2012 CBA Negotiations Thread

[bustaheims]

Well, my argument wouldn't so much be that it should be above those things but rather that it factors into some of the things you mention.

I'd argue that it's the other way around - these things are factors in team values, and the ability to sell a team and the dollars involved in that sale.

 

[Kin]

I'd argue that it's the other way around - these things are factors in team values, and the ability to sell a team and the dollars involved in that sale.

I don't really see that as a meaningful distinction. A impacts B which impacts A. If we're going to have a discussion about the profitability of an NHL team as an investment or the sustainability of the league then franchise values play a role in those discussions.

 

[bustaheims]

I was under the impression that there's a pretty large fee for re-location or a new franchise that goes directly and exclusively to the owners and not the players.

I'm pretty sure (though, not 100% certain) that those fees are dependent on whether or not a team moves into the perceived territory of another team. For instance, I don't believe there were any significant relocation fees for the Thrashers to move to Winnipeg and become the Jets. Expansion fees are a different story, but, until such a time that the league is openly discussing expansion, it's a non-issue, and when it does become one, determining what portion would be considered revenue and what portion would be considered the cost of purchase could be complicated, and would have to dealt with on a case by case basis.

 

[bustaheims]

I don't really see that as a meaningful distinction. A impacts B which impacts A. If we're going to have a discussion about the profitability of an NHL team as an investment or the sustainability of the league then franchise values play a role in those discussions.

We're going to have to agree to disagree on this one.

 

[Kin]

We're going to have to agree to disagree on this one.

"I don't agree to that."

"Neither do I."

 

[Chev-boyar-sky]

I was under the impression that there's a pretty large fee for re-location or a new franchise that goes directly and exclusively to the owners and not the players.

I'm pretty sure (though, not 100% certain) that those fees are dependent on whether or not a team moves into the perceived territory of another team. For instance, I don't believe there were any significant relocation fees for the Thrashers to move to Winnipeg and become the Jets. Expansion fees are a different story, but, until such a time that the league is openly discussing expansion, it's a non-issue, and when it does become one, determining what portion would be considered revenue and what portion would be considered the cost of purchase could be complicated, and would have to dealt with on a case by case basis.

Here's an article from NHL.com:

http://www.nhl.com/ice/news.htm?id=566567

"True North Sports & Entertainment purchased the club from the Atlanta Spirit group for a reported $170 million and paid the NHL a $60 million relocation fee to move the team to Winnipeg, which hasn't had an NHL team since the Jets left for Phoenix after the 1995-96 season."

So seemingly there is a fee, and as far as I understand it the players don't get a cut. I'd imagine a similar fee will apply to Phoenix in the near future with the potential for others to follow.

I also think the NHL would be the only ones that know about expansion, and wouldn't be trumpeting it before a CBA negotiation, especially if there is a fee involved. I'd imagine it would fall into a similar category as the re-location fee (i.e. the players don't get a cut).

 

[bustaheims]

Here's an article from NHL.com:

http://www.nhl.com/ice/news.htm?id=566567

"True North Sports & Entertainment purchased the club from the Atlanta Spirit group for a reported $170 million and paid the NHL a $60 million relocation fee to move the team to Winnipeg, which hasn't had an NHL team since the Jets left for Phoenix after the 1995-96 season."

So seemingly there is a fee, and as far as I understand it the players don't get a cut. I'd imagine a similar fee will apply to Phoenix in the near future with the potential for others to follow.

I also think the NHL would be the only ones that know about expansion, and wouldn't be trumpeting it before a CBA negotiation, especially if there is a fee involved. I'd imagine it would fall into a similar category as the re-location fee (i.e. the players don't get a cut).

Fair enough, but, even still, these are pretty rare events, and, because of that, not something that either side should be focusing too much of their efforts on in CBA negotiations. It's entirely possible that it's something that won't happen throughout the life of the next CBA.

 

[lamajama]

If we are waiting for a CBA that is owner-proof we're not seeing hockey
again for a long long time.

Regardless of what is settled on, it will a matter of "10" contracts into the new CBA before someone circumvents it in some way.

And that's why the players in the long run - or short run actually - will never lose as long as the revenues increase. Of course that "increasing revenues" theory will be sorely tested this time.

 

[pnjunction]

Sigh looks like a 2nd season in under 10 years down the tubes.  What a garbage league us hockey fans have to put up with.

