USA Today, November 21, 2003:

Creating a hockey forum on a football field has been expensive. Watt says, “Revenues are several million, and our expenses are also several million.”

More than 65 truckloads of sand had to be brought in just to cover the piping needed to create the ice. A temporary road was built to get the trucks there. Creating a VIP bleacher setup with heat cost $500,000 to $750,000 Canadian.

But this event was about allowing fans to bask in the romance of the game. Watt says, “(This is more about) nurturing your fans and doing something special for them … than it is about making $2 million, which I hope we do.”

Toronto Star, January 1, 2008:

A former NHL official says the Sabres-Penguins matchup would generate $5 million to $10 million in revenue. Seventy thousand tickets sold at an average $75 apiece will generate $5.25 million alone. Then there’s income from sponsorships, concessions and merchandising and TV income.

Expenses on the game probably won’t eclipse $500,000. The league has spent some $250,000 renting Ralph Wilson Stadium from the Buffalo Bills and costs to install a temporary rink have been estimated at about $150,000.

I didn’t really have anything to say about this, other than to note that I find the massive disparity in expenses a little odd. Even with the heated VIP bleachers, you’re talking about another probably $500,000.00 U.S. at the time. What in the world could these other millions in expenses have been?

Update: This from David Shoalts:

The preparation required for these games is extensive and expensive. The league spent $5-million installing a rink and preparing Ralph Wilson Stadium for the game. That could all have been wiped out by one of Buffalo’s famous blizzards.

So who the hell knows?


Oh and because this strikes me as hilarious - both the Globe’s David Shoalts and ESPN’s Scott Burnside are live blogging the game. One wonders how in the hell this happened:

Shoalts: There was a kids’ game down on a small rink set up next to the big one where the NHLers will play. The teams wore the same retro sweaters the Penguins and Sabres will wear (“The guys wearing the Pittsburgh jerseys won’t go in the corners either, just like the Penguins,” said Pittsburgh Post-Gazette writer Dave Molinari, who has the best cynical one-liners in the business). The kids all looked to be having fun.

Then some guy in a Sabres jersey stepped on the ice. He did not have a hockey stick, although he was on skates. He had a guitar and a remote microphone. Then he started skating among the players while the game was going on, playing his guitar and singing. His warbling was on the public-address system.

Once again, as I have said many times during this exercise, how exactly does this go back to hockey’s roots?

If some clown stepped on the ice with a guitar while my friends and I were playing some 40 years ago, we would have gone John Belushi a la Animal House on him.

Burnside: The small pad of ice at one end of the main rink got a good workout Tuesday with local youths playing long before the big game started. At one point, a man wearing a Sabres jersey weaved in and out of the shinny players and played a guitar and sang. The songs were broadcast over the stadium’s sound system. It brought to mind that scene in “Animal House” where John Belushi stops where a young man is wooing some women with a guitar ballad and smashes the guitar to bits.

Top notch.