Bettman and state of the game

NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman did his state of the game thing before Game 1 of the Stanley Cup Final. If you are wondering about next year’s salary cap, he said what’s been said recently. It will stay the same or drop a little next season.

“For next season the Cap, I am guessing at this point, will either be flat or down 5%, and that will be depending on how the Players’ Association wants to focus on the projections for next year and the 5% escalator or not,” said Bettman.

Here’s a Canadian Press recap of Bettman’s comments via TSN

The full transcript of his comments is available from George James Malik’s Snapshots blog.

And for another side of some of the financial issues facing the league I suggest this article from today’s Columbus Dispatch. The Blue Jackets are losing money and according to this article they aren’t alone. Indication are it’s not just the economy. There are some other issues at play as well. Here’s an excerpt:

But of the 24 U.S. clubs, as many as 15 expect to finish the 2008-09 fiscal year with financial losses.

The clouds on the horizon are as black as vulcanized rubber, and they closed in on central Ohio last week.

“The Columbus team is just one of many in the U.S. that are in very difficult financial situations,” said Andrew Zimbalist, a sports economics professor at Smith College in Northampton, Mass.

“I can’t tell you if (the club’s) claim of $80 million in losses the last seven years is entirely accurate or not. But it’s certainly credible. It is certainly in line with what you hear and see from other NHL franchises in a similar situation.”

The NHL’s new collective-bargaining agreement, written in 2005, instituted a salary cap and floor that kept all 30 clubs’ player payrolls within $16 million of one another. But the cap—and, with it, the minimum—has grown from $39 million to $56.7 million in only four years. It’s been hard for small-market teams to keep pace.

For some, even meeting the minimum has been a challenge.

Bettman said yesterday that the salary cap likely would remain static or dip as much as 5 percent for next season, which some would welcome as sweet relief.

There are other issues that the 2005 agreement didn’t entirely fix.

The NHL, unlike the other major-league sports, does not have a massive national-television contract, so teams don’t receive a huge lump sum that can help balance the books. Each NHL club gets roughly $2 million a year from the league’s deal with NBC and the cable network Versus—about the going rate for a midrange player.

The NHL’s revenue-sharing plan also is far below that of the other major leagues. It helps, but only a little.

“It’s a poorly designed system,” Zimbalist said, “an inadequate system.”

Again, the entire article is here. 

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