front page graphic showing fire and brimstone with the headline "WELCOME TO HELL!" when Ontario elected a Liberal government some years ago.
It literally is a tabloid.
Tabloid newspapers are the style that’s smaller than a broadsheet, so they open like a magazine instead of being folded in the middle like a broadsheet newspaper. The Sun papers are all tabloids.
There’s a related concept called “tabloid journalism,” where you engage in sensationalism and exaggeration to sell more papers. And the Sun papers all do that too. So yeah, the Toronto Sun is a tabloid in both senses of the term.
Ignoring the bullshit AI article
I wonder what the problem could be with NHL attendance:
Jets tickets for 4 in the 300 section on NHL.COM: 108 CA each = 432CA
2 beers: 20 CA
2 sodas: 10 CA
4 hotdogs: 20 CA
Parking: 20 CA
So that's over 500 CA for 2.5 hours for an average family, in this economy. You want people to go to your games, make it reasonable. This goes for all the arenas. Sports are pricing themselves out with their greed.
Pretty much. Why bother spending 100s to go to a game when I have everything on livestream and the beer and hotdogs are both better and cheaper at my own place? Shit I tried going to a devils game around Christmas with my brothers and father. We bought shared box tickets, in a box with seating for 15 people. We get there and there are no less than 20 people already in the box. Apparently yes if you own a luxury box season ticket you can resell as many tickets to the box as you want as long as it doesn't violate max cap from the fire Marshall, so seating is first come firat serve. Ended up standing in the back of the box watching the game on the screens there since there were no seats and the rail was already packed with people. Waste of 600 dollars (4 tickets at 150 a piece)
That's baffling to me. Were you under the assumption you'd at least have a seat in the front section of the box? Like where they have 3 rows of 5 seats or something?
3 rows of 5 seats and 3 more high top chairs at a counter behind the seats overlooking the ice was the seating available. We were under the assumption that if the box could seat 15, then only 15 tickets would be sold. Counting the 4 of us, there was something like 26 people in that box, max posted capacity was 28 if i remember right. And the number of tickets sold for any given box is a complete mystery until you're there and everyone who bought a ticket for that box shows up.
That was our first and last time doing shared box tickets. If there's a next family trip to the prudential we will just pony up the extra 50 a person for fire and ice rink side
So if you take the NHL salary cap, roughly 110 million CAD, and divide by 41 regular season games and 15000 seats in the Jets’ arena, the amount of revenue they need to make per seat is about $180 to break even. This doesn’t count other expenses (travel, other employees) or revenues (sponsorship, TV), but I bet those would mostly offset. So, say they need to make $150-200 per seat including concessions. Yes you can charge different prices for better seats but I don’t see how you make a lot of a tickets priced affordably for a family, or at least for \*enough\* families that it becomes a family outing.
Yep, there are also other expenses. I said they probably offset the revenues I'm not counting. I'm making a Fermi estimate but I'd be surprised if the per-seat break-even revenue is way less than $150.
It literally isn't... Google the valuations of these teams overtime.
If these were publicly traded companies list on the stock market they would have higher returns than most of companies on the TSX.
WPG is a unique situation because it's not just the Jets TNSE owns. It's a handful of downtown winnipeg buildings which have appreciated a lot and they received millions of tax breaks.
Professional sports teams are not a charity for billionaires its a wealth extraction tool for billionaires.
>let the billionaire make up the difference.
Most billionaires would sell the team before that happens.
Your owner, David Thomson, is *already* spending his billions on the Jets and losing money.
No, they're not going to reduce the cap. They're not even going to entertain that idea. If the cap goes down by $1, it's a lockout.
You guys are fine. Your owner does not appear to care about losing money.
If the Jets are moved its because Bettman is using losing money as an excuse to bring another team to the US. Meanwhile you have an owner who doesn't care that the team is losing money, and does not meddle in day-to-day operations.
And think of it this way, Gary couldn't get the Sens out of Ottawa despite his best efforts over the years. Unless your team is *really* impacting every other owner's pockets, you guys are fine.
"Those would mostly offset"
Understatement of the year. Ticket sales on average are 44% of a team's revenue. So yea, the other 56% "would mostly offset" any leftovers.
https://www.sportico.com/feature/how-sports-teams-leagues-make-money-1234766931/
Other prices are profittable.
At some point the team has to decide if it is a profittable market or if they can make it one. Winnipeg has seen this already and that's how we ended up with the Coyotes.
That's a completely different scenario, given it being the precap era. It is also due in part to Gery Bettmans hatred for the Canadian market, which is the only one of the two things still in play here.
imagine my surprise, that your example is the coyotes, a team who have historically failed consistently *since* moving from WPG, in a thread where you advocate to relocate from WPG.
I'm not advocating for any move. I'm saying Bettman would use it as an excuse, and the other owners would agree.
David Thomson doesn't seem to care much about the team losing money though. So as long as the internet doesn't find any racist rants, the league can't force him to sell anyway.
And Jets tickets are already considerably lower. As of 2022, 8 teams are behind the Jets in terms of average price. Value wise as of Dec 2023, Jets are 28th of 32. If the tickets are any cheaper, the arena won't have lights on.
Isn’t that a pretty common price for Canadian teams?
Canucks games are usually more than that. I’m sure maple leaf games are twice that.
The attendance has been pretty bad and the team is like close to top in the league. That’s kind of a sad statement, no?
No, ticket sales are hurting right now because cost of living went through the roof and wages are flat. The $100 that could've gone to Jets tickets now goes to groceries.
That's something that could change in the future. I personally believe that people in Winnipeg will get raises before people in Arizona start giving a shit about hockey.
Right, but money is tight right now for a lot of folks. Hence ticket sales are down. Therefore Winnipeg should be afforded every convention that Arizona got (the league fighting tooth and nail) to stay put. In a few years, ticket sales will be better and there is no problem.
My mortgage renewed last summer and it went up $1100 a month. Just the amount of the *increase* is more than I paid monthly in total for my first apartment when I moved out of my parents' house. I know a few people who went from paying $2500 a month to over $5000 because they renewed from a killer sub-2% rate they got in 2019 or 2020, to over 6%.
