The Red Sox lost the fandom after they won a championship. Less hunger less passion.
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Owners happier than fans of Leafs and Raptors
ROBERT MACLEOD
TORONTO
PUBLISHED MAY 30, 2002
This article was published more than 22 years ago. Some information may no longer be current.
Now that the Toronto Maple Leafs and Toronto Raptors have both officially ended their seasons without so much as a whiff at a championship, the ownership can find some comfort from the fact that attendance figures have never been stronger.
"I can tell you that I'm certainly the envy of my colleagues in the two leagues," said Chris Overholt, vice-president of sales and services at Maple Leaf Sports & Entertainment Ltd., which owns both clubs.
"Not only am I in a very fortunate position with the Leafs, but we've now got a real strong product on the Raptors side. It's a nice place to be."
Another sellout of 19,327 fans streamed into the Air Canada Centre on Tuesday night to witness the fall of the Leafs, who lost 2-1 in overtime to the Carolina Hurricanes. It was one of 11 playoff sellouts that the National Hockey League club enjoyed this spring after selling out the ACC for all 41 dates during the regular season.
Carolina advanced to the Stanley Cup final for the first time in franchise history by eliminating the Maple Leafs with a 4-2 series win in the Eastern Conference final.
Selling NHL hockey in Toronto has never been a difficult chore, even though it is 35 years since the Leafs rewarded their loyal following with a Stanley Cup -- or even an appearance in the final. Nobody in the Leaf organization can recall the previous time a ticket for a home game went unsold.
The big growth curve for Maple Leaf Sports this season was provided by the Raptors, even though the National Basketball Association team's season came to an end with an opening-round playoff loss to the Detroit Pistons.
The Raptors enjoyed unprecedented success at the gate, selling out the ACC for 40 of their 41 regular-season dates with an overall average of 19,784 -- just 16 shy of capacity and fourth best among the NBA's 29 teams. The only non-sellout was for the third home game of the season when only 18,887 bothered to show up on a Wednesday night in October to watch the awful Golden State Warriors.
The 40 sellouts easily eclipsed the old mark of 27 established by the Raptors during the 2000-01 season.
Next season will be the Raptors' eighth in the NBA. Despite the strong attendance figures this past season, Overholt said he remains uncertain when it comes to gauging how secure the team's fan base is in Toronto.
"I wish I knew because I'd sleep better at nights," he said. "I think we feel that it's quite secure, but we try not to act that way. That's the best way to put it."
Overholt only has to look at the attendance woes that have befallen the Blue Jays, Toronto's American League baseball team, to keep him from becoming complacent about selling basketball tickets.
A team that drew in excess of four million fans for three consecutive seasons in the early 1990s, when it won back-to-back World Series titles, the Jays have struggled at the gate in recent years.
Through their first 27 home games this season, the Jays are averaging 18,299 at the SkyDome, a 13-per-cent dip when compared with the same period last year and a far cry from the record 50,098 the franchise averaged in 1993.
"We're very mindful with what has happened with the Blue Jays," Overholt said. "We try to act every day in a fashion that insulates our future from that."
Paul Allemby, the Jays' senior vice-president of marketing and sales, said the road back for the baseball team has been made more difficult since the ACC first opened in 1999.
"Any time a new stadium is built it's always going to affect existing facilities, regardless of the sport," he said. "Suddenly it's the hot new place in town.
"The Leafs and the Raptors I think have to be careful that they do all the right things in terms of how they manage their fan base. The bubble always bursts."
Gord Ash, who was the Jays assistant general manager when they won the World Series in 1992 and 1993, said there were several factors that led to the loss of interest in the baseball team.
"People look back to the strike [in 1994]and I'm sure that was part of it," Ash said. More significantly, he believes that once the Jays won it all, some of the excitement about heading down to the SkyDome began to wane.
‘’Anticipation is a wonderful thing in sports," Ash said. "Once we had won the championship, not once but twice . . . there was not much for that sporting generation to really look forward to. They had seen it all."
Richard Peddie, president and chief executive officer of Maple Leaf Sports, said his organization is taking nothing for granted.
Plans are already under way to alter operations at Raptors games for next season and that other measures are being considered to make life more pleasurable for both hockey and basketball fans at the ACC, including adding more washroom facilities.
"This organization is absolutely not complacent," Peddie said.
