Tampa Bay Lightning = Broke
Oui vey! The BOLTS are in trouble.
“The degree of Tampa Bay’s difficulties came to light Thursday, when the SportsBusiness Daily Web site reported television rights holder Sun Sports in April advanced the team $2 million to help it meet last season’s final payroll. It also reported the league helped Tampa Bay meet January’s obligations by advancing it some of the revenue sharing money it will receive after the season.
All that against a backdrop that includes estranged owners Oren Koules and Len Barrie and a team for sale that, according to media reports, is in default on its debt to former owner Palace Sports & Entertainment.”
It’s similar to the situation that came to light in Phoenix last season; the NHL was propping up the Coyotes financially, in order to keep lenders at bay. After the NHL’s $2 Million dollar bailout for Tampa Bay, the relocation rumor mill has already started up. The Lightning have good reason to worry, their average attendance (15,019) is 23rd in the league, and the owners (Barrie and Koules) are putting the team up for sale. It’s not a pretty picture, but it’s still far too early to sound the relocation alarm.
If we learned anything from the Coyotes-Balsillie situation last year, it’s that the league (Bettman especially) will fight tooth and nail with lengthy legal proceedings to keep a southern-expansion team in place. Tampa Bay will be no exception, as the league has already gone out of pocket to keep the Bolts afloat. While I’ve always been a supporter of adding more teams in Canada, a move (if it ever happens) won’t happen until at least 2012.
Again, this is all speculation, and at very worst, the relocation is in its very earliest stages, but considering that the NHL (purportedly) makes 30% of its total profit from its six Canadian franchises – it’s probably prudent for the league to look into moving its failing, southern organizations.
(update: some commenters brought up some issues with another article I linked to about where the team could move. The original article has been taken down from its own site, so I doubt it’s credible. Citation removed.)
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“Bear Mountain (Victoria BC’s premier resort community), which is Len Barrie’s bread and butter”
You mean the resort that Barrie allegedly defrauded to cover the cost of buying the Lightning? I believe it’s going to be seized for back taxes.
Link: http://wtflangford.blogspot.com/2009/11/bear-mountain-meltdown.html
See also: http://wtflangford.blogspot.com/2009/09/one-day-only-bear-mountain-properties.html
TV news report: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-8TLVFl6TBg
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adam Reply:
January 27th, 2010 at 11:07 pm
I prefaced that information as speculation – and I didn’t write it, I just linked to it. Your issue is with the dude who wrote the topsports article.
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A recent article in a local Victoria magazine states that Len Barrie has a $27 million dollar mortgage on his $3 million dollar house on Bear Mt.. This “premier” resort was thrown together so fast many of the houses and condo buildings are already falling apart. Local tradesmen call it “crack mountain”. Len and his company can’t pay their bills and are facing lawsuits from several creditors; plus they have defaulted on a $4 million loan payment to local government for roadworks and have had several properties put up for sale due to unpaid property taxes. I don’t think Len will be funding a Victoria NHL franchise.
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Bear Mountain is not a resort community, it is a residential community with a few condos. Not Whistler and never going to be. And Greater Victoria, which includes Bear Mountain, is about 300,000, not 750,000.
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