Yeah I'll just get right on telling all the basketball and football fans how much better hockey is when these idiots can't even get it together and actually play the game more than 80% of the time.

Fastest game in the world...when they actually play it.

 

[cw]

Here are the facts as I know them that provide the basis for my remarks:

The Forbes numbers being estimates and all, I'm not too sure I'd rest all that heavily on them as facts. That said, it's largely immaterial to the point I'm making there. The NBA claimed to be hundreds of millions of dollars in the red as a whole when they negotiated that CBA, regardless of what the facts of the matter may actually be.

Forbes are estimated facts. They use various data like ticket prices, attendance, broadcasting deals, creditors, bankers, etc to develop their numbers - when they don't have access to the actual financials. They're not wildly off like throwing a dart at a dart board.

The Hornets financials for a couple of seasons got leaked a while back. Forbes reported a small profit of about $3 mil. The financial reports a slight loss of less than a mil. Given revenues and expenses for items unrelated/not allowed in NBA reporting may have existed (I think there was an unrelated revenue contribution from the state for example) and they're not wildly off.

In 2003, Forbes were about 5% too high in revenues that resulted in being off in losses. Levitt's audit had the losses about $130 mil worse than Forbes. Being off by 5% from an audit with an educated estimate isn't a terrible result. Profit and loss results are typically affected more than 5% though. Forbes numbers couldn't be used for fine tuning the numbers during the last lockout but they stated the problem well enough to carry the discussion a long way.

I know the NBA cried fowl about Forbes numbers. But in their response, they compared operating profits (Forbes) to net profits. Big difference.

The operating profits is where the CBAs typically draw the line because some pretty wild stuff can go on below that line. Above the line is pretty straightforward and definable. For example, under the US tax code, below the line, the owners can write off the purchase price of the team (used to be over 5 years - now it's over 15 years). Why should the players pay for that? They shouldn't. But there are legit items like interest, "real team related" (if you will) depreciation, etc. Because it's not allowed under the CBA, below the line is where the owners might give a son-in-law who has little to do with the team some dough as another example. Below the line is an owners accounting "playground" (if you will) even though it's legit under GAAP.

So it may appear Forbes P&L method to operating income/loss understates/overstates some how the leagues are doing. It is an educated estimate so it's understandable. But I think it's likely that the large discrepancy claimed by the NBA was kind of wildly overstated for PR reasons. If they really had a case, they could have and should have come back with apples to apples operating losses. That struck me as a case of what they didn't say was more damning than what they did say.

When Levitt did it, he kept it apples to apples on operating income/loss and was legitimate about it.

I would add that unless the owners other businesses or income is negative, then the team losses are a write off so they only pay a % of them - they can be very "creative". In fact, I think I read they could double bang some depreciation and crazy stuff like that.

 

[cw]

I haven't determined exactly what the cap floor number would ideally be but I think the $16 mil formula is bad for all parties concerned. I don't understand why Fehr hasn't gone after it.

I also don't understand why the owners haven't, either. Before this all started, I just assumed that expanding the gap between the floor and the ceiling was going to be part of their plan, as it gives the smaller market teams some salary relief while also potentially allowing the larger market teams to flex a little more of their financial clout. I mean, if the mid-point is supposed to be the player's share/30, lowering the minimum allowed payment would logically result in raising the maximum allowed payment in an effort to maintain/achieve a league average as near to that mid-point as possible, would it not? I know the league is big on parity, but, as you've said, something has got to give here.

With this present cap floor, the owners can wag their finger at the players and say "See? 18 teams lost money! So you have to take less salary." With a lower cap floor, under the present other circumstances, maybe it's 12 teams that would have lost money.

What I fear at the end of this upcoming CBA, is there still will be a number of teams losing money and the owners whining about the same thing. So I can see why some owners wouldn't raise the issue.

There are studies that show higher payrolls making the playoffs more often than lower payrolls for example. Generally, it can affect competitive balance. But is the difference between 59% of the cap and 77% of the cap that material? Maybe a little but I doubt it would be very dramatic. The Leafs half proved that during this last CBA - they couldn't buy a playoff berth.

I've always been for a fair deal. A simple spreadsheet showed that it was obvious the last deal was going to develop some of the problems we've seen. I ran that spreadsheet in 2005. I accepted that because the divide was so great at the time and the mistrust so high. The players moved a lot in the right direction. This time around, I'd like to see the problem largely solved. Lockouts aren't good for the owners, players, the fans and therefore, the sport.

