I get that owners need to honour the contracts they sign with the players but we must not forget the Gomezs of the league who don't honour their side of things. All these players that signed long term contracts get paid regardless of how well they play.
I'd love to have not-guaranteed contracts or adjustable contracts but the fact of the matter is that the current NHL deals must be honoured because idiots like the Wild Owner have to pay the price of their hypocrisy.
The people arguing more logically with solid facts on this page are the people taking the owners side. The people on the players side are using more emotions and reaching for bad comparisons that aren't completely true.
But I haven't read the whole thread, just this page.
Most of the thread is like this, actually. You wouldn't believe the personal attacks tossed around by supporters of the players at others for no reason, either!
The really interesting thing is when you hear former players like Nilan and Dollas, and hockey analysts like McGuire and McKenzie, they seem to be siding with the owners as well. The financial realities indicate that the owners are not in the wrong this time. The funny thing is that people supporting the players seem to think that, if the players only get 50% of billions of dollars, the poor players are being screwed over. However, those same people don't care if the owners are getting screwed over even worse by getting 43% of the profits while also absorbing every single operating cost associated with hockey while also bringing millions of dollars in revenue into each team's city, not to mention countless jobs for all of the "Joe Blows" they so disdainfully dismiss as somehow working less nard than the almighty hockey players. Give me a break.
I'd love to have not-guaranteed contracts or adjustable contracts but the fact of the matter is that the current NHL deals must be honoured because idiots like the Wild Owner have to pay the price of their hypocrisy.
Agreed. Current player contracts must be honoured. However, if the players are so determined to keep over 50% of the profits, maybe the owners should counter with abolishing all guaranteed contracts and giving the owners the power to fire players not performing up to par with those contracts. I guarantee the players would balk at that.
A team is a business, like it or not, and it's the owner that pay the bill. They are also the one who take the financial risk in all this, and in our capitalism reality, risk must be awarded with return.
The NHL is rewarded with a profitable return, as a whole. It's just unevenly distributed:
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Revenues have risen from roughly $2.2-billion to $3.3-billion – or an average of about $160-million a season – over the length of the current CBA, pushing the average revenue-per-team figure to $110-million.
Overall, the league is profitable, too.
Take that imaginary average team making $110-million a season. Their player costs would be 57 per cent of that figure, or $62.7-million, and their other, non-player related expenses are likely to be in the neighbourhood of $35- to $40-million, depending on their lease arrangement and various other complicating factors.
What’s left is the profit – which according to these rough estimates here would be between $7- and $12-million per team.
Before revenue sharing, the NHL's top 10 revenue generating teams are believed to averaged close to $150-million in revenue the 2010-11 season. The bottom 10 teams are likely closer to $70-million each.
Where the league is suffering and why we have yet another lockout (the third under Bettman) is (a) the bottom 10 teams have revenues so low they can’t cover their expenses and (b) those at the top have little intention of helping them do so more than they already are.
It’s an owner versus owner problem more than it is an owner versus player one, with Thursday’s massive offer sheet the perfect example of how a high spending team can go after one receiving revenue sharing and just hanging on.
The fact the players are again being asked to save the stragglers rubs many on the PA side the wrong way.
“Under the current CBA, NHL teams have received over $3-billion in revenue that would have previously gone towards player salaries,” one such source said this week. “The issue is not whether the players should now give up more revenue, it’s what did the owners do with this $3-billion?
“We know what they didn’t do. NHL clubs did not meaningfully revenue share between the big and small markets. After accepting a salary cap, a 24 per cent rollback and making other significant concessions last time, with revenues up over 50 per cent since 2005, why look to the players again?”
The answer is easy: Bettman and Co. believe they will have far more luck prying $200- or $300-million out of the players than the big moneyed teams, the owners of which feel they’ve given up enough of their advantage by agreeing to a cap, some limited revenue sharing and greater parity.
But even under the proposal which would cut the players’ share to 46 per cent, many teams on the low end would continue to lose money.
You simply can’t turn a profit while bringing in $80-million or less unless we’re talking about a cap of $45-million or less, which at current revenue levels would require giving players only a 37 per cent share.
To make a team like Phoenix profitable, they’d have to take closer to 25 per cent.
I get that owners need to honour the contracts they sign with the players but we must not forget the Gomezs of the league who don't honour their side of things. All these players that signed long term contracts get paid regardless of how well they play.
Yes, yes, we get it. Everybody hates Gomez. He's terrible.
Gomez has nothing to do with this at all. First off, if you propose that the team just arbitrarily cut his pay due to non-performance then you must therefore agree that you'd just take his money and hand it to DD and Max, who both well outperformed their salary, so this doesn't help the owners any.
If you could, without penalty, just wave a wand and make the bad contracts disappear, the teams would still spend whatever they were going to spend so again, making Gomez and the $10M he's owed go away doesn't fix the system, not one iota.
And while it's cool to bag on Gomez, let's not forget he hasn't done anything wrong short of losing his effectiveness. He didn't hold out and demand a new contract. He got to UFA status and signed an offer that a team thought was fair. His poor play now isn't because he stopped working out and showed up out of shape, or because he did something dangerous off the ice and got hurt.
