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Oilers » Katz, Win50 and the 50/50... something looks slimy

Katz, Win50 and the 50/50... something looks slimy [message #847669]	Tue, 30 September 2025 09:19

HamBlaster
Messages: 1210
Registered: June 2007

1 Cup

https://oilersnation.com/news/oilers-entertainment-group-pus hes-back-report-50-50-revenue-allocation

It looks like Katz might be milking the 50/50 pot. Looks not so awesome.

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Re: Katz, Win50 and the 50/50... something looks slimy [message #847690 is a reply to message #847669 ]	Wed, 01 October 2025 12:19

g2k
Messages: 3014
Registered: January 2003
Location: The Hood

3 Cups

I've been thinking about changing my sig for a while now.

Might hold off a bit on that.

#firebob #screwitjustselltheteam #ownerisacreep

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Re: Katz, Win50 and the 50/50... something looks slimy [message #847693 is a reply to message #847690 ]	Wed, 01 October 2025 13:00

Adam
Messages: 7549
Registered: August 2005
Location: Edmonton, AB

6 Cups

g2k wrote on Wed, 01 October 2025 12:19

I've been thinking about changing my sig for a while now.

Might hold off a bit on that.

It's not great and even the defences that they use in that article are pretty weak. They're trying to shift focus to the fact that they have given more dollars to charities, but it doesn't really make sense that with a much greater pool of money, that your percentage of operating costs would double.

That means from an actual dollar perspective, that using the Oilers numbers:

2020 - $25MM in ticket sales, so $12.5MM to the EOCF. 14% of that is 1.75MM.

2024 - $319MM in ticket sales, so $159.5MM to EOCF. 27% of that is $43MM.

By that argument, the operating costs of the charity have gone up almost 25X in the last four years, while the amount brought in has gone up about 13X.

It should really go the other way - as the charity scales up, the proportionate cost to run it should be going down - that's the simple economy of scale principle, so why are the admin costs jumping at more than double the amount of the growth of the proceeds?

Honestly, it is really sketchy and looks like a cash grab on funds that are supposedly going to charity. I am curious how the donations work and if they also get any tax credit for the charitable funds as they run this.

"Thinking that a bad team's best players are the reason the team is bad is the "Tambellini re-signing Lennart Petrell" of sports opinions." @Woodguy55
#FireBobbyNicks

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Re: Katz, Win50 and the 50/50... something looks slimy [message #847694 is a reply to message #847693 ]	Wed, 01 October 2025 13:33

Kr55
Messages: 12092
Registered: May 2002
Location: Edmonton

6 Cups

Wow, pretty insane what letting people buy those tickets online did. League is hooked on gambling money now. Wouldn't be surprised if seeing all that cash rolling in inspired some brilliant minds to try to figure out ways to shuffle it out to less deserving pockets.

Bobby may not know hockey, but I think he knows how to be a sleaze with finances.

"We need to get better immediately. That starts today"
- Lowe, 2013

"Next year I would forecast as another developmental year"
- MacT, 2015

5 x $5,000,000

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Re: Katz, Win50 and the 50/50... something looks slimy [message #847695 is a reply to message #847693 ]	Wed, 01 October 2025 13:35

bigEfromGP
Messages: 864
Registered: July 2006
Location: GP, AB

No Cups

Adam wrote on Wed, 01 October 2025 13:00

g2k wrote on Wed, 01 October 2025 12:19

I've been thinking about changing my sig for a while now.

Might hold off a bit on that.

Not defending them, but my understanding after reading a bit is that it costs significantly more to run now because they've gone online, they market/advertise it more, etc. Although I can see how adding an online component to this degree would be expensive, I don't know if it's so expensive that it accounts for the increase in costs they claim it does.

CrusaderPi wrote on Fri, 09 October 2020 13:17

CrudeRemarks wrote on Fri, 09 October 2020 13:00

The president thinks he has the ideal male body.
It's hard to disagree that he has the ideal male body.

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Re: Katz, Win50 and the 50/50... something looks slimy [message #847697 is a reply to message #847695 ]	Wed, 01 October 2025 13:38

Greg
Messages: 21
Registered: October 2006

No Cups

From my read it sounds like a chunk of that 81M is image rights to the Oilers. I wonder how the rate for that is determined? Does Katz just get to make up an amount he thinks sounds good and bill the 50/50 for it?

