{"id":157738,"date":"2025-08-13T15:02:16","date_gmt":"2025-08-13T15:02:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/157738\/"},"modified":"2025-08-13T15:02:16","modified_gmt":"2025-08-13T15:02:16","slug":"ottawa-senators-move-to-lebreton-flats-still-a-risky-proposition-with-questionable-returns-the-hockey-writers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/157738\/","title":{"rendered":"Ottawa Senators’ Move to LeBreton Flats Still a Risky Proposition With Questionable Returns – The Hockey Writers –"},"content":{"rendered":"

On Aug. 11, the Ottawa Senators<\/a> and the federal government\u2019s National Capital Commission (NCC) inked a deal for the hockey club to buy 4.5 hectares of land<\/a> at LeBreton Flats close to downtown Ottawa for the construction of a new arena. <\/p>\n

To be sure, this is an important step toward moving the club out of its current Kanata digs \u2013 25 kilometres west of the city core. Yet the deal is no guarantee the move will happen any time soon \u2013 or even at all. That\u2019s because, as things stand now, moving downtown just doesn\u2019t make financial sense.<\/p>\n

Senators Must Know Move Downtown Is Risky<\/p>\n

Cyril Leeder, the Senators\u2019 president and CEO, must know that moving the Senators to LeBreton Flats is a high-risk move with potentially low returns \u2013 at least without major financial support from one or more levels of government.<\/p>\n

\"OttawaArtist Rendering of Proposed New Ottawa Senators Arena in LeBreton Flats (Photo \u2013 National Capital Commission)<\/p>\n

It\u2019s perhaps why, on announcing the deal, Leeder seemed at pains to manage the expectations of the many fans who have spent more than three decades clamouring for the move.\u00a0As he explained it, while the land purchase was \u201cthe next step in the process, there are still many more hurdles to clear in creating an event centre at LeBreton Flats.\u201d\u00a0As he pointed out in an interview almost one year ago<\/a>,\u00a0\u201c(There is) a lot of heavy lifting to do. There are just too many parameters, too many variables to predict how long it\u2019s going to take. I know it\u2019s years, not months, before a shovel goes in the ground.\u201d<\/p>\n

Cost of New Arena for Senators Huge and Unpredictable <\/p>\n

The purchase of the land for the new arena is arguably the easy part.\u00a0It\u2019s rumoured the team paid slightly more than $30 million for the 11-acre parcel.<\/p>\n

Still, that outlay takes a sizeable one-time chunk out of the Senators\u2019 annual regular season ticket revenue of an estimated $87 million. (That\u2019s based on the 2024-25 average attendance of 17,306 per game<\/a> at Canadian Tire Centre (CTC) with fans shelling out an average of $123 per ticket<\/a> over 41 home games)<\/p>\n

But the cost of the land isn\u2019t all the Senators will need to recoup.\u00a0Land decontamination could turn out to be a wild card in any Senators\u2019 business case for the new arena. Almost 10 years ago, one expert estimated that the cost of decontaminating all of LeBreton Flats could be as much as $50 million (from Don Butler, \u2018Decontaminating LeBreton sites could cost up to $50 million expert says,\u2019 The Ottawa Citizen, 1\/21\/16). If that isn\u2019t enough for backers of the new arena to think twice, another study released just two years later pegged the cost at $170 million<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

All of this is to say that there is a high degree of uncertainty about how much it could cost the Senators to load, haul, handle and dispose of the highly contaminated soil believed to be lying on the 4.5 hectares it purchased. While the cost in 2016 was estimated at $3 million per hectare, it is probably many times higher nearly a decade later.<\/p>\n

Still, all of this is small beer compared to the estimated $1 billion cost of a new NHL arena \u2013 a figure borne out by the price tag on the Calgary Flames\u2019 new arena and event centre<\/a>. It\u2019s also one that climbs higher every year. It\u2019s easy to dismiss all of this by saying that the Senators will make their money back on the real estate and entertainment district that goes along with the new arena. That\u2019s fanciful and ignores the fact that, as it stands now, absent some level of government support, the Senators will have to come up with well over $1 billion in cold hard cash to get the project off the ground.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Uncertain Return on Investment in New Downtown Arena for Senators<\/p>\n

