Staff Writer
How did it happen?
That's the question Augusta Lynx fans have been asking in the wake of the minor league hockey team's demise last week after more than 10 years of operation.
Dan Troutman, Robert Burch and Jan Hodges Burch -- the three local investors who made up the Group Operating the Augusta Lynx (G.O.A.L) -- said in two news conferences that they simply ran out of money after spending $2.4 million on the team since taking over in April 2006.
Where did all that the money go?
"The average, everyday fan I don't think sees how quickly everything adds up," Troutman said.
The team lost a little more than $1.4 million in its first year of operation and another $750,000 to $800,000 the second year, Troutman said.
The Lynx entered the 2008-09 season with a $2 million operating budget. Player and administrative payroll costs were the two largest expenses.
Tickets sales and advertising dollars couldn't keep up. At a news conference to announce the team's folding, Robert Burch said the corporate sponsors weren't the problem.
"It's just that we didn't get the support from Augusta as far as people in the coliseum that we needed to come. You can look at our numbers and we did very well with corporate sponsorship. We did very poorly with getting people to come out and see the game," he said. "It's a very family-oriented venue. It's an exciting sport and their option was to either stay home or come to the game. It's not like we're competing with anybody. We just couldn't get them to come out. I don't know if that's our fault or what. The bottom line is that we just couldn't get enough people in the stands."
The Lynx weren't the only team struggling with finances in 2008.
"I'm not naive enough to think in the next year or two we won't have two or three more casualties," ECHL commissioner Brian McKenna said. "It's interesting what we're seeing from the teams in our league. We've seen the biggest impact in our league on the sponsorship side of the sport.
"The teams in our league who have multi-year sponsorship deals, they're in fine shape," he said. "The teams that left it for later in the summer (to get those sponsorship contracts signed), we have seen a fall-off there."
Troutman said the ownership group knew money would be tight at the beginning of the season and took steps to find two sources of income before the season started.
"There was two different plans in place, A and B. I'd just soon not go into what that was but we thought we were covered under both regards and both of the situations were out from under out control," Troutman said at a news conference less than a week before the team folded.
He declined to elaborate on those potential sources of income Saturday night.
"I don't want to dwell on that," he said.
Troutman said the ownership group knew it was in trouble when the two plans fell through on the same day. The group spent the entire month of November searching for an investor or group of investors.
Although a premature report out of Charlotte tabbed the Lynx as already gone, the possibility of an 11th-hour financial savior seemed to increase last Sunday when Charlotte Checkers owner Michael Kahn, who may have been one of the potential investors, said he expected something to happen before the ECHL's Board of Governor's met Tuesday.
Troutman said his search for investors even led him to speak with two potential buyers who wanted to take over complete control of the team.
But the deadline set by the league passed without a completed deal, and Lynx ownership handed in the team's league membership Tuesday night.
Troutman said the deal breaker was always the money and nothing else.
"The thing that turned them away and made it impossible for us to get anybody was that there was no way we could show that we'd have a profitable budget this year," he said. "And, to be honest, there was no profit guaranteed for next year."
Reach Billy Byler at (706) 823-3216 or billy.byler@augustachronicle.com.
