Great posts by Ihearthockey31 and Woodstakes. Yes indeed, financial chicanery is no doubt at play here by Bettman and the owners. But what else are you to expect from people like that ? Agreeing to this connection of salary & HRR was a major blunder on the part of the players in my opinion and now they’re paying for it. They would have been far better off by just keeping it simple, offering “X” amount of service for “X” amount of dollars. The HRR thing is like a “maze or trap” in which they can never have a clear picture of anything ! In fact, you could almost call it a “Ponzi” Scheme, with Bettman playing the part of Bernie Madoff. Personally, I have absolutely no sympathy for the high-end guys like Crosby, Ovechkin and company. What’s upsetting however, are the majority who fall somewhere in the middle or below. Just like in real “everyday” life, they’re the ones who end up getting royally screwed !

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blomfeld – Nov 12, 2012 at 10:52 PM

EUREKA !

Of course the owners will “never” be forthcoming with a complete and honest accounting of their revenues and costs ! From their perspective, that’s the “genius” behind this entire business of setting salary levels by a percentage of “apparent” HRR. The players will “never” be made privy to all of the inflated costs and hidden revenues on the owners books … never in a million years ! And therefore the players will never win this fight. Of course Fehr wants them to believe they can for his own selfish purposes. But the reality is that they can’t, while “hoping” they can makes about as much sense as someone hoping for a visit from the Tooth Fairy.

“Beyond the dissonance between the owners’ desire to pay less and their continued demonstrated ability to pay more, there are hard numbers. In 2003-04, the last season before the only labor-erased season in the history of major North American pro sports, NHL teams paid $1.332 billion in player salaries, according to USA Today’s salary database. In 2011-12, NHL teams paid $1.699 billion in player salaries. Adjusting for inflation, salaries rose just over $84 million over the last eight years, an average of $2.8 million per team.”

“While salaries are slightly higher than they were eight years ago, NHL revenues are not. In 2003-04, league revenues were $2.1 billion. In 2011-12, that figure reached $3.3 billion.”

source: http://aol.sportingnews.com/nhl/story/2012-08-23/nhl-labor-talks-gary-bettman-lockout-sept-15-cba-player-salaries-zach-parise

$1.699 Billion ’11-’12 (salaries) $3.3 Billion Revenue ’11-‘12
-$1.332 Billion ‘03’04 (salaries) – $2.1 Billion Revenue ’03-‘04
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= $367 Million difference in salaries = $1.2 Billion Difference in Revenue

So if you just take the hard numbers, no inflation that’s a difference of $1.2 billion in revenue increase from ’03-’04 to ’11-’12. Teams are paying out $367M or $12.23M per team more in contracts over the same period of time. So that’s $833M to the plus side, divided by the 30 teams that’s roughly $27.76M more per team… so if owners are so broke… where is all that money going??? It’s not going to the players, so who??

IDK apparently a lot of teams are WAY richer than we all thought and maybe if the elites think we should have 30 teams in the locales we do, well maybe they should figure out another way to share the revenue. Because, getting back 7% or even 15% more ISN’T going to save 15-18 teams it’s just going to make the rich teams richer. Yet, they are unwilling to adjust the way they are doing things; it’s ALL the player salaries that are the problem here. I don’t THINK SO!

Then you look a little deeper at more articles and you start seeing where people have broke down the revenue on what the players took and what the owners took and it sure looks like A LOT of mismanagement of funds on the owners parts. Sure some teams just don’t have the revenue coming in, but some of the others have plenty and somehow they’re saying they are broke… but the PLAYERs aren’t breaking them its the “other than hockey related costs…” so what exactly does that entail? That could mean anything… nepotism perhaps? Some owner putting his brother-inlaw in some position that pays him $500k a yr, because he doesn’t want to put him in some position with any of the companies he owns that actually made him a 1%er or the fact that they turned away money, just so the players wouldn’t get a share, EVEN if it would help them pay those “other than hockey related costs…”.

**Sorry so long.. had a lot to say.. just another FRUSTRATED FAN!**

The players aren’t asking for MORE money, they just want what was agreed to in their contract. The NHL’s arguement is that they don’t need to honor the contracts because of the condition that the total salaries were based on overall HRR. Certain teams are INTENTIONALLY lowering the amount of HRR that is available as a means of avoiding paying out full salaries.

The previous CBA stated that ‘fair market price’ had to be paid to ‘teams’ for TV rights. When 3rd party companies offer money for those rights and are turned down, ‘fair market value’ should represent the amount teams were offered by other companies for their rights. ‘Fair market value’ should include the significant amount of customers [as stated by the FCC] & higher prices received for subscriptions when they are directly attributed to the players.

The owners aren’t ‘poor’, they just reaarange their books to minimize the amount of money that is considered for HRR thus making it look like they’re ‘poor’.

The NHL also can’t make claims about how they’re expanding the sport when they’re still making deals that allow blacking-out playoff games from households in major market areas. Yet people continue to wonder why the sport has no ‘casual fans’. Casual fans don’t have access to watch local games i several major market areas. Why is the league allowed to do this when part of the money players receive is now being lost due to the loss of those casual fans? How do small market teams benefit via revenue sharing when large market teams are allowed to refuse households access to games?

Regardless of your feelings for the slick accounting being done, the FCC has passed numerous regulations in an attempt to specifically prevent teams from refusing to sell rights to competing companies & has gone so far as to specifically tell one team owner they MUST make such programming available, as part of a condition for a merger allowing them access to a major network’s programming. The refusal to sell such programming given the direct order is a violation of FCC’s specific directive. They’re breaking the law.

http://thegoaliestick.wordpress.com/randomlockoutthoughts/

Also, “contract honoured” is a subjective term. All NHL contracts are tied to the CBA, and if the players share of HRR is reduced the contract itself is reduced. Thats just how it works. So one way or another the contracts are going to be honoured.