Quoting: pharrow
This isn't about next contract. It's about this next season. This is not baseball or NASCAR. Believe me, the cost of a nascar team is no where near the cost of a NHL team. And the sources of revenue are vastly different.
And baseball has a pretty sweet, although undeserved at this point, TV deal.
We aren't talking about a small chuck of change here. You don't seem to get that. There are already teams in the NHL who are unprofitable even with gate sales. You take that away and you are looking at huge loses. And while I'm sure some owners have the deep pockets to deal with it, others frankly do not.
Even the owner of VGK stated they are losing money with no fans inside. A huge part of their ability to operate is hotel comps. The number of visitors is lower, and they are only allowed 10% capacity in vegas for indoor events casino's etc...
You have come to some conclusions that just aren't logical here.
It's the same fallacy people had made prior. Oh it's just this season, we'll get through the playofffs and everything will be fine.
But then there is reality, that you are looking at long term changes here. Because it keeps spreading and it's not controlled. And people continue to panic over it.
Vaccines aren't 100%, at best they are saying 50%. First flue vaccines were 20% effective. This isn't much different.
This isn't simply a 1 year issue. Much like it isn't a just the playoffs issue and everything will be fine soon after. There is a reality they are having to deal with now.
That reality is the current system is not sustainable, and they are being honest about that. And that they aren't just blindly going to say, we'll do this season and oh well......
This is a business. Two years of huge losses and then a hopefully we can get a better TV deal, isn't cutting it.
You seem to not realize that. They aren't running the league so NBC can make the profit. Much like they weren't stopping their league so they Olympics could pocket large sums of money and not cut them in.
You're not getting it. There is no reason for NBC to pay out more money, they have an expiring contract. They don't care about the NHL (per say), they care about what money the NHL can bring them for their bottom line. They showed this when the NHL decided not to send teams to the Olympics a few years ago. They just went with the Olympics and didn't show any NHL games during that timeframe. Plus they've already figured out how to fill the air time from the abrupt stoppage of games earlier this year too. If the tables were flipped and everyone just decided to stop watching games and the viewership/ratings tanked do you think the NHL would refund the money to NBC to cover the loss? No they would stick by their contract terms.
Money isn't just tight for NHL teams it's tight for tv stations too.
-MSG (NY teams) took a big operating loss last year, because of the Covid.
-Disney now owns Fox Sports "local" (lots of teams this is their local station) and they are taking big hits in their revenue with parks being closed or partially open, not much going on for movies being filmed, and they just laid off 28,000 people. They also show the NBA and MLB games which will run concurrently with the NHL season next season.
If the Covid never goes away there will be a new norm set for pro sports. Teams will lose value and players pay will go down accordingly or there will be a league contraction (like the KHL). This is just dollars and cents business. If an owner is losing money, and not okay with it, costs will be cut until the team makes money or at least breaks even. The players won't be happy, but not much they can really do, there really isn't anywhere else they can make similar money in their current profession. Unprofitable teams may end up moving or be sold (STL, SD, OAK all lost NFL teams to different markets in the last couple of years).
Owners/GMs are already planning for this, just look at the contracts given out recently:
Feb 1st - Aug 1st (2019): 18 contracts $6m or higher a year, 6 of those $9m or higher a year.
Aug 2nd, 2019 -Jan 31, 2020: 17 contracts $6m or higher a year, 4 of those $9m or higher a year
Feb 1, 2020-present: 9 contract $6m or higher, the highest is $8.8m/yr. If this was another industry (tech, houses, etc.) people would be saying the bubble burst and the market is resetting itself.