Blue Bombers confident there's room in Winnipeg for CFL and an NHL team

[footballplaya52]

WINNIPEG - The Winnipeg Blue Bombers are looking forward to facing opponents this season—even if that includes an NHL team.
Bombers president Jim Bell believes there's enough sports dollars to go around if Winnipeg-based True North Sports and Entertainment completes a deal to buy the NHL's Atlanta Thrashers and move them to Manitoba.
"Will there be an impact of the NHL returning to Winnipeg? There may be," Bell said during a media conference call.
"But our feeling within the management of the Winnipeg Football Club is there is room for three (professional sports teams) in the city of Winnipeg."
He noted the Bombers, who finished with a CFL-low record of 4-14 last season, had sold just over 17,800 season tickets by Tuesday. Last year's total season-ticket count was just under 17,800.
"We feel that with the partnership that we have with our community as a whole, we don't feel threatened (with the return of the NHL)," said Bell.
"It'll be very workable for us as a club and we look forward to that."
True North has been quietly negotiating with the Thrashers about moving the team north of the border, a deal Winnipeg Mayor Sam Katz says is just "a matter of time."
Winnipeg has been without an NHL team since the Jets moved to Phoenix and became the Coyotes in 1996.
Robert Warren, a marketing professor at the University of Manitoba, doesn't foresee a huge shift of Bomber fans turning to support an NHL team instead.
"It's going to be a very limited impact," said Warren. "I base that on the fact that back in the '80s and '90s we had an NHL and a CFL team here and I don't think they saw a lot of problems at that point.
"One reason is that the fans are a little bit different. Your football fans versus your hockey fans, you're going to have some overlap, but there's also going to be very distinct groups."
Where Warren does see a potential for an NHL team to take ticket dollars away from the Bombers is if the CFL team doesn't perform well on the field and walk-up fans choose to catch some hockey games instead.
"The good news is, with the new (football) facility coming along, I think they're in a really good position in the near term to combat that," Warren said of the new Bomber stadium that's on track to replacing aging Canad Inns Stadium in 2012.
"People will want to be part of the new stadium."

lol. cfl is hardly a pro sports team.

 

[SaintFan25]

Lol like they need their approval, NHL obviously overpowers CFL.

 

[Phil The Thrill]

Pretty much^ lmao