Quoting: wabit
Viewership is down across all sports for last year, even with people staying home more. All the tv contracts are ready under contract (as far as I know). There is no reason for the networks to negotiate a higher paying deal.
The later the season start gets pushed back the less reason there is for the US networks to care much about hockey. MLB has spring training games in Feb, The NFL is in the Playoffs in Jan with Superbowl is in Feb. NASCAR starts in Feb. The Olympics are supposed to be this Summer. The NBA is trying to start around x-mas. MLS is planning to start in Feb. Filling the scheduled NHL time-blocks won't be too difficult for local or national stations.
It doesn't matter if the contract is already signed. If they want games they are probably going to have to pay more. That is the basic message out of VGK owner.
You can try to justify it to yourself all day. But if you read between the lines of what he said, that's basically it.
He directly mentioned the TV deal as not cutting it for them to operate with no gate. Period.
I don't know why you are trying to argue it. He directly laid the issues out. None of this other stuff you went on a tangent about has anything to do with it.
The cost of operating a league, on their current TV deals isn't sustainable.
None of the owners want to take a loss.
On top of it, they have no idea how to actually do this with the border closed and not being able to bubble all 31 teams in any kind of reasonable way that anyone could agree too.
So keep going on about all of nothing there. But all these things are true.
Furthermore, the point on the draft still stands. If the prospects don't get to play, and they closed the Q after like 4 games. That's a massive blow to the league. Drafting without seeing these guys play the year before their draft is huge. So many guys move up draft boards in their -1 year. That's gone. The draft is gonna be a total mess.
No year to see them play. No combine again. That's just not sustainable year after year.