Journal of Sport History

Venues for sporting events are rich in architectural history and iconic to the cities in which they reside, but as the needs of the consumer evolve so does the need for new and updated facilities. New sporting venues come into existence at the peril of older facilities that have [End Page 312] served out their time and to level the playing field to keep up with other league teams who have secured new facilities. These new venues also have effects on the socioeconomics of the downtown locations in which they are built. Scherer, Mills, and McCulloch's Power Play: Professional Hockey and the Politics of Urban Development provides an inside look at the Canadian city of Edmonton's campaign to build a new home for National Hockey League (NHL) Edmonton Oilers. The campaign was led by the newly elected mayor Stephen Mandel and Daryl Katz (the second owner of the Oilers). Katz's persistence for Edmonton to build a new arena caused conflict with the Oilers' home at Northland's Arena. It became impossible for the city to walk away from entering negotiations with an owner of a professional sports franchise for a new facility (219). In the beginning Scherer, Mills, and McCulloch state that the book does not provide a definitive account of the arena debate and that their own biases and assumptions had shaped their analysis (xvi). The authors' positions and rhetoric often match those of the citizens of Edmonton who were in opposition to the arena's being built.

In 358 pages, Scherer, Mills, and McCulloch contribute to the field of sport history by thoroughly analyzing financial documents, interviews, press conference, emails, and newspaper articles that document the political power plays the Katz Group used to convince or threaten the city of Edmonton to get to their goal of a new arena for the Oilers. Edmonton has been called "The Heartland of Hockey," and its history with the sport shaped the city's identity and gave it the honor of being the birthplace of early amateur and minor professional leagues (15). Early Edmonton hockey venues included the North Saskatchewan River followed by Thistle Rink (1904), the Edmonton Stock Pavilion (also known as Edmonton Gardens, built 1913) and Northlands Coliseum (also known as Rexall Place, built 1974). Hockey clubs are businesses and owners are motivated by their own self-interest rather than concern for the fans or community in which they reside (43). Building new arenas helps make more money, and, since arenas are multipurpose facilities, "simply watching" an event "is no longer sufficient to attract adequate numbers of spectators. The facility must be "a pleasure palace and part of a larger real estate development" (349). Club managers are willing to use the team as leverage to secure more ownership of arena finances and to convince the city to build new state-of-the-art arenas when they feel the facility no longer lives up to expectations and is damaging business interests.

At the end of the book, the authors write that the NHL Calgary Flames in Alberta have begun a campaign to replace the Scotiabank Saddledome and build a new arena of its own, hence continuing the competition for state-of-the-art facilities across the league. This book serves as a good case-study resource for sports-administration courses, especially sport legal and financial electives. This book is not a historical account of the NHL Edmonton Oilers Hockey Club but a historical account of how the current Rogers Place Arena (opened in September 2016) came into existence from city debates to financial and city planning. [End Page 313]