Stadiums & Arenas of Canada, Part 3

[ericmacm]

Of all the potential NHL expansion/relocation options brought up, Quebec City and Houston are the strongest. Both already have arenas, both have decent prospective fanbases (Quebec's is already prominent, and Houston is sure to develop one given its size as a city), and both have prospective ownership groups. Both have also successfully hosted professional hockey before with adequate fan support.

As for my opinion on the other locations brought up in the past few posts:

Milwaukee - Has the population and would certainly garner hockey interest at a state level and UP Michigan, but is being pressured by Chicago, and the Bucks clearly did not build Fiserv with hockey in mind, as their AHL team does not play there, so there is no venue available.

Portland - Also has the population, has a good venue that accommodates hockey, and is free from other market pressures, but lacks popularity. They currently have a WHL team, but the game is not popular in that area and they would need to continue growing the demand for it.

San Diego - Has the population and is looking at building a decent-sized modern arena. They do currently have an AHL team that draws well, so the hockey demand might be there. It's a very non-traditional market, but that hasn't stopped Gary Bettman before. The only major issue I see here is having another California team. Between the Ducks, Kings, and Sharks (as well as the Golden Knights being nearby as well), it's hard to tell if an additional team would work in the area.

Salt Lake City - Very unlikely candidate. It's a beautiful area and big place for winter sports, but is a smaller region and does not have an NHL venue. Vivint (home of the Jazz) is big enough, but it hasn't hosted any hockey in over 20 years. There are also 3 other teams in the interior west (Avalanche, Coyotes, and Golden Knights) so it would be hard for a team to carve out a unique market until the region gets much larger.

Kansas City - Very unlikely candidate. Has a good venue and that's about it. It hosted professional hockey before, but lost the Scouts after 2 seasons of poor attendance. It's a smaller city and lacks the popularity. The Missouri hockey market is most likely fully tapped out already by the Blues anyway.

Also, the NFL will never come to Canada. The NFL thrives off of public funding, and the appetite for that is harder to find in Canada, especially in Toronto or Montreal, the two markets that keep getting brought up for expansion. A large, 70,000 seat stadium, built to the standards that NFL teams are expecting these days would cost multiple billions of $CAD. It would be difficult to find a private group willing to invest that much all at once on a gamble like an NFL team, especially after the Bills Toronto Series showed that Toronto may not even be viable.

[Djeffery]

Originally Posted by ericmacm

Milwaukee - Has the population and would certainly garner hockey interest at a state level and UP Michigan, but is being pressured by Chicago, and the Bucks clearly did not build Fiserv with hockey in mind, as their AHL team does not play there, so there is no venue available.

I did see in my earlier reading about Fiserve that the AHL Admirals are about halfway through a 10 year lease at the Panther Arena, which is a a block south of Fiserve (for a short time while Fiserve was newly open and prior to Bradley being demolished, they had 3 large arenas on 3 consecutive blocks downtown, with Bradley being in the middle). That arena seats just shy of 13,000 for hockey, so probably easily serves the Admirals needs. No idea if Fiserve will be tryin to lure the Admirals there when their lease is up. Fiserve is hockey capable, was supposed to be starting an annual 4 team holiday college hockey tournament this year, and plans to bid to host the Frozen Four in the future. As I said, whether their seating bowl is compatible for a full house for NHL is something I didn't see in the few articles I read.

[Prairiedawg]

Originally Posted by ericmacm

Portland - Also has the population, has a good venue that accommodates hockey, and is free from other market pressures, but lacks popularity. They currently have a WHL team, but the game is not popular in that area and they would need to continue growing the demand for it.

San Diego - Has the population and is looking at building a decent-sized modern arena. They do currently have an AHL team that draws well, so the hockey demand might be there. It's a very non-traditional market, but that hasn't stopped Gary Bettman before. The only major issue I see here is having another California team. Between the Ducks, Kings, and Sharks (as well as the Golden Knights being nearby as well), it's hard to tell if an additional team would work in the area.

I wonder what level of fan attendance for each respective city's hockey team would indicate NHL prospective popularity.

The Portland Winterhawks have been in Oregon since 1976 and average 6000 to their games. San Diego Gulls average 7500 but franchise has been there only since 2015.

https://whl.ca/article/new-year-new-...nd-winterhawks

https://www.hockeydb.com/nhl-attenda....php?tmi=11619

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by blueandgoldguy

Toronto will almost certainly never have an NFL team. For starters an expansion team will likely be $3 billion US (average valuation for an NFL team) to compensate for splitting the the TV contracts between 33 teams vs 32. Second, a new domed stadium seating 65- 70,000 would likely cost $2 billion CDN. There would likely be minimal public money allocated from the province and city for such a project (maybe discounted public land, certain tax benefits that amount to tens of millions at most).

