Though I doubt any teams are moving to costa rica.

Great points, no team should be moved like that.

The finnish article and comments I read about this whole thing were more or less type “yes, another team to canada, this is good”. Nothing about the consequences

sounds like you aren’t hurtin too bad… give the team a little break eh"

“Those with the biggest stake are Glendale taxpayers and the shop and restaurant owners at Westgate and elsewhere that benefit from fans trekking to west Glendale.

Glendale pledged $180 million in taxpayer money to build the $220 million arena, with a plan that the development generated by the arena would pay the debt.

Between 2005 and 2008, the city earned enough to pay its arena debt with about a million dollars to spare.

The city paid $25.9 million on the debt in that three-year period and brought in $27 million from developments directly related to the arena deal, according to a records request filed with the city.

The city revenue flowed from Coyotes payments along with sales-tax collections at the arena, Westgate City Center and a central Glendale shopping center redeveloped as part of the deal."

http://www.azcentral.com/sports/coyotes/articles/2009/05/08/20090508gl-coyotes.html

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Seatlle was screwed while the NBA said Key Arena is “inadequate” 10 years after if was refurbished, with the team relocating to a market that never will support that team, in the long run. Sea-Tac is market #14, 1.8 million. OKC is #45, 687-thousand.
That’s insane. Alberquerque is larger. But, when a cow town is desperate for a team, they’ll spend millions on an Arena — and now, millions more to bring the place up to spec.

Strangely, the New Orleans Hornets stay. Move that franchise to Seattle. NOLA is #53, with over 600K. It’t the smallest market with major league teams. The Saints get so much money from Lousiana, it’s insane. There’s no corporate support. The city is ravaged. Neither team can survive.

And Green Bay, # 70 with 444K is a completly different animal. It’s putting an NFL team in Wichita, and you know that will never happen.

I know the Sonics are a good choice to use for a comparing purpose with the NBA (since the NHL and NBA are really quite similar in that struggling market aspect) but what happened with the Sonics is a joke on a different level because David Stern helped Bennett get the team out of there and, for all intents and purposes, scolded the city of Seattle for not giving into Bennett’s ransom demands for a new arena.

Yes, Key Arena has been around since the 60s and yes it was awfully small for the NBAs needs, but was Seattle a bad market for the sport? No, never. But Bennett wanted a new toy to show off and Stern sided with him and given how well the Hornets test in OKC went, Bennett was able to strike while the iron was hot with OKC (especially since the Hornets should’ve just stayed there, but the NBA didn’t want to look like the bad guy ditching New Orleans after Katrina) and get them to go hog wild and bend over to give the NBA whatever it asked.

The incredible difference here is that Bettman is sticking to his guns with Phoenix, whether because he wants to or he has to is up for argument, and he already won his prize with Phoenix by having the new arena in Glendale built specifically for the Coyotes. It’s his crown jewel now and leaving Phoenix and Glendale a ghost town with an empty new facility truly would be Bettman’s “Watergate” moment for his history.

If this played out the same way the Sonics fiasco did, Bettman would’ve had the Mayflower trucks in Glendale already and helped them head to a greener pasture. If this played out with someone other than Balsillie and the target area was say… Kansas City, you’d have this thing dead-nuts on.

The thing you’re missing here is that sports teams are most profitable when they’re established and entrenched in a market – and that’s never going to change. The most valuable sports franchises are the ones that have a history of winning, operate in large markets, have deep, deep roots in the community or some combination of all of those. Sure, the New York franchises in most cases are also going to be the most valuable, but what about Montreal – which was considered a “small market” franchise in a baseball context? What about the Dallas Cowboys? The St. Louis Cardinals?

The way to make money in sports is to find people that want to support a team and then give them a solid franchise to root for, year in and year out. Phoenix hasn’t had that – I grant you – but a Phoenix move isn’t somehow going to open the floodgates to a scenario where franchises move every off-season. There are many, many downsides (to put it lightly) to declaring bankruptcy. Jerry Moyes’ name will be mud in Phoenix for the rest of his life, just as Jeffrey Loria’s is in Montreal, or Robert Irsay’s in Baltimore. That’s a huge reason against packing up and moving franchises willy-nilly.

And it’s not like it’s an easy process, either. Even if the sale to Balsillie goes through, there are still massive disincentives to declaring bankruptcy and moving a franchise. It’s not going to happen nearly as often as you posit.

Jerry Moyes effectively wants to sell his team to the highest bidder. For months now – maybe longer – we’ve been hearing from the NHL that there were three or four potential Coyotes’ owners, waiting in the wings, and yet it’s only now that any of those phantom owners seem to have maybe kind of sort of possibly decided to get just a little bit serious? Isn’t that a little fishy? The NHL has lied out of both sides of its mouth about the Coyotes situation for who knows how long now. Why anyone would trust them at this point is completely beyond me.

I was angry with Jeffrey Loria when he promised the baseball fans of Montreal a new downtown stadium and then didn’t produce. But let’s be fair: it was unfair to ask him to keep throwing good money after bad into a sinkhole. It was also unfair to ask Jerry Moyes to keep hanging in there, because someone’s going to come out of the woodwork next week to save hockey in Phoenix, Jerry! I just know they will!

@PPP (Sorry, for some reason the reply thing is at the bottom of the page for me and won’t move when I click “reply” on your post)…

A guy who owns a piece of the Arizona Diamondbacks, who has owned the Coyotes, who was a part owner of the Phoenix Suns and still owns a lacrosse team there? A guy who’s been Phoenix-based for pretty much his whole business career – he’s not going to care about his reputation in Phoenix? Give me a break. He has no life anywhere else. He’s a Phoenix guy, through and through.

And my point stands: to relocate a team in the NHL, you need to be in a failing market to begin with. Bankruptcy is a clear indication that a market is failing. Just that someone wants to move a team – that’s not going to be a good enough reason in the future even if the Balsillie thing goes through. The rules may change for teams in bankruptcy, but not for everyone else.