CXLIX - FINAL thoughts on the Arizona Coyotes

[AZDesertKnight]

Yeah, that thing is never going to be built

 

[AZDesertKnight]

Serious question...How many games did you attend at Mullett?

I had a heart issueand wasn't really able to go to live sports events until this year.. but managed to get to one - the atmosphere was great!

The numbers are from the Coyotes marketing data btw.

 

[Boris Zubov]

I had a heart issueand wasn't really able to go to live sports events until this year.. but managed to get to one - the atmosphere was great!

The numbers are from the Coyotes marketing data btw.

Hope you're on the mend. Health is way more important than hockey.

I don't believe any data coming from the Coyotes. They were fine in Glendale until the subsidy was yanked, then Bettman began screaming that there was no path forward in Glendale & the East Valley was the only solution for the franchise. The NHL just wanted someone else to pay the freight, plain & simple. It all came down to their economics, not the reality of the market.

 

[Shwan]

I don't believe any data coming from the Coyotes. They were fine in Glendale until the subsidy was yanked, then Bettman began screaming that there was no path forward in Glendale & the East Valley was the only solution for the franchise. The NHL just wanted someone else to pay the freight, plain & simple. It all came down to their economics, not the reality of the market.

Glendale/ASM was bending over backwards to pretty much make the Coyotes playing at Gila River as close to free as they possibly could.

The lease was about $500,000/year with the Coyotes retaining the vast majority of naming rights fees from Gila River which was projected at $3M/year average.

Office space for the organization was complimentary at the arena and at great detriment to the City's finances ASM would make sure the ice was available for practice to both the Coyotes and visiting teams.

Still wasn't good enough and Meruelo still tried to stiff them with bills.

 

[brentashton]

^^^^^

Oh......

https://x.com/i/web/status/1849082726596383100

Article link (for those who don't like dealing with Elon)

Developers now seeking public financing for $1 billion arena at Reno's Grand Sierra Resort

Developers behind a massive arena project at Reno's Grand Sierra Resort intend to ask the city of Reno for public financing to help pay for the project, a chang

nevadasportsnet.com

EDIT: Pulling this from a link in the article. This is from a page on the CoR website and it summarizes what a TIF is that Meruelo is looking for



My immediate interpretation of all this is Meruelo is seeking the new sales tax the arena (plus whatever the city would approve as a zone around it) generates to pay for building it.

AM is like that dinosaur with short arms.

Dinosaur thinking and arms that can only reach into other peoples pockets. Absolute fraud.

Maybe he can drop a clothing line to pay for the needed arena subsidies.

 

[KevFu]

While I mainly agree with everything you're saying, it turned out there was no "geographic center" to their fanbase. They could barely sell out at Mullett. The TV ratings were atrocious. The market just had no appetite for hockey. Sure there were diehards, but not nearly enough to support an NHL team.

There is a geographic center of the fans, but it's a topography issue. For example, Tampa can't build in the geographic center of their fan base, because that's water. They'd need to make an island with like six bridges.

"Barely sell out Mullet" is absurd. Their average attendance was the exact amount of seats sold for NHL games. (College games can sell another 400 seats because college teams don't appropriate the space for visiting team media, staff and comp tickets).

The east valley-west valley location was always irrelevant. Half the valley would always be bitching, even if the team was still downtown.

That's not true because again, you are ignoring topography. You're acting like "Half the valley" is west of Phoenix and half is east of Phoenix. It's TWO VALLEYS and to get from one to the other, you have to go through one of two routes through Tempe.

You're over-simplifying something that's big, complex, sloppy and messy.

Tempe isn't "The East Valley" and anyone west of it is gonna have just as hard of a time getting there as the East Valley folks have getting to the West. It's a bowtie shape, with Tempe as the knot.

The TV numbers told the real story...even when the team stinks there still should be some fans tuning in. I posted the ratings for either 22-23 or 21-22 in an earlier version of the megathread & it showed they were only drawing 1200 fans per game on TV! That's untenable in a market of 5+ million people.

