Setting the Tone
To be clear, I love Hamilton and I think Hamilton deserves an NHL team. I also think Gary Bettman is delusional in his attempts to make hockey a viable sport in any state south of the Mason/Dixon line (with the exception of LA and Tampa Bay where ample Canadians live during winter). I am also a member of the Facebook Group called "Canada vs. Gary Bettman".

Now, having framed this post in an appropriate way, I want to explain why I think it is nearly impossible for Hamilton to get an NHL team owing largely to: 1) canabilism and 2) Gary Bettman's business plan. I think that if someone replaces Gary Bettman and takes a different approach, Hamilton could get a team, but it's not likely. It's more likely that pending the outcome of the "Battle of Waterloo", that another city would win out.

1) Canibalizing an NHL Franchise
As anybody who's created or managed a product knows that if you have a successful product in a particular market, you nurture it and, as it reaches the end of it's life cycle, you begin to plant the seeds of a replacement product. If you want to grow more revenue, you create a NEW product in a NEW market. What you don't do is create a new product in the same market that's going to eat into the market share of the existing successful product. That will generate no new revenue and will only cost more money. So what does that have to do with the NHL? Well, it's the same deal with NHL teams.

Toronto is an established, highly lucrative team that serves a great deal of Ontario. If you plant a new team in Hamilton, how much new revenue will it generate? It will mostly just take fans (and revenue) from Toronto and Buffalo. It will generate some new money from Ticket Sales as there will now be an additional 18k seats available for sale, but in every other way (TV share, advertising, merchandise, etc.), it will only take from existing products (i.e., Toronto and Buffalo). So does it make sense for the NHL to allow another team in an area that has an existing team if it isn't going to generate all that much more revenue? Probably not.

2) Gary Bettman's Delusions
Gary Bettman gets point #1) and that's why he wants new teams in new markets. The problem is more his choice of which markets. He thinks he can expand hockey's appeal, viability and credibility as a sport by getting teams in southern states. He's delusional. Hockey will never appeal to people in those states and, even where it does draw some folks to the games, it will never earn a decent ticket price, nor a decent share of TV ratings in those markets. Why? Because it will always come in fourth place to the sports that overlap in season: Baseball, Football, and Basketball. People will always pick hockey last in those markets when given a choice.

Do you really think that Kansas City Chiefs fans will give up end of season and possibly playoff tickets or TV games to attend or watch a hockey game? Do you really think they'd give up season openers or even training camp games for the Kansas City Royals in exchange for hockey game - even a playoff hockey game? And they'd probably rather watch ANY city's basketball team play basketball than watch a Kansas City hockey game on TV! Gary's dream of successful southern team is ridiculous. It will NEVER happen except in cities like LA (lots of Canadians living there) and Tampa Bay (lots of snowbirds there).

Gary would be better off putting more teams in Northern cities that could/would support them. Even though some of those markets are smaller, they'd be willing to pay more to see games and they'd have a higher TV ratings share. So ... even if Gary wants to keep it American, he should be planting teams in northern states. He should also consider Canadian Cities while he's at it.

3) Replacement Product -- The Battle of Waterloo
Back to Hamilton for a minute. The only chance Hamilton would have of getting a new team would be if people finally recognized that Buffalo, even despite it's recent winningness, is a dying franchise that needs to be replaced. They could certainly put that team in Hamilton. Hamilton itself has a dying economy (we've lost 290k jobs in manufacturing in the last three years in Ontario and Hamilton is a manufacturing kinda town), but it sits in a prime location. It would draw Buffalo fans, St. Catherines fans, Hamilton Fans, Waterloo fans, Guelph fans, Mississauga fans, Burlinggton fans, Oakfille fans, and even Toronto fans. Of course, this doesn't cure the canabilism of the Toronto product, but it does provide a replacement product for Buffalo.

Another alternative would be a Waterloo team. Something Jim Balsillie might well be considering. He purchased a parcel of land in Cambridge that is suspiciously large enough to host an arena. It also would be outside Toronto's competitive zone and would draw new fans from South Western Ontario that couldn't make the drive to the TO area ... places like London, Sarnia, etc. It would also draw from the same places a Hamilton team would ... Guelph, Burlington etc. So that might be an option.

Unfortunately, ol' Jim Balsillie has really cheesed off Gary Bettman, who doesn't want anymore Canadian teams anyway, and he hasn't won any friends among the NHL owners. So, if he were interested in putting a team there, he's sort of created the "Battle of Waterloo". It's not one that will be easily resolved in the near future.

Thus, Ontario hockey fans, it is unlikely that we'll get a team in Ontario anytime soon and even more unlikely that it will be in Hamilton. But we can all still dream, can't we!!

Posted by: Tom


Oshawa Generals

I went with the guys from work to see the Oshawa Generals game tonight. It was exciting for two reasons: first, it was cool to see such a revered hockey team - the very team that started such greats as Bobby Orr! Second, it was the first live hockey game for one of the guys from work. He's from India and while he's a huge sports fan and follows the Leafs, he had never been to see a live hockey game.

The Generals played the Barrie Colts. Over all, I think the game was pretty entertaining despite the fact that the Generals lost to Barrie, 7-5. Once they warmed up, there was lots of great action, a few scraps and tons of scoring. We had kick ass seats at ice level in the new General Motors Centre and got to see all the action up close.

On the downside, the Generals were grossly out-shot and the shots that they did manage to take were, for the most part, quite feeble. Much worse than the shot ratio, though, was the referee. What an abomination! Quite apart from what seemed like a bias against the Generals, his calls were terrible in their own right. He called way too many penalties, he called things that he should have let go and he missed blatant, dangerous infractions that should have been called. It was, without a doubt, one of the worst called games that I have ever seen.

Again, despite the anxiety induced by the lack of shots from the Generals and the crap ref, the game was very fun! The gang seemed to have a great time and I thought the game was fantastic - I forgot how fun it is to go to a live game. Good show, Generals!