Faced with escalating costs and dim prospects for profitability, CoachSports Inc. has halved its expenses by switching the professional affiliation of its Long Beach-based ice hockey club.
After five years in the International Hockey League, the Long Beach Ice Dogs have joined the West Coast Hockey League.
The move has allowed it to control costs while fielding a winning team. Operating expenses in the WCHL are approximately $3 million annually, vs. $6.5 million in the IHL.
“We are now on the road to profitability,” said Paul Clause, president of the Ice Dogs. “We had no shot at being profitable in the IHL.”
Helping the Ice Dogs move toward profitability is the league’s per-team weekly salary cap of $10,500, or about $525 for each of the team’s 20 players. The IHL, which is known as a minor league for high-priced National Hockey League talent, has yet to implement a salary cap.
And while the move to a new league meant the club’s roster had to be revamped lower pay and the loss of a direct pipeline to the NHL caused many players to leave the team has managed to keep a winning record. As of last week, new head coach Darryl Williams had the Ice Dogs in second place in the WCHL’s Southern Division with 69 points, seven points behind the first place San Diego Gulls, with 18 games left in the regular season.
(In the WCHL two points are awarded for a win, one point for a “shootout loss.” Shootout losses occur when a game is tied at the end of regulation and each side then takes shots on the other’s goal to determine the winner.)
In addition to player salaries, another expense that had burdened the team was the traveling required in the IHL, where its closest rival was the Utah Grizzlies in Salt Lake City. In the WCHL, the club has been able to reduce its travel expenses with rivals in Bakersfield and San Diego.
With an average ticket price of about $13, team officials expect the club to be profitable next season. As for the 2000-01 season, the Ice Dogs expect to cut their losses to less than $500,000, said Clause.
Team officials declined to specify the extent of losses sustained by the team in the prior season. Tim Connolly, chief executive of CoachSports, would only say that it was a “substantial amount of money.”
“We do consider ourselves a success on the ice,” Clause said. “On the business side, I wouldn’t classify our financial performance a success. When you lose money, I don’t consider that a success.”
Unlike the Midwest-based IHL, which continues to suffer financial difficulties after undergoing a rapid expansion in the 1990s, the nine-team WCHL has plans on being a regional league for the western half of North America.
Besides owning the Ice Dogs, CoachSports purchased the membership rights to an inactive WCHL team in Tucson, Ariz. in 1999, and plans to place that franchise in a proposed arena in Ontario, Calif. next year.
“After nine years of the city trying to attract a professional franchise, we are probably closer than ever before to placing a hockey team in Ontario,” said Connolly.
The company also plans to add another one or two WCHL franchises within the next 18 months in Temecula and/or Palm Springs.
Mike McCall, commissioner of the Boise, Idaho-based WCHL, said the league is also exploring the possibilities of placing franchises in Simi Valley, Oxnard and Lancaster.