This is more over-simplifying something that's big, complex, sloppy and messy. Local TV numbers are pretty stupid. Local TV ratings don't reveal anything about the size of a fan base.

#1 - It's a methodology problem. My buddy was a Nielsen rater for a while. We got him into watching Premier League on NBC Sports. And from another friend who worked at a local TV affiliate and was able to provide ratings reports, we mathed out that our friend represented 13,500 people. I'm sure tech has advanced (somewhat) since then, but so has cord cutting and illegal streaming.

Because the TV ratings baed on a cross section of the general population in each market, the local TV ratings are always skewed in favor of places that are more single-male head of household vs family households. That's why the Buffalo Sabres trounce the Islanders in local TV ratings even though the Sabres sucked and the Islanders were good from 2020-2022. Buffalo is like 11% SMHH and Long Island is 3%.


#2 - It's just logically absurd that more people are willing to pay for tickets, travel to the venue (pay for parking? Pay for beer and food) and watch in person than to just click on their TV. But you're suggesting this is accurate for the Coyotes, and therefore the Devils, who also have a lower TV viewership than home attendance.

If local TV ratings are anywhere near the size of a fan base, you'd see road games would be nearly double the viewers of home games to account for the fact that 16,000 people are going to NHL home games.

Hell, you can use the Flyers and Devils average local TV viewership per game, math out to the fact that IF local TV viewership is an accurate measure of a fan base, then the Flyers and Devils have less total fans than the number of people who bought tickets to see them play each other at MetLife Stadium.

So the only logical conclusion is that everyone's fan bases are a lot bigger than their TV numbers, which are a methodological nightmare for hundreds of different reasons and it all adds up to "You can't really tell anything from this information other than 'more is better.'"

So there are two issues with that:

1) If there were hockey fans out east that couldn't get to the games on a regular basis why aren't they tuning in on TV?

2) The theory behind the Southern Expansion was that that the presence of teams in these new markets would create new hockey fans. So why didn't West Valley people become hockey fans in the 19 years they had an NHL team there?

1) They do, it's just how many cannot be adequately measured and fans use data to back up what they believe, and not use data for form their opinions.
2) They did. Which is why there were 13,000+ people in the arena in Glendale even though 3/8ths of the market can't get out there very often.

But if there's only 1200 Coyotes fans in all of Phoenix as the TV ratings have you believe, then who were those other 11,500 people every night for 20+ years?

I don't believe any data coming from the Coyotes. They were fine in Glendale until the subsidy was yanked, then Bettman began screaming that there was no path forward in Glendale & the East Valley was the only solution for the franchise. The NHL just wanted someone else to pay the freight, plain & simple. It all came down to their economics, not the reality of the market.

They were "fine" in Glendale. They were "fine" in a college rink. It's just opportunity cost: It's less than an ideal situation which puts them further behind everyone else.

If only we could do some kind of experiment to see just how few tickets you can sell and remain in business in modern pro sports. Like if some kind of global pandemic prevented leagues from selling tickets, or more than 25% of tickets, for like almost an entire calendar year. I wonder what would happen if any team just sold no tickets for an entire year. How many teams would go bankrupt? Could you imagine? Oh wait. The Blue Jays not only sold no tickets in 2020, but also paid $40m to upgrade Buffalo's stadium so they could play in front of zero fans, and it crushed them financially so much they jacked up their payroll by $109 million over the next two seasons! I wonder where they're going to relocate to?

Fans use data to cherry pick the best argument for their beliefs. Like TV data to say there's no hockey fans in Arizona. Which is just dumb.

 

[TheLegend]

AM is like that dinosaur with short arms.

Dinosaur thinking and arms that can only reach into other peoples pockets. Absolute fraud.

Maybe he can drop a clothing line to pay for the needed arena subsidies.

View attachment 920618

He's replaced Anthony LeBlanc as the BoH poster boy.

 

[Boris Zubov]

There is a geographic center of the fans, but it's a topography issue. For example, Tampa can't build in the geographic center of their fan base, because that's water. They'd need to make an island with like six bridges.

"Barely sell out Mullet" is absurd. Their average attendance was the exact amount of seats sold for NHL games. (College games can sell another 400 seats because college teams don't appropriate the space for visiting team media, staff and comp tickets).