PSLs play an important role in funding the ownership's portion of stadium financing. The pool of wealthy people in Toronto who happen to have a passion for football AND are willing to spend tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars on those PSLs would not be sufficient to reach an ideal goal of $500 - $700 million to assist in financing the stadium.

Good luck finding private investors willing to spend $6 billion to bring an NFL franchise to Toronto. It's not going to happen.

NFL in Toronto is a build-it-and-they-will-come type of thing. If Toronto had hosted say the Olympics in the past 10-20 years and now had a fairly modern 70,000-seat stadium (paid for by governments!), it would likely already have an NFL team by now.

The Bills in Toronto series is a black mark against the city (and I laughed just like you all did) that I am sure the NFL won't soon forget, but I don't think it's a good indication of true NFL potential in the city.

There are more than enough people in the GTA, Southern Ontario and even all the way out to places like Ottawa, North Bay, Sudbury and even some stragglers in Montreal, who love the NFL and would help make it a gate success in Toronto.

But the double whammy of paying for a stadium and paying for a franchise is just too much I agree.

If the stadium were already there, though, I do not think the franchise cost would be too big a hurdle at all.

[Djeffery]

Originally Posted by Acajack

NFL in Toronto is a build-it-and-they-will-come type of thing. If Toronto had hosted say the Olympics in the past 10-20 years and now had a fairly modern 70,000-seat stadium (paid for by governments!), it would likely already have an NFL team by now.

I don't even think it's a "build it and they will come" thing. I think it's more that the NFL hasn't expressly told Toronto they could even have a team. I don't think there is any problem at all getting an ownership group together to buy a team and build a stadium if the league let those potential owners know they would be approved. And I do think there is the nucleus of an ownership group in place that is in some semi-regular contact with the league.

[BlackDog204]

Originally Posted by Acajack

The Bills in Toronto series is a black mark against the city (and I laughed just like you all did) that I am sure the NFL won't soon forget, but I don't think it's a good indication of true NFL potential in the city.

The Bills in Toronto is definitely NOT a black mark against Toronto. Aside from the New Orleans Hornets playing in Oklahoma City, has their ever been a city that supported a team that was not ever theirs?

The Winnipeg Jets only averaged 11,400 people in their lame duck 1995-96 season, when fans knew they were moving to Arizona.

The Houston Oilers moved one year earlier than expected due to the owner announcing the club would relocate to Nashville in two years. They barely drew 20,000 people. The league then tried Memphis for a season, and over half the fans were rooting for the opponents, and it never came close to sellouts.

The Carolina Hurricanes drew notoriously had crowds for the two years they were playing in Greensboro, a completely different metro area than Raleigh, NC.

[esquire]

I'm going to put in an endorsement for Milwaukee as a possible expansion destination. I don't know what the situation is regarding Chicago's possible stranglehold on the area and whether or not the Blackhawks can keep the NHL out of the region the same way the Leafs keep the NHL out of Hamilton, but leaving that aside...

Milwaukee is a big city in its own right and what's important to consider is that it is basically 100km from another substantial city (Madison), and less than 100km from the northern Chicago suburbs. Add to that the fact that Wisconsin is one of the few places in the US where hockey has real cultural traction, and it could be a winner. I mean, when these are the kinds of crowds you get for college hockey, there has to be pretty strong interest in the game.

[wave46]

I think the larger question for many leagues is: Is it better to have fewer teams that individually perform better or more teams but many that struggle?

I can't see the NHL going past 32 teams simply because if they exhaust the number of cities chomping at the bit for a new franchise, they're up shit creek if they have to relocate a team in a hurry.

The NFL's best card in the days of yore was to have Los Angeles as a potential market to relocate to. How many teams shook that sweet government money tree because they'd threaten to pull up stakes and relocate to LA?

I suspect Major League Baseball is on the wrong side of the equation - hence the contraction discussions of the early 2000s.

The boom in pro sports is rapidly petering out. It's one thing to be the mid-80s NHL with almost no presence in the southern US but another to be 2020s NHL with few potential candidates left.