The NFL has this system, wherein a guy like Gomez can go from a multi-million dollar contract to out of the league in two years if he cannot keep his performance up. That system does nothing to keep player salaries down, basically all it does is create two contract signings, the real one (the guaranteed money and bonuses) and the fake one (offesnive lineman signs an 8-year, $100MM contact which everyone knows will get voided after year 4 due to cap issues).
The people arguing more logically with solid facts on this page are the people taking the owners side. The people on the players side are using more emotions and reaching for bad comparisons that aren't completely true.
But I haven't read the whole thread, just this page.
That's because the people who made their pitch for the players have done so in the earlier pages and don't come back to argue until they're blue in the face.
That's because the people who made their pitch for the players have done so in the earlier pages and don't come back to argue until they're blue in the face.
No rhetoric here - just logic:
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Even under the proposal which would cut the players’ share to 46 per cent, many teams on the low end would continue to lose money.
You simply can’t turn a profit while bringing in $80-million or less unless we’re talking about a cap of $45-million or less, which at current revenue levels would require giving players only a 37 per cent share.
To make a team like Phoenix profitable, they’d have to take closer to 25 per cent.
If the owners promised that they wouldn't ask for another rollback in the next 20 years, then as a player I would consider it. Also, don't ask for a flat rollback across the board. Pro rate it. If you make <1M it's 5%. <2M =10% etc. I realize we are talking about huge money here but I look at a guy like Ryan White. He most likely is not going to leave the NHL with enough money to retire for the rest of his life without getting a job. These are the guys I "worry" about. The guys making multimillions can afford to give back.
Eliminating the option to ask for a rollback would force the league to stop the stupid spending. They also have to look at contraction and their revenue sharing. If a team can't make money or appeal to a TV market, it needs to go away.
If the owners promised that they wouldn't ask for another rollback in the next 20 years, then as a player I would consider it. Also, don't ask for a flat rollback across the board. Pro rate it. If you make <1M it's 5%. <2M =10% etc.
I fully support this concept. 5% of 500k means more to a 4th liner than 200k probably means to. Fringe top 6 player.
I'd love to have not-guaranteed contracts or adjustable contracts but the fact of the matter is that the current NHL deals must be honoured because idiots like the Wild Owner have to pay the price of their hypocrisy.
Well it's not because this owner gave out crazy cash that he's for a salary rollback or changing the way contracts are given.
The financial realities indicate that the owners are not in the wrong this time.
What exactly are the fincial realities you speak of? The financial realities of the NHL according to NHL CEO John Collins are as follows:
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NHL Teams Played to 95.6% Capacity, GameCenter LIVE Subscriptions Up 93%,Twitter Followers Up 96%, and NHL Mobile Web Page Views Up 81%
"Thanks to another season of down-to-the-wire competition on the ice and mediapartners and sponsors eager to engage with our fans in new ways, we were able to once again re-write the record book for business success," said NHL Chief Operating Officer John Collins. "And even with all the growth we've experienced the past six years, we all agree the best is yet to come."
Below are highlights of the League’s success for the 2011-12 regular-season across its various businesses:
• The NHL saw its seventh consecutive year of record revenue, with a projection of more than $3.2 billion by the end of the 2012 Stanley Cup Playoffs
• NHL Enterprises revenue is forecasted to increase by 18 percent over last year,a total growth of 195 percent over the 2003-04 season.
The only thing that's broken in the NHL is the franchise's ability to negotiate between themselves a revenue sharing deal that will allow the least profitable franchises to at least break even.
If salaries are cut then current contracts need to be scaled back, otherwise you're just transferring money from future free agents to past free agents. You're also putting teams that signed a lot of contracts in he past two years at a competitive disadvantage to teams that sign a lot of contracts in the next two years.
If salaries are cut then current contracts need to be scaled back, otherwise you're just transferring money from future free agents to past free agents. You're also putting teams that signed a lot of contracts in he past two years at a competitive disadvantage to teams that sign a lot of contracts in the next two years.
Technically, you can always make a hybrid model where players will be paid what they were promised but their caphit is reduced and further contracts are based on the new cap.
I'm sure some owners wouldn't like it. I still think my proposed % solution in one of the earlier pages is best but obviously I'm biased.
From a business PoV and in my humble opinion, the Habs owners might be on the fence with that case.
On one side, they're losing a lot of good money, on the other, they're negociating to be able to get a lower % share for the players, wich will increase their profit margins, and will possibly make less profitable teams become more profitable, wich will potentially mean less of the Habs profits will be distributed to the poor markets, as more teams will close their year with a profit of their own, instead of benefiting of the 'wellfare'.
In the end, and in my opinion, it's sad to say but, I think the owners are the ones we should be supporting, because, many US markets are on the verge of bankruptcy, and yes in Canada the $ is high and teams are making money, but you can't have the Canadian teams be the backbone of the NHL and pretend 'everything is allright', because the real market to developp are the US markets. The only reason, really, why the total revenues of the league have climbed up so high since the latest agreement, is because the Canadian $ went up from 0.7 to parity. It's then extremely volatile to base your negociations on that reality : The Canadian economy might be more stable during harsher economic days (resources etc), the US will turn it around when growth will come back, meaning a possible total revenu loss when the US economy climbs back up and the Canadian $ falls down to 0.6-0.7, the real 'value' of the money.
