The Coyotes and Glendale have "agreed on potential changes to an arena-management deal that could save the city" about $2M per year, according to Peter Corbett of the ARIZONA REPUBLIC. The agreement would expire in '17, allowing the team to "move elsewhere a year sooner than under the existing agreement." Glendale would pay the Coyotes $6.5M to manage Gila River Arena in "each of the next two years." The city "has been paying" the Coyotes $15M annually. In exchange, the Coyotes "would keep" roughly $6M in formerly shared ticket, parking and naming-rights revenue. But the two-year term of the deal "has some believing it will pave the way for the Coyotes’ exit from Glendale." City Councilman Gary Sherwood said, “What it does is gives the city and Coyotes a couple years to formulate their next plans." Corbett notes the City Council on June 10 voted 5-2 to "terminate its arena-management agreement with IceArizona, the ownership group for the Coyotes." The city "still will not be making money on the arena" despite the $2M savings. Glendale has "not received the amount of concert and parking revenue that was expected over the first two years of the agreement, which was approved" in July '13. Glendale "has lost" more than $16M in the first two years of the 15-year, $225M deal. Other highlights of the agreement include allowing Glendale to "hire a new arena manager" after June 30, 2016, if the city "gives IceArizona a 90-day notice." It also requires IceArizona to "terminate Craig Tindall, the team’s general counsel and a former city attorney." In the end, the new agreement "includes nothing to assure Coyotes fans that the team will remain in Glendale for the long term." But acting City Manager Dick Bowers said in a statement it is “a positive outcome for both the city and the Coyotes" (ARIZONA REPUBLIC, 7/24).
GENERAL MANAGER: FOX SPORTS ARIZONA's Craig Morgan noted Spectra by Comcast Spectacor "will continue to manage Gila River Arena but the city has asked for the option to hire its own management company after one year." That would require "sending out [RFPs] at which point Glendale may discover that the fee for managing the arena has climbed higher" than $6.5M (FOXSPORTSARIZONA.com, 7/23).
WHO ARE WE KIDDING? In Phoenix, EJ Montini writes the agreement seems "sort of like a long-term, slow-moving divorce." Montini: "I hope things go really well for everyone concerned, but if you put aside the money issues it sure looks like team owners negotiated a fairly convenient way out" (ARIZONA REPUBLIC, 7/24). An ARIZONA REPUBLIC editorial states if the Coyotes are not playing in Glendale in '17, then they "need to be playing in downtown Phoenix, not in Seattle." Those involved in the new arrangement "did nothing to dampen speculation that this is, simply, a more civil divorce." The editorial: "A friendly divorce is still a divorce. If Glendale is arranging to part with the Coyotes as 'just friends,' other local suitors need to assure the team doesn’t leave the state" (ARIZONA REPUBLIC, 7/24).
