Sports franchises are no small deals. The cash flow factor can be sometimes humongous. Players are paid high, the managers have huge salaries and the personnel component is usually complex and the budget is always big. It is commonly perceived that the cost and expense structure of a game team pays off.
While it really depends on the magnitude of attraction ferreted out of audience and viewers’ interests, sports entities normally provoke an otherwise slumbering population, excite fans and polarize kibitzers into becoming wild cheerers.Adjunct or complementary to those dynamics, companies selling consumer products oftentimes join the fray and ride the bandwagon for vested interests. Rubber shoes, skating paraphernalia, sports shirts, energy drinks, muscle pain relievers will be then all over in advertising billboards, television clips, radio airtime slots and in the web and the internet. All other stuff will go with the snowball. Celebrities are hired for endorsements, promotional offers proliferate, the economy gets more vibrant and alive, and the whole atmosphere connotes one big merry-making.In an economic good time, things like sports franchises are not hot topics for worrisome issues.
It will be talked about as a source of enthusiasm, fun and pure leisurely chit-chats. People will not deal so much in lengthy conversations about who purchased which. Neither will it be too interesting to know how much the package is costing. In old traditional settings, sports franchises used to be owned by private businesses, the big ones most of the time. There are a lot of reasons for these acquisitions.
A popular and widely known team will also make its owner more popular, better known and more talked about. For instance, if a company belongs to the beverage industry and owns a popular team franchise, the lead player almost always endorses its brands and the recall factor comes into play and the buying public gets engaged. At the end of the line, franchises come and go. The team may be the star of today, it can be an obsolete figure by next week. As the luster fades, so does the willingness to maintain the team or the franchise on the part of the owners. It is just like in the movies.
No film production company will harbor stars who no longer twinkle or shine. Every actor or actress has his or her time. Every franchise or team has its time. The type of sports which gets into the franchising rampage depends generally on culture traits and geographical notions. We may thus say basketball in this state or province, football here, baseball there, rugby here, crickets there, and whatever.
In the particular case of Canada, it is hockey. Discovered about a century ago allegedly to keep the body warm and avoid the pesky flies, hockey is an interesting sport.It encourages camaraderie and clean skills contests because it is a team-based game and a challenge to physical prowess. It used to be a seasonal game because of the ice denominator. Owing to indoor ice generated by new technologies, it is now a year-round activity.
As in other sports and territories, hockey franchises are owned by private persons or businesses. However, governments, both local and national, can have a hand in the operations of these franchises. A government unit or one of its owned and controlled corporations can buy shares in a franchise if this is allowed in the respective corporate charters.Tax holidays and exemptions for some justifications which are claimed to be valid are also forms of government interference or assistance.
At times, massive infrastructure construction is considered to keep alive the sport and the general passion and zeal attached to it. Whatever support coming from the government for the sport is sometimes understandable. There are instances though that these official moves become items of heated debate. In the process, sports industry folks, businessmen and government figures get embroiled in the calisthenics which may yet evolve into a fiasco.In the case of the city of Winnipeg, there was a landmark moment when the squabbles were going into undesirable proportions even to the extent of incurring dimensions in physical violence and small pocket threats to democracy.
One prominent personality who got involved in the bickering was writer Jim Silver. It was then an era of crisis for hockey. The Winnipeg Jets, a popular team, was in the verge of getting folded or liquidated. There were efforts to resuscitate the sport franchise via massive government assistance. Some favored the idea, some did not.
A group called the Thin Ice was against the initiative of using taxpayers’ money to insure the survival of the team. Jim Silver was one of the leaders of Thin Ice. The emotional temperature went so high that intruders barged into Jim Silver’s office. He was likewise receiving all kinds of threats. The majority of the people of Winnipeg did not want to lose the Jets. They would not allow the probability of the team being sold out to their American neighbors like what happened to the Canadian WHL franchises of Winnipeg and Edmonton which were relocated out somewhere.
The mass outcry was an embodiment of collective pride, sense of identity and a determined refusal to accept defeat or loss. Those who were against the thinking of the majority argued that the efforts to revive represent a losing proposition and will further aggravate the already miserable circumstances of Winnipeg. This contra group emphasized the fact that Winnipeg, once one of the fastest growing cities of Canada, had reduced into one of the poorest. The media played an important role in the imbroglio.It tried to picture out the sentiments of the people in sensationalized and magnified views in order to polarize and catalyze. Irresponsibly though, the press negligently failed to disclose the information about the huge costs of maintaining the Jets to the detriment of the city government and, of course, the taxpayers.