The only thing that could work, in order to make most (if not all) teams profitable, would be to have better revenue sharing... between owners! Not stealing from the players once more.
In many many cases, and more and more the last 20 years, being extremely successful 'in business' whatever that actually means, involves inheriting wealth, exploiting staff, taking huge tax breaks from governments desperate for employment, and thus not contributing in any way to the general well being of the country (see Europe), creating products that are designed to break, and harming the environment. None of which the players do. But keep on buying the 'Businessman' as Master of the Universe line, if you like.
Like it or not, business owners are generators of income for a lot of people, hockey players included.
Think about it rationally. If you work for someone, you are being paid by a business owner (or corporation which has stockholders as "owners" with a CEO in charge of operations).
If you own your own business, well, goes without saying that you are a business owner and probably pay people to work for you.
Now if you throw in the government, think long and hard about where the government "money" comes from. Yes, from taxes. And those taxes come from business owners and employees.
I do not understand the irrational hatred for people who are willing to take risks to own a business. And yes, LOTS of businesses do go out of business.
Feel free to give Donald Fehr a call and suggest to him that the players disassociate themselves from the NHL owners and start their own League. Of course, they would have to find a rink to play in, hire a marketing staff, a payroll staff, concessions contracts and staff, coaching staff etc and so on.
See how that works out. Oh, and by the way, the players would become "owners". Would you be against them then?
The only thing that could work, in order to make most (if not all) teams profitable, would be to have better revenue sharing... between owners! Not stealing from the players once more.
You gotta look at it objectively. The majority of the revenues comes from Canadian \ Northern US markets, and even some teams from this part of NA (Islanders / Devils) have difficulty closing their budget without a deficit. If the canadian $ would be at around 0.65 US $, there wouldn't be a growth in revenues, there maybe would be a loss, but from my PoV, the players aren't in a position of force for those negociations due to the economic crisis. This isnt like the NFL or MLB, the NHL isn't even close to those leagues. Realistically, comparing the NHL to those leagues, is like comparing the CFL with the NFL.
revenue sharing is nice, but lets be honest, while owners are rich people, they're in sports franchises to make money. You dont invest that much money in something when you know that the only way to make money is revenue sharing. I know I wouldn't invest a cent, unless i'd be fortunate enough to buy one of the few teams extremely profitable.
You gotta look at it objectively. The majority of the revenues comes from Canadian \ Northern US markets, and even some teams from this part of NA (Islanders / Devils) have difficulty closing their budget without a deficit. If the canadian $ would be at around 0.65 US $, there wouldn't be a growth in revenues, there maybe would be a loss, but from my PoV, the players aren't in a position of force for those negociations due to the economic crisis. This isnt like the NFL or MLB, the NHL isn't even close to those leagues. Realistically, comparing the NHL to those leagues, is like comparing the CFL with the NFL.
revenue sharing is nice, but lets be honest, while owners are rich people, they're in sports franchises to make money. You dont invest that much money in something when you know that the only way to make money is revenue sharing. I know I wouldn't invest a cent, unless i'd be fortunate enough to buy one of the few teams extremely profitable.
I'm on owners side and while I agree with you, beefing up the revenue sharing is still a good option. Obviously, it should not be the ONLY thing done. Both have to make sacrifices as revenue sharing alone is not enough.
That doesn't make sense. Even with a 25% cut the game grew nearly 50% so saying playing will make 25% in 2024 makes no sense.
Right now, the owners offered that the players share decline from 57% to 43%, which is a 24.6% cut, just like in 2005.
I wasn't talking about how the game would grow, I was talking about the players share.
I can understand the players position. If the owners have a lockout every 5 years demanding that the players share decline by 25% (which is the pattern), they'll end up a defeated union, like a lot of unions in North America, from teachers to auto workers.
Like it or not, business owners are generators of income for a lot of people, hockey players included.
Think about it rationally. If you work for someone, you are being paid by a business owner (or corporation which has stockholders as "owners" with a CEO in charge of operations).
If you own your own business, well, goes without saying that you are a business owner and probably pay people to work for you.
Now if you throw in the government, think long and hard about where the government "money" comes from. Yes, from taxes. And those taxes come from business owners and employees.
I do not understand the irrational hatred for people who are willing to take risks to own a business. And yes, LOTS of businesses do go out of business.
Feel free to give Donald Fehr a call and suggest to him that the players disassociate themselves from the NHL owners and start their own League. Of course, they would have to find a rink to play in, hire a marketing staff, a payroll staff, concessions contracts and staff, coaching staff etc and so on.
See how that works out. Oh, and by the way, the players would become "owners". Would you be against them then?
As the government's money comes from taxes, the players money comes from the fans, not from "the owners". The owners as a whole are making profits, they are not putting money into the system.
