Will pucks on the ice mean cash in the till?

Restaurants, bars hope return of NHL will provide lift

The return of the National Hockey League on Saturday will give a sorely needed boost to the psyches of Canadian sports fans, and provide a delayed return on investment for long-suffering sponsors.

And while economists point out the NHL’s absence had no noticeable effect on Canada’s overall economy, on a hyper-local level a shortened hockey season will bring a welcome infusion of cash.

Last month payment processing company Moneris released research that found spending in restaurants and bars near Canadian NHL arenas had dropped an average of 11 per cent on nights NHL games had been cancelled, compared with game nights the previous year.

Moneris vice-president of marketing Malcolm Fowler doesn’t know if a condensed NHL season will allow those businesses to recoup everything they lost, but says they should brace for sharply increased revenue between now and late April, when the regular season ends.

“We expect spending to bounce back, but the question is will it come all the way back,” Fowler says. “We expect probably.”

For the people and institutions who wound up as collateral damage in the 113-day lockout, the 24 Maple Leafs games scheduled for the Air Canada Centre this winter will make a noticeable difference.

Game night staff who had been restricted to Raptors games will see their workloads — and paycheques — double over the winter and spring.

Meanwhile the city-owned parking lot across Bay St. from the ACC — which grosses roughly $6,000 on game nights — can count on at least 24 more paydays.

And in Washington, D.C., where hockey fans aren’t as rabid or numerous as they are in Toronto, municipal officials estimate the city lost $200,000 in tax revenue with every game cancelled during the lockout. NHL beer sponsor Molson-Coors threatened legal action against the league, citing the lockout as a factor behind lower-than-expected earnings.

Still not every NHL-linked business suffered during the work stoppage.

Earlier this month equipment manufacturer Bauer released its earning report, revealing adjusted net income had climbed to $7.3 million during the quarter ending last November 30, up from $4.4 million over the same period in 2011.

The stretch included the first 11 weeks of the lockout, but Bauer CEO says his company’s focus on grassroots marketing meant it didn’t necessarily need to use the NHL to reach its core consumers — hockey playing youth.

“The NHL is an important part of our business,” says Bauer CEO Kevin Davis.

“But if you consider the number of guys in the NHL relative to the number of kids playing hockey around the world, that’s a very small number.” And Fowler points out that while overall spending at bars and restaurants dropped during the lockout, establishments in postal codes adjacent to arenas actually reported increased activity over that span.

“Bars in that next layer out did better than they would have had a game been on,” Fowler says.

“Perhaps that’s because there were 20,000 people not sitting in an arena, but who wanted to go somewhere after work.”