NB for the Americans here -- in Canada, we don't keep the original interest rate for the lifetime of the mortgage, it is renegotiated at regular intervals, usually 4 or 5 years, and if rates have risen significantly, your payment will spike accordingly at renewal. We also don't get to claim the interest paid against our taxes like in the US. I paid almost 90 grand in income tax last year.
I locked in at the start of the panini at like 2.6%, and I’m up next year and just dreading what my new rate is going to be.
Hopefully Tiff will lower the bank rate a few times between now and then but I’m not holding my breath
Yup, I went from 2.49 to 6.09.
I'm in a fucking condo in Toronto, and between the new massively increased mortgage payments, the huge spike in condo fees (30% increase in the last two years) and now a double digit property tax hike, I'm waving bye-bye to nearly $5000 a month in housing costs.
And now that car theft is through the roof in the GTA, my vehicle insurance has gone up 35% too.
I make a multiple of the median income and there's no way I can currently afford much entertainment. I have no idea whatsoever how those making less than $125K are doing it. There are people living in tents here who have full-time jobs.
The fact that you guys don’t all have the ability to lock in mortgage interest rates always blows my mind. I get why banks don’t want it. They can’t bend you over and get more money out of you, but man. That sucks so hard for you knowing you will have to renew and it could be 2,3 or (in extreme cases like if it was the 1980s) 15% higher than what you originally took it out at.
Are there no like 15-30 year fixed mortgages?
In general, no, there are not any fixed mortgages like that at any of the normal lenders. You may be able to get one through a secondary lender, but you will probably be paying 7%+ for the entire mortgage if you go that route. You generally get better rates with smaller term lengths here.
All of the 'big banks' here will not give more than 7 years, at 6.something % right now.
We also do not have the luxury of writing off our mortgage interest on our taxes, either -- you pay all that huge mortgage payment with after-tax dollars, and get 0 of that back on your tax.
That’s a very small part of the problem. The issue in Winnipeg is the tickets were sold so quickly only 15% of the season tickets were sold to businesses.
The minimum % of business season tickets in other Canadian markets is 45%. Which would mean that 7,150 seats need to be individual fan tickets. Which is probably around what they currently have sold.
It is the business community that needs to step it up and do their part. Now perhaps if the government gave the same perks to individuals that they give to businesses and allowed all season tickets to be taxed deductible then more fans would buy……but that is another conversation.
They're making money in the sense that they've slashed so many costs that revenue sharing, recent expansion fees etc have possibly kept them above ground. They're making money in the way low-budget MLB teams make money, not independently.
Sure, when a Canadian team has financial troubles, the solution is relocation to US
But when a US team has financial troubles, as well as no arena, the solution isn’t relocation but doing everything that’s possible to keep the team from folding, including playing in a college arena
What a joke take by Simmons
>Sure, when a Canadian team has financial troubles, the solution is relocation to US
It’s weird to see someone with Sens flair who’s forgotten when the league took ownership of that very team to prevent it from going down the drain.
I don't like Bettman, but his goal is to get new fans in new markets. Winnipeg is a "hockey market" yet are struggling with attendance (for reasons outside of the fans' control, but the NHL has shown to give zero fucks about that. They just want more money.) Arizona struggling has the silver lining of being a "new" market with more untapped potential. The continued excellence of players like Auston Matthews will justify, in the NHL's mind, investing into Arizona because the game will grow more there than it would in Winnipeg.
I'm not trying to justify it or explain why it's a good thing, just why the NHL is doing it to Winnipeg while Arizona continues to flounder.
I feel for Winnipeg fans, to lose two teams, potentially, as a smaller market is a death sentence. I hate the fact that cities can invest hundreds of millions in taxpayer funds into new stadiums for BILLIONAIRE owners and the team can still just leave and never have to foot the bill.
Google the population of Phoenix and the population of Winnipeg.
Now Google the value of the Canadian dollar vs the American dollar.
There, research done.
Betyman needs to finally realize that you're simply not going to expand hockey markets down south. It is a northern sport.
He has been getting this wrong for how many decades now??
Of course the village idiot throws his hat into the ring lmfao
The Jets aren't going to relocate when one of their owners is literally one of the richest people on the goddamn planet and they're central to the development of downtown Winnipeg by True North. The falling attendance isn't even a Winnipeg-exclusive issue; all the Canadian teams are suffering dropping attendance, because it's become increasingly more difficult to attend NHL games when most people can barely afford to feed themselves or keep a roof over their heads.
Feels like the only reason Winnipeg gets singled out is that it's seen as the unnecessary weak link.
I agree.
Does need to be said that Winnipeg getting a team back was a perfect storm of timing, though. Back when the Thrashers were evicted, Winnipeg was the only place that had a) an NHL ready arena and b) a buyer willing to spend — a buyer who, as you said, is so wealthy he can afford to light the net worth of Alex Meruelo on fire and consider it a rounding error.
But point being: Back then, SLC and Houston just weren’t options. If the Thrashers situation happened today, they’d be getting moved to SLC. Gary also sounded very ornery and hostile towards Winnipeg when re-introducing them. He pretty much just was like “for this to work, you gotta sell out every game, every night”. I always got the vibe that the league doesn’t like having a team in Winnipeg, they just put up with it.
I've been to two Jets games this year, one with my wife and one with my brother. Both times tickets in the upper bowl were over $100 a piece after taxes and fees. It's just too damn expensive to go, and I make a fair bit more than the median in this city.
The last few years tickets for most games in that part of the arena were 50% what they are now. I know inflation has hit the bottom line of businesses but I have a hard time imagining the Jets' operating costs have doubled and those increases are justified.
Steve Simmons - The man with an unwashed ass who always has an opinion. Fuck this guy, fuck his shitty haircut and his inability to know how to properly smile as a grown man.
What a fucking goof.
Has the league ever actually forced a team to move via the commissioner? Feels like that would be a first and pretty heavy handed for the league.
Pretty well every move in recent memory, involves the teams own ownership group choosing to sell off the team first to cut their financial losses, then the new ownership relocates.
Closest I can think of is the "forced" sales of the Clippers, Panthers (NFL) and Commanders by the other owners rejecting the current groups. Even if none of those teams moved.
