Chapter 1: Billionaire Ted Buys a Team
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"The funny thing to me about all of this was I had been offered to also buy the Flames before in '77 when I purchased the Atlanta Hawks from Cousins and I turned him down. I remember thinking at the time, and it was foolish of me in retrospect, that there was no possible way to sell the sport to a television audience. The main things being that viewers had a tough time trying to see the puck, which is important as the audience needs to know who has possession, and I personally wasn't keen on the problem the NHL had at the time of bench clearing brawls that got out of control with a big sticking point being that Bruins-Rangers brawl where players from Boston went into the stands. We all thought in 2005 that the incident in Detroit between the Pistons and Pacers was absolutely ludicrous and yet that was almost the norm in the NHL then. Add in my personal bias at the time in favor of sports like baseball as well as pro wresling and that the Flames were constantly teetering to stay profitable, I just saw it as a money pit that wouldn't work. That all changed when I saw the sport live on March 15, 1980 and I never will forget that day. I remember that earlier in the day I was conducting meetings with organizers at the Omni discussing scheduling decisions for upcoming and future events. Cousins was in the meeting as the Flames were in a playoff race at the time and he wanted to see if he could secure open dates for round one. After the meeting I remember Cousins invited me to join him in his suite to watch the game between the Flames and Flyers that night and continue the discussions about scheduling playoff dates, which I accepted. And I'm glad I took him up on that because it was that night watching that game in person where it all clicked for me with the sport of hockey." - Ted Turner, Founder of TBS and Atlanta Flames owner, From ESPN's 30 for 30 "Blaze of Glory"
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Excerpt from "Rink of Dreams: Growing Hockey in America's Sun Belt" by Scott Burnside
"When Ted told me after that Flyers game that he reconsidered on purchasing the Flames, I was astonished," Cousins told me. "And I had to say to him 'You know Ted I would love to you to keep the team here and would give you the team for free if I could, but this is out of my hands.' Because at time, the NHL had found buyers in Alberta to bring the team to Calgary and wanted me to advance talks with them as soon as possible. They figured they gave Atlanta a chance but the league wasn't going to take on another franchise to save, especially with the mess going on with St Louis, when there was a market in Canada willing to take on and unquestionably support a team."
And there was no better time than now for a team to be put in Calgary. Alberta's economy was surging off the back of high oil prices that saw unlimited amounts of money coming into the province and an influx of new people with dispensable income ready and willing to support a NHL team. Furthermore, unlike Atlanta at the time, Calgary had a rich history of supporting hockey at multiple levels of play going all the way back to the 1920s with the Calgary Tigers of the old Western Canadian Hockey League to as recent as the Calgary Cowboys of the recently dissolved WHA. It would be foolish for the NHL not to put a team in Calgary when the city was ready and willing to support a pro team that would easily be an instant rival for the up and coming Edmonton Oilers and their collection of young superstars.
"I was also very skeptical about how much he cared about the future of the team here, given my past offers to Ted that went nowhere and yet all of a sudden finally wanting to keep the team," Cousins added. "So I was shocked that after I told Ted about the current situation he completely changed his tone, looked me dead in the eye and said, 'Tom, I don't care what it will take, what it will cost or how many hoops I have to jump through. Just tell me what I need to do and who I need talk with at the NHL, because I will be damned if this city loses this team.' And at that moment I knew Ted was serious about saving the Flames. This wasn't about him taking them on because he needs to fill extra dates at the Omni. He really wanted to see the Flames stay here in Atlanta and thrive."
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"I think the thing that sold the sport to me the most was the energy and the atmosphere I felt when taking in a game live. Seeing how many people from the city were in the stands of the arena, getting into the game, and how people in this city became invested as true fans of the sport and built a real grassroots fan base for the team," Turner told me. "I was in absolute disbelief. Add on the fact that I was able to see the beautiful side of the game of hockey with the playmaking from guys like Nilsson and Chouinard, it made me understand, both from a fan and a television producer perspective, why the city had adopted this sport as its own and that allowing this team to be taken away from Atlanta would be detrimental to the fans who had stuck by the team for years and the growth of hockey in the South as a whole."
