The Cost of Missing the Playoffs at the Garden
By KEN BELSON
Published: April 8, 2010
With two games left on their schedule, the Rangers are in danger of missing the N.H.L. playoffs for the first time in five years. That possibility would certainly be a disappointment for the team’s fans. But it would also sting the Rangers’ front office, which would forgo several million dollars for each playoff game missed.
Madison Square Garden Inc., which owns the Rangers, will certainly survive if the team misses the playoffs because the Rangers are only one part of a $1 billion enterprise that includes the Knicks, the Liberty and other sports properties; Radio City Music Hall and other theaters; and the MSG Network.
But because all N.B.A. and N.H.L. teams must keep dates open at their arenas in case they make the playoffs, the elimination of the Knicks and the Rangers from the postseason means the Garden would remain empty for many more nights in April and May.
“You can’t fill them with two weeks’ notice,” Scott O’Neil, the president of MSG Sports, the division that runs the Rangers and other sports properties, said at a recent news event. “There are more dates in the building if we’re in the playoffs.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/09/sports/hockey/09playoffs.html
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