I think the ownership must have a reasonable path to make money and under the present system, on average, they do not. And I think the players deserve a darn good chunk of the action - right up to the level of moderate team profits. I don't expect perfection but this $16 mil fixed formula to derive the cap floor is a recipe that can not solve the problem unless the revenue sharing disproportionately penalizes the top clubs. And if the top clubs are disproportionately penalized, it will hurt the future financing of the league and the quality of owners they attract - which will ultimately hurt the players, the league, the fans and the sport.

I'll be disappointed if they don't address the cap floor this time around. I think the players would be suckers to go along with it as it is because we'll have the same conversation in another six years.

 

[GhostofPotvin29]

Sigh looks like a 2nd season in under 10 years down the tubes.  What a garbage league us hockey fans have to put up with.

Yeah I'll just get right on telling all the basketball and football fans how much better hockey is when these idiots can't even get it together and actually play the game more than 80% of the time.

Fastest game in the world...when they actually play it.

If the league is so bad from the last lockout - why does Bettman still have a job?  If he's had 3 lockouts in his tenure, and was the architect of a deal that the owners say is killing the league, why do they want him helping to do another deal?

 

[cw]

There isn't a single clause in an old CBA guaranteed to survive the next collective bargaining session. It's all a process of give and take. When a business performs poorly financially, the workers have to give some stuff up. I don't see a union of players any differently in that respect. The NFL and NBA players just went through that. Where the NHL and it's players have been is a reference point but not a rigid contractual foundation that must be carried forward into the future.

I'm glad you said this because I think it touches on why there's a lot of disagreement on this issue. I think there's a tendency to see this dispute very much along the sort of modern left-right economic theory spectrum with people seeing this as a traditional disagreement between labour and management. So depending on how they see labour in general they're trying, in my opinion, to kind of awkwardly see this in that same light. Owners deserve a certain amount of profit, or not, based on their capital investment and players deserve a certain percentage that is then inextricably linked to that profit or lack thereof.

I genuinely don't see it that way. I think that's a little simplistic. We're not talking about members of the UAW down at the Ford plant and it's a little silly to pretend we are. Players aren't really labour in that sense. They're product as much as anything. My interest in hockey, as a consumer, is related chiefly to the individual talents of the players. When I buy a ticket to see an NHL game it's because of their ability. They aren't replaceable without a seriously detrimental impact to the quality of the product being offered.

I mean, from my perspective, my point of view on the economics of sports is me at my right wingiest. I turn from a Keynesian believer in social justice into a full-on believer in the corrective power of the free market and dogs eating dogs. Player costs too high? Choose to cut them, a choice that the previous CBA essentially took away from a lot of the money losing clubs. A team in Columbus can't compete with a team in New York? Welcome to the real world. Competitors fail. I pay the league's highest ticket prices? I should get to see one of the league's best teams, or at least one with a heck of an advantage to getting that way.

But the NHL is afraid of the market, sports leagues are in general. Why is that? I mean, the owners are all smart men who made fortunes in our relatively free markets. Why so terrified to let it into sports? Well, there are two major reasons and they both kind of drill holes in what you're floating. The first is that the NHL is not "a business". It's a league of businesses that compete with each other and have very different financial realities, both factors which dictates the cost of players that wouldn't really be true in any other circumstance. This creates a problem, especially for a league hell bent on "parity". Players are worth, in real dollars, different amounts from market to market. Juggling those realities is very difficult and the decision the NHL has made is to try and create a wholly artificial market where we have to pretend that a hockey player in Phoenix is worth as much as a player in New York. The cuts you're talking about make sense in Phoenix, they don't in Toronto. A real business would address the issue with a scalpel, removing and reducing their unproductive areas. The NHL is trying to fix their problems with a sledgehammer, arguing that every team need an across the board cut in expenses, no matter how profitable the team is. That just doesn't pass the smell test.

There's an old saying: "businesses either grow or they die". If the big market teams grow faster, as they tend to do financially right now, the smaller market teams won't grow at the same rate and ultimately, many of them won't survive or will be unable to compete. In the business world you talk of, that's acceptable because they're truly competing against each other in nearly all ways except when they're jointly lobbying government, with no relationship to one another and if a company goes under because it can't compete, so be it. That is the free market.

But if you keep ripping sports teams going bankrupt out from under fans who are really customers of the entire league because there are great market disparities, the league won't grow or will grow at a very slow rate and eventually die or become a financial shell of itself.

