My buddy, Jon Swensen of Sharkspage, writes in about his own take on the sale of the Nashville Predators:
Eric, it is tough to hear about Nashville. They were probably one of the easiest NHL teams to work with.I actually tried to talk to Leipold a couple of weeks after all of the bad news broke, I think in early March. They told me he was not talking with the media, but there were a lot of positive things about Nashville that were not being reported.
And I have to give Leipold credit, he answered a lot of the pointed questions asked by blogger Jason Kirk during the lockout. I talked to a lot of the media before the Sharks-Nashville series, and a lot of them did not even think that Nashville would sell out their playoff games.
They did, which none of them bothered to report, and the Nashville pre-game tv host told me ratings were very high in the Nashville market. That does not mean any of the problems are any less worse, but a lot of positive news was pushed to the wayside so some people could pile on.
Unfortunately, piling on, along with following the crowd, is simply the nature of this business sometimes.
When I was in Nashville last year, I did see some decent support there. Murals in sports bars, an entire gate at the Nashville Airport done up with Preds regalia, a good position in the non-football sports section (football had its own pullout)…there’s certainly more to build on in Nashville than a lot of other markets, but that being said, it’s all about the corporate support. Since the NHL decided to stop being affordable and run with the big boys, they’ve had to cozy up to Big Business in the absence of a good TV deal like the NFL’s. Nashville’s business community refuses to support the team, so regardless of how well-attended the games are, now or in the future, it’s still a money-losing proposition.