Besides giving into homophobia and other ethical issues, he’s not even good from a business perspective.
Look at the growth of other sports compared to hockey during his tenure. Multiple failed teams and moves. Phoenix is a joke. There are 3 teams in CA and 2 in FLA… Despite wanting to spread the NHL to new regions.
He’s made TV viewing a nightmare. You can’t just buy an NHL package. There are home game blackouts, games and multiple networks that aren’t packaged together for away games. And most recently this dipshit decided to make the boards a green screen with moving fucking ads DURING PLAY. As if hockey wasn’t challenging enough to track the play.
I don’t even watch it anymore, haven’t for about 10 years, ever since I ditched cable. I would love to watch again, but it’s way too expensive for a subscription, and like you said, blackout dates, fucking bullshit. I’m not paying nearly $300 a year, to not be able to watch any fucking game I want.
Why Florida? I don’t know, maybe because the Lightning consistently have some of the highest attendance in the fucking league? If you’re going to ask “What about the Panthers?” I’ll retort “What about the Senators?”
Why Arizona? Stupid question to ask when a team in Las Vegas just won the Cup. The real question is “Why Arizona STILL?”
Which I just covered. The Panthers have better attendance than the team in Canada’s capital yet nobody would ever talk shit about there being too many Canadian teams.
I get what you’re trying to say but it’s not really relevant to expansion.
Not defending Bettman in any way, because I can’t believe he still has his job with how shit he is at TV deals (if you think he’s bad though, check out what it takes to watch the NFL).
It’s hard to argue against the number of teams in CA and FL when they more often than not have better attendance than most of the Canadian teams. People are showing up, even in oddball markets like Nashville. Seattle and Las Vegas have already seen postseason play, with one winning the Cup, and their attendance is solid so expansion is obviously a good thing…
…all of which I mention to make the absolute shitshow of the Coyotes look even fucking worse. The team should have folded a decade ago.
THEY PLAY IN A COLLEGE HOCKEY ARENA.
Absolute amateur hour. This isn’t like an NFL team playing in a D1 college stadium. That’s happened before, but in that case those stadiums are just as large with nearly the same class of facilities. For it to be a comparable reduction in seats an NFL team would have to be playing at a frickin’ Texas high school field.
Arizona barely gives a shit about hockey. Want to open things up? Move ‘em to El Paso, which I think it still the largest metro area without a big four pro sports team. You can even keep the name. Or move them to Portland. Milwaukee? Fuckin’ SLC? ANYWHERE?
For Phoenix alone Bettman should have been gone years ago.
The issue is that Bettman has repeatedly not given teams to cities because he wants to spread the sport geographically. For example Milwaukee will never get a team because Bettman figures those people can either be fans of Minnesota or Chicago. Yet the LA and Anaheim arenas are just 35 minutes apart. I’m pretty sure if Anaheim didn’t have a team their fan base would just watch the Kings play.
It takes the same amount of time to drive from Milwaukee to Chicago as it does to get from Downtown LA to Anaheim at game time.
Milwaukee has 500,000 people and Orange County alone has over 3 million. I don’t think you’ll convince me that an expansion in Orange County doesn’t make sense.
It’s also easy to forget that until very recently, LA and California in general were the new markets true NHL was trying to establish a foothold in.
Milwaukee and Chicago are an hour and a half apart. Milwaukee county is about 1 million people. So it’s not small.
I’m not even saying their isn’t logic in tapping the big markets, but two that are on top of each other? And using that as the reason not to put teams elsewhere? That just doesn’t make sense. At least go to San Diego.
The “issue” they’re trying to bring up is concentration of teams in one geographic region. This argument falls apart when you realize the Islanders, Rangers, and Devils basically play in the same NFL stadium and nobody seems to care. It’s just CA and FL people complain about.
The game needs to expand into new markets but contracting in large markets is not the way to do it.
Maybe we have too many other choices of winter activities we can do outside in the sunshine. In Minnesota people play hockey because it’s warmer on the ice in the arena than on your driveway. And less exhausting than shoveling snow.
Bettman is a laundry list of massive failures.
Besides giving into homophobia and other ethical issues, he’s not even good from a business perspective.
Look at the growth of other sports compared to hockey during his tenure. Multiple failed teams and moves. Phoenix is a joke. There are 3 teams in CA and 2 in FLA… Despite wanting to spread the NHL to new regions.
