While the Wranglers wrestle with a building a viable Junior hockey program for season #3, and the rumors continue to swirl... Rather, I thought I'd take a different approach. Let's say the "Wrangler Fan Curmudgeon" wanted to run his own Junior A Tier III hockey program, how would that work? How much would it cost? So the staff at Wrangler Blog began an exhaustive review. They contacted the Accounting Department, then Marketing, then HR, then IT, then passed it by the Executive Management team. Not satisfied, the Wrangler Blog CEO Curmudgeon said, "Do the research! Investigate." So after hours and hours of calls, interviews, and Internet research here are results...First, let's look at Income. You have 22 players each paying $5,000 for the priviledge of wearing the Wrangler Red, or $110,000. NPHL (NorPac) says, there's no exceptions to this each player pays their fee. (Although you hear of exceptions all the time, I say NO!) Next you have gate receipts. 24 home games, lets figure 150 paying fans each game at $8 each = $28,800. Yes, you have to figure season ticket holders, half price nights, guest admissions, etc. Pointstreak shows an average attendance of 300 fans per game. Being conservative (perhaps too much so), I figured half are paying. Next do you have some sponsors? Again, lets be conservative, very conservative and say sponsors contributed only $5,000. Total income is, $143,800.
Now let's look at Expenses. The biggest expense is ice time. An Internet survey showed that ice time prices vary around the country. However, the high end was chosen of $285 per hour. There are approximately 24 home games, each home game using about 3 hours of ice, and each week for practices, the team uses about 6 hours of ice time. This figures to about $61,560 for ice time rental. Next, lets look at travel. There are about 16 (again high end) road trips requiring a bus each season. Bus rates are about $1,000 per trip. (Again, a high end estimate is used based on Internet research.) Each time the team travels it does pay for some meals, 22 players, 2 meals, $10 per meal. Lets estimate $6,160 for food. Lodging (the home team pays for the visiting team's lodging) requires probably 7 rooms (3 players per room) and 1 room for the coaches at $66 per night for 15 nights or about $10,560. Next, what do you pay your coaches? That's a real toughie. In some markets Junior Hockey coaches can make a lot, in others not so much. Also, it should be figured that it is a part time job of 20 hours a week, and its only for 7 months. Oh, I know some may say it takes more than that, but I'm a curmudgeon, a scrooge, so I'm keeping it at 20 hours per week. Then you probably should pay something for an assistant coach, and some for a good trainer. So, again based on Internet research, I came up with $40,000 for team staffing. Say it can't be done? Oh yeah? Bugger off. (Sorry, coach you're going to have to find a real job too, this is just a part-time gig.) Finally, I threw in $5,000 for other miscellaneous expenses (Wrangler girls, supplies, etc.). So, the expense total is, $139,280. That still leaves a positive variance of $4,520. If you get more sponsors and/or paying fans, then the greater your variance.
Is the Wrangler curmudgeon that far off in his research, expectations, and figures? Is there something that I'm missing? Otherwise, I think it's all totally doable and reasonably so. Oh how I believe the boo-birds and naysayers will chirp at this. It's my figures - reasonably thought out - and I'm sticking to them. I look forward to your comments and arguments. Reminder, be nice.