Raise the Hammer

Highwater said: "This would be true if both sides were invested equally, but with the public providing virtually all the stadium funding, the onus was on the cats to bend."

You can only bend in negotiations up to a certain minimum point (typically your best alternative to a negotiated agreement or BATNA). Past that point the deal is "so bad" for you that you're better off not accepting it and going with your best alternative. I don't know that the Ti-cats think their BATNA is...folding the team? Moving somewhere else? But whatever their BATNA is, the ti-cats think the west harbour site is worse. Whether it actually is worse, that can be the subject of a debate. But I wouldn't fault anyone for walking away from a negotiation where they think their BATNA is better than the offer on the table.

Fan o'Ryan said:

"1. Ryan's premise is flawed: "The first rule of bargaining..." One bargains with an equal. The moment council decided that the WH was the solution, bargaining became an exercise in persuasion."

1. One doesn't always bargain with equals. People of different levels of sophistication and different sized corporations bargain all the time, and often one is in a better position than the other. Anyone trying to bargain with Wal-mart is faced with their oppressive and massive buying power. (Just ask lego, who wal-mart refused to stock for close to a year after a dispute). Or McDonalds and any of their suppliers. You think they can negotiate as equals? No, you do what McDonalds says and you thank them for their business, you don't go in negotiating what you want.

As for it becoming an exercise in persuasion, it didn't have to be. The ti-cats could have continued negogiating a deal. Make the deal sweet enough and council would gladly put the stadium on the East Mountain. For example, if the ti-cats promissed to build a 25k seat stadium and all the city had to contribute was $25 million total, I think the city would have been on board. The dollar savings would have sealed the deal. But the closest we got to that was some complicated offer of giving the ti-cats $51 million, $7 million of that being earmarked for the West Harbour Amphitheatre, with the ti-cats kicking in $5 million (wait...doesn't that net out to us spending $12 million on the amphitheatre and giving them 39 million for the stadium?).

I'm getting off track, but my point is, the ti-cats, at some point, realized they didn't have the resources to negotiate council into an alternative location. At that point the ti-cats made it an exercise in persuasion and went to the public to try and convince enough people, and councillors, that the East Mountain was a better site.