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Article from The Atlanta Constitution from May 30th, 1980
Flames Here to Stay! Turner Saves Team at 11th Hour From Moving to Canada.
by Furman Bisher
It is a great day to be a hockey fan in the city of Atlanta. While there was many doubts about preventing relocation, those fears have been put to bed as Ted Turner's last minute ownership bid to keep the Flames in Atlanta was approved by the NHL Board of Governors last night over a bid from an ownership group in Calgary led by businessman Nelson Skalbania and oil trader Harley Hotchkiss that would have moved the Flames to Calgary. While the state of Georgia has traditionally been more synonymous for its College Football fandom and the Masters Tournament in the sporting world, Canada's national pastime of Ice Hockey has come south of the border and into the hearts of many in the state through the success of the Atlanta Flames. However, finances have not been kind to the team despite the product on the ice making many in Empire City of the South hockey crazy and turning out for games. Lack of partnerships with Atlanta based businesses such as Delta along with concerns about the quality of the Omni Coliseum's facilities also were an impetus for the NHL to suggest former majority owner Tom Cousins to consider selling the team out of state, and possibly even out of the country, to an ownership group that would take the team out of the state of Georgia. Multiple investors from American cities such as Dallas, Houston, and Seattle had approached Cousins on a deal to give a landing spot for the team that would allow him to maintain a stake in the team but discussions with all of those groups fell apart around mid February. It was at that point that NHL Commissioner John Ziegler stepped in and gave Cousins a deadline to make a deal with the Calgary ownership group if a local ownership group could not be found before June 1st.
The future of the Flames staying in Atlanta looked bleak in spite of many fans coming to games with banners reading "Save our Flames" and pleading with the NHL to not take away the team from Atlanta, with the movement reaching a fever pitch in the team's last home game of the season when the Flames got eliminated by the New York Rangers in the first round of the playoffs. When asked about the protests by Flames fans to not have the team moved on CBC's Hockey Night in Canada, Commissioner Ziegler responded with "We understand the frustration of the people of Atlanta not wanting a team they rooted for getting uprooted. Many in the league are sympathetic to the fact that they don't want to see a team, especially one as competitive as the Flames, have to move. The fact of the matter is this is still a business and there hasn't been adequate offers made by local ownership groups to cover the financial debts of the team and the NHL is not in a position to assist a third team with financial woes." Ziegler also reiterated the missed opportunities to make a deal in the middle of the season and stated "Unless Cousins can find someone in the city that can adequately take care of the financial health of the team, then he has to get a deal done with the city of Calgary because we can't allow this to stay in a state of limbo for another season." With many Flames fans were praying for a miracle, they got an answer to their prayers as developments in early May saw billionaire Ted Turner take a massive interest in the team and keeping them from moving. The owner of TBS put in a competitive bid that rivaled the ownership group in Calgary which would cover the teams debts and a commitment to invest in improvements to the Omni Coliseum. While the deal was agreed upon by Turner and Cousins, many in the NHL's Board of Governors were skeptical on giving their stamp of approval. The main sticking point being prior attempts to offer to ownership groups involving Turner falling through. Furthermore, negotiations from the Calgary ownership seemed to hold more sway with Board of Governors as part of their pitch was the guarantee of a new arena being built as one of the facilities coinciding with the 1988 Winter Olympics bid being made by Calgary. The area, being called the Saddledome, is said to seat at least 20,000 people, more than what the Omni Coliseum can currently seat, and will come with state of the art amenities and plentiful amounts of luxury boxes and club seating. Something that many in the world of sports see will become more necessary for arenas in the future to remain viable and produce revenues for teams.
The bid to keep the Flames in Atlanta was all in vain, but a meeting between Commissioner Ziegler and Turner two weeks ago discussing the current bidding war between his ownership group and Calgary's seemed to be what have tipped the scales in the favor of Atlanta in the eyes of the Board of Governors. According to sources, the promise by Turner to not just upgrade the current facilities of the Omni Coliseum and covering the team's debts, but also offering a major television rights agreement with Turner Broadcasting System to air NHL games of the regional broadcasts of the Atlanta Flames as well as possibly do select national broadcasts of games on Wednesday nights and Saturdays. While the details on the latter are still unclear, the leveraging of his cable empire was confirmed to be a big decider in the NHL granting the ownership of the Flames to Turner. "This was an important deal to get done for me and my ownership group," said Turner in a media conference call after getting the news from Toronto, "The Flames have built such a following and bond with the community of Atlanta and to have this team ripped away from the city and not do anything to stop it is something I could not live with. And while I hope the fine people of Calgary get another chance at an NHL team, I am happy to say that the Flames are here to stay and this is not the end of hockey down in Georgia, but rather it is just the beginning."