I was a fan of baseball long before the Jays arrived. I used to buy tickets to see the Jays every year - even when they weren't competitive in the early years. But when their system evolved into an annual Yankees-Red Sox playoff appearance, I stopped and lost interest in going to Jays games - because the Jays had almost no chance to make the playoffs. The studies are in showing big money dominated the sport.

So team sports are not like many other businesses where each individual team can purely stand for it's own interests. They have a set of by-laws they jointly operate under instead of just one set of by-laws for each corporation. They have a set of rules they must jointly abide by - unlike distinct business corporations. They jointly make money from broadcasting and merchandising unlike businesses who are true independent competitors. They do have some reliance on each other and some mutual business interests.

And if the players truly believed in a free market, why would they need to unionize? Why aren't they "every man for himself in the free market"?

Business would be pretty simple if one philosophy and one wide set of rules applied to all. But we don't see that. From industry to industry, we see wide and broad differences in regulations, marketing, structure, business component needs, etc, etc, etc. As business people, we're supposed to figure out what is best for our respective businesses.

All four major pro sports leagues have figured out that they have had to get salaries under control. All those leagues players have formed unions to protect themselves and haggle those salaries under collective bargaining. So there is tremendous consensus in the general place both the owners and the players have arrived at today within their unique business model of 30 or so corporations competing for a sports championship. I think there's a lot more right than wrong with that. And no party is making a major or even a minor argument against it in this current dispute.

The argument between the NHL and it's players is about money. Plain, pure and simple. And that is the case with the vast majority of, if not all collective bargaining agreements since the right to collective bargain by employees was born. Whether it's the UAW, the United Steel Workers, an airline pilots union or a major league sports PA, they're bickering about their rights, safety, etc but mostly it's all about  money.

 

[pnjunction]

Sigh looks like a 2nd season in under 10 years down the tubes.  What a garbage league us hockey fans have to put up with.

Yeah I'll just get right on telling all the basketball and football fans how much better hockey is when these idiots can't even get it together and actually play the game more than 80% of the time.

Fastest game in the world...when they actually play it.

If the league is so bad from the last lockout - why does Bettman still have a job?  If he's had 3 lockouts in his tenure, and was the architect of a deal that the owners say is killing the league, why do they want him helping to do another deal?

Who knows the owners might be happy with how he's putting the screws to the players.

Or maybe not but they're not going to say anything in the middle of this mess.  As much as I'd love for the players to say they won't play for Bettman period we're probably all stuck with him until this gets sorted out one way or another.

I wouldn't be surprised if the owners dumped him soon after this though.  There has to be some of them that agree that these CBA negotiations have been horribly mismanaged?

I know the official line is that most teams were losing money anyways but besides the teams that make money some of them have to realize that cancelling multiple seasons in 10 years is insane for so many reasons.  The future of the entire league, empty buildings, pissed-off fans, franchise value, etc.

 

[GhostofPotvin29]

Oh I know he'll stay, I was mostly just venting out loud (or the forum version of 'out loud').  Was really looking forward to landing back in Canada and going to the Winter Classic...

 

[hockeyfan1]

Formal announcement on state of the Winter Classic will be announced Friday.  All signs point to a cancellation, according to a source who deals with sponsorships & events.

The deal struck with the school for the rental of Michigan Stadium last February included a "work stoppage cancellation" clause that allows the NHL to call off the game as late as Friday for a penalty of $100,000 -- an amount it has already paid as a deposit.

If a cancellation comes Nov. 3 or after, the league would also have to reimburse the university for any "out-of-pocket expenses reasonably occurred" in connection with the outdoor game.

In addition to the contractual commitments to the University of Michigan, the NHL must be mindful of sponsors who have been left out in the cold during the lockout. Not only is the outdoor game an important event on their schedule, it's one that requires a lot of planning.

I knew that (a decision on the Winter Classic) was coming sooner than people thought," sports marketer Brian Cooper said Monday.

Cooper, the president and CEO of S&E Sponsorship Group, represents a number of corporate clients who do business with the NHL.