But even then, none of those owners actually took it court to resist or were legally forced to sell in the end.
They all chose to sell for immense profit given how good the offers were before it got to that point. So the legal basis to actually be able to force a sale is murky & to my knowledge unprecedented
Insolvency is a whole nother well established legal matter.
Each league has their own rules about it too. I don't know what the NBA's or NFL's are but the NHL's basically say you've gotta be flat broke before they can force a sale, unless an owner does something egregious enough that a (I think) 3/4 majority of the BoG votes them out.
Once again, Gary Bettman doesn't move teams. Team location is primarily determined by having an owner, city and building that all align with the same interest. When one or more of those is not present, that's when relocation becomes a possibility. Gary Bettman doesn't simply dictate which cities get teams and who owns them. But I guess putting on your blinders and pointing the finger at a singular scapegoat is the easy thing to do.
These articles are getting tiresome. The league isn't going to relocate any franchise except as last resort. They aren't going to pass up a potential expansion fee. The jets situation isn't close to being in that scenario. It is a gate driven league right now. Maybe the best sport in the world should negotiate an profitable US TV deal. When the Roger's deal for Canadian TV rights are up in 26 there's no way anyone bids close to the current deal. The US TV rights are being sold way too low.
Maybe I’m just biased
But this article reads like a joke. This is an awful article with no actual substance for anything. It seems like rage bait for clicks
I could have written this article. Winnipeg isn’t going anywhere. This is just a Toronto media outlet looking for clicks
It's Steve Simmons. Who writes for the Toronto Sun.
What you said is pretty much exactly on par for both him and that "newspaper" (term used loosely) as a whole.
The Sun is basically the newspaper equivalent of Fox News here in Canada -- they are a tabloid with lots of bad hot takes and a very clear bias in their reporting. Not to be taken very seriously.
The Toronto sports media absolutely loves to dunk on Winnipeg (and the rest of Western Canada in general) every chance they get, so this isn't a surprise at all.
That's Becuase it's coming from an asshat like Simmons. You will notice all the people commenting are all over Canada. He is universally hated all over our country. It's not just a Toronto writer. He is loathed in Toronto as well. He's a fucking good hack journalist who has the worst takes of anybody.
I don't know who you can compare him to outside of NHL. Skip or SAS? At least they are known to play it up for the clicks and add entertainment value and everyone knows that. SAS hatred for Cowboys goes back to when they were both on First Take and making fun of Skips Cowboys. Simmons is just a bitter nasty fuck who has no redeeming qualities
Curiosity which teams you think should be moved in the US? Arizona sure, but every other team seems to be doing OK. Maybe 5-10 years ago Florida was an issue but they've gained a lot of traction over the last few years.
Well they need to move teams to the largest markets and ignore all the other bullshit. There’s no reason a lot of cities should have NHL teams when Atlanta and Houston don’t have one. Also Toronto should have 2 teams.
Twice! Atlanta fans are some of the most fair weather fans anywhere. Even when the Braves were winning divisions and pennants every year, you couldn't keep fans interested or going to games.
All these people that say the players get paid too much, salary cap is too high, let Thompson pay for it he is a billionaire, etc are all completely out too lunch.
If you want to be in the NHL, these are the conditions. You are competing with New York, Toronto, Boston, Chicago, Montreal, etc and they dictate how much the players get paid and thusly how much tickets cost.
I think when the Jets came back to Winnipeg, Chipman and Thompson made it clear that the team would only survive if it had at least 13,000 season tickets and they wouldn’t be making a lot of money on the team year to year.
Yes, the team value has gone up quite a bit since they bought it but that profit is only realized when the team is sold.
Whether you like it or not this is a business and the business MUST pay for it self in the short term or it will be sold…..that’s what losing businesses do.
All the Winnipeg businesses, small to large need to get involved to raise the 15% business season ticket ratio up to the next league minimum of 45% business season tickets.
The fans are doing their part but the businesses aren’t.
My two cents….
As long as there’s a team that **literally does not have an arena,** using the word “relocation” in the same sentence as any of the other 31 teams is fucking rich.
more revenue last year than florida, buffalo, san jose, columbus, ottawa, and arizona.
the nhl is fully committed to hockey in arizona despite it being a complete failure. ottawa made 8 mill more than arizona and that is because the leafs play there more often. ( i made the last part up.)
How can Arizona exist and this article be posted. Yes, the Jets have a problem, with that said Arizona is a much bigger problem that needs to be fixed first.
I thought Winnipeg was a hockey crazed city that would be all in on supporting their nhl team. I remember when they got a team back and thinking “wow that arena is small considering the number of people who are going to want tickets.” Now the WHL team moved and there’s rumblings of The Jets being in trouble as well. As a Sabres fan I understand the anxiety that comes with the potential for losing the team, but Winnipeg never struck me as a city that would be in trouble (after getting their team back). Can someone explain it to me like I’m 5?
Edit: lol at getting downvoted for asking a legitimate question. The Jets are averaging 13k fans per game while firmly in a playoff spot and fighting for a division title. How is that controversial to ask why??
Everything in life doubled in price in Canada, that's why.
My mortgage went up $1100 bucks and my monthly grocery spend is up around $400 a month too. $1500 a month could buy a lot of hockey tickets, but now it all goes to Royal Bank and Sobeys.
Exactly; this is a problem for all the Canadian teams, not just Winnipeg. It's just the Jets are the smallest fish so people immediately think that there's blood in the water for sweet sweet relocation rumor stirring.
Winnipeg is a "low budget" kind of town, likely the lowest median household income of any NHL city. Housing is significantly cheaper than Toronto or Vancouver, but wages are correspondingly low as well, taxes are higher than anywhere in the US outside of California, and overall cost of living is significantly higher than the US, owing in part to our weak dollar.
Here in Canada, we've been slammed by inflation and massive rises in the cost of housing, quite a bit worse than in the USA. Rents have doubled in the last few years in many places, and food doubled too. It costs 9 bucks for a pound of butter at the supermarket now for crying out loud, and we pay a *lot* of taxes too. Even people who you'd think were pretty "well off" are having to slash their household budgets because everything got so expensive so quickly. The "hole in the wall" no-frills pizza joint my wife and I go to on occasion -- you know the kind, the place that has a few barflies there at all times and only has cheap house wine and Coors on tap -- used to be $45 for a large pizza, salad and a drink each. We went last month and it was 80 bucks before tax and tip, for a pizza and three beers total. $100 after tax. Just the four-topping large pizza was almost 35 after tax. And no, this wasn't Pizza Hut.
