With every blessed day that the Lockout drags on, your ol’ pal Wanye is pushed further from home in the vain attempt to forget about the NHL and the beloved Edmonton Oilers. Today his sobering musings come from San Francisco. Also he is speaking in the fourth person, which has to be some sort of Olympic Record.*
Its striking how the NHL and the Lockout have been completely invisible in the week we have been in the US so far. Now granted San Francisco isn’t an NHL City, nor is it really a hotbed of hockey fandom. But the National American media isn’t even registering the lockout as an issue any more.
We have been watching ESPN and their TSN copycat show "Sports Center" on the reggie-reg and any mention of the lockout is given the same amount of air time as the summary scores from the Portuguese Cricket League if at all. Same thing with USA Today and the New York Times – two leading newspapers with national reach.
As goes the American Media so goes the casual American Sportsfan. Not only is the average US sportsfan not on any particular side in the Lockout – they seem barely aware of the work stoppage if at all.
This is impossibly bad news.
WHY WANYE?
Americans – and in particular American Sports Fans – are the most entertainment saturated people in the history of time. They have a dizzying array of channels, sports, teams and talking heads all vying for their attention and thereby their hard earned dollars.
These same fans are the collective wallet that allows the NBA to pay something called a Andris Biedrins $62 million over six years. Their money paid the NFL to sign Kevin Kolb for six years for a mere $62.1 million and allows the MLB to basically lose it’s fiscal mind on a daily basis.
Really these fans pay for it all.
And if you want to keep the Shawn Horcoffs of the world rolling Bentley for years to come as is his God given right, these are the people you need to entertain. As much as it may pain us to realize it: Canadian fans are a fraction of the collective buying power of their American counterparts.
And the NHL had been making substantial inroads in recent years. Chicago, Pittsburgh, Boston and LA have all won Cups recently bringing a great many new fans into the fold. Heck even the craptacular Rangers have had some playoff runs in Gotham of late. This is all necessary for the NHL to get its paws on additional revenue it so desperately needs.
But with every passing day these new fans are finding things to do to entertain themselves. And it isn’t that difficult – there are a trillion teams and a gillion sports competing for their hard earned dollars. Black hearted sports leagues and teams that don’t even know or care what a Baby Nuge is and why he is so important to humanity.
Their well oiled business machinery is sweeping up hockey fans like those Aliens in War of the Worlds and blasting their dead carcasses all over the fields.** And rather than competing head-to-head during tough economic times the NHL and NHLPA are handing them over without a fight.
OH TOTALLY
Now don’t get us wrong. The hardcore American hockey fan is just as pissed as his/her hardcore Canadian counterpart. The average American sports fan that is a fan of a few teams in a few sports? Not so much. The machine that is the American Media – that can turn the UFC from underground human cockfighting into a substitute for Heavyweight Boxing in a matter of months?
They don’t even seem to notice anymore. That silence you hear? Its the sound of the vast, vast majority of the US not caring.
If this season is lost, a lot of the good work the NHL has done in emerging markets is going to be lost along with it. Can anything be more anti-climactic in a "what have you done for me lately" mecca like Los Angeles than the Kings raising their Cup Banner a year late? Please.
OH WE TOLD YOU SO ALRIGHT
Now once upon a time a certain dashing young hockey blogger made dire predictions in part of a 4 part article series called "The Good, the Bad, the Ugly and the Beastie Boys" about the potential economic strife that a prolonged recession would cause.
A bad economic scenario for the NHL would include a minor interruption in league activity that would force restructuring, a change in franchise ownership or some sort of bailout package to rescue a team unable to make payroll.
Think this is a crazy scenario? Look at the lengths the US government has had to go to bailout failed investment banks. These people have one function: make money—and they have failed monumentally. Would it be so crazy for NHL head office to put together a bailout package for the Nashville Predators if they couldn’t make payroll?
You have to wonder how many more proverbial rabbits Bettman can pull out of his hockey helmet (to keep NHL ownership stable) I mean, you can only stumble over so many Jeff Vinik’s in the world and convince them to risk their wealth on the shaky prospect of NHL ownership.
Bettman and Vinik met at this year’s Winter Classic and in the next few months, Bettman convinced Vinik– a hedge fund manager from Boston and a part owner of the Boston Red Sox – to buy the Tampa Bay Lightning. Now that Vinik is in control of the Lightning, he’s getting a nice glimpse of what a mess things are there. In fact, sources maintain that he has offered the CEO job to five people and they have all turned him down.
If the salary cap were lowered to, say, 50% of revenue and the subsidies from high-revenue teams to their low-revenue rivals were increased to $200 million from the current $150 million, which is essentially where the two sides seem to be headed, small-market team values would get a big boost (as was the case in the NBA when the New Orleans Hornets and Memphis Grizzles sold for $338 million and $330 million, respectively, after the league worked out a new labor pact last year). The league’s overall profitability would also increase.
But teams like the Carolina Hurricanes, Phoenix Coyotes, Tampa Bay Lightning, Anaheim Ducks and Columbus Blue Jackets would still have trouble making money unless they went at least two rounds in the playoffs.
