Like every heartwarming narrative, this one required a certain suspension of disbelief. After years in the desert, the team that Canada lost 13 years ago would return to native soil, sending joy through the streets of a downtrodden city, Hamilton, Ont. The lords of the National Hockey League would bow to financial logic, and the team’s deliverer—a fiery-eyed patriot—would quickly reach terms with the Toronto Maple Leafs. The prodigal franchise would then set up shop a few miles down the road, and together the new rivals would share the spoils of hockey’s richest market.
The script was far-fetched enough that even the intended audience acknowledged doubt. Fully 41 per cent of those surveyed by Harris-Decima last week admitted they didn’t think Jim Balsillie could pull off his bid to buy the Phoenix Coyotes (née the Winnipeg Jets), however devoutly they wished he would. Balsillie maintained his customary self-confidence. But desperation was creeping into the message. By late last week, the BlackBerry tycoon was asking for the biggest leap of imagination yet from the 100,000 faithful who registered their support on a website he created to boost his cause. “I take on entrenched interests,” he said in one interview. “It’s my character quirk. I don’t quit. I don’t get scared.”
Maybe not, but when a man worth $2 billion claims underdog status, it’s safe to assume he’s running out of options. On Tuesday, those dwindling odds came into sharp focus as an Arizona judge began hearing arguments into Balsillie’s controversial offer to pluck the Coyotes out of bankruptcy. Not only was Gary Bettman, the NHL commissioner and Balsillie’s nemesis, pulling every lever to block the sale, it seemed increasingly possible that the Waterloo, Ont., tech magnate had no deal at all. Coyotes owner Jerry Moyes, it turned out, had surrendered at least partial control of his money-losing franchise to the league in November, which meant the judge’s first task would be to determine who actually holds the reins of the destitute club. If the NHL wins that call, the Hamilton proposal is as good as dead.
But even if Moyes were found to be in control, the sale of the Coyotes would by no means be final. Balsillie’s proposal, after all, hinges on the condition that he can move the Coyotes to southern Ontario, and transfers of teams require league consent. To put it mildly, that seems unlikely. Three times now Balsillie has tried to buy NHL teams, and three times his bids have dissolved amid accusations that he tried to circumvent the league’s relocation procedures. Redfield Baum, the judge hearing the bankruptcy case, tried this week to smooth over this long history of hostility, ordering Moyes and the league into mediation over the issue of control. But if the past is any indicator, NHL involvement in the disposition of the Coyotes will be a bad thing for Balsillie.
Still, the 48-year-old businessman has promised to fight on, with implications that could reach far beyond Phoenix or, for that matter, the National Hockey League. A few days before the hearing, the Coyotes filed a civil complaint alleging the league’s machinations against Balsillie amount to anti-competitive behaviour. The suit is a long shot, but its implications could prove seismic: by painting the NHL as an “illegal cartel” conspiring to protect regional monopolies, it aims to smash the cement that has held sports leagues in their positions of privilege for more than a century. “Other leagues in the United States are going to be looking at this very closely,” says Matthew Pace, a sports law attorney with the New York law firm Herrick, Feinstein. “A league has to have the right to manage where and when they place a franchise in the best interests of all of its members.”
That Balsillie sees himself in the role of outsider should not come entirely by surprise. The glowing profiles that have charted his rise as chief executive of Research in Motion (RIM) make as much of his passion for beer-league hockey as the wave pool in his house, invariably invoking the “everyman” aesthetic that until a few years ago saw him driving a Honda and living in a four-bedroom home. The blue in his collar has inarguably faded: by his late teens, Balsillie was rubbing shoulders with such future luminaries as the writer Malcolm Gladwell and filmmaker Atom Egoyan at the University of Toronto’s hallowed Trinity College. He went on to Harvard Business School and now ranks as Canada’s 18th richest person. Still, say friends, the son of a Peterborough electrician is never far below the surface. “Being part of some wine-and-cheese country club is the last thing he wants,” says Ron Foxcroft, a Hamilton businessman who golfs with Balsillie. “He wants to own a hockey team because he has a great passion for sport, teamwork and being with the guys.”
Certainly Balsillie’s career remains defined more by tenacity than social connection. “He was never an Olympic athlete, but he has that kind of drive,” says Joan Fisk, a friend and head of the Kitchener-Waterloo Chamber of Commerce. “If he sets his mind to something, he’s the kind of person who really goes and gets it.” His part in RIM’s success story is a case in point. In 1992, Balsillie mortgaged his house to invest in the idea of using pager technology to create a system for wireless email. Leveraged to the teeth, scrambling to keep partners on board, he and partner Mike Lazaridis took seven years before shipping their first device bearing the BlackBerry name. From the outset, they were competing with industry giants like Motorola and Apple. By the early 2000s, their revenue was growing more than 100 per cent a year, and their company has since become one of Canada’s greatest corporate success stories.
Sadly—and surprisingly—these are not the sort of credentials that win you entree into the mason’s lodge of NHL ownership. That much became clear in October 2006, when Balsillie tried to purchase the financially ailing Nashville Predators, and ran up against the group-think of NHL owners. By then, he had already tried to purchase the Pittsburgh Penguins in a US$175-million deal, which failed only when he refused to guarantee he wouldn’t move the team for seven years. Balsillie maintains he merely wanted the option as leverage to get a new arena built in Pittsburgh. But the league stood firm while Pens’ owner Mario Lemieux, the legendary player, declared himself “shocked and offended” by Balsillie’s decision to back out. As public shamings go, it was pretty hard to top.
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