Minor league baseball, hockey teams seeking COVID-19 relief

Laying off 17 people in the Charlotte Checkers front office of 25 felt like gutting a team for chief operating officer Tera Black.“the front office is a team just as much as the team on the ice,” she said.

Similar scenes played out across the rest of the American Hockey League, the ECHL, Southern Professional Hockey League and all levels of minor league baseball during the pandemic. Two years in and countless jobs and millions of dollars lost, over a hundred minor league baseball and more than a dozen minor league hockey teams hope to finally receive COVID-19 relief from the U.S. government after being left out of the first round of small business subsidies.

“Everybody who’s in our situation really is deserving of and needs some of this relief,” said Jason Frier, chairman and CEO of Hardball Capital, which owns and operates minor league baseball teams in South Carolina, Tennessee and Indiana. Unlike major pro sports leagues that could play games in empty stadiums and arenas thanks to TV and streaming revenue, the minors are almost entirely reliant on attendance. A Minor League Baseball survey found the average team lost over 91% of revenue from pre-pandemic levels — with the entire 2020 season canceled — and the AHL reported leaguewide revenue down 85-95% from its last full season. Not every team was hit that hard — those owned by MLB or NHL affiliates are not eligible for this relief, which could get through Congress as soon as next week as part of big-picture budget bills. Only a handful of Minor League Baseball teams are owned by MLB franchises; 21 of 31 in the AHL are owned by NHL teams.