Goodbye, Long Island. And goodbye, Brooklyn. The New York Islanders, which left Long Island in 2015 for Brooklyn, are getting the boot from the Barclays Center. The owners of the arena on Atlantic Avenue concluded it would make more money not hosting the hockey team, which won’t contribute revenue after the 2018-2019 season, according to a financial analysis shown to potential investors, Bloomberg reported.
Since November, Russian billionaire Mikhail Prokhorov has been shopping a stake in the Nets and Barclays, which he bought from Forest City Ratner [TRDataCustom] in a deal that valued it at $825 million.
Barclays pays the Islanders an average of $53.5 million a year to control its business operations, including ticket sale revenue, according to Bloomberg. But since moving to Brooklyn, average attendance for Islanders’ games fell to 12,828, the third-worst in the National Hockey League, and players have complained about the quality of the ice.
Last year, Islanders owners Jonathan Ledecky and Scott Malkin began talking with Sterling Equities about building a new hockey arena next to Citi Field in Queens. Prokhorov bought the team’s former home, the Nassau Veterans Memorial Coliseum, in 2014.
Last year, Prokhorov issued $480 million in municipal bonds to refinance the Barclays Center. [Bloomberg] — E.B. Solomont