Kenny Jacoby

Absolutely, yeah.

My news organization spent the last nine months investigating Black Bear Sports Group.

It is a company owned by a private investment firm called Blackstreet Capital Holdings.

It was started about 10 years ago.

And over the last decade, it has rapidly bought up ice rinks and hockey teams across the Northeast and Midwest U.S.

And then leveraged that control to steer families into its own costly ecosystem of leagues, tournaments, and fees.

And all of that has the effect of higher prices, fewer choices for families.

and growing concern that one company is consolidating power over a sport that was long rooted in local nonprofits.

There is.

His name is Murray Gunty.

He is the CEO of Blackstreet Capital Holdings and was, until recently, the CEO of Black Bear Sports Group.

He is a hockey dad whose kid came up playing in Maryland recently.

And he had coached his son's team.

His son, as he climbed the ranks of Team Maryland, a Tier 1 team in the state, Murray Gunty essentially realized how he could turn the sport into an arm of his for-profit business.

Sure.

So in a Black Bear market, often what happens is Black Bear will come in and buy up multiple rings within, let's say, an hour radius or so.

And there are just not that many hockey rings in the whole country.

And so when one company kind of controls, you know, a decent share of the market there, there's far more demand for ice time than there is supply.

And so some amount of families are going to be forced to use those Black Bear rinks almost no matter what.

Typically what happens when Black Bear takes over a rink, almost immediately it raises prices on any third-party teams that rent ice from there.