Few Crying Over NHL Lockout

Hoping to commemorate my last attendance at a pro hockey game -- the Buffalo Sabres’ 12-6 rout of the previously undefeated Wings of the Soviet in 1976 -- with another look at the sport, I recently tried to buy a ticket to see the Los Angeles Kings. Imagine my amazement upon learning that the season so far has been canceled.

It just shows what can happen if you don’t pay attention to a sports league for nearly 30 years.

I was evidently not alone in ignorance that the National Hockey League imposed a lockout of its players in September. The loss of half a season hasn’t exactly inspired nationwide anguish.

The league is aiming to obtain a new contract, which would include a hard cap on player salaries. The players, naturally, are resisting.

Implicit in the league’s position is that its 30 owners, who include some of the savviest business leaders and corporations in the world -- cable operators, real estate magnates, Walt Disney Co., etc. -- turn into raving morons the moment they’re asked to make any decision about paying a draft pick or free agent. Thus, the players must help to protect them from their own stupidity.

League and player representatives, who met Wednesday in a last-ditch attempt to salvage the rest of the season, ended their talks without a deal.

But as the public’s collective yawn over the lockout suggests, the NHL has already succeeded in one thing: identifying the lower limit of North America’s fascination with pro sports.

Indeed, when you’re a collection of businesses averaging $75 million a year in revenues (the figures are from a Forbes magazine survey), not even the glamour of pro sportsdom is enough to make you matter in any sizable regional economy.

A few sports commentators have begun to wonder why the lengthy lockout hasn’t provoked any mayors to apply public pressure to the league to end the lockout. But the answer is simple: Few probably care.

“It’s hard to imagine a politician exercising himself over such a small business,” says David Carter, a professor of sports business at USC and a principle in the Sports Business Group, a consulting firm. “Most don’t have enough political capital to expend it on something people don’t see as essential.”

One is tempted to use the NHL’s lack of economic standing in its host communities -- especially in large metropolitan areas such as Southern California -- as evidence that cities that prostrate themselves to attract a franchise are being played for mugs.

Analysts say that every consumer dollar spent on major league sports in big municipalities is merely redirected from another form of entertainment. “In the overall economy it’s a wash,” says Andrew Zimbalist, an expert in sports economics at Smith College.

But hockey may be a special case.

One can debate whether it ranks even fifth in popularity in the U.S. behind pro football, NASCAR, Major League Baseball and pro basketball. Its new national network TV contract with NBC doesn’t even grant it a rights fee like serious leagues get; instead, it will share advertising revenue with the network, a deal that places it in the same category as arena football.

This isn’t to say that the NHL lockout hasn’t inflicted economic pain on some, as my colleagues Chris Foster and Helene Elliott reported this week. Among the victims: arena employees laid off at different venues and game broadcasters deprived of their per-game fees.

To varying degrees, the labor strife has also crimped the finances of smaller host cities with a direct stake in arena revenues.

Anaheim’s deal with Arrowhead Pond, for example, grants it 20% of annual profits once they exceed $12 million. The city expected to start collecting its cut this year, but with the Mighty Ducks locked out, that won’t happen.

Now, says Greg Smith, the city’s convention, sports and entertainment director, “it could be several years before we recover and get back in the position we were before the lockout.” On the plus side, the city was only expecting about $500,000 this year, a drop in its $100-million annual budget.

A few other small communities have been unwise or unlucky enough to depend on the NHL as their big draw. A case in point is Glendale, Ariz., which built a new arena with $180 million in public financing, principally to host the Coyotes.

Soon after the lockout began, the city declared the new arena a “success,” based on its having attracted more non-hockey events in its first year than was expected.

Still, the announcement smacked of whistling past the graveyard. The arena says that more than 100 non-hockey events have been booked, but most of these, apparently, are small or private happenings that aren’t important enough to be handled by Ticketmaster. Coyotes games packed the arena to about 85% of capacity last year, so the possible loss of more than 40 home dates can’t be healthy.

In fact, the city says that the revenue lost from the NHL lockout will cause it to fall $1 million short this year on its bill for principle and interest on the construction bonds. Glendale will dip into a contingency fund to make up the gap, so the shortfall doesn’t mean an immediate tax increase. Yet if the NHL doesn’t recover from its self-inflicted wounds, there may be more deficits to come.

Glendale, like many other communities, hopes that its arena will spur commercial development around the site. But the odds on its financial gamble have already changed dramatically. The NHL experience is one more sign that any city counting on pro sports owners to remember how much they mean to their host communities is asking for trouble.

Golden State appears every Monday and Thursday. You can reach Michael Hiltzik at golden.state@latimes.com and read his previous columns at latimes.com/hiltzik.