Quick Update: NHL Lockout Official

Greetings, last night the National Hockey League (NHL) officially locked out players, making this the third lockout of Gary Bettman’s tenure as league boss.  I find it absurd that someone would be allowed to be the commissioner of a league after two lockouts, but now his leadership has presented us with a third one.  Of course, he really works for the owners, so as long as he is keeping the thirty or so super rich individuals across North America happy, he will stay in his job.

On Saturday, Bettman continued in doing his work for the owners when the league told the head of the players’ association (Donald Fehr) to not even bother trying to get a last minute face-to-face meeting to try and bring the sides to a compromise.  Granted, this may have been a waste of time as the sides are still too far apart on any deal happening.  The players had already taken a 24 percent cut in salaries to end the previous lockout in 2005, now the owners want the players to drop the percentage of revenues they share by around 8 to 10 percent.  The players weren’t going to agree to this, the Collective Bargaining Agreement was thus allowed to expire, and thus we are now in a lockout.

In my opinion the league has continued to slash costs, the previous time the league had some good arguments to reduce costs, but this time around it seems as if they just want to slash costs because they can.  The NHL is scheduled to begin play in October, but that seems to be in doubt as there is no way a deal will get done in time to get players to training camp and ready for the season by then… unless those players bolt to Europe.  The exodus has already begun, Evgeni Malkin has already left to play in the KHL in Russia.  The KHL was well prepared and set out rules about the number of players from the NHL a team can sign during a lockout, and that the salaries can’t exceed 75% of what the player makes in the NHL.

Already several players are headed over to play in Europe which makes me think that with other revenue sources for many players readily available, this lockout could last a long time. One wonders if this could be the end of the NHL as we know it.

If the NHL locksout, who gets Ovechkin?

As Bryan reported in the previous post on the blog, the NHL labor negotiations do not seem to be headed in a good direction.  My students have gone from posting comments on our class site for governance from: “will the negotiations get done?” to: “If a puck drops at center ice, and no one is in the stadium, does it make a sound?”.  Clearly there is some cynicism from the fans as we have already been under two work stoppages in the Gary Bettman era of the NHL.  The second one hurt the league, forced them onto an obscure Cable TV network, but supposedly solved a lot of the revenue issues that existed, right?  Wrong, the revenue issue seems to be getting more problematic and is the core issue that is sending these negotiations down the tube.

Many are already talking about the NHL lockout, and one league with high interest is the Russian professional KHL.  Being one of the highest quality leagues in Europe, it is a naturally attractive location for players to go and make some money while the lockout continues.  The big question already seems to be who has first dibs on Russian star Alex Ovechkin.  Ovechkin is in the headlines as Dynamo head Mr. Rotenberg said that he doesn’t want Ovechkin on his team, and will not go after him if there is a lockout.  Okay, no big deal.  Except it is a very big deal, so big that the KHL President came out and said that Dynamo should have the first rights to Ovechkin, as they have the “moral right” to him.  That’s right, the teams owner says he doesn’t want Ovechkin,  but the head of the entire league says that he should be on the team.  It is a confusing situation, and it looks like there is even more arguing and fighting going on between the teams and the league over who gets Ovechkin.

Some say Dynamo has the birthright to Ovechkin, who would technically be a free agent when coming to the league.  Others say that it should be open season.  In either case, at least Ovechkin knows that if there is a lockout, he will still have many courting his services.

World Cup Decision: Anger and Frustration

Let the recriminations begin.  Yesterday, Russia was awarded the 2018 World Cup, with England’s bid being eliminated at the first stage.  Vladimir Putin has described the vote and decision as “fair”, and I’m sure it is in his eyes.  Just not in the rest of the world’s eyes.

In somewhat similar conditions, the US also lost out for the 2022 World Cup to Qatar.  In both situations it seems clear: The best bid did not win.  It seems also clear that large quantities of money were involved.  Clearly, Qatar could throw a huge amount of money at their bid and did, as could Russia.  In both cases, another host would have provided a more lucrative profitable World Cup for FIFA.

As can be inferred thus far from this post, the outcome has left a huge amount of questions unanswered – as Declan Hill is pointing at.  How is it that the most profitable, commercially successful bid crashed out at the first stage for 2018?  Most of the England entourage have pointed at something: The total lack of integrity of FIFA members voting.  They’ll say yes to your face, but when voting it’s a different story.  Moreover, it is coincidence that the country from which two exposes of FIFA’s corrupt nature originated got just two votes from 22?

I’m personally not all that disappointed England didn’t get the World Cup.  I’m not sure how much I really wanted it.  But it’s fair to say it would have been, along with the other European bidders, the World Cup leaving the least White Elephants (Qatar, incredibly enough, plans on exporting its stadia to better uses after the tournament – and air condition when while in the desert – it is nice to see how much FIFA is concerned about the environment), since all stadia would have been the homes of English football clubs.  And therein lies a huge issue yet again unanswered for by FIFA’s unaccountable committees.  Stadia still lie barely used in Japan and South Korea after 2002, and I wonder what the legacy is for the stadia in South Africa now the world has left.  Yet FIFA commits itself to a load more such stadia in Russia, and wherever the Qatari stadia end up.

Then: The positive spin of course is that new places get to see the World Cup.  Wasn’t it nice to have it in Africa in the summer?  And won’t it be lovely to have it in mafia land in 2018, and in the desert (where alcohol is banned amongst other things natural to the football fan).  Sarcasm aside, it is nice to spread the tournament around, but this leaves, along with the legacy issue, another big and frustrating issue.  Why didn’t FIFA make this abundantly clear before the bidding began?  Why did it let old, established nations (which I think the US has to belong to in football terms these days) waste so much money on bidding if it was all in vain?  As this Guardian piece makes clear, David Cameron could have instead been back in the UK making important decisions, and perhaps not closing quite so many school sports programmes as part of the austerity his party is foistering onto the UK.

It’s been mooted for years (as the first page of Declan Hill’s ‘The Fix’ makes clear) that FIFA is unaccountable and corrupt and the biggest upshot of all this has to be that the institution needs reforming.  As it stands it continues to drive football fans to despair the world over yet has no incentive to actually take their views into account – instead taking bribes and saying one thing to one person and another to another and making corrupt decisions affecting billions worldwide.  How long must we endure this?

Chaos at the FA – anything new?

Late last week the Football Association (FA) in England submitted their bid to host the 2018 World Cup. England last hosted the World Cup in 1966, and had a bid to host the 2006 World Cup turned down in favour of the Germans, but after London’s successful 2012 Olympics bid, hopes were high that this time the World Cup might come “home”, as English football fans somewhat arrogantly assert.

That was, until Lord Triesman, the Chairman of the FA and head of the 2018 bid decided to step in, kamikaze fashion. It seems he was taken in by a blonde assistant and mentioned to her his conspiracy theories about the Spanish and the Russians, the two other 2018 bids seen as the main threats to England’s bid.

Apparently, the Spaniards are trying to bribe referees at the World Cup, and might pull their 2018 bid if the Russians help them fix a few World Cup matches. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Triesman has now resigned both from the FA and from the 2018 bid.

We shall now see what the recriminations are and implications for England’s World Cup bid. But I wonder whether anyone will seriously investigate the match-fixing allegations? They seem far fetched, but who really knows?