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Re: Katz, Win50 and the 50/50... something looks slimy [message #847707 is a reply to message #847697 ]	Wed, 01 October 2025 21:09

Kr55
Messages: 12092
Registered: May 2002
Location: Edmonton

6 Cups

Greg wrote on Wed, 01 October 2025 13:38

Guess they can justify any sum for themselves by just thinking that if it wasn't attached to the Oilers brand/games, it wouldn't even bring in a tiny fraction of the amount that ends up coming. Take the cash, everyone pat themselves on the back for making it happen through pure OEG awesomeness. Everyone wins!

Definitely good that this is being dug into and put in the spotlight. Hopefully ends up with more of the money going to the actual charities, now it turns from being just silently taking the cash into a PR issue.

[Updated on: Wed, 01 October 2025 21:11]

"We need to get better immediately. That starts today"
- Lowe, 2013

"Next year I would forecast as another developmental year"
- MacT, 2015

5 x $5,000,000

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Re: Katz, Win50 and the 50/50... something looks slimy [message #847699 is a reply to message #847695 ]	Wed, 01 October 2025 14:49

Adam
Messages: 7549
Registered: August 2005
Location: Edmonton, AB

6 Cups

bigEfromGP wrote on Wed, 01 October 2025 13:35

It is definitely possible that they have had some increased operations costs. But to think that it's 25 times higher than what it was pre-online is preposterous. It's also backwards to how almost any company tends to work.

If you have a company and you go and buy a large piece of machinery that increases your operation costs to pay for increased utilities, labour, etc. you are expecting that it will increase your output and allow you to grow revenues. We've seen that what the Oilers have done HAS dramatically grown the revenues too so that investment has done what it was expected to do.

Economy of scales suggest that while costs overall may increase, that costs per unit if you're selling way more should theoretically come down.

But if the Oilers are playing this straight, then it's costing them WAY more money to process every single entry, and their costs per unit have DOUBLED from that infrastructure investment. That doesn't make sense.

If, as Greg mentions, the Oilers are paying themselves for "image rights" well, that's clearly unrelated to the shift online other than the cost of a couple images on the website. Here's the website: https://www.nhl.com/oilers/community/5050-landing. There isn't even a photo of a player on it.

FWIW, I think there's a good chance that other teams are running some similar things with their foundations so it may not just be a Katz thing, but that doesn't really excuse the behaviour.

"Thinking that a bad team's best players are the reason the team is bad is the "Tambellini re-signing Lennart Petrell" of sports opinions." @Woodguy55
#FireBobbyNicks

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Re: Katz, Win50 and the 50/50... something looks slimy [message #847705 is a reply to message #847699 ]	Wed, 01 October 2025 18:33

Skookum Jim
Messages: 5384
Registered: March 2006
Location: Burnaby, BC

5 Cups

Adam wrote on Wed, 01 October 2025 13:49

bigEfromGP wrote on Wed, 01 October 2025 13:35

The entire selling point of that lottery is that the proceeds will go to charity.. everyone might accept some operational costs.. but few would have believed the percentages that are being charged.. and syphoned away from the actual charities.. doesn't align with the public's perception.. its almost fraud-like.. it shouldn't be a percentage of the lottery funds anyways.. the operational costs should be relatively flat.. regardless of the amount of money it collects.. especially since it primarily digital.. I think the Oilers should be doing an investigation on this.. maybe shop for a different management company.. these guys smell like freaking TicketMaster.. who are scum of scum.

Maybe there should be legislation whereby any charity has to divulge the percentage of the funds it collects going to the actual charity so its not a secret.. i.e. transparency

[Updated on: Wed, 01 October 2025 18:36]

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Re: Katz, Win50 and the 50/50... something looks slimy [message #847706 is a reply to message #847705 ]	Wed, 01 October 2025 20:57

Adam
Messages: 7549
Registered: August 2005
Location: Edmonton, AB

6 Cups

Skookum Jim wrote on Wed, 01 October 2025 18:33

Ha ha - I don't think we should let the Oilers conduct the investigation. I'm pretty confident they'll fail to find any wrongdoing!

There are laws about charities - but it's hard to find a one-size-fits-all so there's some looseness on the rules. It's worth noting that the Oilers were actually reporting their admin expenses and EXCLUDING the payments to Win50. If you looked at the charity's statements, it would say that for that period of time - 2021-24, the admin costs were only $9MM. That seems really good - except that they were then siphoning out an additional $70+MM with this "third party" that Katz actually owns.

