The Arizona Coyotes won’t be coming to Canada, or even British Columbia, after all..The team announced Thursday it will be staying in the 5,000-seat Mullet Arena on the Arizona State University campus in Tempe for at least one more season while it looks for another home in the Phoenix area..Already, at least one location in nearby Mesa — on the site of a shopping mall slated for demolition — has been touted by local news outlets.. Slapshot“Who own ‘da Chiefs?” .“We remain committed to Arizona and have already started re-engaging with local officials and sites to solidity a new permanent home in the Valley. We look forward to sharing more with you in the coming weeks,” Coyotes CEO Xavier Gutierrez said in a statement..That’s sure to break the hearts of sports fans in Surrey, who tweeted out yesterday that its new mayor was submitting a bid on behalf of the city to relocate the team to Lotusland. In an hoax worthy of Slapshot, it turns out it was all a gag (surprise) — an inside joke meant to pique Canucks fans after one of the worst seasons in franchise history..All good fun, Western Standard readers likely suspected as much. Not too many pundits in Hockeyville took it seriously, although there was definitely support for moving the team to Quebec City..Stateside, a tweet by Kansas City Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes calling for the team to be moved to KC went viral. “KC coyotes has a nice ring to it! @NHL what y’all think? @tmobilecenter.”.All flights of fancy aside, the Tempe experience raises serious questions about Calgary’s own $1.2 billion arena bid and the extent to which governments and municipalities should pay for it. Especially after a ThinkHQ poll earlier this month found that 50% of residents oppose it outright..That figure rises to 61% in Edmonton, whose own Ice District received a grand total of zero dollars from the provincial government. In hindsight, Edmonton’s arena has been a spectacular success, re-energizing both the team and the city’s downtown core which had been neglected for nearly three decades..In Tempe, voters rejected a trio of special ballot measures — one on re-zoning land near the airport, one to approve the deal and a third to implement a bond to fund it — by a minimum of 56% for all three. At 33%, it was reportedly one of the largest turnouts for a municipal plebiscite in the state’s history..It was the bond issue that really raised eyebrows. The city would have had to issue $200 million in bonds to remediate the site — a former landfill — and pay it back over 30 years using monies generated from city sales taxes, hotel taxes, parking revenues and a 6% surcharge on retail sales and real estate assessments generated from a special ‘Community Facilities’ corporation..Sound familiar?.Apart from the issue of using tax dollars to fund it, another big sticking point was the role of Coyote’s owner Alex Meruelo, who made his billions in the casino industry in Vegas, including sports betting.. Arizona Coyotes owner Alex MerueloArizona Coyotes owner Alex Meruelo .A major feature of the Tempe arena deal — and the one that turned voters off the most — was the construction of a major sportsbook adjacent to the rink catering to high-rolling hockey fans and snowbirds wintering in Glendale..And we all know how lucrative that’s been for the NHL in Canada. According to numbers from iGaming Ontario — which runs the provincial government’s online gambling market — revenues jumped 71% to $457 million in its fiscal third quarter that ran from Oct. 1 to Dec. 31 last year, which just happens to coincide with hockey season. Given the Leaf’s playoff run, Queen’s Park is well on its way to raking in a billion dollars..Nonetheless, Tempe’s vote provides a blueprint for community activism and how future opposition to publicly funded professional sports teams could work here..“This is a victory by Tempe for Tempe. This win goes to show that Tempe residents love our community, we know what’s best for it and we must be part of every conversation when it comes to our land, our tax dollars, and what we value as our city grows,” Tempe1st, which spearheaded the campaign said on Twitter.