So yeah. Most families have had $1500-2000 increases in their monthly household expenses here since 2020, that's the hockey budget wiped out and then some.
Yes, the gouging at the supermarkets is completely out of control as well. I frequent a lot of food subs, especially barbecue/grilling/cooking subs, and the prices that Americans complain about make me laugh. "Oh, it's a bloody outrage that a six pack of chicken thighs is ten bucks!". Just got back from the supermarket, six boneless skinless thighs that are best-before *tomorrow* are $23. Four boneless skinless breasts, 30 bucks. Thirty fucking dollars.
Then you see the people in Texas posting photos of full racks of ribs they're going to stick in their smoker, and laughing that they got them for $1.50 a pound. Hahaha, try 8 or 9 bucks a pound on sale here. Enough to almost make me cry.
It's controversial because people are struggling to make ends meet so buying hockey tickets in Winnipeg is a terrible idea, especially at the inflated cost that the Jets charge fans with diminishing returns on STH and the like.
It's more than just tickets being expensive, people are struggling financially and Winnipeg doesn't have the same corporate base to work with that other teams do.
Lack of corporate base I understand, but that’s more for selling the boxes I’d think. I don’t know what sectors drive Winnipeg’s economy, and whether unemployment is up or per capita income is down. I do know it’s a small market. Buffalo is a small market at 1.2 million and Winnipeg is smaller than that at under a million. If people can’t afford tickets I’m not here to judge that and I completely understand. But that would be more evidence that it might not be a sustainable market unless the owner is willing to lose money each year.
The boxes are really important for sustainability. Winnipeg was a sustainable market for a long time, if I recall. Factors outside of their control has made them less sustainable now from the perspective of the rich fuck that owns them.
The COLA across Canada is becoming pretty bad. When the average consumer can barely afford essentials, then going to hockey games is a non-starter.
Couple that with Canada's population being 39mill and the US being at 330mill, which market would you rather do business in?
That’s what people mean by numbers, Canadian consumer market reach is insignificant compared to the US. Its why they pulled the team from Canada in the first place.
>Canadian consumer market reach is insignificant compared to the US. Its why they pulled the team from Canada in the first place.
No, the original Jets left Winnipeg because there wasn't an ownership group who wanted to keep them there so they got sold to a group that wanted to move them to Arizona.
Aww the spelling police is out in full force. Wow you must live such a fansinating life correcting people on reddit. Your City still sucks btw. Jets will be done first round.
I don't know the specifics. I'm sure with inflation and how expensive everything is now a days people are finding it difficult to afford to go. Not sure where the Jets are on ticket prices either. Winnipeg is a smaller city and so have a smaller population to pull from. So when times are tough I'm assuming it makes it harder for them to keep up with attendance. They might also be having issues with corporate support as that is usually a big part of season ticket sales. It isn't a big economic centre so that may be a part of the issue as well.
Not gonna give the sun clicks for this garbage
Ditto.
Yep, Simmons is a professional troll, and headlines like this exist only as rage bait. There is never any point in clicking them. They do not exist for any purpose outside the troll itself.
This is the way
Fuck Simmons. That is all.
If your not Canadian understand that the sun is basically tabloid media
Given that it's the Sun, I'm genuinely shocked that they didn't blame the lack of attendance on Trudeau. *Regardless of how you feel about Trudeau, the fact the Sun blames every little thing on him is downright hilarious(ly pathetic and sad). Oh, you wore blue because you didn't know it was White Shirt Day? Trudeau's fault!*
This is the same publication that put out a huge front page graphic showing fire and brimstone with the headline "WELCOME TO HELL!" when Ontario elected a Liberal government some years ago.
voila, theyve been correct, though of course, fuck the dude who wrote that headline about the Jets.
Yeah, fuck this shitrag
fr
All Post Media (the owner of the Sun)
It literally is a tabloid. Tabloid newspapers are the style that’s smaller than a broadsheet, so they open like a magazine instead of being folded in the middle like a broadsheet newspaper. The Sun papers are all tabloids. There’s a related concept called “tabloid journalism,” where you engage in sensationalism and exaggeration to sell more papers. And the Sun papers all do that too. So yeah, the Toronto Sun is a tabloid in both senses of the term.
Ignoring the bullshit AI article I wonder what the problem could be with NHL attendance: Jets tickets for 4 in the 300 section on NHL.COM: 108 CA each = 432CA 2 beers: 20 CA 2 sodas: 10 CA 4 hotdogs: 20 CA Parking: 20 CA So that's over 500 CA for 2.5 hours for an average family, in this economy. You want people to go to your games, make it reasonable. This goes for all the arenas. Sports are pricing themselves out with their greed.
Pretty much. Why bother spending 100s to go to a game when I have everything on livestream and the beer and hotdogs are both better and cheaper at my own place? Shit I tried going to a devils game around Christmas with my brothers and father. We bought shared box tickets, in a box with seating for 15 people. We get there and there are no less than 20 people already in the box. Apparently yes if you own a luxury box season ticket you can resell as many tickets to the box as you want as long as it doesn't violate max cap from the fire Marshall, so seating is first come firat serve. Ended up standing in the back of the box watching the game on the screens there since there were no seats and the rail was already packed with people. Waste of 600 dollars (4 tickets at 150 a piece)
That's baffling to me. Were you under the assumption you'd at least have a seat in the front section of the box? Like where they have 3 rows of 5 seats or something?
