Getting In on the Game

“Because the players live with host families, that creates a tremendous bond,” says Gary Weckwerth, vice president of mortgage banking for Home Federal Bank in Sioux Falls and the Stampede’s CEO. “Everybody knows the players, and they become celebrities in our community.”

The fact that the USHL is an amateur rather than a professional league can make a team attractive not only to ambitious players but also to potential owners. Because there are no wages or other employee-related costs for players, expenses are limited primarily to staff and coaching salaries, equipment and transportation, marketing, and facility maintenance and leases. All told, Schoenborn says, a well-run USHL team should bring in about $1.5 million in revenue annually, up to half of which is profit after an operating budget that varies between about $800,000 to $1.2 million. “The business model is such that with the right management, you can do very well,” Schoenborn adds. “There should be a 50 percent profit margin, even without devoting all your energy and resources to it.” He says that nearly all of the USHL’s teams are profitable.

USHL President Gino Gasparini, who works out of the league’s headquarters in Grand Forks, North Dakota, says that the USHL “is doing exceptionally well. We’ve drawn over a million fans a year in each of the last seven years. When you consider 30-some home games per year, with an average attendance of 3,000 at about $12 a ticket, you can see how this would be a good business to be involved with.”

Economic Development Tool?

The American Bar Association lists 1,029 attorneys in the United States who practice in some area of sports law, but most work on the labor side—that is, as player representatives. A relative few represent teams or leagues. And then there are the very few who, like Schoenborn, represent teams they themselves helped start.

“I have a very nontraditional practice,” he says. “I’d be surprised if there were more than five or six attorneys who have the type of practice I have. We use business law for the nuts and bolts of running a team, real estate law for facility development, and employment law for staffing issues. It’s business law with a sports shell on it.”

A St. Cloud native, Schoenborn earned his law degree from the University of Minnesota in 1995. He then moved back to his hometown and went to work for the Hall & Byers law firm, which later became the local office of the Minneapolis law firm Gray Plant Mooty. Craig Dahl, the former St. Cloud State University hockey coach, told Schoenborn about the USHL, and Schoenborn did his due diligence.