Peter Karmanos Jr., retired co-founder of Compuware, and current chairman and co-founder of MadDog Technology in Birmingham, wants to sell his NHL hockey team, the Carolina Hurricanes.
Bill Shea of Crain's Detroit Business that Karmanos told reporters Tuesday after the league’s annual Board of Governors meeting in Pebble Beach, Calif., that he’s not moving the Carolina Hurricanes from Raleigh, N.C.
Shea writes:
The team has been the subject of relocation chatter because its poor attendance, finances and on-ice performance make it a theoretical candidate for markets seeking an NHL club, such as Quebec.
Last year, Karmanos said that $400 million was a fair price.
Forbes magazine reports the value of the team is $225 million.
The magazine reports that the team was purchased for $48 million in 1994.
In August, the website Canes&Coffee wrote:
This is going to get a bit long, so let me first put forward the short version for anyone who only wants that.
1) Peter Karmanos has been selling the Carolina Hurricanes in some way or another mostly unsuccessfully (which is why he is still doing it) since his partner Peter Thewes passed away in 2008. So this situation is 7 years old and not new news. If the end is in fact coming, it is coming real slowly!
2) The preference was NEVER to move the team. I guess at some point if you cannot make plan A work, you have to come up with plan B, but I think it is important to recognize that the underlying goal here is to decrease or possibly gradually sell Karmanos’ stake in the team, not find a way out of Raleigh.
3) The probability of a team (any team) being sold and moved is at a generational low. The NHL has been walking up to adding two teams, put a HUGE price tag rumored to be $500M on them and has two takers in Quebec and Las Vegas. For the team owners, this means about $17M straight into their pocket for each of the two expansion teams. If they instead approved a sale and move type deal, all of the money goes to the selling owner and not the group. I would be shocked to see the NHL allow a team (how long have the Coyotes been supposedly on the move but suddenly with quiet) move before the expansion process is completed.
Karmanos has a minority interest in Deadline Detroit.