First-year accounting students at Carleton University are smart enough to calculate a quick return on investment (ROI) on the new arena. I\u2019d wager they\u2019d have a hard time finding one that wasn\u2019t coloured bright red if the Senators need to spend well north of $1 billion of their own money on the new rink.<\/p>\n

First, it\u2019s doubtful that the Senators will be able to sell many more tickets if they move downtown. Last season, they were at capacity on many nights, and on the season as a whole, average attendance matched that of the league<\/a>. In all, ticket sales in the regular season ran at about 93% of CTC\u2019s total capacity of 18,500 hockey fans<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"CanadianCanadian Tire Centre (Jeff Morris\/THW)<\/p>\n

Secondly, there\u2019s not much chance that Senators\u2019 fans would be willing to pay more for the privilege of watching games downtown. The price of Senators\u2019 tickets during the regular season is laughably low. In Canada, fans on average pay between CAD$257.30 and CAD$443.57 per ticket, while in the United States, American hockey-goers can pay as little as USD$123 per ticket but as much as USD$460.72 (from Rebecca Tauber and Mark Puleo, \u2018What did it cost to be an NHL fan during the 2024-25 regular season?,\u2019 The Athletic, 4\/19\/25).<\/p>\n

There\u2019s a good reason the Senators can\u2019t charge more than they do for tickets during the regular season. The corporate sector in the Ottawa region is comparatively tiny relative to other NHL cities. Let\u2019s face it, the major industry on the Rideau Canal is governing Canada. Civil servants generally don\u2019t make the kind of money needed to spend lavishly on tickets to NHL hockey games. What\u2019s more, government departments don\u2019t blow big money on luxury suites to entertain clients.\u00a0(could they tag it as defence spending now that we\u2019re committed to spending 5% of gross domestic product on that?)<\/p>\n

A lot of the money needed to buy expensive tickets to see the Senators play is found in Kanata\u2019s high-tech parks \u2013 within a stone\u2019s throw of where the Senators already play. It\u2019s hard to see how moving 25 kilometres away to a new rink in downtown Ottawa helps the team sell more luxury boxes to companies and more season tickets to well-heeled high-tech executives and software engineers. Making the problem with a downtown arena and entertainment district even worse is that the federal government has moved to a hybrid work model under which most government workers go into the office just three days per week. The only time Ottawa\u2019s downtown core has been emptier was during COVID.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s no reliable data regarding where the Senators\u2019 season ticket holders and single-game ticket purchasers live. Even so, with half of Ottawa\u2019s population living in its western suburbs<\/a>, it\u2019s hard not to believe that the majority of tickets the team now sells are to people living in them. Moving downtown increases the commute time and cost for this key market segment.\u00a0<\/p>\n

What\u2019s more, there\u2019s good reason to believe that these fans prefer the convenience of driving to games along with easy parking \u2013 something CTC offers in abundance. It\u2019s hard to fathom how having to take a combination of buses and the city\u2019s notoriously unreliable and limited light rail transit system (LRT) to see the Senators play at LeBreton Flats would make many of them very happy. All things considered, there is a very real risk that a move to LeBreton Flats would actually shrink the team\u2019s paying fan base with no guarantee that new fans would replace them.<\/p>\n

There is an argument that younger fans who don\u2019t have cars would replace any west end fans the team loses with the move to LeBreton Flats. That seems far-fetched since carless young fans probably don\u2019t have extra money to spend on hockey tickets. The first clue is that they don\u2019t own a car! What\u2019s more, younger people tend to be saddled with high rents or huge mortgages, leaving precious little left over for such frivolities as NHL tickets.<\/p>\n

Some say that a new arena would draw in new tourists and many more top entertainment acts to Ottawa. Yet does anyone really think tourists would flock to Ottawa to see its new downtown arena? People come to Ottawa to see Canada\u2019s seat of government. As for big-name acts performing in the new arena, most of them bypass Ottawa to entertain crowds in Toronto and Montreal. Not only that, but acts like Taylor Swift play to crowds of 60,000 \u2013 more than three times the capacity of any new building the Senators are likely to put up.<\/p>\n

Some argue that there is \u201cbranding value\u201d, such as naming rights, in having the Senators relocate to Ottawa\u2019s central core. Yet how do the Senators factor hazy projected profits like those into a hard business case? What\u2019s more, the value of the Senators\u2019 brand extends no farther than a one-hour radius around Parliament Hill. Go beyond that and you\u2019re in Toronto Maple Leafs or Montreal Canadiens territory. Additional profit from the putative branding value of a new LeBreton Flats venue is likely to be small.<\/p>\n