The media-men were remiss in their responsibility of giving a true account and assessment of the real situation. Most of the people in the government gave some rationale in keeping the Jets alive.One of the intended proposals was the use of public money to establish a new arena for the Jets. They claimed that if the city continued to support the team and it went on in the games business, the economy would be stimulated, taxes would come in, cash would circulate. These folks thus believed that in the final analysis, the people and the government would benefit from the team’s survival. On another note, there were so many differing views on the general topic of hockey and on variant but similar fundamentals.
For instance, it was said by a certain sector that the Canadian NHL franchise owners had gone out of bounds, forgetting common sense in the process with their cries of penury and seeking of relief for tax concessions from the government. This side criticized the media for pushing government officials to formulate policies founded on civic pride and wrong economic reasoning. It was further argued that franchise owners, as well as other businesses for that matter, needed fiscal reforms and not risky industry-tailored plans and programs which were believed to be not the solution but to be additional burdens.To cite comparisons, it was further debated that bailouts to rescue the airline industry, salvaging the failed Nova Scotia coal mining ventures and the fledgling British Columbia aluminum factories did not produce positive results. One other side claimed that the people of Canada had spoken unequivocally on the issue in nationwide polls and other communication forms that there was no real general desire to let government invest huge funds to help the skating millionaires and their rich employers.Criticisms were therefore high against the determination of men in government to ignore the concerns over wrong financial schemes under advocacies advanced by those in favor of the intended bail-out.
The critics stressed that these sort of dole-outs would not help the situation but would rather hinder the economic growth of an enterprise, particularly that of a sports franchise. Along the way, arguments, both pros and cons, abounded. One stated that if hockey teams folded or moved out, taxes would be lost supposedly to be generated and which would otherwise go to government coffers.A contra-bailout opinion said that money shelled out by fans for hockey tickets is a disposable income and that if they did not spend it for the game, it would anyway be used for some other leisure stuff. In short, it would still redound to the benefit of the government. It would seem to mean therefore that with or without hockey, the money is still there for the city.
The proponent further argued that dollars spent by companies on advertising and ticket purchases and shows sponsorships were a discretionary option and, hence, the decision to advertise and to do allied acts would continue in order to market the products of these companies.Again, it was driving the point that with or without hockey, the advertising industry would remain unaffected. Upon the other hand, a pro-bailout loyalist opined that the loss of a hockey team would have significant adverse repercussions including stalled economic development and investment opportunities for the city or cities so affected. It is important to note at this juncture that a study of hockey statistics claimed that economic comparisons between territories with hockey franchises or teams and those without presented very negligible percentages.From a macro point of view, bailout opponents claimed that professional sports teams are not a major factor in the decision-making process of corporate investors.
The perception was advanced that companies would rather consider such directly connected dynamics as availability of workers, location of suppliers, population of the targeted consumers or clients and levels of financial capacities and ways of living. The equilibrium of arguments and discussion could not point who was right and who was wrong. In a quandary like that, references might better be made to realities.Cities of global prominence such as Rome, Tokyo and Paris did not have franchised teams. If these metropolitans survived and prospered in right directions without idolized games and players, there would be no reasons to make the teams mandatory components of cities in Canada. One sarcastic note dictated that the pro-bailout proponent had better spent his own money.
Montreal, Toronto, Winnipeg, Vancouver, British Columbia and Edmonton would not disappear in the map and would not lessen investor interests simply because these cities would lose all those franchise teams. Why then this big argument for those skate icons?Why then the pro-bailout movements which went so far as encroaching the ideals of democracy and encourage distorted facts in media coverage? The other side would counter. Man does not live by bread alone. The matter was not all money and income and coffers for the government.
It was also about national identity, pride of a people and love and passion for the favorite pastime. There was also that strong recommendation that business and government should coordinate and cooperate with each other to address this very serious issue. From a present-time perspective, one may be asked. Which way will he go?He goes this way or he goes that way will make a subjective decision.
Some go for the passion and the emotion without the money. Others go for the money no matter what. In the final analysis, any decision is as good as the other. What counts is what gives happiness. King Midas yearned for gold so much and asked the gods to give him the touch that would manufacture gold.
Resultant of the greed, his daughter turned into the precious metal. The loneliness and sadness made the royal head realize that his vast deposit of gold was, after all, not the measure of happiness. He returned the magic touch, retrieved his daughter and found true joy.