The league in the best position is probably the NBA, simply because they can operate in venues of smaller cost and capacity. That allows smaller markets to actually have a reasonable chance of success - Oklahoma City comes to mind. The demographic change also favours the NBA too - my distinct impression is that the NBA's fans are more diverse than any of the other big leagues.

[esquire]

One thing to consider about leagues adding more teams - eventually you get to a point where many teams will have fans living their entire lives without seeing their club win a championship. That must surely have some impact on the viability of more marginal teams.

[ericmacm]

Originally Posted by Prairiedawg

I wonder what level of fan attendance for each respective city's hockey team would indicate NHL prospective popularity.

The Portland Winterhawks have been in Oregon since 1976 and average 6000 to their games. San Diego Gulls average 7500 but franchise has been there only since 2015.

https://whl.ca/article/new-year-new-...nd-winterhawks

https://www.hockeydb.com/nhl-attenda....php?tmi=11619

Originally Posted by Prairiedawg

I wonder what level of fan attendance for each respective city's hockey team would indicate NHL prospective popularity.

The Portland Winterhawks have been in Oregon since 1976 and average 6000 to their games. San Diego Gulls average 7500 but franchise has been there only since 2015.

https://whl.ca/article/new-year-new-...nd-winterhawks

https://www.hockeydb.com/nhl-attenda....php?tmi=11619

San Diego has had numerous incarnations of hockey teams since 1966. The original WHL Gulls were in the area from 1966 to 1974, when they were replaced by the WHA Mariners. It started well, but started falling apart with California's general loss of interest in hockey at the time, and eventually folded in 1977. The Mariners name continued on for another couple of years in a low-minor team, and hockey didn't return until 1990 with the IHL Gulls, which were then replaced in 1995 by the WCHL/ECHL Gulls Until 2006. The modern AHL Gulls are a continuation of a long legacy. The team keeps coming back so it certainly indicates that there is some degree of a hockey following there. There is also something to be said about the current void in the professional sports market in San Diego, since the only ones in town are the Padres at the moment, so it's possible that an NHL team could be a hit there, despite it being a non-traditional market. The big question, though, is determining if the California market is too dense already.

As for Portland, the WHL Winterhawks have been there since 1976, so it's been much more stable than the situation in San Diego. However, it's been the only team in the modern era. The Portland Rosebuds did exist in the early 20th century, and even competed for the Stanley Cup in 1916, but that was a different time. I initially suspected Portland may have some college-level hockey to make up for the lack of professional presence, but it surprisingly does not. It just really seems that the game is not present there beyond the major junior level, which is what makes me question its NHL viability. Portland is a decent sports market, with the Blazers and Timbers posting fantastic numbers, but I see them more interested in going after an MLB team than an NHL team anytime soon, which is exactly what is happening now.

[thurmas]

Originally Posted by esquire

I'm going to put in an endorsement for Milwaukee as a possible expansion destination. I don't know what the situation is regarding Chicago's possible stranglehold on the area and whether or not the Blackhawks can keep the NHL out of the region the same way the Leafs keep the NHL out of Hamilton, but leaving that aside...

Milwaukee is a big city in its own right and what's important to consider is that it is basically 100km from another substantial city (Madison), and less than 100km from the northern Chicago suburbs. Add to that the fact that Wisconsin is one of the few places in the US where hockey has real cultural traction, and it could be a winner. I mean, when these are the kinds of crowds you get for college hockey, there has to be pretty strong interest in the game.

Exactly this is why I never understood the sunbelt strategy while there were several pockets in the U.S. which had long traditions of popular AHL, college and junior hockey that the NHL never looked more closely at or just recently started getting into. Seattle, Milwaukee, Portland, Salt Lake City heck even Cincinnati and Cleveland would have made more sense getting into in the 90's and had better natural rivalries than Arizona, Carolina and Miami.

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by BlackDog204

The Bills in Toronto is definitely NOT a black mark against Toronto. .

Huge missed opportunity, then?

[Berklon]

People keep forgetting that Buffalo's NBA team played 10 games in Toronto in the 70s' to a half-empty Maple Leaf Gardens. Yet we all know how that worked out for Toronto getting an NBA team and how successful they are now. The Bills in Toronto meant very little - especially when you consider a fuck-ton of people in Southern Ontario drive to Lions and Bills games for a fraction of the price.

It's all a moot point anyway, there's no stadium or ownership group anyway.

And there's more to plopping an NHL team in Milwaukee than just population. Where's the corporate support? Without that, it's very hard for a team to stay above water.

