Continuing its New Jersey acquisition spree, Black Bear Sports Group announced that it has purchased Skylands Ice World, a two-sheet ice arena complex in Stockholm, New Jersey. This represents Black Bear’s fourth facility in New Jersey acquired within the last two years.
It is difficult to gauge the effect that Black Bear’s activity in New Jersey will have on the sports of ice hockey and figure skating in the area. New Jersey can be thought of as two or three different markets: the Metropolitan New York Area, Central New Jersey, and the Delaware Valley Area adjacent to Philadelphia.
Black Bear now owns two facilities in Central New Jersey (Jersey Shore Arena and Ice Land Skating Center) and one in lower Bucks County, Pennsylvania (Revolution Ice Gardens), that are quite close to each other. Although Revolution and its customers probably see themselves as part of the Delaware Valley, because of hockey league affiliation and because they are physically in Pennsylvania, they are closer in many respects to Central New Jersey. We would argue that Black Bear has a dominant position in the Central New Jersey ice facility business.
Black Bear’s two acquisitions in North Jersey, both in the fourth quarter of 2019, are interesting because they have quickly become the major private ownership player in Northwestern New Jersey. The only organizations that truly compete with them in that part of New Jersey are the Morris County Park Commission, with its ownership of the three-sheet facility William G. Mennen Sports Arena in Morris Township, and the Essex County Department of Parks, Recreation, and Cultural Affairs which owns the two-sheet Richard J. Codey Arena in West Orange.
Northern New Jersey has many other ice facilities, but the market is still very fragmented, with a number of individual, privately-owned facilities, and several facilities owned by governmental agencies.