• AlternatePersonMan@lemmy.world
      50·
      1 year ago

      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.

      • XbSuper@lemmy.worldEnglish
        12·
        1 year ago

        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.

      • hiddengoat@kbin.social
        71·
        1 year ago

        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.

      • NewNewAccount@lemmy.world
        61·
        1 year ago

        3 teams in California, the most populous state and also the third largest? What’s the issue, exactly?

        • AlternatePersonMan@lemmy.world
          51·
          1 year 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.

          • NewNewAccount@lemmy.world
            2·
            1 year ago

            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.

            • AlternatePersonMan@lemmy.world
              1·
              1 year ago

              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.

        • hiddengoat@kbin.social
          51·
          1 year ago

          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.

        • Mouselemming@sh.itjust.works
          1·
          1 year ago

          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.

  • pdxfed@lemmy.world
    14·
    1 year ago

    Too late, they’ve shown their bigot colors for everyone to see. Imagine being so uninhibitedly stupid as to go full bigot AND not go through with it so you don’t even keep your bigot audience/owner segment happy meanwhile throwing up a klieg light of “boycott us” to the other 90% of your audience.

    This is so much worse than the Donald Sterling moment for the NHL.