Raise the Hammer

drb: "Can anyone help me in making sense of these numbers? Am I mad, or does this look like we are going to be on the hook for losses for years to come, even if upper levels of government bail us out of our current capital funding short fall?"

The squishy math is everywhere. For instance:

"This great opportunity means that for the first time in decades, the Tiger-Cats and the City of Hamilton will have a first-rate facility we can be proud of as a national showcase for not only the teams but our great city. The Tiger-Cats won’t have to rely on wealthy owners to subsidize the team representing Hamilton. Between investing in the $2 million Dofasco/Arcelor Mittal TigerVision scoreboard, refurbishing the team’s quarters at Ivor Wynne, buying a building downtown for the business operations, and funding the operating losses of the team for the last six years, as Caretaker of the team I’ve invested over $30 million in the team and the city of Hamilton. We employ over 250 people in a wide variety of roles, and hundreds more part-time workers in Hamilton rely on and benefit from our related businesses.

The economics of a CFL team, even when we bring additional events to a new stadium, do not enable CFL teams to build their stadiums on their own. We can, and we will be, investing in the stadium and working with the City to find new revenue streams to ensure the stadium contributes enough economic activity (and the resulting tax revenue) to the City of Hamilton that the stadium more than justifies the city’s investment."

http://www.thespec.com/news/local/article/265110--letter-ticat-owner-bob-young-bullish-on-stadium-plan

You don't have to be a forensic accountant to see that the "$30m loss" often cited is, as BY describes it, an investment. The scoreboard he thoughtfully breaks out, leaving us with $28m invested in gussying up the locker room, buying the Jarvis Street bunker (and perhaps the payroll of his three enterprises sited therein, the Ticats, on-demand publishing upstart Lulu and sports marketing firm MRX, two of which have had claims of "substantial investments" -- again, the operative word being "investment" -- associated with them, per link below) and funding the operating losses of the team.

http://www.thespec.com/news/local/article/265348--ticats-will-invest-in-new-stadium

Without having numbers released it's obviously unclear exactly what the Cats' operating losses are, but it's not more than $28m. At the very least, that scoreboard (for which naming rights have been sold, suggesting possible ROI on that $2m) won't be scrapped.

At the same time, however, what we have from the Cats camp are sticky proclamations about how IWS' geographic/logistical handicap has contributed to the franchise's last four decades of borderline insolvency, Mitchell's characterization less than a month ago that IWS was basically an insane option and BY's ranking of IWS somewhere outside of his top three picks: Aldershot, Confederation Park and East Mountain.