Yup! Hartford isn’t a hockey market

[freescooter]

I just don't see the people in New Haven supporting a NHL team in Hartford. They didn't when the Whalers were here and I just can't see that changing. It also doesn't help that Hartford and the state can't even agree on what to do with the XL Center. One day they want it to be kept the way it is now being used by the Wolf Pack, UConn, shows, and events. Then they next day they want to spend $300 million on making it a state of the art NHL ready arena. The day after that they want to just tear the whole thing down because "it's just a waste of money, and no one goes there." If the state would just sell the XL Center then they'd finally be able to collect property taxes on the building, while still making money from parking, and taxing the people that come into the city and the people that work in the arena. Right now they're paying for everything and collecting no property taxes, and that's one of the main reasons the building loses money. All the events that are held in the arena make money, but since the state has to pay for all of the maintenance and upgrades that need to be done every year, they lose money.

Last time they tried to sell it nobody wanted to buy. It is going up for sale again so we’ll see. The only proposal to date is a sale/leaseback deal that is pretty one sided. The fundamental problem is that the building is at the end of its useful life and needs a major reinvestment to extend its life just like any facility would. And we are in a very different era than the one in which it was built.

So if you try to sell it, not sure it has much value since any buyer will want certain things either addressed before the sale, reflected in the price or get cash for the improvements as part of the deal.

The other issue is how many privately owned facilities of this type are there? Especially in mid tier cities. DCU (Worcester) Mass Mutual (Springfield) Times Union (Albany) Webster Bank (Bridgeport) and Dunkin Donuts Center (Providence) are all owned by some form of public entity. That would seem to indicate that seeking private ownership of this type of facility in this type of market is at best a questionable undertaking.

 

[freescooter]

Arenas in Portland Maine and Manchester NH are also publicly owned for what it’s worth.

 

[Adios]

If the team had been called the Connecticut Whalers, things would have been different. But even western Mass had Whalers fans.

 

[Biggie1083]

If the team had been called the Connecticut Whalers, things would have been different. But even western Mass had Whalers fans.

They did try that and still no one came. The Baldwins even got in trouble with the AHL for giving away thousands of tickets, faking their numbers, and counting tickets that were never even used. There were a few games where they said they had around 4000 people and there were barely 1000 in the building. The best example of that was the Whale Bowl. They said that they sold over 40,000 tickets and they announced the game had over 20,000 people, yet there was barely 15,000 people at the game.

 

[Doggie Style]

They did try that and still no one came. The Baldwins even got in trouble with the AHL for giving away thousands of tickets, faking their numbers, and counting tickets that were never even used. There were a few games where they said they had around 4000 people and there were barely 1000 in the building. The best example of that was the Whale Bowl. They said that they sold over 40,000 tickets and they announced the game had over 20,000 people, yet there was barely 15,000 people at the game.

The reason there weren’t as many at the Whale Bowl was bcuz it was -10. I know people that had about 20tickets collectively that didn’t go bcuz of the temps. It wasn’t a fair representation of interest as I’m sure there were many more that didn’t go after buying tickets

 

[Adios]

They did try that and still no one came. The Baldwins even got in trouble with the AHL for giving away thousands of tickets, faking their numbers, and counting tickets that were never even used. There were a few games where they said they had around 4000 people and there were barely 1000 in the building. The best example of that was the Whale Bowl. They said that they sold over 40,000 tickets and they announced the game had over 20,000 people, yet there was barely 15,000 people at the game.

I was talking about the NHL, not the AHL.

Trigger happy?