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Saturday, September 18, 1999
Flames boss likes plan
He isn't issuing odds; hasn't seen the over/under yet.
But his Calgary Flames and the five other Canadian-based NHL teams believe a stake in the $170-million sports lottery dodge is their best bet for survival.
Look, Bremner and his buddies aren't out to win the lottery. Just around half of half of it. The half of that half NHL hockey generates in this country.
That'd top off at roughly $15 million per year, per team.
The NHL yesterday released its report on recommended avenues to assist struggling Canadian-based NHL teams in remaining financially and competitively viable, and landing a significant piece of the sports lottery betting pie is the linchpin to hanging on until 2004, when the league's collective bargaining agreement is up for renegotiation.
"This has nothing to do with cutting education, health care, old-age pensions or any other social program, which seemed to be the major complaint of Canadians," said Bremner.
"We're not after anyone's tax dollars. Just a portion of the lottery money that we help generate."
More problematic is the recommendation that franchises receive a break on property taxes, a burden that mercifully doesn't affect Alberta-based teams. The Leafs and, particularly, Habs are cash cows in the tax department for their municipal and provincial governments.
Now it's easier taking the puck off Jaromir Jagr than money off any level of government, of course, but Bremner has a blunt rebuttal: "How much money," he asked, "will they get if the teams leave?"
As the league pointed out in its seven-page proposal: The Professional Sports Policy Committee, commisioned by the Alberta government, reported in 1994 that the Oilers and Flames meant $178 million to the local and provincial economies.
With this proposal, the league is out to buy time, until the CBA expires in September 2004. To that end, the proposal pledges that current Canadian-based clubs would not relocate outside the country until then, setting the stage for a Domi-Probert style fight with the Players Association over the indefensible rise in salaries.
Surely, hockey fans in Calgary, Edmonton and Ottawa deserve that period of grace to try to salvage their franchises. Because once they leave, they ain't coming back.
And the logical venue is lottery money.
In 1996-97, $343,634,000 was bet on sporting events, $171,817,000 of that on hockey. So, $15 million per team, or $90 million for the six, quite frankly doesn't seem out of line. The lottery corporations are using the NHL product to draw bettors, and in any other sort of situation, to use an entity -- a person, a brand name, a likeness, a trademark, whatever -- in generating capital would automatically mean that entity requires compensation in return.
Why should this be any different?
"Did you know that the arts were subsidized $9.90 a ticket by lottery money, or that every time you went to Theatre Calgary, you were subsidized $5.97 from lottery money?" asked Bremner. "Now I like a good evening out at the theatre as much as anybody, but we hockey teams -- whose product generates roughly half of all the sports lottery betting in this country -- receive nothing, nada."
No, ballet dancers don't pull in $3 million a year to get up on their points. But they also don't help put 15,000 people in a building 82 times a year.
And this much is certain: If this gamble doesn't work, all bets are off on the Flames surviving in this market very much longer.
There's not a sucker ever been born willing to take a chance on odds that long.
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