Raise the Hammer

@ Sask

I have no feelings toward BY good or bad. I don't know the man. As a business owner I do know that whether my business makes money or not, I cannot expect a bail out from the taxpayers simply because I say I can't make money here.

Which by the way is utter crap. If the TiCats regularly sold out the stadium they currently played in, instead of having 8-10000 empty seats on a regular basis, they would likely be in a break even, or slight profit situation. That goes directly to the product on the field. The team is has around a .300 win percentage in the Bob Young era. He has done some great things organizationally on the business side, but those things do not sell tickets. Winning does. And the citizens of this city have ponied up money to put deposits on NHL season's tickets twice now at well over 14000 subscibers. However I suspect that any team that came here would have to provide results or it would suffer at the gate too.

Testing markets is fine. Who is going to put their money up to put a team there, pay for a stadium, operate the stadium, etc etc? Is there some secret investor we don't know about? Is Mr Young willing to lose money for at least 10 years in Atlantic Canada while he waits for those investments to pay off? If ever?

Mr Young has not committed in reality one dime of his own money towards the capital costs of building the stadium. The money ( a mere 10 million over 10 years) was to be borrowed from an Ontario infrastructure investment fund at low interest and paid back over 10 years which means that the taxpayers of this province are really fronting the 10 million and then paying interet to pay THEMSELVES back.

Certainly not wanting to lose money is not extortion. The extortion part comes in when you try to leverage 141 years of tradition and emotional affection for an institution like the Tiger Cats to have taxpayers foot the bill to build you an edifice where you want it, how you want it, and then hand over control of that publicly funded project for a period of at least 20 years. Its a bad deal for the city, the taxpayers of Ontario and Canada and if those are the terms we should just say thank you but no.