They haven't had much success. What they did have was
Broward County giving them $86 million. Quote:
The Florida Panthers hockey team won one of the most important contests of its existence Tuesday, when the Broward County Commission agreed to give it $86 million in public funds.
The agreement increases the public investment in the team to $342 million, county officials confirmed.
The vote was 5-3, with Commissioners Mark Bogen, Dale Holness, Barbara Sharief, Tim Ryan and Lois Wexler voting yes. Voting no were Commissioners Chip LaMarca, Beam Furr and Mayor Marty Kiar. Commissioner Stacy Ritter had a conflict of interest and couldn't vote; her husband lobbies for the team.
"We're here to stay, we're here to win a championship. We want to make South Florida proud,'' team co-owner Doug Cifu said after the vote. "What the county did today was really double their commitment to the BB&T Center and enable us to put a professional product on the ice and also bring world-class entertainment to Broward County.''
From what I understand, the master lease on the arena (which the county owns) is contingent on owning the hockey team as an anchor tenant, so while the hockey team loses money, hosting concerts and events all year is good business because you're not spending much/any of your own money putting on the shows, you're just renting the place out to whoever does. If you can cash all those checks on the good side of the business while the government subsidizes your losses on the bad side, suddenly your team is "valuable"!
The obvious question would seem to be "well, why doesn't Broward County rip up the part of the agreement that says there has to be a hockey team at the arena? Then they won't have to pay for it." Because that would make sense and sports make people dumb. They think they're still coming out ahead by having the games and the surrounding sales tax revenues. (Also, I suspect they're a little too proud of the Panthers because that's Broward's team and the other three are in Miami-Dade.) Of course, Atlanta lost its hockey team under the same premise, namely the arena operators' realization that they'd make more money with non-hockey events, and hey, Atlanta's doin' okay. Kansas City turned down an NHL team because they expected an agreement that would give away revenue to the team, they have no anchor tenant at all, and they're doing great.
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Molly Lambert wrote:
The future holds the possibility to be great or terrible, and since it has not yet occurred it remains simultaneously both.
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