They Should Have Let Mouse Roar
Bruce McNall's best scam was legal: He persuaded Michael Eisner, then chairman of the Walt Disney Company, to buy an NHL franchise for the new arena in Anaheim, a deal that would benefit the Disney empire and, not secondarily, McNall.
But before committing to the project, Eisner had a question.
"His kids had played, so he knew hockey from the standpoint of a father watching his kids play," McNall said, "but he'd never watched an NHL game. I took him to some games and talked to him about it and he said, 'How much is the league going to pay us to come in?' "
McNall informed him the process didn't work that way. Besides, Eisner would be infringing on the market McNall claimed as owner of the Kings. They agreed Disney would pay $25 million to the NHL and $25 million to McNall for territorial infringement.
"At the moment, I was just a little short," said McNall, who later spent nearly four years in prison after pleading guilty to two counts of bank fraud and one each of wire fraud and conspiracy involving $236 million.
"The $25 million came in handy and kept me going another three weeks or so."
Disney and the Ducks kept going for more than a decade, until Friday's announcement that the club had been sold for $75 million to Orange County entrepreneur Henry Samueli and his wife, Susan.
To McNall, who was there at the beginning, the ending was unspeakably sad.
Still a fan of the game and a friend of Eisner's -- McNall got letters from him while in prison and he made Eisner a wallet -- McNall believes the NHL drove the Disney chief away, even though Eisner's marketing savvy could have brought immense riches to a league that was built on family fiefdoms and had no clue how to promote itself.
Traditionalists were livid when the Ducks took their name from a kids' movie and introduced an aggressive marketing plan. The Ducks entertained fans with a mascot, on-ice cheerleaders and laser shows, which have become standard in Toronto and Calgary and other cities that once considered such sideshows beneath them.
The Ducks became a marketing textbook for rival clubs after they played to 99.3% of capacity in their first five seasons and marketed their merchandise to the same stratospheric levels as the NFL's Dallas Cowboys and baseball's New York Yankees. In 1993-94, their inaugural NHL season, the Ducks made $11 million in merchandising; in April 1995, Financial World magazine pegged the franchise's value at $108 million, tied for second with the New York Rangers and behind the Detroit Red Wings, two of the NHL's "Original Six" clubs.
