There was an interesting article in the Tennessean last week about the extremes that the Nashville Predators' ownership group is going to in order to qualify under the NHL's league revenue plan.
To qualify for revenue sharing in the NHL a club must have a payroll of $48M or less (the Preds have a payroll of $44.6M), must average at least 80% paid capacity in attendance (in the Preds case that's 14,000) and a team's revenue must increase at at least the same rate as the rest of the league (which prevents a team from dropping their ticket prices to minor league prices)
"Through 22 home games, the Predators' average paid attendance stands at 13,744, said Ed Lang, president of business operations. That's 256 tickets short of the 14,000 average required for a full share of the NHL revenue-sharing pool."
In order to make up for the shortfall in attendance, the Preds ownership group is fully prepared to buy enough tickets with their own money to allow the team to qualify for revenue sharing which in 2007 netted the club $12M which came as a share from the top-10 revenue generating clubs.
My question is, if you're one of those top-10 clubs that doles out money each year to help prop up the weaker teams, how do you feel about the loophole that's being used here?
No comments:
Post a Comment