Sabres' value and revenue

[Pimlach]

On 10/2/2025 at 2:57 PM, shrader said:

What’s the timeline on all of this? Given the 14 year drought, I’d at least question whether or not it hurt the product on the ice. You can’t break something that’s already broken. 

The topic was Sabres total payroll and I mentioned that they gutted the entire organization since Covid and the departure of Botts, and upon the arrival of Adams.  True enough, the entire 14 years of Pegula hockey has been a shambles.   

Adams traded Reinhart and Eichel, lost Montour, Ullmark and McCabe - all of that hurt the product on the ice.   Paying Muel, Cozens, and Power and consistently icing very young teams far under the cap - that hurt.  Peterka wanting out is another sign of problems.  If this year is another bust then there will be more "Peterka's" wanting out.  

 

Edited yesterday at 01:44 PM by Pimlach

[RangerDave]

Just as "expenses" are probably more than just player and employee salaries and benefits (advertising, travel, taxes, rent, etc.), I assume "revenue" is more than just ticket sales and TV broadcasting revenue.  Things like merchandising, sponsorships, food sales, etc.  It woul dbe really interesting to see all of the expenses and all of the revenues.

[ska-T Palmtown]

lol - it is like you folks have never heard of Google. Forbes does all this work for you. This is from 2022-23, but feast thine eyes:

Red circle, operating income - 2024 was $13M, 2023 was $25M, and 2022 was $22M

The fine print in the first part implies that the $13M is after payroll, taxes, and arena expenses. It also notes, that is NOT inclusive of the Kraken fee ... which was $1B/30 so ... $30M per team.

The Sabres have not lost money since Covid. Pleez Stahp!!!!

[mjd1001]

There are some people as they get older, they sense their mortality and get desperate to leave a mark that they can be remembered by. They try to do big things. If they own a sports team, they'll throw everything at it to try to get that championship. 

Then there are others who as they get older do almost the opposite. They get cheaper, more frugal, they look at their bank account or their net worth every single day and don't want to take chances with their wealth. 

I've always gotten the sense that Terry Pegula is more of the second as he gets older and not even close to the first.

He has the money, so how do you explain when he bought the team... No expense will be spared... Money is not an issue... Going to the relative penny pinching of the past 5 years? 

If he truly believed now what he said when he bought the team, even during covid, there would not have been any gutting of the hockey department or layoffs like they went through, and even if that did happen, things would have certainly been fixed immediately when the league came back.

Edited yesterday at 12:04 PM by mjd1001

[LGR4GM]

8 hours ago, ska-T Palmtown said:

lol - it is like you folks have never heard of Google. Forbes does all this work for you. This is from 2022-23, but feast thine eyes:

Red circle, operating income - 2024 was $13M, 2023 was $25M, and 2022 was $22M

The fine print in the first part implies that the $13M is after payroll, taxes, and arena expenses. It also notes, that is NOT inclusive of the Kraken fee ... which was $1B/30 so ... $30M per team.

The Sabres have not lost money since Covid. Pleez Stahp!!!!

On top of that, Terry spent about 200 million to buy the team. It's worth 1 billion more now. Terry would have to be losing 75 million a year or so to actually have a bad investment. And that's every year. 

[Pimlach]

9 hours ago, ska-T Palmtown said:

lol - it is like you folks have never heard of Google. Forbes does all this work for you. This is from 2022-23, but feast thine eyes:

Red circle, operating income - 2024 was $13M, 2023 was $25M, and 2022 was $22M

The fine print in the first part implies that the $13M is after payroll, taxes, and arena expenses. It also notes, that is NOT inclusive of the Kraken fee ... which was $1B/30 so ... $30M per team.

The Sabres have not lost money since Covid. Pleez Stahp!!!!

Having a good finance guy on the staff is a nice.  

[Pimlach]

1 hour ago, mjd1001 said:

There are some people as they get older, they sense their mortality and get desperate to leave a mark that they can be remembered by. They try to do big things. If they own a sports team, they'll throw everything at it to try to get that championship. 

Then there are others who as they get older do almost the opposite. They get cheaper, more frugal, they look at their bank account or their net worth every single day and don't want to take chances with their wealth. 

I've always gotten the sense that Terry Pegula is more of the second as he gets older and not even close to the first.

He has the money, so how do you explain when he bought the team... No expense will be spared... Money is not an issue... Going to the relative penny pinching of the past 5 years? 

If he truly believed now what he said when he bought the team, even during covid, there would not have been any gutting of the hockey department or layoffs like they went through, and even if that did happen, things would have certainly been fixed immediately when the league came back.

But yet he is the opposite with the Bills.  His problems with the Sabres stem from these things:  

1.   He thinks he knows the game

2.  He gets infatuated with people he knows and likes

3.  He does not fit into or trust the NHL establishment and feels they led him astray. 
 

Just curious, are you retired yet?  

[JohnC]

2 hours ago, mjd1001 said:

There are some people as they get older, they sense their mortality and get desperate to leave a mark that they can be remembered by. They try to do big things. If they own a sports team, they'll throw everything at it to try to get that championship. 

Then there are others who as they get older do almost the opposite. They get cheaper, more frugal, they look at their bank account or their net worth every single day and don't want to take chances with their wealth. 

I've always gotten the sense that Terry Pegula is more of the second as he gets older and not even close to the first.

