Pyramid might refer the general playbook for professional sports is most teams lose money year to year (over the long term) but the real goal is to make the league stature such that the buy in costs (team values) increase over time. And Expansion fees keep going up.
Of course you get zero transparency in this league, local reporters are the stars for that, but I expect Winnipeg being a decent sized media market should be playing in a facility to that level. It didn't look good on TV. I wonder if ICE put the powerplay on and said you keep giving us the gears, here are the keys you take over. Wenatchee was a win win in the end. Did the ICE make money on the sale? They did well on the dollar conversion at least. Is WPG media doing a final chapter on the team? Maybe on the one year anniversary of the move.
You nailed it re: pyramid scheme. Like any sports league the WHL is trying to make money through a variety of means and their plan clearly involves pushing communities to build them ever-larger and more luxurious rinks. These rinks boost the bottom line in the biggest, most meaningful way possible... by increasing revenue streams and increasing the value of the franchise. But in the WHL's case the communities they push are relatively tiny. Towns like Moose Jaw and Prince Albert. Building a 5,000 seat arena is a huge expense in a place like that. And it doesn't look good for the WHL if the ICE were making a go of it in an 1,800 seat barn... how do you convince the people of Prince Albert you need an expensive new building when that's the case?
As soon as it became obvious that the ICE weren't going to build a rink in the immediate future, that was the end of the franchise. That is a shitty way to do business. I'm sure it left a bad taste in the mouths of many. Why would anyone want to do business with a WHL team again as a sponsor, season ticket holder, etc. after that shoddy treatment?
As to any deep dives, I do not expect that at all from the local Winnipeg media even though it would be interesting. The ICE were basically the number six local team in the Winnipeg area and the media coverage they received was in line with that. There was one long feature newspaper article written about the team for their entire four year existence in Winnipeg. Beyond that it was just game reports, on rare occasions previews and player profiles, and that's it. The team had a decent following but it has been forgotten pretty quickly by the media... after all, this is a pretty busy sports market for a city its size.
In terms of how it looked on TV, I hate to say it but like 90% of WHL games you see seas of empty seats. I don't think the TV views last season were any less flattering in Winnipeg than they were anywhere else Connor Bedard wasn't playing.