The problem with Quebec City is that the revenue flow from the financial/corporate market is small as compared to many other NHL teams. They also don't have an arena which would be required to accomodate an NHL team, but even if they do build one, who will fill up the corporate boxes, which is how many teams make the most attendance revenue?
Very true, Quebec City is a civil servant town where the provincial government is by far the largest employer. Also, the last year the Nordiques were in town, they did sell out every night (approx. 16,000 seats) but only 3,500 were to season ticket holders.
However, the timing has never been better to try because
a new facility in Quebec City will be announced shortly with 20,014 seats and 128 corporate boxes that will be paid mostly with public funds, something the public were against in the 90's. The government just helped the Molson brothers buy the Habs so again public sentiment is on any new owner's side. Several U.S. teams are in markets that will never embrace hockey and are just dieing to relocate. Betteman's dream of a big U.S. network TV contract will never happen, the current one is with Versus which most of the country can't get now that DirecTV has dumped the channel. Lastly, the recession has hit the U.S. much harder the Canada making these teams bleed even more than usual. In fact, the recession has hardly even touched Quebec City so far.
The big challenge will be to see how long people will support a team which will likely never win (we're not Toronto
) since they will have to maintain one of the smaller budgets in the league. The current league salary average is $54.4 million US with 10 teams under that amount ranging from $40.5 - $50.3 million. (NAS, NYI, PHX, CLB, DAL, TB, LA, COL, ATL,FLA) If you look at them none will be winning anything any time soon. The new team would have to sell 128 corporate boxes at $75,000 each and 18,000 seats at an average of $60 to generate just about $55 million CDN or approx $50 million U.S at current exchange just to be in Florida Panther territory. Then you cross your fingers and hope the dollar doesn't go back down 35% to 1990's levels.
Again a very daunting task.
That being said, If we do get another team I will support it just like I did the Nords by buying a pair of season tickets and will enjoy seeing the greatest franchise in hockey history visit my town 3 or 4 times a year.
