Hawkcott?

[CODHAWKSFAN]

For the record when I said good riddance, I was specifically talking to curtmcgirt.

[frosgrim]

For the record when I said good riddance, I was specifically talking to curtmcgirt.

I got that, but there are others that have been quite vocal about their desire to see the Thrashers leave Atlanta.

[Guest]

I can't in good conscience give these clowns anymore money. All my Hawks and Thrashers gear is going into a box until they are gone. I still love the NBA so Im switching my loyalties to the OKC Thunder until ASG is gone.

Due to the nature of my job I'm privy to some of the back of the house dealings of ASG and they honestly don't care about winning. They are the kids that think that because they got a car as a junior in high school that they should be prom king. They're just happy to own a team and could care less unless it involves them losing a nationally televised game.

I was ridiculed on here for claiming Junior was born with a silver spoon. He was, and yet he still claims to be a "self-made entrepeneur". bullsh*t. I sure hope they sell soon and for a loss. Biggest bunch of douchebags I can think of, its a shame they also happen to be our owners.

[lethalweapon3]

(Convo from yesterday)

Me: “Safe to say ‘Don’ won’t come down for Hawks games?”

Friend: “He said, ‘Not on your life.’”

In the mid-90's, a friend of mine invited another friend (“Don”) to a WCW event at the Omni. Bearing a standard-issue nWo cutoff tee, Don met us after work near Five Points station and we trotted down Marietta Street to the show. The entire time, he was craning and swiveling his neck, pointing at stuff.

“It’s really kinda neat around here,” he offered repeatedly. “Is that the Peachtree Plaza hotel? Man, that thing’s huge! And what is that over there?”

“Centennial Olympic Park,” I responded, glancing out the side of my eye at my friend with a raised brow.

“Wow! Nice!”

“So… first time in Atlanta, huh?”

“Yeah, it’s my first time in town! Rode MARTA for the first time, too!”

“Cool! Welcome! So, where are you from?”

“Doraville.”

I was floored.

Don, then comfortably into his 30s, grew up in Doraville and had last set foot downtown when his folks took him to ride The Pink Pig in the 70's as a child. He professed to never having a legitimate reason to come downtown (he claimed “inside the city limits,” not technically true, since our common friend grew up with him and lived in north Buckhead) on his own free will. The MARTA rail line to Doraville being relatively new (3-4 years, maybe?) was also a factor. It took the nWo -- and a free ticket -- to draw him out of his suburban confines.

Which is why I found it strange to find Don, a couple years later, as a multi-seat season ticket holder for the expansion Atlanta Thrashers. Decked out in the Thrashers’ sweaters-du-jour, Don would go on to invite us to Thrasher games (usually the matchups against my Flyers and Penguins) over the course of the next decade. While he detested the NBA or anything about basketball, it turned out Don was a huge fan of the NHL (Mario Lemieux in particular). He claimed to be too young to have attached himself to the Flames, and the competition level for the Knights didn’t intrigue him at all. But he vowed long ago that once Atlanta got an NHL franchise, he would be committed for the long haul.

Don routinely complained the Thrash should move north of I-285 (“There’s more hockey fans out there”), yet dutifully spent the lion’s share of his disposable income on hockey nights at Philips, cutting back to half-season plans after the year Hartley got fired and Waddell took over. Without fail, he also would high-tail it back to Doraville after the final horn, even on weekends. My friend and I would coax him occasionally to Hooters, The Varsity, or a sports bar in a veiled pre-game attempt to expand his intown experiences, but he made clear he doesn’t come into Atlanta for this stuff. We did get Don to a Sunday afternoon Hawks game on a lost wager, but he spent most of his time swilling beer at the food court and buying more Thrashers items at the fan store. “Just not my crowd,” he’d say.

Now with no more NHL and, thankfully, no more Hall ‘n Nash, Don will be a hard sell to get back downtown for much of anything. In time, he’ll probably settle for becoming a Gladiators fan.

Over the years, attending Thrashers games on my own volition as well as with Don and his associates, I got the sense there are many more “Dons” out there than fans of all-things-Atlanta-sports. Beyond maybe crossover between the Braves and Falcons, Atlanta’s local fan support gets pretty stovepiped among pro teams, and the instances of dual-fandom between the Thrashers and Hawks seem small in number. For every “Don,” I’ve got even more “Donnas” and “Dans” who couldn’t be dragged to a Thrashers game for free, but will jump at the chance to go check out the Hawks if they’re playing someone good.

