A rendering of the proposed CalgaryNEXT arena.

The National Hockey League’s Calgary Flames need a new stadium. At least their owners say they do. The 35-year-old Scotiabank Saddledome is perfectly functional, but the team owners’ dream project was CalgaryNEXT, a new Bow-riverside complex home to the Flames and the Canadian Football League’s Stampeders that may also pull in more concert revenue. The proposed multiplex made a compelling pitch until the price tag appeared—$890 million, of which Flames ownership would pitch in just 22 percent. The remainder would come from taxpayers.

Yet even $890 million proved optimistic, as the wildly underestimated price tag inflated to $1.8 billion, with Calgarians assuming two-thirds of the bill. The Flames would also pay no property tax.

An unimpressed municipal government replied with a deal offering a rough 50/50 split in cost with the team paying taxes. Talks quickly broke down when Flames’ ownership opted not to negotiate in good faith, but instead reacted like children denied a new toy. Led by CEO Ken King, the team walked away from negotiations, called in NHL commissioner Gary Bettman to threaten the city, and inappropriately inserted themselves into Calgary’s 2017 mayoral election.

When arena-skeptic Naheed Nenshi was elected to a third term, the Flames’ media relations director tweeted, “Having @nenshi as mayor is worse than @realDonaldTrump being president,” using the hashtags “#arrogant” and “#outoftouch.” Murray Edwards and Clayton Riddell, two of the team’s owners, are worth a combined $4.8 billion. Edwards, Calgary’s second-richest man in 2016, would not have seen a nickel of his tax dollars fund CalgaryNEXT—his legal home is in the United Kingdom.

King’s most recent tactic has been to make the (likely) empty threat of moving the Flames from Calgary, where they have played since 1980. The relocation is improbable. Despite Bettman privately suggesting to Nenshi that the Flames jumping ship could destroy his political career, 75 percent of NHL owners would have to approve the move and open up the logistical mess of reformatting the league’s schedule. One of the most commonly cited possible destinations, Seattle, is now receiving an expansion team, leaving few potential markets offering both Calgary’s size and proven rabid fanbase.

Research from the Washington-based Brookings Institution and others have shown for at least two decades that publicly funding stadiums never works out in taxpayers’ favour—the proposed benefits never materialize anywhere near the extent of making up for costs. Only owners profit. While not new, the debate over taxpayer-funded stadiums has taken an ugly turn in Calgary: Supporters of the NEXT project, like the right-leaning Calgary Sun, have criticized the municipal government for investing in the supposedly wasteful evils of public libraries and bicycle paths. These are services that the majority of Calgarians support and anyone can use, regardless of whether they can afford pricey hockey tickets. The Sun has since deleted the offending article.

All of this could be setting a nasty precedent for Canadian sports cities: that billionaire owners, instead of sitting down to negotiate, can bluff, threaten, and lie to get their way. Historically, Canadian cities have done well in standing up to pro-sport bullying, but the tide is shifting. Quebec City built a $400-million stadium almost entirely with public money to fill a Nordiques-sized hole in their heart, solely in the vain hope of enticing an NHL team back to town. The 2012 renovation of Vancouver’s BC Place also went over budget, up from an initial estimate of $365 million to a final whopping $514 million price tag, all paid for with public cash.

While Calgary has yet to crack under the pressure, the NHL’s Oilers strong-armed the City of Edmonton into paying the majority share of a new arena by threatening to move. Their new rink, whose budget ballooned to $604.5 million, was pitched as part of an urban revitalization project for downtown Edmonton. Dubbed the Ice District, it consists primarily of luxury condos, hotels, and corporate headquarters, and its development is being handled by a real estate company controlled by none other than Oilers owner Daryl Katz.

Taxpayer-funded arenas simply do not benefit taxpayers, as the Calgary saga has shown. But in the face of underhanded tactics and open threats from billionaires denied vanity projects gifted by fans and non-fans alike, the faulty math is worth remembering. Sports franchises, while powerful social institutions and potential sources of civic pride, are simply another form of entertainment. You pay for a film ticket—you don’t subsidize the movie theatre.

Sens fan Katie Kerrick was assaulted at Friday’s game. Prior to this she met Ottawa player Bobby Ryan.
Photo from Kerrick’s Facebook page.

Sports culture—jock culture—is part of our national masculinity. And in the case of Canada, national manliness is all about white middle class men playing hockey, chugging beer, and getting maple leaf tattoos, as pointed out by William Bridle and Martyn Clark in “If Canada is a ‘Team’, Do We All Get Playing Time? Considering Sport, Sporting Masculinity, and Canadian National Identity.” Our Canadian heroes are players like Sidney Crosby: white, assumed to be heterosexual, and rich. Hockey players are known for their hard work and making it to the top.

Undoubtedly a lot of work is put into becoming and remaining a NHL player. But, it’s not exactly like the majority of hockey players started from the bottom and hard work alone got them where they are today. In the last 10–15 years, minor league hockey costs have dramatically increased, “It’s a development that threatens the sport’s blue-collar roots, including the idea that the next Gordie Howe or Wayne Gretzky will come from backgrounds as modest as theirs were,” James Mirtle reports in a 2013 article for the Globe and Mail. “Players of modest means in this generation must beat out peers who are often better trained and have spent many more hours on the ice, thanks to wealthy parents.” Wealthy, in the majority, is connected to whiteness and men. The NHL insists “Hockey is for everyone,” boasting its history of black players. Still, there’s no question the majority of players are white—white Europeans, actually (but somehow this is a Canadian sport).

At the professional men’s level, hockey is an aggressive (thus manly) sport, and it can easily become a place where both players and fans release their aggression. In the case of fans, frustration from socio-economic stress, bruised egos and socially-taught entitlement, can all add fuel to the fire. Michael Kimmel writes about how the growing divide between the haves and have-nots has added to white male anger in his book Angry White Men: “It requires that we both look into the hearts of regular guys, as well as those who feel marginalized, and that we examine the social and historical circumstances that brought them to this precipice.” I wonder whether this sort of this behaviour will be seen in the stands of National Women’s Hockey League games? Or is automatically part of a less “manly” culture—the kind that won’t attract the type of men who attack two young women?

When Kerrick and her sister were hit with towels, shoved, called “whores”, and had beer poured on them, it wasn’t because Montreal fans are inherently evil. It has nothing to do with the city or the specific team. It isn’t even a result of the sport itself. It is a result of the culture we created and continue to perpetuate. This culture allows this group of men to think their entitlement and assertion of manliness is acceptable behaviour. And when attendants dismissed the women’s abuse and did nothing, when security was nowhere to be seen, these men were proven right. Our anger at the city of Montreal would serve everyone better directed at the mentality that “boys will be boys” and this is how Canadian boys are expected to act.

A former This intern, Hillary Di Menna is in her first year of the gender and women’s studies program at York University. She also maintains an online feminist resource directory, FIRE- Feminist Internet Resource Exchange.