He’s made TV viewing a nightmare. You can’t just buy an NHL package. There are home game blackouts, games and multiple networks that aren’t packaged together for away games. And most recently this dipshit decided to make the boards a green screen with moving fucking ads DURING PLAY. As if hockey wasn’t challenging enough to track the play.
Fuck Bettman.
Any commissioner that still has blackout restrictions in their league is a crappy commissioner.
I don’t even watch it anymore, haven’t for about 10 years, ever since I ditched cable. I would love to watch again, but it’s way too expensive for a subscription, and like you said, blackout dates, fucking bullshit. I’m not paying nearly $300 a year, to not be able to watch any fucking game I want.
Die in a fire Bettman.
There are plenty of pirate streams. You may have to switch streams if one dies mid-game, but that’s the tradeoff.
Yeah, I’d rather not watch than deal with that.
The NHL is stuck in the 90s with that Clown
I don’t get why the owners keep him around.
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I completely forgot about that embarrassing fiasco.
What a joke.
Why Florida? I don’t know, maybe because the Lightning consistently have some of the highest attendance in the fucking league? If you’re going to ask “What about the Panthers?” I’ll retort “What about the Senators?”
Why Arizona? Stupid question to ask when a team in Las Vegas just won the Cup. The real question is “Why Arizona STILL?”
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Which I just covered. The Panthers have better attendance than the team in Canada’s capital yet nobody would ever talk shit about there being too many Canadian teams.
I get what you’re trying to say but it’s not really relevant to expansion.
Not defending Bettman in any way, because I can’t believe he still has his job with how shit he is at TV deals (if you think he’s bad though, check out what it takes to watch the NFL).
It’s hard to argue against the number of teams in CA and FL when they more often than not have better attendance than most of the Canadian teams. People are showing up, even in oddball markets like Nashville. Seattle and Las Vegas have already seen postseason play, with one winning the Cup, and their attendance is solid so expansion is obviously a good thing…
…all of which I mention to make the absolute shitshow of the Coyotes look even fucking worse. The team should have folded a decade ago.
THEY PLAY IN A COLLEGE HOCKEY ARENA.
Absolute amateur hour. This isn’t like an NFL team playing in a D1 college stadium. That’s happened before, but in that case those stadiums are just as large with nearly the same class of facilities. For it to be a comparable reduction in seats an NFL team would have to be playing at a frickin’ Texas high school field.
Arizona barely gives a shit about hockey. Want to open things up? Move ‘em to El Paso, which I think it still the largest metro area without a big four pro sports team. You can even keep the name. Or move them to Portland. Milwaukee? Fuckin’ SLC? ANYWHERE?
For Phoenix alone Bettman should have been gone years ago.
3 teams in California, the most populous state and also the third largest? What’s the issue, exactly?
They meant Canada. The three teams in Canada are Toronto, Toronto, and Toronto.
Fuck Toronto.
The issue is that Bettman has repeatedly not given teams to cities because he wants to spread the sport geographically. For example Milwaukee will never get a team because Bettman figures those people can either be fans of Minnesota or Chicago. Yet the LA and Anaheim arenas are just 35 minutes apart. I’m pretty sure if Anaheim didn’t have a team their fan base would just watch the Kings play.
It takes the same amount of time to drive from Milwaukee to Chicago as it does to get from Downtown LA to Anaheim at game time.
Milwaukee has 500,000 people and Orange County alone has over 3 million. I don’t think you’ll convince me that an expansion in Orange County doesn’t make sense.
It’s also easy to forget that until very recently, LA and California in general were the new markets true NHL was trying to establish a foothold in.
Milwaukee and Chicago are an hour and a half apart. Milwaukee county is about 1 million people. So it’s not small.
I’m not even saying their isn’t logic in tapping the big markets, but two that are on top of each other? And using that as the reason not to put teams elsewhere? That just doesn’t make sense. At least go to San Diego.
The “issue” they’re trying to bring up is concentration of teams in one geographic region. This argument falls apart when you realize the Islanders, Rangers, and Devils basically play in the same NFL stadium and nobody seems to care. It’s just CA and FL people complain about.
The game needs to expand into new markets but contracting in large markets is not the way to do it.
Maybe we have too many other choices of winter activities we can do outside in the sunshine. In Minnesota people play hockey because it’s warmer on the ice in the arena than on your driveway. And less exhausting than shoveling snow.