So sick of this crap...
-LA Kings season ticketholder
I’m with the players this time. It is the owners who are offering the obscene contracts - think Suter and Parise - and now they want the players to take another 25% cut!
The players should all sign contracts with European leagues and not return until they get an agreement without rollbacks. Malkin and Gonchar have already done so; Brodeur is on the way. If Crosby, Ovechkin and the Staals go, the owners are SOOL. Replacement players won’t cut it.
killing the golden goose ping!
And blame it all on the owners....the players are willing to play. Many of the current stars will be playing in Europe, others in some minor leagues. Unlike other sports, hockey players have other pro options and can handle a long work stoppage
The owners and the league screwed themselves because they could move some of the struggling franchises to Canada, where the economy is much better. Why they worked so hard to keep the Phoenix Coyotes in Phoenix? That has to be one of the stupidest sports business moves ever
Unfortunately, your rank and file Business Socialists will blame the players fully...and be dumb enough to call it a “strike”. It is the owners who shut the league down
Bastards.
I thought it was all posturing, and they would get a deal done on time. Can’t believe they will have ANOTHER lockout.
The Bruins were a little more expensive but a decent seat could be had for under $5. I'd take the subway to North Station the day of the game and ask the ticket window for the best available seat for whatever money I had to spend at the time.
During the time I was 13-17 years old, I must have seen over 200 Red Sox and Bruins games (didn't like the Celtics and the Patriots were down in Foxboro). This was only 30-35 years ago!
My kids never had the experience of going to games on their own as it was way beyond their reach financially. The few times I took my sons to Fenway, it costed me a couple hundred dollars or more per event when you factor in parking, food, etc.
I don't blame player salaries for the situation. It's just the law of supply and demand. Ticket prices skyrocketed because people (and mostly corporations) were willing to pay the higher prices.
When I went to games in the 1970s, you had mostly real fans there. Mostly working class people who might get a hot dog and a couple beers but would take the subway there and not spend a lot of money on souvenirs and such.
Starting in the 1980s, corporations started buying up season tickets because they could then offer the tickets to clients and potential clients as gratuities and to top performers as perks. Thus the demographics of the spectators changed radically. You had a lot more well-heeled spectators who would pay for overpriced souvenirs to take home to the kids (or they'd have kids with them) and pay the higher concession prices. Suddenly ballparks started offering higher quality food items and microbrew beer to their menus instead of just soggy hot dogs and watered down Budweiser. Most patrons would think nothing of spending $50 a person or more on food and drink alone.
This is all not to mention television revenues which became enormous - especially for the NFL. In fact, the story of the NFL under Pete Rozelle is a fascinating one if you like business stories. I would highly recommend reading books on how Pete Rozelle built the NFL into a cash-cow.
So professional sports teams became multi-billion dollar businesses and player salaries skyrocketed as well. The average fan who used to go to the ballpark multiple times each season was now content to watch the games at home (on a big screen TV) and let the corporate people go to the actual park and limit their own attendance to an occasional one-off appearance - like how you might go to Disneyland or Las Vegas once every five years or so.
Well in recent years, corporations are tightening their belts and are spending much less on corporate seats. My own company pulled out of Fenway Park two years ago (we had a block of 6 seats) as the benefits of having this perk to hand out no longer justified the bottom line expense.
So we are seeing a lot more empty seats on stadiums then we used to. I believe that the business of professional sports has peaked and an adjustment is necessary. Sports teams are now overvalued and as ticket and TV revenues drop, look for salaries for athletes to drop as well.
It will be interesting to see how this hockey lock-out turns out. It appears that the owners are drawing a line in the sand on this and do not want to increase the player's share of revenues.
There isn't a bigger hockey fan anywhere than me ... and if the regular season is impacted in any way by this labor dispute I can assure anyone in the NHL who might be reading this that this will likely close the books for me as far as my support of the NHL is concerned.
That thread had over 200 replies ... and there are a lot of familiar names there!
O.G.N.T.S.A.
If they keep this up, the KHL is going to move in and start their North American League.