He has the money, so how do you explain when he bought the team... No expense will be spared... Money is not an issue... Going to the relative penny pinching of the past 5 years? 

If he truly believed now what he said when he bought the team, even during covid, there would not have been any gutting of the hockey department or layoffs like they went through, and even if that did happen, things would have certainly been fixed immediately when the league came back.

Sometimes explanations are simpler than one might expect. The problem isn't so much about the amount of money he spent as it is in the decisions being made. The owner came in gangbusters thinking that throwing money around would give his team instant credibility. What he learned is spending money foolishly, no matter what the amount is, is simply wasting money. The owner has made a number of bad decisions, especially in staffing. And to compound the problem, this self-made billionaire is a stubborn man who was inclined to double down rather than alter course. The reality is that this franchise is structured the way he wanted it and is staffed the way he wanted it. Ineptitude is ineptitude. He has sabotaged himself. Has he learned from his mistakes? Maybe so. I'm not really sure because this fellow with the off big boat doesn't talk much.  

[mjd1001]

50 minutes ago, Pimlach said:

But yet he is the opposite with the Bills.  His problems with the Sabres stem from these things:  

1.   He thinks he knows the game

2.  He gets infatuated with people he knows and likes

3.  He does not fit into or trust the NHL establishment and feels they led him astray. 
 

Just curious, are you retired yet?  

No, not retired.

[dudacek]

If you zoom way out to look at his record overall in sports, Pegula isn’t cheap, he just over-reacted to COVID and draws lines over arbitrary things.

I also think his reputation for interference  is over-wrought. It’s more about capriciousness again, combined with hiring poor managers, who have also been unskilled at managing their boss.

In 14 years he’s yet to fire someone for failing to ice a good team, despite never icing a good team.

His biggest flaw is he’s never been about winning.

 

[PASabreFan]

1 hour ago, dudacek said:

If you zoom way out to look at his record overall in sports, Pegula isn’t cheap, he just over-reacted to COVID and draws lines over arbitrary things.

I also think his reputation for interference  is over-wrought. It’s more about capriciousness again, combined with hiring poor managers, who have also been unskilled at managing their boss.

In 14 years he’s yet to fire someone for failing to ice a good team, despite never icing a good team.

His biggest flaw is he’s never been about winning.

 

"Starting today" was a lie?

 

[Pimlach]

2 hours ago, mjd1001 said:

No, not retired.

I asked you this because I wonder what you base your opinion on how “older people” feel about their savings.   You could be  a financial planner that studies how people feel about managing finances and risk?  
 

[K-9]

22 hours ago, PASabreFan said:

"Starting today" was a lie?

 

Not a lie; more like a naive thing to say before the realities of NHL ownership presented themselves. 

[PASabreFan]

27 minutes ago, K-9 said:

Not a lie; more like a naive thing to say before the realities of NHL ownership presented themselves. 

How is it naive to say that the mission of the franchise is to win a championship?

What was and remains naive is Terry's belief that he can be the POHO of achieving that mission without hiring good hockey people and letting them decide how best to do it.

On second thought, scratch the "remains." It pretty clearly is no longer the mission of the franchise.

[Taro T]

On 10/4/2025 at 8:02 AM, mjd1001 said:

There are some people as they get older, they sense their mortality and get desperate to leave a mark that they can be remembered by. They try to do big things. If they own a sports team, they'll throw everything at it to try to get that championship. 

Then there are others who as they get older do almost the opposite. They get cheaper, more frugal, they look at their bank account or their net worth every single day and don't want to take chances with their wealth. 

I've always gotten the sense that Terry Pegula is more of the second as he gets older and not even close to the first.

He has the money, so how do you explain when he bought the team... No expense will be spared... Money is not an issue... Going to the relative penny pinching of the past 5 years? 

If he truly believed now what he said when he bought the team, even during covid, there would not have been any gutting of the hockey department or layoffs like they went through, and even if that did happen, things would have certainly been fixed immediately when the league came back.

One thing that, IMHO, gets overlooked in Pegula's actions regarding the Sabres (or more accurately, non-actions, post-Covid) is the heart attack/stroke that Kim suffered.  Personally, expect that affected his outlook tremendously.  Covid showed him that his illiquid assests could lose tremendous value literally almost overnight given the wrong circumstances.  And Kim's health showed him, in a bad way, that you never know what tomorrow's going to bring.

I wonder just how much of his unwillingness to spend wastefully (for lack of a better word) on coaches and FO staff that are no longer working for him is due to holding out the hope that some medical team is going to have a breakthrough in brain recovery and the treatment they develop is going to cost way beyond what any of us here wasting time on a Sunday reading and posting to a message board dedicated to an irrelevant team in a semi-obscure sport when the weather is absolutely glorious in WNY could afford to come up with.

It would make sense that he's concerned about cashflow when it's possible (not likely, but possible) that a ton of cash could bring back the version of his wife that he fell in love with and made so many plans with.

Just throwing out a potential reason why his perspective on how he wants to run things might've changed.  But IF that is the reason things have changed, don't know how we ever get past February 2 as it all seems to be a feedback loop.  Maybe everything coaching-wise starts over next year as there are no contracts to buy out?  Maybe Leone has such a special season in Ra-cha-cha he supplants Appert as heir-apparent?  There must be a way to get to February 3; just not seeing that path right now.