That's not true because again, you are ignoring topography. You're acting like "Half the valley" is west of Phoenix and half is east of Phoenix. It's TWO VALLEYS and to get from one to the other, you have to go through one of two routes through Tempe.

You're over-simplifying something that's big, complex, sloppy and messy.

Tempe isn't "The East Valley" and anyone west of it is gonna have just as hard of a time getting there as the East Valley folks have getting to the West. It's a bowtie shape, with Tempe as the knot.




This is more over-simplifying something that's big, complex, sloppy and messy. Local TV numbers are pretty stupid. Local TV ratings don't reveal anything about the size of a fan base.

#1 - It's a methodology problem. My buddy was a Nielsen rater for a while. We got him into watching Premier League on NBC Sports. And from another friend who worked at a local TV affiliate and was able to provide ratings reports, we mathed out that our friend represented 13,500 people. I'm sure tech has advanced (somewhat) since then, but so has cord cutting and illegal streaming.

Because the TV ratings baed on a cross section of the general population in each market, the local TV ratings are always skewed in favor of places that are more single-male head of household vs family households. That's why the Buffalo Sabres trounce the Islanders in local TV ratings even though the Sabres sucked and the Islanders were good from 2020-2022. Buffalo is like 11% SMHH and Long Island is 3%.


#2 - It's just logically absurd that more people are willing to pay for tickets, travel to the venue (pay for parking? Pay for beer and food) and watch in person than to just click on their TV. But you're suggesting this is accurate for the Coyotes, and therefore the Devils, who also have a lower TV viewership than home attendance.

If local TV ratings are anywhere near the size of a fan base, you'd see road games would be nearly double the viewers of home games to account for the fact that 16,000 people are going to NHL home games.

Hell, you can use the Flyers and Devils average local TV viewership per game, math out to the fact that IF local TV viewership is an accurate measure of a fan base, then the Flyers and Devils have less total fans than the number of people who bought tickets to see them play each other at MetLife Stadium.

So the only logical conclusion is that everyone's fan bases are a lot bigger than their TV numbers, which are a methodological nightmare for hundreds of different reasons and it all adds up to "You can't really tell anything from this information other than 'more is better.'"





1) They do, it's just how many cannot be adequately measured and fans use data to back up what they believe, and not use data for form their opinions.
2) They did. Which is why there were 13,000+ people in the arena in Glendale even though 3/8ths of the market can't get out there very often.

But if there's only 1200 Coyotes fans in all of Phoenix as the TV ratings have you believe, then who were those other 11,500 people every night for 20+ years?




They were "fine" in Glendale. They were "fine" in a college rink. It's just opportunity cost: It's less than an ideal situation which puts them further behind everyone else.

If only we could do some kind of experiment to see just how few tickets you can sell and remain in business in modern pro sports. Like if some kind of global pandemic prevented leagues from selling tickets, or more than 25% of tickets, for like almost an entire calendar year. I wonder what would happen if any team just sold no tickets for an entire year. How many teams would go bankrupt? Could you imagine? Oh wait. The Blue Jays not only sold no tickets in 2020, but also paid $40m to upgrade Buffalo's stadium so they could play in front of zero fans, and it crushed them financially so much they jacked up their payroll by $109 million over the next two seasons! I wonder where they're going to relocate to?

Fans use data to cherry pick the best argument for their beliefs. Like TV data to say there's no hockey fans in Arizona. Which is just dumb.

I appreciate all the effort you put into this reply, but I don't have the time to dissect all of this right now, if ever.

I will say I posted the TV numbers with a link to the Nielson data(or whomever), then using my own math I came up with 12,000 viewers per game, which still sux by the way. However I was corrected by @Reaser who seemed to know WAY more than I did about calculating those ratings. I trusted his math at the time more than mine, but whether he was right or I was right, I don't think it's irrelevant that in a market of 5 million plus that the numbers are so dismal. Does it tell the entire story of the market, probably not, but I disagree if you don't think it tells a very big part of it.

