The Hartford Whalers Are Going Going ...

Essay by Ed KowalewskiCollege, UndergraduateB, December 1996

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The Hartford Whalers Are Going Going ...

The Hartford Whalers are in a very tough situation at this time. When Peter Karmanos bought the team in May of 1994, he inherited the worst lease agreement at the smallest arena in the NHL. The Hartford Civic Center lease agreement creates profit for private companies; however, the lease causes the Whalers to lose money. The mall is owned and operated by Aetna; therefore it has nothing to do with the Whalers. The city of Hartford owns the coliseum, parking garage, and exhibition hall. The state of Connecticut pays a 1.6 million dollar annual leasing fee to take control of the coliseum, parking garage, and exhibition hall. The state hired Ogden Entertainment Services to run the coliseum, and Ogden receives all of the revenue from luxury boxes, the coliseum club, advertisements, rental fees and the exhibition hall. The state also hired Kinney Systems to run the parking garage and Service America Corporation to run the concessions.

Both companies receive all revenue from the service they run. After all of this, there is no money left for the Hartford Whalers (Swift & Arace, 1+).

The reason why these three companies keep all of the revenue from the Civic Center can be blamed on Richard Gordon, the former owner of the Whalers who did not want the city of Hartford to run the Civic Center. In 1993, the state decided to negotiate a new lease with the Whalers. The state of Connecticut did not want to run the coliseum so they hired three private companies to take this job. These companies would only run the Civic Center if they could keep all of the revenue from the service they controlled. Richard Gordon accepted this lease because this agreement would repay him for an additional ten...