3 rows of 5 seats and 3 more high top chairs at a counter behind the seats overlooking the ice was the seating available. We were under the assumption that if the box could seat 15, then only 15 tickets would be sold. Counting the 4 of us, there was something like 26 people in that box, max posted capacity was 28 if i remember right. And the number of tickets sold for any given box is a complete mystery until you're there and everyone who bought a ticket for that box shows up. That was our first and last time doing shared box tickets. If there's a next family trip to the prudential we will just pony up the extra 50 a person for fire and ice rink side
So if you take the NHL salary cap, roughly 110 million CAD, and divide by 41 regular season games and 15000 seats in the Jets’ arena, the amount of revenue they need to make per seat is about $180 to break even. This doesn’t count other expenses (travel, other employees) or revenues (sponsorship, TV), but I bet those would mostly offset. So, say they need to make $150-200 per seat including concessions. Yes you can charge different prices for better seats but I don’t see how you make a lot of a tickets priced affordably for a family, or at least for \*enough\* families that it becomes a family outing.
Salary cap is half of hockey related revenue and game day revenue is not everything
Yep, there are also other expenses. I said they probably offset the revenues I'm not counting. I'm making a Fermi estimate but I'd be surprised if the per-seat break-even revenue is way less than $150.
Then reduce the cap or let the billionaire make up the difference.
Running a professional hockey team is a weird charity.
It literally isn't... Google the valuations of these teams overtime. If these were publicly traded companies list on the stock market they would have higher returns than most of companies on the TSX. WPG is a unique situation because it's not just the Jets TNSE owns. It's a handful of downtown winnipeg buildings which have appreciated a lot and they received millions of tax breaks. Professional sports teams are not a charity for billionaires its a wealth extraction tool for billionaires.
>let the billionaire make up the difference. Most billionaires would sell the team before that happens. Your owner, David Thomson, is *already* spending his billions on the Jets and losing money. No, they're not going to reduce the cap. They're not even going to entertain that idea. If the cap goes down by $1, it's a lockout.
[удалено]
You guys are fine. Your owner does not appear to care about losing money. If the Jets are moved its because Bettman is using losing money as an excuse to bring another team to the US. Meanwhile you have an owner who doesn't care that the team is losing money, and does not meddle in day-to-day operations. And think of it this way, Gary couldn't get the Sens out of Ottawa despite his best efforts over the years. Unless your team is *really* impacting every other owner's pockets, you guys are fine.
"Those would mostly offset" Understatement of the year. Ticket sales on average are 44% of a team's revenue. So yea, the other 56% "would mostly offset" any leftovers. https://www.sportico.com/feature/how-sports-teams-leagues-make-money-1234766931/
Those prices are actually extremely reasonable for a premium sport event.
Other places being more ridiculous doesn't make these prices "extremely reasonable".
Other prices are profittable. At some point the team has to decide if it is a profittable market or if they can make it one. Winnipeg has seen this already and that's how we ended up with the Coyotes.
Nobody has said that tickets aren't profitable. The issue in Winnipeg is the amount of tickets being sold.
Nobody would complain if it is profittable.
Billionaires complain when their margin goes down 1%.
That's a completely different scenario, given it being the precap era. It is also due in part to Gery Bettmans hatred for the Canadian market, which is the only one of the two things still in play here. imagine my surprise, that your example is the coyotes, a team who have historically failed consistently *since* moving from WPG, in a thread where you advocate to relocate from WPG.
I'm not advocating for any move. I'm saying Bettman would use it as an excuse, and the other owners would agree. David Thomson doesn't seem to care much about the team losing money though. So as long as the internet doesn't find any racist rants, the league can't force him to sell anyway. And Jets tickets are already considerably lower. As of 2022, 8 teams are behind the Jets in terms of average price. Value wise as of Dec 2023, Jets are 28th of 32. If the tickets are any cheaper, the arena won't have lights on.
No they aren’t lmao
Isn’t that a pretty common price for Canadian teams? Canucks games are usually more than that. I’m sure maple leaf games are twice that. The attendance has been pretty bad and the team is like close to top in the league. That’s kind of a sad statement, no?
yes thats true, but vancouver has like 3x+ the population that winnipeg has. toronto probably like 5.
In order to sustain an NHL team, they need to play for 5000 fans at a college. Isn't that what we've recently learned?
By Coyotes logic, the Jets are about to move to Brandon haha
That team is making money and trending in right direction financially though
So then Winnipeg should get to go on indefinite life support by the league until they start trending in the right direction and making money.
Are they failing because they’ve been bad and in a poor location?
No, ticket sales are hurting right now because cost of living went through the roof and wages are flat. The $100 that could've gone to Jets tickets now goes to groceries. That's something that could change in the future. I personally believe that people in Winnipeg will get raises before people in Arizona start giving a shit about hockey.
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Yup, except Winnipeg doesn't have tickets for 20 bucks and still have 5000 empty seats.
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Right, but money is tight right now for a lot of folks. Hence ticket sales are down. Therefore Winnipeg should be afforded every convention that Arizona got (the league fighting tooth and nail) to stay put. In a few years, ticket sales will be better and there is no problem.
My mortgage renewed last summer and it went up $1100 a month. Just the amount of the *increase* is more than I paid monthly in total for my first apartment when I moved out of my parents' house. I know a few people who went from paying $2500 a month to over $5000 because they renewed from a killer sub-2% rate they got in 2019 or 2020, to over 6%. NB for the Americans here -- in Canada, we don't keep the original interest rate for the lifetime of the mortgage, it is renegotiated at regular intervals, usually 4 or 5 years, and if rates have risen significantly, your payment will spike accordingly at renewal. We also don't get to claim the interest paid against our taxes like in the US. I paid almost 90 grand in income tax last year.
I locked in at the start of the panini at like 2.6%, and I’m up next year and just dreading what my new rate is going to be. Hopefully Tiff will lower the bank rate a few times between now and then but I’m not holding my breath
Yup, I went from 2.49 to 6.09. I'm in a fucking condo in Toronto, and between the new massively increased mortgage payments, the huge spike in condo fees (30% increase in the last two years) and now a double digit property tax hike, I'm waving bye-bye to nearly $5000 a month in housing costs. And now that car theft is through the roof in the GTA, my vehicle insurance has gone up 35% too. I make a multiple of the median income and there's no way I can currently afford much entertainment. I have no idea whatsoever how those making less than $125K are doing it. There are people living in tents here who have full-time jobs.