Again this is all the time I have to devote to this today, but I will try to revisit this later on.

 

[brentashton]

He's replaced Anthony LeBlanc as the BoH poster boy.

First winter Ive spent in Phx that I won’t see live, pro hockey. Not gonna lie, feels off. Going to try and hit up an ASU game and/or drive down to Tucson (make my donation to the AM Fund that way I guess). Sometimes in past years I would go to the IceDen and watch youth hockey. Will likely do that again this year.

 

[Reaser]

I will say I posted the TV numbers with a link to the Nielson data(or whomever), then using my own math I came up with 12,000 viewers per game, which still sux by the way. However I was corrected by @Reaser who seemed to know WAY more than I did about calculating those ratings. I trusted his math at the time more than mine, but whether he was right or I was right, I don't think it's irrelevant that in a market of 5 million plus that the numbers are so dismal. Does it tell the entire story of the market, probably not, but I disagree if you don't think it tells a very big part of it.

Not worth your effort. He's repeated the same anecdote about his friend numerous times. I've explained it to him multiple times before, including how it works now. Not interested in doing that again since he ignores and repeats his claims, while conflating ratings & viewership and not understanding the difference between ratings, HHs, average viewership, etc.. All while using the alleged one-time anecdote where he and his merry-band 'cracked the code' and now forever know more about ratings than the multi-billion dollar businesses (NFL, Disney, even Amazon for select events, etc..) that use them.

I'll just quote myself, twice, from these previous Yotes threads:

"The U.S. broadcast partners avoid(ed) Arizona like the plague. For good reason.

Here's the last five regular seasons and how often the Coyotes were on [linear] national broadcasts and the avg viewership # of the games:

2019/20 (1 game)
158k (NBCSN)

2020/21 (1 game)
134k (NBCSN)

2021/22 (3 games)
234k (TNT)
151k (TNT)
142k (TNT)

2022/23 (1 game)
150k (TNT)

2023/24 (0 games)
-

Presuming you're familiar with the NHL on U.S. TV and avg viewership numbers, you'll recognize just how horrible those numbers are: e.g. 2022/23 the least-viewed game in the U.S. was the ONE game the Yotes had.

It's not just the long history of no one watching the Coyotes locally, that also plays into national broadcasts because of the regionalized fanbases in the NHL -- lack of casual fan viewership nationally. Generally the avg viewership for a game is primarily determined by the two markets/fanbases involved, with neutral observers making up the rest. Which with Arizona contributing nothing from their side for all intents and purposes, their nationally broadcast games did horrible numbers.

That's why the U.S. broadcast partners (Disney / TNT Sports) and even previously NBC wanted nothing to do with them."

&

"We have decades of data, that data has the Yotes at/near the bottom YoY, especially on HHs and viewership. It's not some conspiracy against them or a flawed metric that no one uses that's screwing them and only them. It's THE standard and shows a frankly common-sense conclusion."

 

[TheLegend]

More raw meat…. (haven’t watched yet but what heck)

 

[Shwan]

Fans use data to cherry pick the best argument for their beliefs. Like TV data to say there's no hockey fans in Arizona. Which is just dumb.

When Coyotes defenders have used the Phoenix TV market and it's potential ad nauseum for the last decade it becomes fair game.

Again, this all could be very easily resolved if the people that had the data simply released how many people in the Salt Lake City Metro (Population: 1.2 Million) watched the Coyotes vs how many people in the Phoenix Metro (Population: 4.9 Million) last season.

This is data that is available and easily measurable despite your misgivings on methodology. Scripps releases detailed viewership numbers for the Golden Knights, and aren't afraid of telling people about their WNBA numbers but for some reason they kept the viewership for the Coyotes intentionally vague (Hint: the only usual way you can make a number go up "900%" is by having the original number be infinitesimally small.)

Do you really think it was a coincidence that Meruelo dragged his feet on launching the Coyotes' streaming package until he pretty much* knew he was losing the team to sucker out those last few "diehards" out of their change?

The shell game regarding TV viewership numbers are is sufficient for most logical people to have a good feel on the lack of fan base in Phoenix.