Hawkcott?

[Sothron]

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.

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.

So you actually believe the tired old rhetoric of pro teams claiming to lose millions upon millions...only to line up in a pack to buy major pro teams? It is an old trick for teams to try and list all their operating costs for a team and an arena on the sports team to try and get leverage with labor unions. The owners never truly open their books up so people can see the truth. NHL teams aren't really losing money. No one with hundreds of millions of dollars are going to intentionally buy into a business and actually expect to lose money.

As for the local groups, there are interviews with Anson Carter, Tom Glavine and some movie guy from L.A. that is from Atlanta and they were trying to buy the Thrashers. They all reported that they weren't given any real chance to buy the team by the ASG and that they were using the exclusive clause concerning the arena as an excuse why.

And why is that? Because the ASG believes they can make more out of the arena for 41 dates from concerts or other acts instead of a NHL team. It doesn't matter if they own the hockey team or not. That is why they were so desperate to get the team out of Phillips. This whole crap about trying to sell to local groups and not finding any is exactly that: crap. There were local groups. They just didn't want NHL hockey in their arena any more.

Since the ASG has already been exposed as outright liars by trying to sell the Thrashers literally as soon as they bought them and lied to fans for years about trying to win a title while literally spending the league minimum salary there is absolutely nothing you can take at face value from them. Action speaks louder than words and those actions clearly show a money grubbing bunch of bastards that stabbed Atlanta sports fans in the back.

[niremetal]

So you actually believe the tired old rhetoric of pro teams claiming to lose millions upon millions...only to line up in a pack to buy major pro teams? It is an old trick for teams to try and list all their operating costs for a team and an arena on the sports team to try and get leverage with labor unions. The owners never truly open their books up so people can see the truth. NHL teams aren't really losing money. No one with hundreds of millions of dollars are going to intentionally buy into a business and actually expect to lose money.

As for the local groups, there are interviews with Anson Carter, Tom Glavine and some movie guy from L.A. that is from Atlanta and they were trying to buy the Thrashers. They all reported that they weren't given any real chance to buy the team by the ASG and that they were using the exclusive clause concerning the arena as an excuse why.

And why is that? Because the ASG believes they can make more out of the arena for 41 dates from concerts or other acts instead of a NHL team. It doesn't matter if they own the hockey team or not. That is why they were so desperate to get the team out of Phillips. This whole crap about trying to sell to local groups and not finding any is exactly that: crap. There were local groups. They just didn't want NHL hockey in their arena any more.

Since the ASG has already been exposed as outright liars by trying to sell the Thrashers literally as soon as they bought them and lied to fans for years about trying to win a title while literally spending the league minimum salary there is absolutely nothing you can take at face value from them. Action speaks louder than words and those actions clearly show a money grubbing bunch of bastards that stabbed Atlanta sports fans in the back.

Alrighty then.

[Beelzebob]

To win championships in the NBA you need great players plus a good owner/s. The second part of that equation is not in place for the Hawks. The only ability a fan has to fix that problem is to take their funding away to force a change. Look what happened when the Falcons were finally purchased by a good owner. The same could happen for the Hawks but instead we will see the ASG dismantle this team to stay under the luxury tax. I've been a Hawks fan for over 25 years and that won't change. What will change is that I won't keep giving money to the junkie in hopes that they buy food instead of drugs.

[Diesel]

To win championships in the NBA you need great players plus a good owner/s. The second part of that equation is not in place for the Hawks. The only ability a fan has to fix that problem is to take their funding away to force a change. Look what happened when the Falcons were finally purchased by a good owner. The same could happen for the Hawks but instead we will see the ASG dismantle this team to stay under the luxury tax. I've been a Hawks fan for over 25 years and that won't change. What will change is that I won't keep giving money to the junkie in hopes that they buy food instead of drugs.

I don't think the owners matter as much as you think. A good front office can overcome ownership. Clay Bennett is not everybody's favorite.

But Presti works very hard in spite of that.

[Beelzebob]

I don't think the owners matter as much as you think. A good front office can overcome ownership. Clay Bennett is not everybody's favorite.

But Presti works very hard in spite of that.

I view the front office as an extension of the owners. You can have the best GM in the world but without money and support from the owners it would be very difficult to succeed.

[drzachary]

And why is that? Because the ASG believes they can make more out of the arena for 41 dates from concerts or other acts instead of a NHL team. It doesn't matter if they own the hockey team or not. That is why they were so desperate to get the team out of Phillips. This whole crap about trying to sell to local groups and not finding any is exactly that: crap. There were local groups. They just didn't want NHL hockey in their arena any more.

Will the day come when the ASG thinks they can make more money with 41 MORE dates from concerts/events instead of an NBA team? I wouldn't be too surprised.

But hey, it's only about money. We should sit back and admire the "beauty" of the free market. f*** that. Run these clowns out of town, fast.