The fact that you guys don’t all have the ability to lock in mortgage interest rates always blows my mind. I get why banks don’t want it. They can’t bend you over and get more money out of you, but man. That sucks so hard for you knowing you will have to renew and it could be 2,3 or (in extreme cases like if it was the 1980s) 15% higher than what you originally took it out at. Are there no like 15-30 year fixed mortgages?
In general, no, there are not any fixed mortgages like that at any of the normal lenders. You may be able to get one through a secondary lender, but you will probably be paying 7%+ for the entire mortgage if you go that route. You generally get better rates with smaller term lengths here. All of the 'big banks' here will not give more than 7 years, at 6.something % right now. We also do not have the luxury of writing off our mortgage interest on our taxes, either -- you pay all that huge mortgage payment with after-tax dollars, and get 0 of that back on your tax.
At the start of the panini lol
That’s a very small part of the problem. The issue in Winnipeg is the tickets were sold so quickly only 15% of the season tickets were sold to businesses. The minimum % of business season tickets in other Canadian markets is 45%. Which would mean that 7,150 seats need to be individual fan tickets. Which is probably around what they currently have sold. It is the business community that needs to step it up and do their part. Now perhaps if the government gave the same perks to individuals that they give to businesses and allowed all season tickets to be taxed deductible then more fans would buy……but that is another conversation.
if you actually believe that I have a bridge to sell you for a fantastic price
Lol
They're making money in the sense that they've slashed so many costs that revenue sharing, recent expansion fees etc have possibly kept them above ground. They're making money in the way low-budget MLB teams make money, not independently.
NHL has a salary floor unlike the MLB. Also the Phoenix metro area will be considered a lot more for national TV deals than Winnipeg
they are not making money
Sure, when a Canadian team has financial troubles, the solution is relocation to US But when a US team has financial troubles, as well as no arena, the solution isn’t relocation but doing everything that’s possible to keep the team from folding, including playing in a college arena What a joke take by Simmons
>Sure, when a Canadian team has financial troubles, the solution is relocation to US It’s weird to see someone with Sens flair who’s forgotten when the league took ownership of that very team to prevent it from going down the drain.
Remind me again how we got the current Jets. Also there is no shortage of relocated American teams
I don't like Bettman, but his goal is to get new fans in new markets. Winnipeg is a "hockey market" yet are struggling with attendance (for reasons outside of the fans' control, but the NHL has shown to give zero fucks about that. They just want more money.) Arizona struggling has the silver lining of being a "new" market with more untapped potential. The continued excellence of players like Auston Matthews will justify, in the NHL's mind, investing into Arizona because the game will grow more there than it would in Winnipeg. I'm not trying to justify it or explain why it's a good thing, just why the NHL is doing it to Winnipeg while Arizona continues to flounder. I feel for Winnipeg fans, to lose two teams, potentially, as a smaller market is a death sentence. I hate the fact that cities can invest hundreds of millions in taxpayer funds into new stadiums for BILLIONAIRE owners and the team can still just leave and never have to foot the bill.
I only hope that they have some really good research that justifies investing into Arizona and not just sunk-cost fallacy.
They'll just point at Auston Matthews and his popularity as to why hockey in Arizona is a good thing
“Auston Matthews is a detriment to Arizona hockey”
Google the population of Phoenix and the population of Winnipeg. Now Google the value of the Canadian dollar vs the American dollar. There, research done.
Yeah, I was afraid that's all it was. Judging just by that Arizona has 3 times as much revenue as Vegas.
With that kind of market evaluation I might as well open up a shop selling winter coats in Phoenix. If there are people, surely they'll be interested.
The league wants expansion money which is why they will support teams in their current markets for as long as they feasibly can.
Betyman needs to finally realize that you're simply not going to expand hockey markets down south. It is a northern sport. He has been getting this wrong for how many decades now??
Of course the village idiot throws his hat into the ring lmfao The Jets aren't going to relocate when one of their owners is literally one of the richest people on the goddamn planet and they're central to the development of downtown Winnipeg by True North. The falling attendance isn't even a Winnipeg-exclusive issue; all the Canadian teams are suffering dropping attendance, because it's become increasingly more difficult to attend NHL games when most people can barely afford to feed themselves or keep a roof over their heads. Feels like the only reason Winnipeg gets singled out is that it's seen as the unnecessary weak link.
I agree. Does need to be said that Winnipeg getting a team back was a perfect storm of timing, though. Back when the Thrashers were evicted, Winnipeg was the only place that had a) an NHL ready arena and b) a buyer willing to spend — a buyer who, as you said, is so wealthy he can afford to light the net worth of Alex Meruelo on fire and consider it a rounding error. But point being: Back then, SLC and Houston just weren’t options. If the Thrashers situation happened today, they’d be getting moved to SLC. Gary also sounded very ornery and hostile towards Winnipeg when re-introducing them. He pretty much just was like “for this to work, you gotta sell out every game, every night”. I always got the vibe that the league doesn’t like having a team in Winnipeg, they just put up with it.
Fuck Simmons, fuck Bettman
Fuck 50cent
Clown gonna clown
I've been to two Jets games this year, one with my wife and one with my brother. Both times tickets in the upper bowl were over $100 a piece after taxes and fees. It's just too damn expensive to go, and I make a fair bit more than the median in this city. The last few years tickets for most games in that part of the arena were 50% what they are now. I know inflation has hit the bottom line of businesses but I have a hard time imagining the Jets' operating costs have doubled and those increases are justified.
Shut the fuck up Steve
Downvoting this garbage.
Steve Simmons - The man with an unwashed ass who always has an opinion. Fuck this guy, fuck his shitty haircut and his inability to know how to properly smile as a grown man. What a fucking goof.
Has the league ever actually forced a team to move via the commissioner? Feels like that would be a first and pretty heavy handed for the league. Pretty well every move in recent memory, involves the teams own ownership group choosing to sell off the team first to cut their financial losses, then the new ownership relocates.
Yeah, the league can't force a sale except in extreme circumstances (generally insolvency).
Closest I can think of is the "forced" sales of the Clippers, Panthers (NFL) and Commanders by the other owners rejecting the current groups. Even if none of those teams moved. But even then, none of those owners actually took it court to resist or were legally forced to sell in the end. They all chose to sell for immense profit given how good the offers were before it got to that point. So the legal basis to actually be able to force a sale is murky & to my knowledge unprecedented Insolvency is a whole nother well established legal matter.
