Hockey and Opera: What's the connection?

It looks like Jim Balsillie, who is currently making a bid to bring the Phoenix Coyotes back to Canada, is going to have a major say in the success of Hamilton arts organizations including Opera Hamilton (formerly Opera Ontario). Hamilton's local daily is reporting that the RIM boss is negotiating for control of Copps Colleseum so that his new hockey team would have somewhere to play. The key is that to control the arena, he would need to control Hamilton Entertainment and Convention Facilities Inc., the group that runs it and (and here's where it effects the arts) Hamilton Place where Opera Hamilton performs, along with other groups such as the Hamilton Philharmonic. The concern is that with a new, for-profit entity controling the facility they could either force the arts groups to pay market rent, or make date selection incredibly difficult with their currently discounted rates.