MONEY MATTERS COLLIDE WITH LOVE OF THE GAME
From the juniors to the Olympics, battles are brewing
The economic hierarchy of hockey is in some turmoil, and games played in courts and meeting rooms could impact those played on the major junior, world championship and Olympic ice.
The issue they have in common is one of player as commodity. It will be addressed in Canada and the United States this week, and the results should be fascinating.
On Tuesday in Toronto, a law firm will seek to certify a suit against the Ontario Hockey League’s member clubs as a class action. The firm is suing to establish the designation of player as employee, along with a salary of $10,000 per year and retroactive pay for juniors who, according to the suit, have been paid a meagre stipend between $40 and $60 per week. The Canadian Hockey League and OHL argue that players are amateur student athletes, not employees.
The lawyers representing 400 junior players who have joined the suit feel it unfair that some OHL and WHL teams can pocket hundreds of thousands or millions in profit while handing out crumbs to the talent that drives ticket sales. A similar class action certification hearing was held before a judge in Calgary recently. There has not been a ruling yet.
Financial documents unsealed recently by an Alberta judge indeed make it clear that some major junior teams in Canada can surely afford to pay their 16- to 20-year-old employees at least a minimum wage that values them as much as other businesses that employ teenagers. The junior teams owned by NHL teams, like the Edmonton Oil Kings of the Western Hockey League, can certainly pay more, given their profitability.
But it’s not that simple, because the financial landscape in major junior isn’t nearly as flat as the prairies upon which many of the WHL’s small market teams are located. The Swift Current Broncos are in the same league as the Oil Kings, but not really.
And if we’re equating a junior hockey league to another business that employs teenagers and pays them minimum wage, how many of those fast food companies offer a year of university tuition and books for each year of service on the job? Major junior kids have that opportunity, and thank goodness, because it’s the avenue for the vast majority of them, while a smaller percentage go on to make the NHL and minor pro.
So that fight should go the distance.
On Monday, it is expected U.S.A. Hockey officials will meet with women’s national team players threatening a boycott of the world championships later this month in Plymouth, Mass. The players want salaries of US$68,000 per year and benefits like maternity leave, in addition to the bonuses they get for winning medals at Olympics and worlds. They want to be valued as full-time employees, and the $1,000 per month paid by U.S.A. Hockey in nonOlympic years isn’t cutting it.
So they are leveraging the immediacy of an American world championship, not to mention their potential role in the upcoming PyeongChang Olympics, to force a resolution of a fight they have been waging quietly since 2000. If the gamble pays off, it advances their cause, and the next generation of women will profit from this action.
Some of the women’s team players say they hold down two part-time jobs to support their participation on the national team. Some play for the fledgling NWHL, drawing modest salaries that were just slashed by 38 per cent. Some players earn decent corporate endorsements, some don’t.
They say they are not fairly compensated or marketed, particularly in comparison to the men’s national team, which is generally full of NHL players.
But what’s fair? Is it fair that NHL players make millions in salary while NWHL players make a relative pittance? From a business perspective, of course it is. The NHL produces billions in revenue, largely from TV deals, and the game’s major stakeholders are free to distribute that lucre as they may.
But the NHL is apparently feeling undervalued too, as it relates to player participation in the 2018 Winter Olympics in PyeongChang, South Korea. The NHL, the National Hockey League Players’ Association, the International Ice Hockey Federation and the International Olympic Committee have been unable to hammer out an agreement, and the clock is ticking. The National Broadcasting Corporation must be more than an interested bystander, after paying US$963 million for television rights to the PyeongChang Games and investing $7.75 billion more for the six Olympics from 2022 through 2032.
Olympic hockey drives ratings, which affect advertising rates, which determine a network’s ability to cash in on its massive investment. Though admittedly, PyeongChang presents a challenge because of the time zone difference.
NHL commissioner Gary Bettman says league owners feel they don’t derive enough benefit from the Olympic relationship, given that the IOC and IIHF restrict the league’s ability to market its players as Olympians.
NHL players, in general, want to play in the five-ring circus. It’s an honour and a pleasure to suit up for your country. Since they’re already extremely well paid by their NHL teams, their financial stake is less of a motivator or a complicating factor.
That makes the Olympic issue a bit of an outlier, but the commonality of employee as commodity is still at the very heart of that tussle too.