Alex Meruelo is as defiant as ever.
Whether it was meeting with Arizona Coyotes staff last Thursday, doing an interview with a local radio station later that afternoon, or sitting next to NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman at a hotel in Phoenix the next day, it’s been 2019 since Merullo, who is the owner of the Coyotes, reacted to being forced by the league to sell the team by insisting that he did not lose the team at all.
Of course, the Arizona Coyotes are moving to Salt Lake City. Sure, players and hockey operations staff are already meeting with the new owners and planning tours of their facilities in Utah, and sure, Arizona season ticket holders are wondering when they’ll get their deposits back for next season, but Merue Law’s relationship with reality is casual at best.
On the “Burns and Gamble” radio show, he corrected one of the show’s hosts, insisting that he was still the owner of the team and that the team was now just “inactive.” He said he was simply sending “the players and the hockey business to Utah.” In a meeting with employees the next day, he told those worried about their jobs that he refused to go down as the man who lost the Coyotes. During Friday’s press conference with Bettman, when Meruelo blurted out “I don’t like the press,” the commissioner repeatedly interjected and interjected to “translate.” At one point, Bateman grabbed Meruelo’s arm to stop him from speaking.
Arizona’s thriving NHL franchise has long been an oasis for the league’s struggles. It is a vibrant market with a thriving youth hockey scene that has long provided opportunities for a diverse hockey fan base. But since the club’s inception in 1996 (when the club moved from Winnipeg to the Winnipeg Jets), the league and Coyotes fans have endured many hardships in pursuit of that dream. An attempt to build the team in Scottsdale failed in 2001, and it was relocated to Glendale in 2003. Take over the team. The Coyotes, who played the past two seasons in a 4,500-seat university facility, were kicked out of their previous arena due to unpaid arena fees and more than $1.3 million in delinquent taxes.
In forcing the Coyotes to sell to NBA Utah Jazz owner Ryan Smith, the league ultimately put an end to Arizona’s dream — at least for now. At the heart of this defeat was Meruelo. He was seen as a potential savior when he bought the team five years ago, only to be the final nail in the team’s coffin with failure and defiance.
Wit and elegance have never been Meruelo’s style.
He built his wealth through real estate development and construction, as well as owning media companies and casinos. He was the first Hispanic owner to own a majority stake in an NHL club — when he purchased the team, the club was operating in a market that was 42% Hispanic or Latino. His top deputy and Meruelo’s longtime confidant, Xavier Gutierrez, became the league’s first Latino chief executive and team president. Both emphasized their desire to connect with their fan base and launched a number of community-oriented initiatives to achieve this goal. Although Merullo had a deal with an NBA team fall through a few years ago (the league deemed the deal too highly leveraged, according to one report), the NHL is hoping his deep pockets and reputation for revitalizing distressed properties will eventually bring the deal to the table. The team improved to stability.
It took just over a year for that optimism to be shattered. In August 2020, it was reported that he failed to pay signing bonuses to players. Gutierrez attributes that to their lack of experience owning sports franchises. As more vendors and employees began complaining about unpaid invoices and heavy-handed tactics, it became clear that this was a feature of Meruelo’s business practices, not a bug.
Finding a long-term home for the Coyotes under Meruelo quickly became his biggest concern. In his first press conference, he spoke of the need for a “financially sustainable” solution to the team’s arena woes. Given his background in real estate and construction, there is optimism that he will be able to build a state-of-the-art arena as part of the plan. But as news of his business tactics spread, distrust grew within the business and political circles. Instead of trying to make headway with power brokers and rebuild his reputation among local leaders, he was arrogant. Former Tempe City Councilwoman Lauren Kuby recalled one interaction in which Meruelo said, “I bet you’ve never met a billionaire before.”
February 2021, Competitor A published report said Meruelo’s first 18 months at the helm were marred by executive changes, strained relationships with corporate partners and a host of financial problems, some of which were exacerbated by the pandemic. Oops. The story, drawn from interviews with more than 50 people, details a pattern of unpaid bills and abandoned vendors, a disastrous draft that left them with widespread scorn and employees complaining of a toxic environment.
At the company’s draft party in the summer of 2021, he unexpectedly took the microphone and told the crowd that the team would be leaving Glendale and building a new facility in Tempe. Executives in attendance, including Gutierrez, were visibly upset by his rhetoric, given the team’s tenuous relationship with Glendale and its corporate partners in the audience.
“That was the first sign I saw that we were really in trouble,” one former employee said. “He didn’t have any sense of self.”
Later that summer, the Coyotes were told they would be kicked out of Glendale at the end of the 2021-22 season, with the city manager describing the situation as “an irreversible situation.” Merullo played tough in lease negotiations, convinced the city of Glendale would never kick him out of the building. For a man who owned a casino, he was an ineffective bluffer.
