I can't help but get the feeling that it's all connected somehow. Maybe the details are a little fuzzy and the picture a little out of focus at this point, but there has got to be some connection to it all.
Here we have an ownership group, the collection of four local professional sports teams — hockey, indoor lacrosse, soccer and outdoor lacrosse — all linked by a common co-owner. And here's what's happening:
• That common owner and a partner are being sued by another part-owner of the hockey and indoor lacrosse teams. The lawsuit alleges severe mismanagement on the part of the primary co-owner and the other partner. The lawsuit asserts that the co-owner in question owes money to everyone and his brother, and the suit requests that this co-owner and other partner be removed from positions of leadership of the hockey and indoor lacrosse teams.
• In the months before the lawsuit, that co-owner goes public with a demand that the hockey and indoor lacrosse teams receive a better cut of concessions revenue at a publically-owner arena, stating that the two teams are losing money because of the lousy lease deal they have with the city and the company that manages the arena. The co-owner strongly hints that the two teams might have to shut down operations in the near future unless they're given a better deal.
• In response to the co-owner's demands, Rochester's mayor demands that before the city cuts any such deal and bails out the hockey and indoor lacrosse teams, the teams must open their books to an independent auditor.
• About a mile away, a brand-new soccer stadium sits unfinished because the owners of the soccer and outdoor lacrosse teams, including the co-owner in question, don't have enough money to fund the project themselves and have become dependant on state grants funded by taxpayers to complete the construction.
• When the soccer stadium was originally proposed several years ago, the owners of the soccer and outdoor lacrosse team, including the co-owner in question, assert that the teams themselves will fund most of the project's cost. However, as negotiations and planning move ahead and the years pass by, the owners gradually reveal that they will be able to fund fewer and fewer of the costs themselves, and they ask the various governmental bodies — as well as the taxpayers who fund those bodies — to pick up more and more of the tab. In essence, it gradually becomes understood that the owners of the soccer and outdoor lacrosse teams — as well as the new stadium — don't have as deep of pockets as they initially let on.
• As the as-yet unfinished soccer stadium enters its second year of existence, attendance at soccer games gradually decreases, falling below the numbers attracted at the soccer team's previous home and below the projected numbers the soccer team's owners used to successfully pitch the idea of the soccer stadium to local and state officials.
• Several reasons for this drop in attendance are proferred by observers. Some say the stadium doesn't have enough parking, and some say the stadium was built in a less-than-safe neighborhood. Some suggest that the soccer team isn't promoting its product as well as it could be, and others suggest that the cost of attending a soccer game is simply too high.
• While all this is happening, the soccer team experiences a steady stream of employee departures, led by the COO and vice president widely credited with making the soccer team the massive success it's been. This VP is joined by other former employees of Rochester's soccer team in a brand new team in North Carolina.
• The decline in attendance, the problems with the new stadium and the departure of the talented executive all roughly coincide.
• Another of the soccer team's co-owners — the person who was the most vocal and passionate lobbyist on behalf of a new stadium — remains silent about the fact that his co-owner is being sued for alleged mismanagement of the hockey and indoor lacrosse teams. He offers few, if any, public statements of support for his beleaguered business partner. Perhaps no one has asked him to comment.
Soooo ... what do we make of all this? Maybe nothing. I certainly hope there's nothing to be made of it, because these four teams mean a great deal to the sports fans in this city, and all the players on all four teams work extremely hard to give those fans a success product.
Anyway, I gotta go home and watch "The X-Files." Me, a conspiracy nut? Nah.
