Thursday, March 03, 2005

We'd Like to Buy Your League, Please

In one of the most interesting sports stories I've seen in a long time, an investment group has offered the NHL 3.5 billion dollars--for the league. They would buy all franchises and, I assume, the arenas that are under control of the teams.

That's $117 million per franchise. Less than half the franchises in the league are worth that, some much less. So it's an interesting offer to a group of people who claimed that they were losing so much money they couldn't afford to play the season under the current financial system. Well, take your 117 million and get out, guys.

If the offer gets increased to 4 billion, and the owners refuse, it's going to be very hard for them to make the financial poverty case to the NHLPA when contract negotiations resume.

Here's a link to the story:
http://sports.espn.go.com/nhl/columns/story?id=2004406.

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