This is a huge mistake. That means the team has no suitable playing surface, while Meruelo tries to get politicians, unions and voters to support Tempe’s $2 billion development plan, which includes a new stadium. As he struggled to pursue the plan, Meruelo’s years of arrogance came back to bite him. Grassroots organizers blasted his track record and credit rating, citing a financial analysis commissioned by the Tempe City Council. Campaign materials described him as “corrupt,” “scandal-ridden” and a “deadbeat billionaire.” Local unions and labor unions lobbied against the plan. Meruelo isn’t investing heavily in counteracting the negative messaging. He said last week he spent $7 million on the referendum; campaign finance records show he spent just over $1 million.
In May 2023, voters rejected the proposal, leaving the team once again unable to find a clear path to a suitable stage.
“I think Tempe’s argument … is that they screwed up the movement,” said Tempe City Council member Randy Keating, who supports the development proposal. “They did it.”
After the proposal was rejected, the clock started ticking on the move, but Meruelo remains undeterred. In early March 2024, news broke that the team was eyeing state-owned land north of Phoenix. Gutierrez later told The Arizona Republic that the team initially considered 200 acres in the area, but that plan was “cut back” due to high infrastructure costs. But bids for the land required months of announcements; Bateman said by the time the team secured a spot on the Arizona Land Department’s agenda in mid-March, the timeline became too “tight.”
In January, Ryan Smith publicly stated his intention to take a team to Salt Lake City. In February 2023, NHLPA executive director Marty Walsh lashed out at the Coyotes and made clear the situation was untenable. He stressed the urgency of addressing the issue and put pressure on the coalition to take action.
On March 6, Bettman and deputy commissioner Bill Daly met with Merullo and asked him if he could look the players in the eyes and give them an honest answer about when they would have an NHL-caliber home. He told them he couldn’t. Within the next five weeks, they reached an agreement to travel to Utah for the 2024-25 season.
During Friday’s news conference, Bettman said the league believes it’s unfair for players to continue playing in a facility built to house the Arizona State University hockey team that is only three times the size of most stadiums in the league. one. Meruelo called selling the franchise “the most painful decision of his life” — even though it was arguably not his decision.
NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman (right) speaks with Coyotes owner Alex Merullo during a press conference in Phoenix last week. (Christian Peterson/Getty Images)
As part of the sale, Meruelo will receive exclusive rights to bring a team back to the market, which will begin with a state land auction on June 27. 18 months notice, PHNX Sports reports any arena must be 50% complete to trigger a restart notice. According to Sportsnet, “revival rights are non-transferable” and a $1 billion price tag to bring the Coyotes back has been locked in. This happens.
“I have not seen a group that is more committed to doing things the wrong way and has failed to gain any meaningful support among the political community, the business community and the influential stakeholders they need to make it happen,” said former U.S. Senator David Leibowitz.
Keating said: “I have zero confidence that they can pull it off. The fact is he can’t build an arena when he has a team. Who will build it now? No one will,” he added. Why do this?
Meruelo still exited with a golden parachute. Ryan Smith and Ashley Smith of Smith Entertainment Group (SEG) purchased the team for $1.2 billion, of which $200 million will reportedly be divided among other NHL owners. Meruelo purchased the team for nearly $450 million, according to two people familiar with the team’s finances. Even taking into account the team’s existing debt and annual operating losses, which range from $50 million to $70 million, Meruelo could net hundreds of millions of dollars, sources said. One former employee aware of this fact likened Meruelo’s tenure to the time when a teenager destroyed a car and was given a Ferrari as compensation.
Employees at the franchise business unit have been told their jobs are safe ahead of the land auction on June 27. Meruelo said on Friday that the work would be evaluated over the next 60 days but that his intention “is to keep everything intact.” Those who stayed were told to focus their efforts on the Tucson Roadrunners, the Coyotes’ AHL affiliate that Meruelo still owns.
Over the last week, many of these employees and other past employees have been in the anger stages of grief. On social media, one former employee described her time at the organization as the worst four months of her life. A former game host revealed on X that the team tried to avoid paying the full amount she was owed on her contract. Many employees attended the team’s final game last Wednesday in Arizona. Meruelo was noticeably absent. He later claimed he didn’t attend because he was finalizing the details of selling the team. In his absence, the atmosphere was more like an Irish wake than a funeral. Die-hard fans held on long before and long after the final whistle. Players stayed on the ice in their gear and signed autographs. Employees huddled on the ice until their feet grew cold.
A young fan held up a sign with photos of Coyotes players. “Thank you for helping me fall in love with hockey,” he wrote. In the center of the logo is a picture of Meruelo. Under the photo, it was written in red:
“It’s not you.”
— CompetitorChris Johnston contributed to this report.
(Illustration: John Bradford/The Athletic. Photos: Norm Hall, Scott Taetsch/Getty)
