The Chicago Blackhawks Greatest Sports Business Turnaround Ever Case Solution

1. Discuss the reasons the Blackhawks were once so popular historically.

The Chicago Blackhawks were founded in 1926 by Major Frederic McLaughlin after his death, it was sold to bill Tobin and finally to Arthur Wirtz who was rocky's grandfather. Initially, the team was very successful. It also won the Stanley cup, and they had well-known athletes on the team. Four sports were very popular in the United States, i.e., football, baseball, basketball, and hockey, but the studies reveal that hockey was much less popular than any of them. There might be many reasons, but the most important ones are that it is a game that is played in the cold and the people of southern and western states lack such weather. Secondly, it is an expensive sport and only a minority can afford it since it requires a lot of things that are out of range of many. The Chicago black hawks is basically a hockey team of Chicago that was once famous for its achievements and performances. Rocky Wirtz, the chairman of black Hawk, was trying to work on his team which had been struggling for so long. He took charge of this team after the sudden death of his father, William bill Wirtz. The fans did not like bill Wirtz and were very angry with him because they thought that this man was responsible for the failure of this team. Blackhawks was not the only business held by the Wirtz family, and they owned a lot many other businesses too, like banking, real estate, insurance, etc. when rocky got to know that the revenue of Blackhawks had decreased, it did not matter much because he used capital from other businesses to run the affairs of his team but it could not long last as this was not the permanent solution. 

2. Discuss the facts that evidence how much trouble the team’s brand was in when Bill Wirtz died.

Bill Wirtz had stopped broadcasting home games due to which many people stopped watching such games so they were worried that how they could restore fans' interest back into the game. Four sports were very popular in the United States, i.e., football, baseball, basketball, and hockey but the studies reveal that hockey was much less popular than any of them. There might be many reasons but the most important ones were that it is a game that is played in cold and the people of southern and western states lack such weather. Secondly, it is an expensive sport and only a minority can afford it since it requires a lot of things that are out of range of many. Rocky had sponsored and financed the team by means of other businesses, but now he needed some more sponsors. They needed some more people to work for the team, and they knew that they were worried that how they could convince people to work for such a defamed team. After their father's death, people thought that peter would take charge of the team, but instead, rocky took control of the group. He reassigned his father's right-hand man, Bob Pulford. Finally, Rocky hired John McDonough from the Chicago Cubs to serve as the team's president. Rocky had to be accountable for some things. That is, the revenue generated by the team was getting low because they could not increase the ticket prices because of the poor performance of the group. At the start of the session of 2004, when bill Wirtz's family had gathered in the ceremony to listen to the speech in bill Wirtz tribute but what happened was unexpected for them when bill Wirtz's name was called out, people started screaming and shouting as nobody respected him and blamed him for team's present performances. They needed some good athletes for their team and now were worried about how they could attract them to join their team.