Worth checking out this afternoon are Vogs' profiles of Mathieu Perreault and Patrick McNeill over at Caps.com, as well a pair of pieces on Ted Leonsis, the first of which is an interview over at DCist, while the second is a lengthy recap of an AP interview.Some highlights from the latter Leonsis article:
- "Every person in the organization's expectation is that we will make the playoffs."
- "We're under the cap. We have a lot of assets. I could see us during the season making trades. We've reached that point now where we're a team going up with good cap management. We have 'optionality.' We're very well-positioned in the new NHL. We're not a whining team."
- "I need another 2,500 season-ticket seats," Leonsis said. "What that would do is tip it, it would give us scarcity of tickets and allow us finally to raise prices. Our ticket prices, for the most part are exactly the same as they were in 1999."
- Leonsis said the Capitals "might never break even" financially, but added that the franchise right now could probably sell for at least $225 million, compared to the $85 million he paid for it eight years ago.
Perreault doesn’t hesitate when asked which NHL player he looks up to and tries to model his game after.All things considered, I'd take that in a heartbeat.
"Daniel Briere," Perreault affirms. "He played junior on Drummondville. I’m from Drummondville so I watched him play junior. He is the kind of player I want to be, so I’m working to be like him."
6 comments:
1) Not sure how finances are calculated, but we recall Ted saying AFTER the lockout that the Caps would still lose money (a gentleman's loss)despite the salary cap. Their payroll that year was in the mid 20's
2) Today, despite admitting that the prices for seats(where almost all income is derived) has been static the last 8 years, and with the team payroll about 10 million MORE than it was 2 years ago, the Caps may ' break even'?? What are we missing here????
If you're going to be critical, be critical - but there's really no need for that language or ad hominem attacks.
I've got take my hat off to Ted for making such a great effort to field a competitive team and to market hockey in the Washington area. I believe we are headed in the right direction. While I would love to see him add another 2,500 STH, if the team does real well this year, he can sell them next year. Since this is not a publicly traded company (LLC), it is tough to exactly grasp their finances, nor are the figures available.
faux,
I think the missing ingredient is the bigger revenues from the new jerseys and Ovechkin probably generates more money for them now than 2 years ago. Still, and I've said this before, Ted does not lose any money. The team does lose money because they don't own the Verizon Center. However, the owners of the Caps all have a stake in WS&E which owns the building, so while the team can claim a loss, the owners of the team make up that loss in the revenues generated by the building and thus don't lose any money. Of course this is all just my theory and I don't really know how to go about getting the actual numbers to prove it.
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