A summary of the press conference:
 
The final season of the Salt Lake Golden Eagles marks 25 years of
hockey in Salt Lake City.  Larry Miller has bought the Eagles from Art
Teece 5 years ago.  Art Teece had put a lot of money, time and effort
into keeping Hockey in Salt Lake City including getting the IHL to
allow Salt Lake into the league.  Larry Miller said the hardest thing
about selling the Eagles was breaking the news to Art.
 
Larry Miller stated his reasons for selling the team was strictly
financal.  The Eagles have been losing money for the last 5 years.  He
said he needed around 7500 paid attendance to break evern.  Paid
Attendance has been around 2500 week nights and 5000 weekends.
 
With the direction the IHL is going, he expected to see the break even
point increase instead of decrease.  Chicago and Detroit will now have
both IHL and NHL teams.
 
Larry Miller said the problem is with the fan base, the kids do not
grow up playing hockey around here.  If kids grow up playing baseball
they watch baseball, if they grow up playing hockey they watch hockey.
 
The Eagles were sold to the owner of the Detroit Pistons, and Larry
Miller would not commit to an excat amount exchanged in the sale.  He
said the last IHL expansion franchise sold for 4 million, and the next
one is going to go for 6 million.  The sales price was in that range.
Larry Miller also said after the 5 years of operation, and with the
sales price he would about break even on his ownership of the Eagles.
(+/- 1,000,000).
 
Larry Miller went to detail about how he had tried to get a larger fan
base, different marketing plans he had gone through (shoestring and
spend on advertising....) and could not get hockey to make money in
the Salt Lake market.  He said he did not like to admit failure but it
was bigger than him.
 
Larry Miller also had purchased a local TV station, and has been
trying to make the TV station make money.  The Goal is to make money,
and the Eagles were not making money.