Love it!
Inactivision is simply brilliant.
I really hate to see you beating your brains out in the hardest city on the planet to start a new internet venture when they’re showing up all over the city in those portable pop-up kiosks on street corners.
If you’re going to write fantastic stuff like this, it might as well be back here in Edmonton. You can hatch internet genius anywhere you have a computer and a relatively sober mind. All Silicon Valley has is great weather, cheap livin’, internet babes, cheap food, geniuses renting out houses and having all night boozeathons/coding sessions…
Yeah uhhh…nevermind.
Cheap living you say?! I have half a mind to take some pictures of the room I am renting INSIDE a garage here in SF that conveniently lacks a bathroom of any kind.
In fact I will do exactly that.
What? You mean where you live isn’t EXACTLY like the coding house in the movie The Social Network?
You DON’T have dinner every night with players who look just like Justin Timberlake?
What the h3ll man?
Well it’s certainly ghetto – JT hasn’t swung by though. Yet.
The positive news of course is that we’ll all be able to pitch in 20 Canadian Rubles to acquire the Nashville Predators in a few years. By then we can trade Weber and the rest of his front-loaded contract to Oilers Dynasty 2.0, while Pekka Rinne makes us sandwiches by the pool at Wanye Manor.
It’s all going according to plan.
I would also add renaming the team the “eat shit Calgarys” stocking them with talent and putting them in Airdrie. Tickets are only $1, the team loses money like crazy but no matter – they are designed only to mess with the Flames.
Stupid Flames. Even in the lockout they can still eat shit.
Edit: manually approving my comments with swear words during a lockout: STILL PRICELESS
Edit 2: Renne will have to find room poolside among the 43 children Natalie Portman and I are planning on having as soon as she answers some of my fan letters that are written in tears and mailed hourly.
The only solution that makes sense to me is to model the NHL to European soccer. Every city or town that wants a team can have one. Top division is the premier. Have a season long league-wide knock out cup, and add a playoffs for the top 4 teams.
I honestly think that there may be some sort of drastic action on the horizon. Your idea wouldn’t be the craziest thing I have heard of. Other crazy ideas could include starting to allow transfer fees in lieu of trades creating a sizeable revenue stream for second tier teams like in soccer. Or making DiPietro and Horcoff cover all losses for the next 20 years as penance for their gross overpayment
I honestly think that there may be some sort of drastic action on the horizon.
DE-CERT! DE-CERT! DE-CERT!
I have read about this but I don’t quite follow what it means. Disbanding the NHLPA would do what beyond voiding the current CBA? Who would have to be involved with a decision like that? Would the players vote?
Long answer:
http://flamesnation.ca/2012/11/22/random-thoughts-the-decertification-threat
short answer – players would have to agree to go that route, then the lock-out and collective aspects of the CBA would likely be considered illegal under aspects of anti-trust and it would be wild west time in the NHL.
It seems like the owners have accepted another lost season if it means that they can reset the economic order of the league and the players are responding not a penny more beyond their last offer.
The real problem with the league is that the distance between the “haves” and the “have nots” is too great and the owners want to address and cut their greatest expense, being player salaries, in one step and the players want the teams to look at other alternatives such as better revenue sharing, a luxury tax system, or a cap room trade system.
Wayne. I have rarely posted on this site, and have criticized you before. But with respect to Gregor, Brownlee, Lowetide, and excuse me for not naming every wonderful author on this site (including Cult of Hockey and the Sun authors in including terry jones).
This is the BEST piece of journalism I have ever read. Hockey related or not.
Well shucks Cameron. Thank you. If this is the kind of stuff you want to say in comments I say COMMENT MORE OLD BEAN!! lol
The Oilers may suck but Wanye and his band of merry bloggers write some funny stuff. Thanks.
I’m still waiting for that picture of your room, Wanye
“The machine that is the American Media – that can turn the UFC from underground human cockfighting into a substitute for Heavyweight Boxing in a matter of months?”
This reminds me of the Tebowification of American Sports Media:
http://deadspin.com/5948667/you-cant-talk-enough-tebow-espns-instructions-to-on+air-talent
http://deadspin.com/5929361/how-espn-ditched-journalism-and-followed-skip-bayless-to-the-bottom-a-tim-tebow-story
Awesome reads. Thanks for sharing them. If I ran the NHL I would advertise like crazy on ESPN and make Jordan Eberle the new Tim Tebow. They always follow the money – so hit them with it and build the sport!
Also if I ran the NHL I would fold the Flames. Immediately.
There will be NO deal until the NHL tables a ” final offer”, with no other options except writing off the season!
The NHLPA will then have to decide whether they would rather enter the regular worke force or make millions of dollars. I suspect their collective wisdom will see them peeling potatoes.
Wayne, I was in San Francisco a few years ago in late April, in a pub watching sports. This was during the playoffs and the San Jose Sharks were playing, but still no coverage on the local news or on ESPN.
Here’s a news flash: 98% of Americans just don’t care about hockey.
Holy Sh*t! there’s a Portuguese Cricket league?!?