How Does a Hockey Team Survive in River City?

Six seasons ago professional hockey made its debut in Evansville’s Ford Center. Civic pride was at an all-time high when the Ford Center was sold out for the Bob Seeger concert in the fall of 2011. Evansville leaders, which had taken a big gamble on building a downtown arena, was full of expectations for the new hockey team called the Evansville Icemen.

The Icemen opened their first season in what appeared to be a successful season and even progressed to the playoffs in the first year.  After 5 seasons, the Evansville Icemen let it be known that they had been losing money from day one. The Icemen did attract larger than expected crowds to the Ford Center where they paid $11,000 base rent per home game to the Ford Center for 36 games per year. That adds up to $396,000 base rent per season.  Also the Icemen paid a $2.00 per ticket facility fee to the Ford Center, which generates around $200,000 per year.  The $2.00 per ticket facility fee is not assessed to free comp tickets given to area not-for-profit organizations.  Finally , the Icemen paid the Ford Center $50,000 a year to lease the video and audio equipment. The total amount of money paid to the Ford Center by the Evansville Icemen was for five (5) seasons was approximately $650,000 a year.  According to psst guesstimates the crowds averaged nearly 200,000 attendees (paid and comp tickets) per season  and to the outside world things looked good.

Even after the IceMen reported generating total revenue from tickets, suites, etc. of over $3 Million per year, they publicly disclosed that they lost an average of $600,000 per year.  Sources indicate that after all was said and done the average admission only netted $13.75 for the first year and gradual increases over the next 4 years. The easiest way for the Icemen to have broken even would have been to either sell an additional 46,153 tickets (1,282 per game) or increase the ticket price by about $3.25 per game. The problem with those solutions was that the market for hockey in Evansville seems to only be about 5,000 people per game when the team is winning. To really be able to budget for an acceptable profit of say 15% the Icemen would have needed a $20 average ticket price without losing any fans or to sell out the 11,000 seats for every game at the $13 average. The other problem was the abundance of free tickets that drove attendance up in the early years.

The probability that either of these things could be achieved was low enough that the ownership of the Icemen decided to seek another location for the team. Bottom line. because of unreasonable contractural demands by the City of Evansville concerning a new 5 year contract the Icemen were forced to leave town. The Icemen recently agreed to play Hockey in Jacksonville, Florida.

Upon the departure of the Icemen a desperate effort to keep hockey alive in the $127 Million hockey rink resulted in the formation of a lesser level team called the Evansville Thunderbolts. A businessman with a passion for the sport came in as a 10% owner in the new team and enthusiasm was high. After a single season in which the team lost many more games than they won, the businessman made a quick exit from his equity stake and the team is now owned by VenuWorks that happens to be the manager of the Ford Center.

The Evansville Thunderbolts by all measures probably had a disastrous year from a financial perspective. Attendance fell to levels that were a small fraction of the Icemen’s levels, Executive suite rentals fell sharply and season ticket sales seemly dried up. Concession sales were way down. The Ford Center home game rental contract was amended from $11,000 per game that the Evansville Icemen paid down to $1,000 per game for the Thunderbolts which is essentially free. The losses incurred by the Evansville Thunderbolts have not been disclosed, but if the Icemen lost $600,000 per year one can only speculate that the Thunderbolts who average way less in home game attendence probably could have lost a lot more.

That brings us to the Ford Center which was paid for by the taxpayers of Evansville in a $127 Million bond issue that costs $8 Million per year in payments. The Ford Center admittedly also lost about $600,000 per year when the Icemen played there, not counting paying the $8 Million per year note payments. The people of are now under their leadership tasked with paying for the utilities for the Ford Center, providing free labor for the Thunderbolts, and absorbing all of the operating losses of the team in addition to paying $8 Million in payments per year. Several financial professionals place the losses attributed to the Ford Center at well over $10 Million per year.

So the question arises, can hockey survive in Evansville, Indiana. The answer appears to be no. Some places do not have sufficient markets to support everything that a starry eyed future governor wants to spend money on and this is one of them. Filling the building at what the market will bear will not create a profitable franchise. Subsidies of rent, utilities, and note payments won’t make it work either. Hockey teams have come and gone for 6 seasons now and a profit has never been made.

The Ford Center is another matter. The long suffering people of Evansville will continue to be taxed for the payment stream and the Evansville Redevelopment Commission will keep on subsidizing the operation of the Ford Center until the note is paid off. The people of Evansville will keep on dealing with crumbling infrastructure, sewer spillage, and the damages they cause.

What was carefully orchestrated by former Mayor Wienzapfel to pass without a referendum is now an albatross around the neck of the Evansville. taxpayers.  The damage will continue and the charades will too until some group of people are elected who will speak the truth.  As of today, we can’t even get an honest answer about what the utilities bills for the Ford Center are and who pays them.

Withholding that information from the taxpayers of Evansville is simply dishonest. Its obvious that member of the Evansville City Council have no idea what it means to be a “good steward of the public trust’! They should be ashamed of themselves!

FOOTNOTE: Todays “READERS POLL” question is: :Do you feel that our elected officials should immediately release information concerning who is  paying the utilities bills at the Ford Center?

Attorney General Hill Announces More than 2,000 Indiana Students Are Eligible For Student Loan Cancellation

Indiana Attorney General Curtis Hill today announced that more than 2,000 Indiana residents who attended schools operated by Corinthian Colleges, Inc., are eligible for cancellation of federal student loans used to pay tuition.

Indiana residents who attended Everest Institute, Everest College, Everest University, Heald College and Wyotech are eligible. If granted cancellation, those students would not have to make any more payments. Any payments already made would be refunded.

Indiana and 45 other states, in addition to Washington D.C., are sending a letter to students detailing the relief available. The letter will include a short application that must be filled out and submitted to the U.S. Department of Education. A total of 2,414 Indiana residents are eligible for relief.

Corinthian Colleges is a for-profit organization that abruptly halted operations in 2015, transferring some of its campuses to a non-profit organization called Zenith Education group. Prior to this transfer, the U.S. Department of Education discovered widespread misinterpretations about post-graduation employment rates at the aforementioned institutions across the nation between 2010 and 2014.

Lists of the affected campuses, programs and dates of enrollment are available at these two links: hereand here. Students who first enrolled in the identified campuses and programs during the specified time periods are eligible for streamlined discharge of their federal student loans.

While the outreach efforts are centered around students who fall within the U.S. Department of Education’s findings of fraud discussed above, any student who attended Corinthian Colleges and believes they were lied to about job prospects, transferability of credits or other issues is encouraged to apply to have their federal student loans cancelled. Students who wish to do so should use the Department of Education’s universal discharge application. More information is available here.

Due to the volume of applicants, it may take the U.S. Department of Education longer than usual to process applications. Because of this potential delay, those who apply should continue making payments on the affected loans until they receive confirmation from the U.S. Department of Education — or from one’s loan servicer — that the federal loans are in forbearance while the application is pending or that the loans have been cancelled.

Students can call the U.S. Department of Education hotline at 1-855-279-6207 or email questions about discharge of their federal student loans to FSAOperations@ed.gov.

On September 2, 1920, an era ended for Evansville’s firemen. It was an emotional occasion as the public gathered at Hose House No. 3 to bid on the last of the fire department’s horses in an auction. Although the animals were specially trained, they were let go when the department’s vehicles were motorized. Horses had transported fire wagons around the city since at least the Civil War. When they were not working, the horses were housed in stalls in hose house basements and treated as pets. A local newspaper reported that firemen “sat around looking gloomy” the night before the auction. While some horses were sold to farmers, others entered a well-deserved retirement.