CHLPA’s ticket revenue estimates showcase big-market, small-market gap

If the CHLPA's ticket revenue projections are anything close to accurate, then the CHL has a bigger problem with an upstart union attempting to improve education benefits and stipends for players. The not-so-sure-maybe-perhaps-a-player's-union took to Twitter last night and caused a buzz when they attempted to create revenue projections for teams based off attendance and average ticket prices.

The revenue earned by teams landed somewhere between the $10,485,862.00 earned by the Calgary Hitmen in 2011-12 and the $470,184.00 from the Val-d'Or Foreurs. As the account hammered home many times, the revenue figures were just in ticket sales alone and Ticket sale estimates DO NOT INCLUDE pre season games, or playoffs.

Of course, there's a little bit of wonky math that goes into this. Bruce Luebke over at Luber's Lounge has a post that questions the way the CHLPA got the Brandon Wheat Kings' revenue figure. ("How could the average price of a Wheat Kings' tickets [sic] be $22.20," Luebke asks, "when their season ticket price average out to be less than $10 per game and their highest individual game ticket was $17?")

But let's pretend that the CHLPA got everything right. You know, the one that suggested "George" Laraque had been hired as the executive director for the union and that the WHL's Cougars play in a small French Canadian town in Northern British Columbia called "Prince Georges". The logic is that the estimated ticket sales for all teams was about $157,712,301, and plus an additional $100M in additional revenue (unsourced) brings the CHL's overall revenue figure up to over $250M.

That's a far cry from Laraque's claim that the WHL alone made over $250M in profits last season, but the account did point out that the high estimate in stipends for all 60 CHL teams was approximate to just $7.5M.

If there wasn't a chance to profit here, this league probably wouldn't exist. It's not that CHL players and unpaid labourers are alike, but it does hurt hockey players growing up in Canada that it isn't possible to choose where you want to play if you must be uprooted from your family. Players can go the NCAA route, but that option doesn't exist in Canada. You must play where you're told to play, unless you're really really good, at a very young age, for no guarantee of a future career in pro hockey.

Let's pretend that the ticket revenues are close to equal. I put them all out on a spreadsheet and, while Google Docs' addition of the revenue figures clashes with the estimates of the CHLPA (heh), we have a reasonable estimate. The traditional big-market teams make the most money and the traditional small-market teams make the least.

I'm not sure if you're counting here, but that's just seven of the 20 OHL above the league average in estimated ticket revenue, six of the 17 QMJHL teams and eight of the 22 WHL teams. Not for a second am I going to assume these figures are dead-on accurate, but if they're used as a proxy, there is a sizeable gap between what the large franchises can afford and the small markets.

The bigger the team, the more amenities they can afford to give to the players, either over or under the table. Players know this, and how often have we seen a player leverage the small-market club that drafted him into trading them to a more favourable environment?

If there was a way to level the playing field, we may not see so much of that, although it's not too much of a surprise that Southern Ontario and Western Canada is a better place to play than rural Québec.

The system isn't completely broken, but something about it needs to change, either in giving players more say in playing close to home or their education options. The CHLPA as it stands probably isn't the best way to help out current and future players, but it's placed some of the challenges that the average end of CHL players and teams face into the national discussion.