Megaterio Llamas wrote: ↑Sun Dec 06, 2020 12:44 am
Micky wrote: ↑Sun Dec 06, 2020 12:35 am
Megaterio Llamas wrote: ↑Sun Dec 06, 2020 12:08 am
Just based on the tone from Donald Fehr and some of the comments I've seen floating around from certain players it's looking increasingly to me like there won't be a season. The players quotes I have read seem to imply a complete divorce from reality on their part. They can all sit for five years the way I'm feeling right now and in the event that the season is cancelled I expect the court of public opinion will judge them harshly.
If the NBA plays and Hockey players don't, they can kiss their US broadcasting contract good-bye. Sportsnet might say f**k you too.
We're all fighting away, trying to make things work. Entertainment and sports are no different, it all meshes together.
Hey, long established businesses here in my village are going belly up one after the next. The NHL can't stay afloat on tv revenue, they could be goners too.
This is really not a good look for the League, and suggests that the CBA was not negotiated in good faith. The league pushed hard for the CBA to be co-signed with the Return to Play deal, they made their deadline and had a great playoffs. Now, 3 months of COVID behaving exactly as predicted since at least April (big-ass second wave, vaccine near but not ready, still restrictions on gatherings), they're going to threaten the players with a flat-cap to try to change the terms of the barely-dry deal?
Apparently (can't recall where I read it, maybe Friedman?) the League is desperate to play this season and bring the bad NBC deal to an end. If the season is cancelled, the NBC deal rolls over another year.
So that means, in the period that the League is threatening a flat cap, there will be a new US TV deal and a new Franchise, which is juicing HRR by $650 million already plus another likely-sold out venue 41 nights a year.
By the bye, HRR in 2018/19 was $5.1 billion, that that expansion fee alone is a 13% boost in revenue. Factor in the US TV deal projected to rise by $150 million to $250 million, and if Seattle contributes leage average HRR ($164 million), that's basically an extra billion dollars in HRR, which is factored into the cap in year 2021/22.
I'm 100% with the players on this - stick to the deal (which Bettman imo is acknowledging is within their power), and let the chips fall where they may in the next 6 years of cap calculations.