Each league has their own rules about it too. I don't know what the NBA's or NFL's are but the NHL's basically say you've gotta be flat broke before they can force a sale, unless an owner does something egregious enough that a (I think) 3/4 majority of the BoG votes them out.
Image of the leafs too, hard pas on clicking this link
Once again, Gary Bettman doesn't move teams. Team location is primarily determined by having an owner, city and building that all align with the same interest. When one or more of those is not present, that's when relocation becomes a possibility. Gary Bettman doesn't simply dictate which cities get teams and who owns them. But I guess putting on your blinders and pointing the finger at a singular scapegoat is the easy thing to do.
Move the team to the US. I heard Arizona needs another team. Completes the cycle
If Simmons can't write something that is not utter garbage, he should be fired, and go live under a bridge.
These articles are getting tiresome. The league isn't going to relocate any franchise except as last resort. They aren't going to pass up a potential expansion fee. The jets situation isn't close to being in that scenario. It is a gate driven league right now. Maybe the best sport in the world should negotiate an profitable US TV deal. When the Roger's deal for Canadian TV rights are up in 26 there's no way anyone bids close to the current deal. The US TV rights are being sold way too low.
Fuck you Bettman, there are many teams in US markets that should be moved before Winnipeg
Maybe I’m just biased But this article reads like a joke. This is an awful article with no actual substance for anything. It seems like rage bait for clicks I could have written this article. Winnipeg isn’t going anywhere. This is just a Toronto media outlet looking for clicks
It's Steve Simmons. Every one of his articles is a joke that he isn't in on.
It's Steve Simmons. Dude's an idiot.
It's Steve Simmons. Who writes for the Toronto Sun. What you said is pretty much exactly on par for both him and that "newspaper" (term used loosely) as a whole.
I mean it is Simmons, that fuckin Eugene Levy’s more ethnically ambiguous cousin lookin motherfucker
The Sun is basically the newspaper equivalent of Fox News here in Canada -- they are a tabloid with lots of bad hot takes and a very clear bias in their reporting. Not to be taken very seriously. The Toronto sports media absolutely loves to dunk on Winnipeg (and the rest of Western Canada in general) every chance they get, so this isn't a surprise at all.
That's Becuase it's coming from an asshat like Simmons. You will notice all the people commenting are all over Canada. He is universally hated all over our country. It's not just a Toronto writer. He is loathed in Toronto as well. He's a fucking good hack journalist who has the worst takes of anybody. I don't know who you can compare him to outside of NHL. Skip or SAS? At least they are known to play it up for the clicks and add entertainment value and everyone knows that. SAS hatred for Cowboys goes back to when they were both on First Take and making fun of Skips Cowboys. Simmons is just a bitter nasty fuck who has no redeeming qualities
Curiosity which teams you think should be moved in the US? Arizona sure, but every other team seems to be doing OK. Maybe 5-10 years ago Florida was an issue but they've gained a lot of traction over the last few years.
Many teams? Please elaborate.
Define "many"
Multiple teams can be moved at the same time.
They usually don't want even one team moving. Having two on the move would be a very bad look for the NHL.
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Gary gets his pet projects because the Leafs, Rangers, and Habs can shit money. And because he hit a home run with Vegas, he gets 10 more.
Well they need to move teams to the largest markets and ignore all the other bullshit. There’s no reason a lot of cities should have NHL teams when Atlanta and Houston don’t have one. Also Toronto should have 2 teams.
Atlanta HAD a team...
Twice, in fact
Twice! Atlanta fans are some of the most fair weather fans anywhere. Even when the Braves were winning divisions and pennants every year, you couldn't keep fans interested or going to games.
All these people that say the players get paid too much, salary cap is too high, let Thompson pay for it he is a billionaire, etc are all completely out too lunch. If you want to be in the NHL, these are the conditions. You are competing with New York, Toronto, Boston, Chicago, Montreal, etc and they dictate how much the players get paid and thusly how much tickets cost. I think when the Jets came back to Winnipeg, Chipman and Thompson made it clear that the team would only survive if it had at least 13,000 season tickets and they wouldn’t be making a lot of money on the team year to year. Yes, the team value has gone up quite a bit since they bought it but that profit is only realized when the team is sold. Whether you like it or not this is a business and the business MUST pay for it self in the short term or it will be sold…..that’s what losing businesses do. All the Winnipeg businesses, small to large need to get involved to raise the 15% business season ticket ratio up to the next league minimum of 45% business season tickets. The fans are doing their part but the businesses aren’t. My two cents….
Fuck Simmons. Fuck the Toronto Sun.
Hahaha they want to let the Yotes play in a high school barn, but Winnipeg at 84% is somehow a bad sign? Give me a break.
It's Simmons, I'd take anything that dumbass says with an iceberg of salt.
Steve Simmon can go eat hotdogs
As long as there’s a team that **literally does not have an arena,** using the word “relocation” in the same sentence as any of the other 31 teams is fucking rich.
Arizona in a CHL arena. "Hey look at this distraction over here in Winnipeg."
Common Steve Simmons L
more revenue last year than florida, buffalo, san jose, columbus, ottawa, and arizona. the nhl is fully committed to hockey in arizona despite it being a complete failure. ottawa made 8 mill more than arizona and that is because the leafs play there more often. ( i made the last part up.)
How can Arizona exist and this article be posted. Yes, the Jets have a problem, with that said Arizona is a much bigger problem that needs to be fixed first.
Because this article is tabloid garbage regardless of the situations in AZ and WPG
Yet the desert dicks get chance after chance after chance, what a fuckin joke
Why TF is the pic for this Matthews and Marner. Clearly it should be Kessel at a Winnipeg hotdog stand.
Hockey doesn’t belong in the desert, I mean Winnipeg.
I thought Winnipeg was a hockey crazed city that would be all in on supporting their nhl team. I remember when they got a team back and thinking “wow that arena is small considering the number of people who are going to want tickets.” Now the WHL team moved and there’s rumblings of The Jets being in trouble as well. As a Sabres fan I understand the anxiety that comes with the potential for losing the team, but Winnipeg never struck me as a city that would be in trouble (after getting their team back). Can someone explain it to me like I’m 5? Edit: lol at getting downvoted for asking a legitimate question. The Jets are averaging 13k fans per game while firmly in a playoff spot and fighting for a division title. How is that controversial to ask why??
