We got the money !......err?.......we had the money !.....grrrr.!

[growler]

MLSE can pay for NBA All Star game on its own dime
Thursday saw Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne whip out Ontario’s overstretched line of credit to hand Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment $500,000 to assist their bid for the 2016 NBA All Star game.

Say what? Half a million to a company in the top three globally as a money-spinner from sports? A company that produces oodles of black ink annually from a 46 year history of futility on the ice, a franchise lifetime of futility on the boards, and a franchise lifetime of futility and embarrassment on the grass?

MLSE owns the Toronto Maple Leafs (NHL Hockey), the Toronto Raptors (NBA basketball) and Toronto FC (MLS Soccer). They also own the relevant television specialty channels, the Air Canada Centre and BMO Field, and have their fingers in concert promotion.

They make hundreds of millions annually from television and radio rights for their sports franchises, more than anyone else in the NHL, in fact, and approaching the stratospheric range enjoyed by the New York Yankees in baseball and Manchester United in Britain’s Premier League.

These guys need a handout about as much as … well, words fail me. Let’s just say that it’s on the same order as Vancouver billionaire Jim Pattison sitting on the street with a hat looking for coins and leave it at that.

Understand as well that the decision to hold — or to pass — on holding the NBA All-Star game is a business decision, one that would be quite profitable for MLSE without the province’s money.

Wynne’s explanation of why taxpayers should fund the NBA All Star game is the usual one: spin-off effects. All those hotel nights, restaurant bills, and the rest of it.
Well, whoopee! It’s not like there’s a glut of open tables and empty rooms in downtown Toronto at the best of times. I doubt the province’s alcohol taxes and HST take increase is going to balance out this “investment”.

What we have here, of course, is a big corporation — one that’s capable of writing a substantial donation cheque, perhaps? — putting its hand out and asking for welfare. (The obligatory public speech by one of its executives decrying the “handout society” and calling for cutbacks in public services is an optional extra.)

It’s also not like Torontonians (whose votes Wynne needs when the election comes) are going to be able to actually see the NBA All Star game anywhere but on the television anyway. Most of the tickets are sold by the league elsewhere. Those that remain go first to corporate box holders. Any that remain are priced in the thousand dollar range.

If you can only watch the NBA All Star game on television, does it matter if it’s going on in your town? Is it worth spending over an hour getting downtown, paying downtown rates to park, eat, etc. just to sit in a bar?

Kathleen Wynne’s hypocrisy over this whole issue is something to behold as well.

Monday saw Wynne railing against the injustice and entitlement thinking underlying executives with the 2015 Pan Am Games expensing 91 cent claims for coffee and parking meters. I was nodding along with her ripping people paid in the quarter million a year and up range demanding to be repaid for pocket change incidentals, treating the public purse like a trough they could dip in. (Go ahead: convince me you weren’t going to have that coffee anyway.)

Then she turns around and adds to the province’s $10 billion pile of red ink for this year alone — and its quarter trillion in outstanding debt — to pay off a corporation that is rolling in money?

All this on the heels of the Ellis-Don affair, where new legislation favouring that company (a major donor to the Liberals and the PCs) has been withdrawn in the legislature.

Sorry, Kathleen. You’re not any different. All I heard today was Dalton McGuinty’s voice talking out both sides of your mouth.

[retired2]

I say let the big businees that is going to make all this money during the all star game week put up the money. We won't see a penny of it down here

[retired2]

I hear she dropped off 2 millon in town this morning for bridge repairs. If that cuts down our cost on the bridge we can use that money to repair the overpass. Some how that sounds tooo simple.

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