AS I SEE IT COLUMN: And so it begins – Jets ask for financial aid

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 22/04/2023 (744 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

In a controversial move, Winnipeg Jet owner Mark Chipman recently implored companies to buy more season tickets. He showed a video titled “Forever Winnipeg” that included footage of the previous iteration of the Jets leaving Manitoba in 1996. Pointedly, the video asks the question “Is Winnipeg a NHL city?”

Between that question and the footage of that dreadful last Jets game in ’96, the message wasn’t subtle. The fan reaction was swift and mostly negative. After reading hundreds of comments on social media and the Winnipeg Sun, my guess is that about 90 per cent of the comments were negative.

The overwhelming majority of commenters took the video and Chipman’s plea for more corporate support as fearmongering. A not-so-veiled threat: You’ve lost a team once — if you don’t pay up you could lose them again. (After the backlash Chipman was quoted as saying the Jets aren’t going anywhere.)

To be fair, Chipman deserves tons of credit for bringing NHL hockey back to Manitoba. He clearly loves Winnipeg and he loves the game. To his credit he has spent as much on team salaries as the league allows. He is clearly a very loyal person, to his players, his management team and his staff.

But he is also a businessman. Bringing the NHL back to Manitoba wasn’t a charitable venture; it was a business deal. On that front the Jets have been wildly successful to the Chipman family and their True North Sports and Entertainment company.

There is no question that he is losing revenue when there are fewer fans in the stands. But there is also no question that Chipman has leveraged his partial ownership of the Jets to acquire large swaths of prime downtown real estate in Winnipeg. He owns the block across the street from the rink. He owns True North Square. He owns the block west of that and he is hoping to purchase Portage Place.

Thanks to the Jets, Chipman’s business empire has grown exponentially. I’m pretty sure True North didn’t have a real estate division when the Jets came back to Manitoba. It does now. Given the large tracts of land he already owns – and the buildings built on them – along with the prospect of adding Portage Place to his real estate holdings, he should do what Jets 1.0 goaltender Bob Essensa told me when he was the union rep on the team: “Show us your books.”

It is undeniable that Chipman has lost money recently – on the small piece of his business pie that is Jets ticket sales. It’s also undeniable he has massively increased his overall fortune by orders of magnitude.

Mr. Chipman, show us how much money you’re losing in lower ticket sales and then show us how much money you’re making in your real estate acquisitions and land development. Seems fair, doesn’t it?

We are not stupid. If you’re losing money overall, Manitobans will act appropriately. But if you’re scooping up block after block in the downtown it’s hard to feel sorry for you. It’s even harder to believe you’ve fallen on hard times.

Will Chipman next ask for even more tax breaks to stay viable? Will there be whispers about needing a new rink?

This whole thing is so deeply insulting because Chipman’s business partner is David Thomson. Forbes magazine lists Thomson as the 23rd richest person on the planet. Not only is he the richest owner in the NHL; he is wealthier than any owner in the NFL, Major League Baseball, NBA or European soccer.

We don’t know how much of the Jets Chipman actually owns. Is it 5 per cent? 90 per cent? 51 per cent?

It’s off-putting to tell businesses and hockey fans to give the Jets more money, when the person sitting beside Chipman happens to be one of the richest people on earth.

No one questions that Chipman is losing money on ticket sales. The pandemic, the rising cost of living, inflation and other economic pressures have forced businesses and individuals to think really hard about where to spend discretionary dollars.

We don’t have all the corporate head offices that Toronto does. We don’t have the tax breaks that people in Alberta enjoy. We don’t have the population base that the Canadiens and Canucks can draw from.

But let’s be brutally honest. Modestly fluctuating ticket sales is a yearly issue. Owning downtown Winnipeg is multi-generational wealth.

So please, when your business partner is one of the richest people in the solar system and when you’ve parlayed whatever your portion of the Jets ownership actually is into massive real estate deals (with dollar figures that dwarf the loss in revenue from slightly lower ticket sales), it’s not a good look to be holding out your hand.

I’m used to charitable organizations asking for money. But NHL owners?