The city of Detroit may have "missed out on millions of dollars from Olympia Entertainment as part of revenue" from the Red Wings' cable TV agreements, according to a front-page piece by Joe Guillen of the DETROIT FREE PRESS. A '99 sublease between Olympia and the Red Wings states that the team "would be responsible for paying the city a 25% share of the team’s annual cable TV revenues, under certain conditions." During years of contentious discussions before a '14 settlement, Olympia "consistently maintained that it owed the city no TV revenue, since the TV deals were with the Red Wings and not with Olympia." Detroit officials may have "never known about the sublease as the city and Olympia," for a period that stretched seven years beginning in '07, "debated cable TV revenue payments." Olympia was "required to file the sublease under its master lease of Joe Louis Arena with the city." Neither Olympia nor the Red Wings "ever paid Detroit a share of the team’s cable TV revenues." The accumulation of any debt Olympia or the Red Wings had with the city from their decades-long occupancy of the publicly owned Joe Louis "was settled" in '14 during the city’s bankruptcy, under the direction of then-Detroit Emergency Manager Kevyn Orr, for $5.2M. Olympia’s response during the settlement negotiations was "consistent with that of previous years when Detroit asked about the cable TV payments: Olympia owed nothing because the Red Wings are a separate legal entity, despite Mike and Marian Ilitch’s common ownership of both companies." Although the Red Wings are "not part of the master lease, the sublease between Olympia and the Wings raises new questions." The city estimated in '14 that its share "might have been" as high as $80M (DETROIT FREE PRESS, 5/31).