Even with the A$G fiasco, I can’t foresee a major bump in Hawks ticket sales from the hockey fans with newly disposable income, and I can’t foresee a major drop in ticket revenue from disaffected Thrashers fans boycotting everything A$G remains associated with.

~lw3

[Sothron]

I personally think this will bottom line better for the ASG in regards to the Hawks. There were many nights where Phillips looked half empty for the Hawks on a nightly basis. Many of those seats could have been bought by someone spending a $ on hockey instead. Without that option every other night, I could see a few thousand more butts in Phillips for home games. Even 2000 more fans nightly at $50 a fan is 4.2 million in sales by the end of the year and that is without the losses the Thrashers were incurring.

I hate to see the Thrashers go but this is a good business move for the Hawks.

Adding on...just found the numbers

Hawks ticket sales average per home game - 15,648. Phillips capacity 18,729. Average not sold, 3081.

That doesn't include the people who buy tickets and then don't show.

You should go to some Thrasher messageboards. There is not Thrasher fan that I know of that will go to Hawks games as long as the ASG owns them. The ASG didn't just stab every Thrasher fan in the back they also cost themselves thousands of Hawks fans. And that is the only good thing to come out of their betrayal.

[Guest]

Yap, yap, yap....if you are a fan of basketball you are a fan....IF the Hawks make a good trade, play well all next season, and play really well into the playoffs and make the ECF....the people will come. Give fans a winning team they can get behind and the business side of the ASG won't mean crap to most.

[CODHAWKSFAN]

You should go to some Thrasher messageboards. There is not Thrasher fan that I know of that will go to Hawks games as long as the ASG owns them. The ASG didn't just stab every Thrasher fan in the back they also cost themselves thousands of Hawks fans. And that is the only good thing to come out of their betrayal.

The question is were there lots or thousands of Thrashers fans that actually went to Hawks games to begin with.

[drzachary]

That means I root for both Georgia and Georgia Tech

What? No. This is not okay. :)

But back to the topic at hand, I do find it much harder to support the team now that the ASG has shown us that they're not only incompetent, they are Belkin-like in their evil. I firmly believe that they will sell the Hawks as soon as they can make a buck, to anyone who would want them, be they in Atlanta or far away. And since every penny I spend on the Hawks enriches those greedy, worthless douchebags, I do feel guilty about it.

Going to most basketball games is more enjoyable than not, so no boycott from me. I re-upped my season tickets, but believe me, I'll make my displeasure known very loudly if any of those idiot clowns are within my field of vision at a Hawks game.

One heartening thing about the whole mess is that the national and local media seems to have gotten it right: the potential for hockey is here, but not when you have cowardly, sleazy people like Bettman and the ASG involved.

[NineOhTheRino]

to bad not enough fans displayed this level of passion when the team was here

[Beelzebob]

I will not support the ASG in any fashion. I will still remain a Hawks fan but I won't give my money to a group that is certain to turn its focus on running the Hawks into the ground now. The NHL should be ashamed of themselves for not stepping in to ensure a local buyer could purchase the Thrashers but the multimillion dollar franchise fee that the league gets probably clouds their vision. Lets hope the same fate is not in store for the Hawks as Seattle is an example of what happens with bad ownership.

[niremetal]

The NHL should be ashamed of themselves for not stepping in to ensure a local buyer could purchase the Thrashers but the multimillion dollar franchise fee that the league gets probably clouds their vision.

Huh? Why would the NHL step in to get someone to keep a team in a region where EVERY SINGLE FRANCHISE IS HEMORRHAGING MONEY? The Southern Strategy has been an unmitigated disaster for the NHL. Why on earth would they throw more money into the fire pit?

The beautiful thing about a free market is that if someone thought they could make more money by keeping the Thrashers in Atlanta than by moving them to Winnipeg, they would have stepped up and made an offer to do so. No one did. Even now, if someone thought that they could make money by setting up a hockey franchise in Atlanta, they could make the NHL an offer for an expansion franchise. But no one will.

Why? Because there is no one stupid enough to buy a hockey team in the south right now. No one. And my guess is that no one will be stupid enough to buy one in the region for many years. It's not just ASG that can't market a team in this region. NO ONE CAN. Even Dallas, the 4th biggest metro area in the country and home to the only NHL team in the sunbelt to post operating profits after its first couple years, is now losing money and the owners are seeking new investors (and not finding any).