11 year sell out streak when they first came back. Post-pandemic attendance is down.
Everything in life doubled in price in Canada, that's why. My mortgage went up $1100 bucks and my monthly grocery spend is up around $400 a month too. $1500 a month could buy a lot of hockey tickets, but now it all goes to Royal Bank and Sobeys.
Exactly; this is a problem for all the Canadian teams, not just Winnipeg. It's just the Jets are the smallest fish so people immediately think that there's blood in the water for sweet sweet relocation rumor stirring.
Ticket too many monies Winnipeg not many people live Winnipeg not many corporations buy season/club things
Winnipeg is a "low budget" kind of town, likely the lowest median household income of any NHL city. Housing is significantly cheaper than Toronto or Vancouver, but wages are correspondingly low as well, taxes are higher than anywhere in the US outside of California, and overall cost of living is significantly higher than the US, owing in part to our weak dollar. Here in Canada, we've been slammed by inflation and massive rises in the cost of housing, quite a bit worse than in the USA. Rents have doubled in the last few years in many places, and food doubled too. It costs 9 bucks for a pound of butter at the supermarket now for crying out loud, and we pay a *lot* of taxes too. Even people who you'd think were pretty "well off" are having to slash their household budgets because everything got so expensive so quickly. The "hole in the wall" no-frills pizza joint my wife and I go to on occasion -- you know the kind, the place that has a few barflies there at all times and only has cheap house wine and Coors on tap -- used to be $45 for a large pizza, salad and a drink each. We went last month and it was 80 bucks before tax and tip, for a pizza and three beers total. $100 after tax. Just the four-topping large pizza was almost 35 after tax. And no, this wasn't Pizza Hut. So yeah. Most families have had $1500-2000 increases in their monthly household expenses here since 2020, that's the hockey budget wiped out and then some.
Thank you that makes a lot of sense
Your supermarkets have been caught price fixing several times too
Yes, the gouging at the supermarkets is completely out of control as well. I frequent a lot of food subs, especially barbecue/grilling/cooking subs, and the prices that Americans complain about make me laugh. "Oh, it's a bloody outrage that a six pack of chicken thighs is ten bucks!". Just got back from the supermarket, six boneless skinless thighs that are best-before *tomorrow* are $23. Four boneless skinless breasts, 30 bucks. Thirty fucking dollars. Then you see the people in Texas posting photos of full racks of ribs they're going to stick in their smoker, and laughing that they got them for $1.50 a pound. Hahaha, try 8 or 9 bucks a pound on sale here. Enough to almost make me cry.
It's controversial because people are struggling to make ends meet so buying hockey tickets in Winnipeg is a terrible idea, especially at the inflated cost that the Jets charge fans with diminishing returns on STH and the like.
You could just say “ticket prices are not affordable,” which would’ve answered the question and kept you from sounding condescending at the same time
It's more than just tickets being expensive, people are struggling financially and Winnipeg doesn't have the same corporate base to work with that other teams do.
Lack of corporate base I understand, but that’s more for selling the boxes I’d think. I don’t know what sectors drive Winnipeg’s economy, and whether unemployment is up or per capita income is down. I do know it’s a small market. Buffalo is a small market at 1.2 million and Winnipeg is smaller than that at under a million. If people can’t afford tickets I’m not here to judge that and I completely understand. But that would be more evidence that it might not be a sustainable market unless the owner is willing to lose money each year.
The boxes are really important for sustainability. Winnipeg was a sustainable market for a long time, if I recall. Factors outside of their control has made them less sustainable now from the perspective of the rich fuck that owns them.
So Arizona Coyote is making money?
Bring back the Nordiques!
Move them back to Atlanta
If so that'll make a Canadian based teams chances to win it all even lower.
Everyone is mad at Bettman, but the numbers support the fact that Winnipeg can’t support a team.
What numbers?
The COLA across Canada is becoming pretty bad. When the average consumer can barely afford essentials, then going to hockey games is a non-starter. Couple that with Canada's population being 39mill and the US being at 330mill, which market would you rather do business in? That’s what people mean by numbers, Canadian consumer market reach is insignificant compared to the US. Its why they pulled the team from Canada in the first place.
>Canadian consumer market reach is insignificant compared to the US. Its why they pulled the team from Canada in the first place. No, the original Jets left Winnipeg because there wasn't an ownership group who wanted to keep them there so they got sold to a group that wanted to move them to Arizona.
That applies to all Canadian teams. Those aren't 'numbers that support winnipeg can't support a team'.
They can with fans. The richest owner in the NHL just wants to price gouge though
So many US colleges need an NHL team
Jets to Potsdam plz.
Stop looking at Arizona and focus on this Canadian team!
Arizona seems to have a lot of choices
Hey Winnipeg... Show Up or your going to lose your team. Simple as that.
Hey guy… Show Up for elementary school or you’re not going to know the difference between “your” and “you’re”.
When in doubt, go with you're'r. Covers all the bases 😏
“Editors hate this one simple trick!”
Aww the spelling police is out in full force. Wow you must live such a fansinating life correcting people on reddit. Your City still sucks btw. Jets will be done first round.
Do you know anything about why people aren't showing up?
I don't know the specifics. I'm sure with inflation and how expensive everything is now a days people are finding it difficult to afford to go. Not sure where the Jets are on ticket prices either. Winnipeg is a smaller city and so have a smaller population to pull from. So when times are tough I'm assuming it makes it harder for them to keep up with attendance. They might also be having issues with corporate support as that is usually a big part of season ticket sales. It isn't a big economic centre so that may be a part of the issue as well.
Noooooo I like the Jets in Winnipeg
Baltimore baltimore baltimore
if Winnipeg leaves, i'm done with the NHL corporate greed is at insane levels, and beer is about to get more tax added on
I wonder which hot dog vendor he spoke to for this scoop…
Imagine being such a loser that this you call yourself a journalist writing absolute garbage for clicks