Coyotes are a Business Opportunity: Portability 101

Now a second group led by Bassano, Alberta’s Daryl Jones is supposedly making a firm offer to the bankruptcy court for the Coyotes.Several media outlets have asked why anyone would be involved in Phoenix’s NHL money-shredder.These journalists are Offside if they haven’t looked at this story as an investment story first, sports story second.These businessmen see the Phoenix Coyotes as a huge potential opportunity, the same way that Boots Del Biaggio viewed the Nashville Predators.In short, it's all about "Portability"!All investors know that in the end, the NHL would rather relocate a team than lose them outright to bankruptcy and dispersal drafts. Such an occurrence would heavily de-value the remaining franchises. Teams borrow money against team values. So as they go up, they can borrow more money against it up to a certain percentage. So when values plummet, this in turn causes their lenders to call in their loans on an accelerated basis, making life even tougher for the remaining teams. Such is called the "domino effect" of sports team valuation. The collective weight of the team’s debt load can be become overwhelming should team values be adjusted downwards. Lenders get anxious especially in a downturned economy to begin with.So then every team has portability value regardless of how bad they are in their present state and locale. more »