[esquire]

Originally Posted by Berklon

And there's more to plopping an NHL team in Milwaukee than just population. Where's the corporate support? Without that, it's very hard for a team to stay above water.

Quick googling tells me that Milwaukee metro has a GDP of $131.2 billion (CAD)… for context, metro Vancouver is at $135.6 billion.

I doubt corporate support would be a major issue for the NHL in Milwaukee.

[isaidso]

Originally Posted by blueandgoldguy

Milwaukee is too small (1.6 million metro) and population growth has been at a trickle for a long period of time. They would not be able to adequately support 4 pro teams - I count the packers as they are only a couple hours driving distance from Milwaukee and thousands of season ticket holders are from the area. Hockey is a no go there.

From a corporate POV I'd have to agree. The NHL is a business and a dearth of corporate backing is a deal breaker. It's why the NHL is in Phoenix but not in Quebec City. On the surface a metro of 1.6 million may seem too small to support 4 pro teams but the culture in that part of the US is extremely sports oriented. People in Wisconsin do travel for sports so the market is really 5.8 million. I doubt they'd have a problem with attendance.

Canadians massively under-estimate how deeply ingrained sports are in the culture of these places. This below isn't even professional sports but at a university with only 50% more students than the University of Manitoba. Camp Randall dwarfs anything in Canada. It seats 80,321 and sometimes sells out before the season even starts. Can you imagine a scene like that at the University of Toronto? It won't happen in our lifetime because Torontonians just don't care as much as they do about sports or football. Nothing like it exists in Canada with the possible exception of pro football in Saskatchewan.

Madison, Wisconsin

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[JHikka]

Originally Posted by BlackDog204

The Winnipeg Jets only averaged 11,400 people in their lame duck 1995-96 season, when fans knew they were moving to Arizona.

To say nothing of the dismal crowds the Expos garnered in their final years.

Originally Posted by esquire

One thing to consider about leagues adding more teams - eventually you get to a point where many teams will have fans living their entire lives without seeing their club win a championship.

This hasn't really prevented teams like Toronto, Buffalo, Vancouver, and previously the Rangers and Blackhawks from having good fanbases despite not winning championships. The Cubs are another example. There's a fine balance between consumer (fan) expectation and tolerance. Put out a decent product and people will usually flock regardless. Be somewhat competitive and people will still come out.

Originally Posted by thurmas

Exactly this is why I never understood the sunbelt strategy while there were several pockets in the U.S. which had long traditions of popular AHL, college and junior hockey that the NHL never looked more closely at or just recently started getting into.

Because many of those markets were either within or overlapped with current NHL markets, or were failed NHL markets in the past. Milwaukee is too close to Chicago, as one obvious example. I don't doubt a team in Milwaukee would do exceptionally well but I can't imagine the Blackhawks being tremendously on-board. Places like Hershey, Rochester, etc. simply aren't going to get NHL teams any time soon, and going directly up against college teams isn't overly wise (as numerous gridiron leagues have tried in the south).

Originally Posted by isaidso

Can you imagine a scene like that at the University of Toronto? It won't happen in our lifetime because Torontonians just don't care as much as they do about sports or football.

Perhaps this isn't a Toronto issue and moreso an issue of university sport being nonexistent north of the border.

[esquire]

Originally Posted by JHikka

This hasn't really prevented teams like Toronto, Buffalo, Vancouver, and previously the Rangers and Blackhawks from having good fanbases despite not winning championships. The Cubs are another example. There's a fine balance between consumer (fan) expectation and tolerance. Put out a decent product and people will usually flock regardless. Be somewhat competitive and people will still come out.

I thought of the Cubs when I wrote my earlier comment... for better or for worse, the Cubs sort of adopted that lovable loser identity. It was sort of their calling card, and it worked in a market with deep-seated love for baseball like Chicago.

But would it work in a more marginal situation, like, say, a NHL team in some random 40th market like Sacramento or Austin that gets off to a lousy start? I get that hope springs eternal for sports fans, but at a certain point you have to realize when the numbers don't line up for you.

[blueandgoldguy]

Originally Posted by Berklon

People keep forgetting that Buffalo's NBA team played 10 games in Toronto in the 70s' to a half-empty Maple Leaf Gardens. Yet we all know how that worked out for Toronto getting an NBA team and how successful they are now. The Bills in Toronto meant very little - especially when you consider a fuck-ton of people in Southern Ontario drive to Lions and Bills games for a fraction of the price.

It's all a moot point anyway, there's no stadium or ownership group anyway.