If people want to blame the ASG for mismanaging the Hawks (which they have), fine. If you want to say they mismanaged the Thrashers too, I can't argue with you there because I don't follow hockey outside of the commercial and antitrust litigation that I see involving them. But Thrashers fans need to wake the eff up and get over their state of denial about the profit potential of pro hockey in the south. It doesn't exist. This is not hockey country. That's why EVERY single NHL team in the region has crappy attendance and is hemorrhaging money.

[drzachary]

Would the Hawks franchise make more money in, say, Vegas? Probably. Seattle? Almost definitely. Let's not be in denial, here. We should be perfectly fine with it if the ASG uproots the team and moves them, right?

To me, the beautiful thing about sports is that fans are not rational consumers in a free market. If we were, we'd just want to watch the best two teams duke it out each year, regardless of what colors they wear.

However, we're bloodthirsty tribal brutes, cheering for our soldiers to kill theirs. Making money in this sort of unfree market requires building interest in the sport as a whole and a buzz around the team in particular. Hockey interest in the South has absolutely soared, even as the teams have yet to make much money. (Look for the Predators to buck this trend next year, IMO.) There's nothing genetic about Canadians that makes them more interested in hockey than Southerners. They grow up wanting to play hockey. That's starting to happen in the South, but will be happening far less in GA now that the NHL has abandoned Atlanta. Hockey in the South is a forward-thinking idea that hasn't yet come to fruition. It takes gutsy, rich owners willing to grow a product while suffering losses, not our get-rich-quick yahoos.

[Guest]

You should go to some Thrasher messageboards. There is not Thrasher fan that I know of that will go to Hawks games as long as the ASG owns them. The ASG didn't just stab every Thrasher fan in the back they also cost themselves thousands of Hawks fans. And that is the only good thing to come out of their betrayal.

Thrasher fans weren't even going to Thrasher games (granted product was poor) so I don't see why they would be going to Hawks games anyway.

[Guest]

I will not support the ASG in any fashion. I will still remain a Hawks fan but I won't give my money to a group that is certain to turn its focus on running the Hawks into the ground now. The NHL should be ashamed of themselves for not stepping in to ensure a local buyer could purchase the Thrashers but the multimillion dollar franchise fee that the league gets probably clouds their vision. Lets hope the same fate is not in store for the Hawks as Seattle is an example of what happens with bad ownership.

If you see spending money on Hawks tickets as just "giving your money to the ASG" then you are in a no win situation. When I buy tickets to games it's for my enjoyment and entertainment value I don't look at it as just supporting the ASG bottom line.

The Sonics moved because they couldn't reach a deal on a new stadium, what business you know will stick around to just lose money, people buy these teams to make money period.

[niremetal]

Would the Hawks franchise make more money in, say, Vegas? Probably. Seattle? Almost definitely. Let's not be in denial, here. We should be perfectly fine with it if the ASG uproots the team and moves them, right?

My guess is a big "no" on both cities.

To me, the beautiful thing about sports is that fans are not rational consumers in a free market.

Fans are not rational. Owners deciding whether to invest in teams are relatively rational when it comes to purchase/sale decisions, which is what I was talking about. They will not invest in a product that they anticipate will lose money. They will spend no more than the amount they think they can make back when they sell the team.

If we were, we'd just want to watch the best two teams duke it out each year, regardless of what colors they wear.

However, we're bloodthirsty tribal brutes, cheering for our soldiers to kill theirs. Making money in this sort of unfree market requires building interest in the sport as a whole and a buzz around the team in particular. Hockey interest in the South has absolutely soared

Considering that the interest before the Thrashers came was as close to zero as you can expect in a city the size of Atlanta, that ain't saying much.

even as the teams have yet to make much money.

Yeah, except for that small little detail. Also, saying "they have yet to make much money" in this situation is like saying "he's yet to lose much weight" about a guy who's put on 100 pounds in the last year. They haven't simply "not made" money. Every one of them has LOST money. And not a few pennies. We're talking hundreds of millions of dollars.

(Look for the Predators to buck this trend next year, IMO.)

I'll take that bet. But even if you're right, one team turning a profit one year isn't much of a "eureka" moment.

There's nothing genetic about Canadians that makes them more interested in hockey than Southerners. They grow up wanting to play hockey.

Uh...they have ice. They live in a cold-weather climate. Do you really think that doesn't make a difference? Remind me of the level of interest in hockey in sub-Alpine Europe? The Middle East? South America? Really, any part of the world south of 30 degrees north?

I have a friend who grew up in the St. Paul suburbs that was able to just get together with friends and play a pick-up game of hockey out on the neighborhood pond a few months out of the year. That's just not possible in the south.

