The Rhinos are toast unless the Phantom investor comes forward. BTW, why would anyone want to pick up a team that is already ten million in the hole? he would never recoup his investment.
Unless the investor did what hotel investors did and take over the debt as part of a fire sale of the team. Then they pay off the debt and upgrade then run the team in order to make their profit over time.
Here's another sign of the times in Rochester: http://cgi.ebay.com/1999-Rochester-...ryZ50133QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem Get your while it's hot!!!
It says "TIX" on the side. Could that have been a ring given to someone in the ticket sales department? Or was there someone on the team nicknamed "Tix?"
Norm the ticket guy. Seems like a good bet. He was named the scape goat for the issues in 2007 and was let go by the team. EVEN though he has been with the team since 1996 and has done an awesome job. The reality is probably: a. He asked twice for a paycheck b. He confronted Matt Ford (GM) or Donner about their shady business practices.
Yeah, but the picture of the side of the ring says "TIX." So unless that's a picture of another ring, the person who owns the ring had "TIX" on the side.
Strike that. Supposedly everyone who worked in the Frontier Field Ticket office at the time also received rings. The FF ticket office was controlled by the Red Wings so it could have been any number of baseball diehards who just happened to be a ticket person at the time.
Then the buyer would be outed as the "Donner's phantom investor!" Hmmm... I think I've figured out the new financing scheme.
No, they're switching site hosts and they posted on the web forums the other day that they would be down while they switched.
http://www.13wham.com/news/local/story.aspx?content_id=9e20fa28-9277-4442-9349-28deba653942 More legal problems for the Rhinos.
Here's what Steve Donner head of RSG talked about today: Today's "KickThis!" show is archived online. http://www.soccersam.com/kickthis/ I like the rebrand idea. Hopefully they don't totally dump the Rhinos name, but getting rid of the kid-toon logo and the "Ragin' " part sure would be welcome.
http://www.democratandchronicle.com...e?AID=/20080128/SPORTS02/80128015/1007/SPORTS Another lawsuit for the Rochester owners.
Can someone explain the problem for out of towners? If you can't make money drawing nearly 10,000 a game, what went wrong?
It's quite simple really. The CEO of the Rochester Sports Group is a crook. And if he's not, he's a complete moron and probably broke laws along the way so he's a crook.
The guy who owns the rhinos also owns a AAA Hockey team, a pro indoor LAX team (current champs). An a MLL (LAX) out door team that plays in Rochester, in addition to Rhinos.
Many of us usually interpret that to mean that he knows sports and therefore will do a good job running a soccer team. (Leaving aside that most of the teams you listed are lacrosse teams, and I have my doubts as to whether anyone can run lacrosse successfully yet). So, once again, what went wrong?
Well, I was trying to point out that he is spreading himself a little thin... That said, he doesn't pay his bills on time and has a massive amount of debt built into his franchises. He has little to no business credit at this time. The city of Rochester will not release the balance of a 4 mil state awarded grant until the RHinos open up their books AND prove that the team will be stable for the immediate future, which Donner refuses to do. So the team won't get the grant money. Basically, he bit off more than he could chew in going "halfsies" with the state of NY on this new stadium. He found the attendence decline by about 2000 fans on average over the last 2 seasons, and people are disgruntled about the concessions and parking, and neighborhood of the stadium. These are not things I would think good fans should be too worried about, but in Rochester people seem to care about the peripherals almost more than the on field product.