And there's more to plopping an NHL team in Milwaukee than just population. Where's the corporate support? Without that, it's very hard for a team to stay above water.

In the mid-70s, many NBA teams drew 5 - 7,000 people per game and the average attendance was 10,000 or so.

http://www.apbr.org/attendance.html

NBA attendance in Toronto for those exhibition games was typical of many markets at the time and would have no bearing on Toronto's chances at acquiring an expansion franchise 2 decades later.

Contrast this to the poor attendance for the Bills in Toronto series, with reportedly tens of thousands of seats given away for free despite hugely discounted prices after the first game or two. Most NFL teams at the time, have sellouts or near-sellouts in stadiums that seat close to 70,000.

I would also point out that Buffalo has the lowest or next-to-lowest ticket prices in the league so that should not have been a realistic expectation for ticket prices in Toronto. More typical (league average prices) can be viewed in places like Baltimore and Minnesota where a face value ticket between the goal lines in the first deck are valued at $250 US and up. Club seats are $300 - $500 US. That was the mark set for the Toronto market and they failed to generate interest.

Meanwhile in London, with several less than desirable matchups, sellout or near-sellout crowds of over 80,000 attended games at typical NFL prices. This is London, often billed as the second greatest city in the world, with more entertainment options per capita, than any other city on earth, other than New York...a city with no history of American football...and they still pulled in impressive numbers for these games.

London (and England)would be a slam dunk for the NFL, a brand new market of 60 million people, with the potential to pull in tens of millions more viewers from neighbouring countries. An NFL London team would likely be a top-10 revenue generator for the NFL and would almost certainly provide hundreds of millions in additional tv money and sponsorships.

Contrast that to Canada - Bell Media and Rogers already pay the NFL to broadcast games on their networks (Sportsnet, TSN, CTV) with some impressive ratings for both the regular season and the playoffs. Adding a team in Toronto will not move the needle much with regards to additional tv money. They have more or less captured the market. Given the dollar and the lack of passion among the majority of the wealthy set, a Toronto team would likely be a mid to lower-mid level revenue team.

London, would of course be incredibly difficult to work given the time zone difference - games would have to always be played in the evenings to be viewed in the afternoons in the US. I'm sure the majority of American players would rather not play there either, given the distance from family and friends and different culture. However, the monetary benefits to the NFL would be far greater than a team in Toronto.

Anyways, as you said, it is a moot point. There is almost certainly no ownership group that would be willing to spend approx. $6 billion Canadian to purchase an expansion team and build a stadium. There certainly isn't any hope for partial public funding of an Olympic Stadium (with conversion to an NFL Stadium afterwards) in Toronto in the near to medium term either given the next 3 Olympics have already been secured.

[JHikka]

Originally Posted by esquire

But would it work in a more marginal situation, like, say, a NHL team in some random 40th market like Sacramento or Austin that gets off to a lousy start?

Columbus seems to be doing ok given the complete lack of any success whatsoever for that franchise. I've previously pointed out how Arizona has had a similar lack of success which has stunted their growth, and when they did have some success it was during a tumultuous time for their ownership group. Florida's in that group, too. Minnesota's probably there, too.

The thing about franchise sports, as we all know, is that they perpetuate parity and cylical teambuilding every 5-10 years. They're rewarded for being bad. Teams build, they have a competitive window for 3-6 years, and then they decline, rebuild, and start over again. Most teams follow this pattern with some exceptions. It's expected that most teams have a chance to win a championship at some point and most do. 13 different NHL teams have won a Stanley Cup in the past 25 years, and 11 additional teams made a Final without winning in that same time frame (and a lot of the overlapping of winners was between 1995 and 2003, prior to the salary cap being introduced).

The more teams you add obviously makes winning overall less likely but at the same time....the more teams you add the more potential there is for wild-card, play-in, and playoff games.

[blueandgoldguy]

A Milwaukee NHL team would likely be a perennial bottom-5 revenue generator for the NHL even with a reasonably strong hockey culture. With 4 pro teams (counting Green Bay), cannibalization of corporate dollars and discretionary income would be further exacerbated. Remember this is market of 1.6 million in the metro area. The smallest market with teams in the big-4 is Denver which is nearly double the size at 3 million.

While the state does have over 5 million, you cannot have depend on the majority of those people to attend weekday games - over 55% of NHL games. I doubt people in the northern suburbs of Chicago would attend in any significant numbers either. That is Blackhawks' country.