Also, ice hockey requires a bigger investment in equipment than pretty much any other team sport, especially in warm weather climes where informal competition is basically unheard of since you need access to a rink. That restricts the audience further because few poor people can afford to pay what they need for their kids to play down here, and you don't have the large and culturally significant network of benefactors willing to subsidize the sport. That's why my little brother couldn't play. We couldn't afford it.

That's starting to happen in the South, but will be happening far less in GA now that the NHL has abandoned Atlanta.

Funny. Attendance stats suggest that it's the other way around.

Hockey in the South is a forward-thinking idea that hasn't yet come to fruition. It takes gutsy, rich owners willing to grow a product while suffering losses, not our get-rich-quick yahoos.

In other words, "if you build it, they will come."

You'd have fit right in with the people who ran the NHL into the ground with it's 1990's-era Southern Strategy. Sorry, but "if you build it, they will come" is not a smart business strategy when you're talking about an area where the market for the product you are selling is very weak and prospects for future growth are highly uncertain.

Wake me up when you find a billionaire willing to invest in a team that faces years of 8 digit losses, on the hope that he can "grow the product" into something profitable years down the road. That's the type of thinking that leads to bubbles, not sustainable business models. Rich people become rich by making smart business decisions. History has pretty much established that investing in southern hockey teams is not a smart business decision.

The NHL was able to dupe a bunch of "yahoos" (to use your word) into doing it during the boom years of the 90's. They won't be able to sell that snake oil again.

Edited June 1, 2011 by niremetal

[drzachary]

Attendance numbers show that NHL interest in the South hasn't really grown yet, but participation in things like youth hockey and amateur hockey -- aka interest in the sport, but not wanting to buy the NHL product -- have increased dramatically in that span.

[niremetal]

Attendance numbers show that NHL interest in the South hasn't really grown yet, but participation in things like youth hockey and amateur hockey -- aka interest in the sport, but not wanting to buy the NHL product -- have increased dramatically in that span.

Again, that's not saying much because the participation in those things prior to the NHL's Southern Strategy was close to zero considering the population of Atlanta (and their sister southern cities with NHL franchises).

And again, it's unrealistic to expect a businessman to pay 9-digit amounts for a team in a region where the teams historically post 8-digit annual losses, on the hope that maybe someday the south will embrace ice hockey and make their NHL franchise profitable. Owners of pro sports teams are businessmen running for-profit businesses, not philanthropists running a non-profit organization for the benefit of fans.

Edited June 2, 2011 by niremetal

[Sothron]

Huh? Why would the NHL step in to get someone to keep a team in a region where EVERY SINGLE FRANCHISE IS HEMORRHAGING MONEY? The Southern Strategy has been an unmitigated disaster for the NHL. Why on earth would they throw more money into the fire pit?

The beautiful thing about a free market is that if someone thought they could make more money by keeping the Thrashers in Atlanta than by moving them to Winnipeg, they would have stepped up and made an offer to do so. No one did. Even now, if someone thought that they could make money by setting up a hockey franchise in Atlanta, they could make the NHL an offer for an expansion franchise. But no one will.

Why? Because there is no one stupid enough to buy a hockey team in the south right now. No one. And my guess is that no one will be stupid enough to buy one in the region for many years. It's not just ASG that can't market a team in this region. NO ONE CAN. Even Dallas, the 4th biggest metro area in the country and home to the only NHL team in the sunbelt to post operating profits after its first couple years, is now losing money and the owners are seeking new investors (and not finding any).

If people want to blame the ASG for mismanaging the Hawks (which they have), fine. If you want to say they mismanaged the Thrashers too, I can't argue with you there because I don't follow hockey outside of the commercial and antitrust litigation that I see involving them. But Thrashers fans need to wake the eff up and get over their state of denial about the profit potential of pro hockey in the south. It doesn't exist. This is not hockey country. That's why EVERY single NHL team in the region has crappy attendance and is hemorrhaging money.

This entire post is incorrect. There were several local groups that tried to buy the Thrashers and the ASG deliberately used the "exclusive" clause in talks with the SD guy about buying the Hawks/arena to keep them from being able to legally sell to a local group. Why? Because Phillips is the only NHL approved arena in the state of Georgia and by not allowing potential local groups to discuss leasing it killed any talks right from the start.

Hockey has done well in the south. Nashville, Carolina and TB are doing fine. Dallas is about to be sold to a local owner to keep the team there. No offense but when you admit you don't even keep up with hockey you really shouldn't start talking about things you have no clue about.