The fact that they were slippery about this says all you need to know about whether they believed they're being nefarious.

I appreciate what Katz did in buying the team and the Arena District is a great addition to the city. He's done a lot of good - but he always ends up coming off like a Bond villain in the end. It's really a shame. Why steal millions from charity when you're already a billionaire? It's just shameless greed.

"Thinking that a bad team's best players are the reason the team is bad is the "Tambellini re-signing Lennart Petrell" of sports opinions." @Woodguy55
#FireBobbyNicks

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Re: Katz, Win50 and the 50/50... something looks slimy [message #847704 is a reply to message #847693 ]	Wed, 01 October 2025 17:37

Adam
Messages: 7549
Registered: August 2005
Location: Edmonton, AB

6 Cups

Adam wrote on Wed, 01 October 2025 13:00

g2k wrote on Wed, 01 October 2025 12:19

I've been thinking about changing my sig for a while now.

Might hold off a bit on that.

My numbers are off as I assumed the the quoted revenue numbers are the 100% numbers but that's after the 50% has been given away. It means everything is doubled basically, and then that aligns with the $81MM referenced in the story.

It does basically mean that every time they award a 50/50, Katz's company wins too - and wins a higher amount than any of the 2020 or earlier 50/50 winners did!

EDIT to add:

I do note the kid gloves that even OilersNation takes related to this. The story is all about misconduct and the pushback is, as I said, pretty tepid. They try to get you focusing on them paying more in actual dollars, even as they're skimming millions and millions more out and the author, while reporting what they said there also makes it pretty clear that it's problematic at best. He avoids any comments on their pushback other than reporting it. And then the piece is named "Oilers Entertainment Group pushes back against report on 50/50 revenue allocation" which if you only read the headline makes it seem like maybe this is all a nothing burger.

It is always of interest to me just how little scrutiny anyone in the Canadian media is willing to take on Darryl Katz. The Journal and Sun have not run this story at all that I can see from a quick google search. The St. Albert Gazette HAS run the story, picking up the story from Investigative Journalism Foundation but that's it.

[Updated on: Wed, 01 October 2025 18:19]

"Thinking that a bad team's best players are the reason the team is bad is the "Tambellini re-signing Lennart Petrell" of sports opinions." @Woodguy55
#FireBobbyNicks

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Re: Katz, Win50 and the 50/50... something looks slimy [message #847711 is a reply to message #847669 ]	Thu, 02 October 2025 10:58

mightyreasoner
Messages: 545
Registered: October 2005
Location: Edmonton

No Cups

So for starters, I doubt anyone is shocked that a Katz organization is being slimy, shady, and greedy. When I heard about this, I felt some disgust, but not surprise.

Second, I've had some friends who have been a charity recipient of the Oiler 50/50, and I was initially surprised by their lukewarm reception to it. I thought they would be over the moon, but while grateful and always quick to participate, they kind of alluded that it wasn't as much as one would think it would be, and that there was always difficulty trying to find enough staff and volunteers to run the 50/50 for a game. It was a good fundrasier, but not the home run one might imagine. So this aligns with that and makes sense.

I have to imagine that the Oilers Community Foundation receives all kinds of tax benefits distributing to other charities, rather than money going directly to those charities. Same for other Foundation that is set up to distribute proceeds. It's done for tax benefit purposes.

There's a reason that websites like Charity Navigator, Charity Intelligence, and Charity Watch are so important – they serve as watchdogs for shady practices like this. Personally, I am much more inclined to give to organizations with transparency and show me how the money is being distributed.

https://www.charityintelligence.ca/charity-details/463-edmon ton-oilers-community-foundation

I'm actually not a hardliner for charities having extremely low administrative costs either – it's all about Return On Investment. If you have to pay more for a CEO but that person is connected and makes up the difference (and more) in adding revenue than the alternative hire would, that's money well spent. If you spend $100 in advertising, but make $150 in donations, that is money well spent. So I actually appreciate strong financial stewardship of donations, even if that means a charity has higher administrative costs. But that doesn't sound like what this is.

If there is one thing I know with certainty, it is that Albertans will buy 50/50s like no where else in the world. They don't need the Oilers brand to assist with that.

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