Report: 60-year-old OHL team in serious financial trouble.

A staple of North American hockey at risk of going away.

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HockeyFeed
Published 7 years ago
Report: 60-year-old OHL team in serious financial trouble.

It appears that one of the Ontario Hockey League's well established franchises is in very serious financial trouble.

The President of the Peterborough Petes, Dave Pogue, went before Peterborough city council this week to inform them that if they didn't make efforts to help save the team that the Petes could go broke within the next four years. 

The Petes are run as a non-profit and they have seen their operation costs skyrocket in the last decade, especially when it comes to the tuition fees of the annual scholarships that they give out and Pogue believes the city needs to scale back on how much money it takes from the Petes each year in order to keep the program viable.

From the Peterborough Examiner:

Pogue said that under their lease agreement, the city rakes in somewhere between $800,000 and $1 million a year from having the Petes as the main tenant of the Memorial Centre.

The city shares in Petes ticket sales, for instance. They also get money from the concessions (the Petes get nothing) and from parking (again, the Petes don't share in this revenue).

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Pogue suggested the team would like a new agreement so they can share more of that $1 million with the city.

"We're suggesting maybe the city could scale back, so they make about $650,000," he said.

Pogue says the team has lost $658,000 over the course of just the last five years, and again for a team run as a non-profit this is a massive loss that has forced them to dip into their financial reserves. If things don't change soon it may be too late to save the Petes.

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