St. Louis Blues franchise focusing on business aspect during Lockout -NHL Update
While the St. Louis Blues had an amazing run this past 2011-2012 National Hockey League (NHL) regular season and made history with their 109 point year that had them second throughout the Western Conference, business still was not at its peak.
They lost $20 million and for them, the need of the moment is cutting those extra costs that has the new ownership under a lot of stress. With the lockout situation currently prevailing in North America, focusing on other aspects of their business is seen to be a strong factor for why St. Louis may be getting back to making money as other clubs are doing practically nothing with all the free time at hand.
The St. Louis Blues realize that they may not be the biggest sports franchise in the country and setting their expectations to meet that level of mindset is what they are planning to do in order to succeed.
Over the offseason, the St. Louis Blues were taken over by an investment group of people that know the city, the fans and the franchise. They have followed it throughout their lives and now want to actually make it an organisation that supports not only itself, but runs profitably as well.
"We see that we're not some large glitzy national or worldwide business. We see the Blues as a small- to medium-size very local company. So we need to operate on that scale," Tom Stillman, head of the local ownership group said.
Bringing in top talent to manage the team has been the starting step and they hope on continuing the process.
There were a lot of people that did not do much and letting them go was something the new St. Louis Blues ownership group had to do without discrimination.
"That was kind of the first step," Stillman said. "Here's somebody whose first game in the organization was 37 years ago, who has a great appreciation of the organization. Since Bruce has come in, we've continued to restructure the business (side). We had to make the organization flatter, less hierarchical. Before we had three levels of vice presidents, and that was under the person below the level of the person running the business. It was a pretty bloated organization."
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