Senators\u2019 Move to LeBreton Flats Needs Government Support<\/p>\n

Any way you look at the financial side of moving the Senators downtown, it always involves some level of government support to make it work. There\u2019s simply no way that increased ticket revenue, even if it were to magically appear, would push the project into positive ROI territory. Debt servicing and capital costs would kill the business case. There is a very real risk that the Senators would overextend themselves financially on the project if free money weren\u2019t made available to them by one or more levels of government.<\/p>\n

Related: Why Do Cities Still Publicly Fund New NHL Arenas<\/a><\/p>\n

The Senators themselves have been hinting at this for the past several years. Team owner Michael\u00a0Andlauer<\/a> was categorical in a 2024 interview explaining that the new arena, \u201ccannot happen without public support\u201d (from Bruce Garrioch, \u2018Ottawa Senators owner Michael Andlauer on LeBreton deal: I think we\u2019ll get there,\u2019 The Ottawa Citizen, 9\/11\/24). Some will argue Andlauer is wrong, pointing out that Bell Centre in Montreal, Scotiabank Arena in Toronto and Rogers Arena in Vancouver were built largely without government money. Yet these exceptions prove the rule \u2013 experience shows that while new rinks can be built with just private money in large hockey markets, they can\u2019t be in small markets like Ottawa.<\/p>\n

\"MichaelMichael Andlauer, Owner of the Ottawa Senators (Photo by Arianne Bergeron\/NHLI via Getty Images)<\/p>\n

Take Calgary, for example. The new arena that will house the Calgary Flames comes with a price tag of $926.4 million<\/a>. Of that, the City of Calgary is on the hook for $850.3 million while the Province of Alberta is kicking in $30 million. The Flames\u2019 owner, the Calgary Sports and Entertainment Corporation (CSEC), will pony up $40 million but enjoy a sweetheart lease agreement under which they\u2019ll pay $17 million each year compounded at an annual rate of just 1% for 35 years. All told, John Q. Taxpayer in Calgary is covering over 90% of the cost of the Flames\u2019 new arena.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Of the five new NHL arenas that opened in the last 10 years, just two needed government support \u2013 Rogers Place in Edmonton and Little Caesars Arena in Detroit. The remaining three \u2013 the New York Islanders\u2019 UBS Arena, the Vegas Golden Knights\u2019 T-Mobile Arena and the Seattle Kraken\u2019s Climate Pledge Arena were launched with no public money.\u00a0<\/p>\n

What is important to keep in mind, though, is that these arenas are multipurpose facilities hosting many events each year, ranging from National Basketball Association (NBA) games, college basketball, professional wrestling, mixed martial arts and large concerts. Ottawa is too small to attract the kind and number of entertainment events that Las Vegas, Long Island and Seattle can.<\/p>\n

Given that it\u2019s Ottawa, I wouldn\u2019t blame any owner of the Senators for demanding public money to build a new rink at LeBreton Flats. Sure, many will dismiss that as socialism for capitalists, but it\u2019s not like the Senators are the ones pressuring for the move. It\u2019s their fans outside of the city\u2019s west end and city politicians desperate to revitalize a moribund downtown. None of them seem to understand that any new investment, new businesses and new jobs that a new arena creates downtown just offsets losses in the west end.<\/p>\n

Even located at CTC far outside the city core, the Senators still get sellout crowds. So why leave? How would they be better off in LeBreton Flats than they are in Kanata, especially after spending over $1 billion of their own money on a new arena, as many of their entitled fans expect them to do? It\u2019s hard to see how they could generate a return on that investment. That is, again, unless one or more levels of government come to the rescue and pick up the lion\u2019s share of the cost of the new rink.<\/p>\n

Senators Could Be in Kanata for a Long Time<\/p>\n

The Senators\u2019 Kanata home may not be as glamorous as a spiffy new arena downtown, but there\u2019s a good chance that\u2019s where fans will be watching them play for years to come. There are many high hurdles to clear before construction starts at LeBreton Flats \u2013 despite all the high hopes the land purchase raised.<\/p>\n

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