yes , but not in the mass numbers as in" my little approved hockey areas"
I constantly hear how Winnipeg is a "hockey hotbed", and people "live and breathe hockey, and "hockey is a religion".
Yet, when they had an NHL team, there was not more than an average of 13,000 souls (and substantially less in certain years) who cared enough to plunk down their hard-earned dollars. Arena or not, the numbers are the numbers. In my view, this does not demonstrate a market that is a "hotbed" where people "live and breathe hockey". Heresy, I know, but the only piece of evidence to the contrary is that Winnipeg is located in Canada. To that I say this is evidence of nothing when it comes to evaluating a market.
What's more, Winnipeg seems to have been exempt from the apparent epidemic that has been around for many years of teams fudging their attendance numbers higher. but I digress.
Winnipeg (and Hartford, I might add) are failed NHL markets. If people do not support the product
with their dollars in a market, it is a failed market. That is a bitter pill to swallow, but that is what it is. Now one can argue whether circumstances are changed since those failures such as would warrant a diferent outcome, but the markets failed, and they have been moved to markets which are
empirically demonstrated to contain more souls who will plunk down their money to attend the product.
It makes me laugh out loud to read suggestions that the teams were moved to markets which have been failures as if they have been less successful. Like it or not, that is not the case.
There is no debate on this for anyone who is not xenophobic.
One can debate whether things are changed (I see no evidence), but one cannot debate what has happened.