It's All About Smg Lease that's Isles Problem

New York Islander Fan Central | 3/31/2009 10:11:00 AM |
Of course most folks know this already.

To be fair Smg did not give themselves this lease and if it were me, I would want my revenue from a binding contract also.

Nassau County/Tom Suozzi who is saying Lighthouse or bust is doing a good sales job but he's doing a good Kate Murray impersonation on getting Charles Wang or the team any immediate financial relief on rent or Smg lease.

In short, Nassau will not do a thing financially for the club besides approve the Lighthouse.............Maybe if the TOH does approve this down the road.

In July 2003 Richard Sandomir of the NY Times spoke with Islanders owner Charles Wang here about the teams finances/Smg and reported the following after the club came off two playoffs:

Rent at the Coliseum rose to $2.5 million that, based on paying SMG, the landlord, 11 percent of net ticket revenue. The team gets nothing from parking and concessions and pays SMG and the county 40 percent of its advertising income.

Newsday: We also now know the Islanders for at least this season the Islanders paid Smg a fixed rate in advance for the advertising income from the recent meeting with Newsday:

HAVE LOSSES AFFECTED PAYROLL/WANG: We watch every penny. We try to be as conservative as we can. You see the attendance isn't that great, and you know the deal we have with SMG isn't that great. The more fans we get, we get admissions, but we don't get a cut of food, beverages or parking. Once we build a new one, the county is going to condemn their lease.

PICKER ON INCOME: Merchandise is up, we give a percentage of ticket revenue to them. We give them a fixed number for sponsorship now. It used to be 35 to 45 percent of sponsorship. We bought ourselves out of that this season. So, now, it's a fixed number we pay SMG.

WANG ON PAYMENT TO SMG FOR SPONSORSHIP: The reason is that the inventory we're creating, digital signs and things like that, we really want to be able to create without having to think. So, we paid SMG money and bought it all out.

WHY DID ISLES AGREE TO LEASE/PICKER: It's the old owners. We knew that going in. We understood the negative sides of it. But there was a vision that we thought we could pull off and we're hoping to do that and that we can push this forward in a timely fashion to alleviate all these types of questions that are out there to get us the benefits we've been talking about.

Sports Business Journal: Andy Bernstain in 2000 before Charles Wang bought the club had a lot on the Smg stranglehold lease not only here but in Pittsburgh.

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette: Also reported Smg was willing to make changes to the Pens lease letting the team play rent free but with concessions and that was with KC hanging over everyone's head in Pittsburgh.

NYI Fan Central Comments:
Bottom line-Charles Wang takes the financial losses, Smg enjoys it's legal and binding lease and makes money off the Islanders (including the gate) while Tom Suozzi and Nassau County do nothing to help ease Wang's financial burden.

Updated:
Since the Dec 2009 Smg sublease agreement in Tom Suozzi's final days as County Executive, many aspects of this agreement were altered from this entry. It would be best to read Dec 2009 and subsequent entries from that point forward.


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