"This is the first year that it really affects Canada," said Cooper. "There was going to be a lot of in-market (sponsorship) activations, there were going to be a lot of hosting opportunities, there were going to be consumer promotions. ...

http://www.sportsnet.ca/hockey/nhl-lockout/2012/10/29/winter_classic_on_chopping_block/

 

[Kin]

There's an old saying: "businesses either grow or they die". If the big market teams grow faster, as they tend to do financially right now, the smaller market teams won't grow at the same rate and ultimately, many of them won't survive or will be unable to compete. In the business world you talk of, that's acceptable because they're truly competing against each other in nearly all ways except when they're jointly lobbying government, with no relationship to one another and if a company goes under because it can't compete, so be it. That is the free market.

But if you keep ripping sports teams going bankrupt out from under fans who are really customers of the entire league because there are great market disparities, the league won't grow or will grow at a very slow rate and eventually die or become a financial shell of itself.

That's a point of view directly contradicted by the history of sports. The reality is that sports leagues tend to experience their biggest periods of growth after periods of great uncertainty and franchise instability. The NHL after the WHA and the 80's, the NBA after the ABA merger in the 80's, Baseball in the 50's, the NFL after their merger and on and on. When leagues have allowed the market to determine which cities can support teams and which can't then the leagues almost always emerge stronger than they do when they continually prop up teams in markets that can't compete.

I was a fan of baseball long before the Jays arrived. I used to buy tickets to see the Jays every year - even when they weren't competitive in the early years. But when their system evolved into an annual Yankees-Red Sox playoff appearance, I stopped and lost interest in going to Jays games - because the Jays had almost no chance to make the playoffs. The studies are in showing big money dominated the sport.

Again, that's just patently untrue. I mean, for starters, the longest continuous stretch of years where the Yankees and Red Sox met in the playoffs? Two. The total number of times the Yankees and Red Sox met in the playoffs in the history of Baseball? Three.  It is as legitimate to say that baseball "evolved into an annual playoff Yankees-Red Sox Appearance" as it would be to say that the previous NHL CBA evolved into an annual Pittsburgh-Detroit Stanley Cup final. 

But as to the general point no serious scholarship of baseball holds that to be the case. You may have missed it but there was a big Hollywood film last year, that got nominated for Oscars and everything, all about how that's not true. Oakland built a model, one that relied on exploiting the market that baseball's system created for players, that allowed them to be competitive at with a much lower payroll than other teams. Tampa Bay in recent years has built on that philosophy and is seen by many as being the model for team building. These were small market teams who were able to be competitive because the market forced them to change and adapt. They innovated. They didn't whine and moan about how hard they had it and how they needed a salary cap. They out-smarted the other guys.

This year in major league baseball 10 teams made the playoffs. Those teams ranked 1st, 5th, 6th, 8th, 9th, 16th, 17th, 19th, 20th and 29th in payroll. Five in the top half of the league in payroll, five in the bottom half. The idea that a team can't be competitive because they're not spending money like the Yankees is antiquated. Anyone who looked at Baseball in the mid 2000's and said "The Yankees and Red Sox are always going to make the playoffs" is the equivalent of someone showing up to Chicago in 1872 and saying "This city is always going to be on fire."

And if the players truly believed in a free market, why would they need to unionize? Why aren't they "every man for himself in the free market"?

Because the 30 competitors that they were dealing with would engage in collusive practices that unfairly restricted their ability to negotiate their deals. Players didn't unionize so they could bargain for better salaries. Players unionized because team owners, when left to their own devices, actually operated under the assumption that and would make the argument in court that if they signed a player to a contract they owned him forever and that their competitors could not employ him.

Players unionized, essentially, because the owners had no interest in operating under the free market and used their power as a monopoly with anti-trust protections to destroy the market. They unionized to fight for the right to negotiate their contracts under a free market.

All four major pro sports leagues have figured out that they have had to get salaries under control. All those leagues players have formed unions to protect themselves and haggle those salaries under collective bargaining. So there is tremendous consensus in the general place both the owners and the players have arrived at today within their unique business model of 30 or so corporations competing for a sports championship. I think there's a lot more right than wrong with that. And no party is making a major or even a minor argument against it in this current dispute.

All of those leagues have done so by virtue of the fact that they essentially exist as a monopoly. If we broaden our horizons to examine circumstances where sports leagues have actual competitors then we see something entirely different. The EPL, Serie A, La Liga, have not done anything to try and collectively bargain limits to player salaries nor have they addressed the fact that they all have very real issues of competitive balance that put your Yankees fantasy to shame. Yet, they exist and show no real sign of ceasing to do so in the near future.

A monopoly, I don't need to tell you, is of course interested in using that position to increase their profitability and manipulate the market for their own benefit. That's why monopolies are bad.

