Through good and bad, Bruins have profited owner

Last season's Stanley Cup win was richly deserved by Bruins fans like Casey Robichaud, who spent years shelling out top dollar only to have her heart broken by a succession of mediocre teams.

"The owners, they can do what they want," said Robichaud, who grew up in Waltham, Mass., watching Bruins games with her father and now works for a health insurance company. "But it's a real financial burden."

But for Bruins owner Jeremy Jacobs, the ka-ching being heard after the team's championship season is simply icing on the cake for an extraordinary, decades-long run.

With bare-bones local investment, the elusive Buffalo-based billionaire and his Delaware North concessions empire have reaped hundreds of millions in profits off his Boston hockey and arena operations.

Yet even as Bruins fans year in and year out have struggled with high prices, Jacobs - who declined a request for an interview - has managed to keep his own costs down.

A review of Jacobs's track record as owner of the Bruins and the TD Garden by the New England Center for Investigative Reporting reveals:

• A squeeze on average fans amid a steady expansion of costly season tickets and luxury seating, with ticket prices poised to surge again.

• More than $200 million in profits from the Bruins and the Garden spanning the last decade alone, most earned before the Stanley Cup win.

• Substantial charitable giving in his hometown of Buffalo, with less in New England.

• No progress yet on a now two-decade old plan to make the Garden the centerpiece of a sports, residential, retail and office megaplex - despite a multimillion-dollar tax break on the arena itself.

The Bruins Stanley Cup win couldn't have come at a more opportune time for Jacobs, who just a year ago was facing a fan revolt - including a website pleading for a sale of the franchise - after years of paying top dollar to watch an endless succession of mediocre teams.

As recently as 2008 and 2009, the Bruins payroll, as it was for much of the decade, was stuck in the middle of the league. The biggest shift came last season, when Jacobs shelled out $64.8 million on players, fifth in the league, up from 16th the year before, according to USA Today's annual team payroll survey.

The Bruins also effectively capped ticket prices four years ago, though at what were already league-leading levels. The Bruins floated down the ticket/fan cost rankings, from No. 2 among all NHL teams in the 2007-2008 season to No. 4 among U.S. teams last season, according to Chicago-based Team Marketing Report.

Still, a night out at the Garden to watch the Bruins - more than $340 for a family of four - costs as much as an afternoon at Fenway Park, long baseball's priciest ballpark, according to Team Marketing Report.

In fact, just going solo can be expensive, noted Robichaud, decked out in a Bruins T-shirt as she watched the game at the bar.

With an outing at the Garden a sure $100-plus night, there are only so many games she can afford to attend.

Determined to avoid paying the Garden's concession prices, which include beer at more than $7 a pop, some fans take extreme measures.

"It makes people think like they have to drink heavily before the game," she said.

Piling on the profits

Last winter, before their Stanley Cup win, the Bruins raised ticket prices by 7.3 percent to an average price of $58.94. It was the second-highest increase in the league, said Jon Greenberg, Team Marketing Report's executive editor.

Ticket brokers are now fetching an average of $113 for a Bruins ticket this season compared with $86 last year, according to SeatGeek, which tracks the secondary market.

"As long as the team doesn't completely fall apart this year, I envision a bigger jump," Greenberg said.

But even the Bruins' long run of mediocrity was hardly bad for the bottom line of Jacobs and Delaware North. The Bruins owner pulled down nearly $40 million in the past decade alone off a ho-hum franchise before he hit the Stanley Cup jackpot, according to annual team valuations published by Forbes. (next page »)