[niremetal]

This entire post is incorrect. There were several local groups that tried to buy the Thrashers and the ASG deliberately used the "exclusive" clause in talks with the SD guy about buying the Hawks/arena to keep them from being able to legally sell to a local group.

Link? Or is this just your speculation? The Winnipeg group paid $170M for the Thrashers, including the $60M relocation fee to the NHL - i.e. ASG only got $110M. I haven't seen even a hint of a whiff of a report that any local prospective owners were willing to pay north of $100M for the team, much less north of $150M. From the ASG's perspective, a prospective owner willing to pay $120M and keep the team in Atlanta would have been preferable - that would have given them $10M more than they got from the Winnipeg group. The Moore exclusivity period was 1 week, if memory serves, and only happened a couple weeks ago; the reports have said the ASG has been seeking investors for the Thrashers for years and outright buyers for the last few months at least. Surely "getting the word out" wasn't a problem - everyone who picks up the sports section or watches ESPN knew the Thrashers were for sale. And trust me, the Atlanta billionaires club is pretty damned small. There wasn't a superrich person in town who didn't know the Thrashers were on the block.

Are you really so blinded by your fury with ASG that you think they would have sold the team to Winnipeg even if there were a Atlanta group willing to pay them the same or more than the Winnipeg group? You think they'd eat millions of dollars just to spite Atlantans? Because unless you actually think that, you pretty much have to accept that no one was willing to pay more than $110M to keep the team in Atlanta. Again, that's the beauty of the free market.

Hockey has done well in the south. Nashville, Carolina and TB are doing fine. Dallas is about to be sold to a local owner to keep the team there. No offense but when you admit you don't even keep up with hockey you really shouldn't start talking about things you have no clue about.

I don't follow hockey standings and stats. I most certainly do follow the financial side of pretty much every major pro sports organization active in the US (NBA, NFL, MLB, NHL, MLS, ATP, WTA, PGA, etc). I can't be more specific without busting my anonymity and violating a few dozen ethics rules, but I had to learn far more about the finances of pro sports than I ever cared to know due to a pair of cases I've worked on over the past two years.

In any case, you don't have to be a restauranteur to understand that a fine dining restaurant located next to a landfill in a run-down part of town probably isn't going to do well. And when the newspaper runs stories year after year talking about how the restaurant is losing money and laying off staff, you don't need to understand how the burgers are made in order to have a good idea as to why that might be. The fact that all the southern hockey teams have been hemorhhaging money is a matter of public record. How is losing $5.5M, $7.3M, and $7.9M "doing fine?" This isn't something that just started with the recession. The southern teams have been hemorrhaging money for years. It's been a drag on the entire league. You can't read Forbes or Money for a year without seeing some piece discussing how badly the Southern Strategy has diluted the NHL brand. A friend of mine sent me this short article from 2005 a couple weeks ago when the Winnipeg deal started coalescing and the NHL front office people started bad-mouthing Atlanta. He sarcastically commented "Nah, no one saw this coming.

Edited June 2, 2011 by niremetal

[Guest]

The fact that all the southern hockey teams have been hemorhhaging money is a matter of public record. How is losing $5.5M, $7.3M, and $7.9M "doing fine?" This isn't something that just started with the recession. The southern teams have been hemorrhaging money for years. It's been a drag on the entire league. You can't read Forbes or Money for a year without seeing some piece discussing how badly the Southern Strategy has diluted the NHL brand. A friend of mine sent me this short article from 2005 a couple weeks ago when the Winnipeg deal started coalescing and the NHL front office people started bad-mouthing Atlanta. He sarcastically commented "Nah, no one saw this coming.

Having operating loses is not necessarily losing money. This is a foolish claim like what Stern has been trying to pull. Why not look at net value change of a franchise? If memory serves me correctly the A$G paid $330 million for their 3 assets. I seriously doubt they valued all three equal at the time they purchased them. My guess is they valued the Thrashers around $60 to $90 million. Adjust that to real dollars and account for their awful management skills (when people KNOW you are selling you lose leverage) and it turns out they did alright and certainly didn't "hemorrage" in that deal.

And quoting Forbes as some sort of truth reminds me of a Mark Cuban quote. It was something to the effect of "those Forbes numbrs are god awful wrong, if you are interested in buying or selling a cub then you have your own people crunch the numbers". He went on and rambled a bit but he was just pointing out Forbes doesn't have merit with owners. Now granted, knowing how stupid the A$G are they might have legitimately used the Forbes numbers for all their decisions. It would sure be a shame if Forbes numbers held up in a court of law though.