And while Baseball has made efforts to "get salaries under control" they have not made that effort by virtue of pretending as if the people who own and run their teams are fundamentally incapable of setting their own payroll as if they were businessmen without even the most basic modicum of restraint and intelligence. They were able to do this by virtue of the fact that they knew that, as evidenced above, smart teams could be competitive regardless of where they ranked in terms of salaries. Baseball didn't need to idiot-proof their system, they just stopped hiring idiots.

The argument between the NHL and it's players is about money. Plain, pure and simple. And that is the case with the vast majority of, if not all collective bargaining agreements since the right to collective bargain by employees was born. Whether it's the UAW, the United Steel Workers, an airline pilots union or a major league sports PA, they're bickering about their rights, safety, etc but mostly it's all about  money.

Like I said, I think that's an ill-fitting and simplistic dichotomy here. Players are not simply labour. They're product. If we're trying to work out what's "right" or "fair" then we have to acknowledge the difference between a guy working on an assembly line and someone who's on the cover of magazines, selling jerseys with his name on them.

 

[hockeyfan1]

On the condition of anonymity, an NHL executive (owner?b) allowed Reddit a Q&A session, basically thoughts on the lockout/CBA, the state of the league, etc., etc.

Some excerpts:

The anonymous executive said that the lockout hinges mostly on three points: "Contract fulfillment," the definition of revenue and what he called "intangibles" or "incidentals," things like hotel rooms and airfare for players on the road...

"There was a reason why the last 2 years worth of contracts were front-loaded with signing bonuses. EVERY single person involved knew this was coming. And once more, owners can't legally consult on contracts, otherwise it'd be collusion and a violation of anti-trust laws. The NHLPA has no such restrictions.

"Every single player in the league knew there would be a renegotiation this year. That's why there were so many front-loaded contracts. What many people don't understand is, by anti-trust laws, the owners are legally bound to not consult each other when they work on contracts. Otherwise it would be collusion. The players have no such limitation, and as much as some don't like it, a lot of owners want to win.".:

Worth a read:

http://www.sbnation.com/nhl/2012/10/25/3550950/nhl-lockout-2012-team-executive-reddit-ama:

 

[OldTimeHockey]

Here's an article from NHL.com:

http://www.nhl.com/ice/news.htm?id=566567

"True North Sports & Entertainment purchased the club from the Atlanta Spirit group for a reported $170 million and paid the NHL a $60 million relocation fee to move the team to Winnipeg, which hasn't had an NHL team since the Jets left for Phoenix after the 1995-96 season."

So seemingly there is a fee, and as far as I understand it the players don't get a cut. I'd imagine a similar fee will apply to Phoenix in the near future with the potential for others to follow.

I also think the NHL would be the only ones that know about expansion, and wouldn't be trumpeting it before a CBA negotiation, especially if there is a fee involved. I'd imagine it would fall into a similar category as the re-location fee (i.e. the players don't get a cut).

Fair enough, but, even still, these are pretty rare events, and, because of that, not something that either side should be focusing too much of their efforts on in CBA negotiations. It's entirely possible that it's something that won't happen throughout the life of the next CBA.

Yes it's entirely possible, but it's also possible that a couple teams get moved(see Phoenix). So, while they shouldn't be spending alot of time focusing on those numbers, it is still a revenue that the NHL took in last season.

 

[bustaheims]

Yes it's entirely possible, but it's also possible that a couple teams get moved(see Phoenix). So, while they shouldn't be spending alot of time focusing on those numbers, it is still a revenue that the NHL took in last season.

Sure, but, it represented less than 2% of last season's revenue, and it was the only time that it happened under the last CBA. Based on looking at the league, I really only see one team that has a strong possibility of relocating under the next one - Phoenix - if the league can find a buyer that can actually make it work. The Coyotes may not even be sold by the time the upcoming CBA expires.

Really, we're discussing something that represents a fraction of a percentage of revenue over the life of the CBA. Something that has no material impact on either sides' bottom lines. It's as close to a non-issue as we can get here. Expansion may be a larger issue, but, again, until it's something that's legitimately on the table, it's also a non-issue. There's a reason the items in revenue sharing in CBA are classified as a "non-exhaustive list." When these things come up, the PA is well within their rights to them with the league and come to an agreement there. There's no sense in bogging down these negotiations by discussing these things that may not happen before the CBA expires.