NHL attendance down, everything else up

[Fugu]

I suggest you take a look at the Thrashers annual attendance figures since the lockout and then get back to us.

You obviously have no idea what you are talking about when it comes to who has good attendance and who does not. There are three teams with worse attendance than the Thrashers this year....and only once have the Thrashers been in the bottom two in annual attendance since the lockout.

Instead of just picking on random southern teams, do a little research before you start accusing teams of making the NHL look bad.

I'm not sure if you're saying the attendance is not a concern regardless of the reason for it, or just that you disagree with the ordinal ranking (a technical matter)?

Regardless of market, and I agree that ANY market regardless of location is open to scrutiny, when should attendance begin to matter?

 

[bigtimehockeyfan]

I suggest you take a look at the Thrashers annual attendance figures since the lockout and then get back to us.

You obviously have no idea what you are talking about when it comes to who has good attendance and who does not. There are three teams with worse attendance than the Thrashers this year....and only once have the Thrashers been in the bottom two in annual attendance since the lockout.

Instead of just picking on random southern teams, do a little research before you start accusing teams of making the NHL look bad.

It's more about actual people at the game. The Thrashers and Coyotes are without a doubt padding their numbers. The Thrashers the other night had maybe 3,000 people in attendance, but it said 11,000.

 

[Fugu]

It's more about actual people at the game. The Thrashers and Coyotes are without a doubt padding their numbers. The Thrashers the other night had maybe 3,000 people in attendance, but it said 11,000.

How did you arrive at a figure? I know people like to present eye-witness reports, but that's hardly equivalent to an NHL tickets sold source (usually not public info).

 

[btn]

It's more about actual people at the game. The Thrashers and Coyotes are without a doubt padding their numbers. The Thrashers the other night had maybe 3,000 people in attendance, but it said 11,000.

What about for the first 3 seasons after the lockout when the Thrashers were averaging around 15-16k per night ? Were they padding the stats or making up figures then too?

You accused the Thrashers attendance of being awful since the lockout, and you have been proven wrong.

So instead you make up your own attendance number for a game you probably were not at, and probably did not see all sections of during the game, and accuse the Thrashers of lying about their paid attendance number.

The question I have for you is this, why are you so obsessed with the Thrashers attendance that you would spread lies about it, that you would make up your own attendance figures, while accusing the Thrashers organization of doing the same?


I am always amazed at the lengths that some people will go to on this thread to take shots at non-traditional markets like Atlanta. What exactly did we do to incur this wrath?

 

[Magnus Fulgur]

Attendance will go up about 1k in January for Atlanta - it always does.

Atlanta lost around 50% of its STH due to the way the team was handled in 2007-8 and 2008-9. It is going to take a full year of playing decent hockey for some of these fans to return.

Also, the economy in Atlanta is very bad - one of the worst places in the US thanks to the massive real estate bubble here.

Atlanta Spirit set up a stall for buying Holiday Packages for both the Hawks and the Thrashers in the Lenox Mall today, with a giant split poster (20x20?) hanging above it with pics of Joe Johnson and Kovalchuk on it.

Nobody was going up to the stall for tix. Nobody. That says more about the economy than about hockey.

 

[CC Chiefs*]

What about for the first 3 seasons after the lockout when the Thrashers were averaging around 15-16k per night ? Were they padding the stats or making up figures then too?

You accused the Thrashers attendance of being awful since the lockout, and you have been proven wrong.

So instead you make up your own attendance number for a game you probably were not at, and probably did not see all sections of during the game, and accuse the Thrashers of lying about their paid attendance number.

The question I have for you is this, why are you so obsessed with the Thrashers attendance that you would spread lies about it, that you would make up your own attendance figures, while accusing the Thrashers organization of doing the same?


I am always amazed at the lengths that some people will go to on this thread to take shots at non-traditional markets like Atlanta. What exactly did we do to incur this wrath?

I'm always amazed how many excuses and the lengths the 100 non-traditional fans will go to and try to justify the southern teams. You yourself said if the Threshers were winning the fans would come out! Well my friend they are winning and they STILL can't attract fans to the games. I know "the bible belt" and "college football". It's all BS, very few people care about hockey in the south. VERY VERY few.

 

[IslesDude]

I'm always amazed how many excuses and the lengths the 100 non-traditional fans will go to and try to justify the southern teams. You yourself said if the Threshers were winning the fans would come out! Well my friend they are winning and they STILL can't attract fans to the games. I know "the bible belt" and "college football". It's all BS, very few people care about hockey in the south. VERY VERY few.

So one hot start brings out fans? You don't seem to understand how sports attendance work. The Thrashers franchise is a joke and has always been a joke. Until they prove otherwise no one will come to the games. They have to actually have some sustained success for people to come. It's the same with the Islanders. If you really thought that John Tavares would cause sellouts then you need to have your head examined. Same with ATL's hot start. Couple all of this with the bad economy and you have bad attendance.

All you do is trash teams in this thread anyway. I really don't see what kind of point you're trying to prove. You're not going to change any minds.

 

[Rob]

What about for the first 3 seasons after the lockout when the Thrashers were averaging around 15-16k per night ? Were they padding the stats or making up figures then too?

You accused the Thrashers attendance of being awful since the lockout, and you have been proven wrong.

So instead you make up your own attendance number for a game you probably were not at, and probably did not see all sections of during the game, and accuse the Thrashers of lying about their paid attendance number.

The question I have for you is this, why are you so obsessed with the Thrashers attendance that you would spread lies about it, that you would make up your own attendance figures, while accusing the Thrashers organization of doing the same?


I am always amazed at the lengths that some people will go to on this thread to take shots at non-traditional markets like Atlanta. What exactly did we do to incur this wrath?

One of the claims that has been made over the years is that the non-traditional markets pad their attendance numbers. Especially with regards to Florida, Atlanta and Phoenix. The latter case proved to be true through court documents this past summer.

 

[GetPucksDeep]

One of the claims that has been made over the years is that the non-traditional markets pad their attendance numbers. Especially with regards to Florida, Atlanta and Phoenix. The latter case proved to be true through court documents this past summer.

What do you call seats that are empty that are fully paid for? Is that reverse padding? You have to count those too!!!

 

[JoeBag84]

I'm always amazed how many excuses and the lengths the 100 non-traditional fans will go to and try to justify the southern teams. You yourself said if the Threshers were winning the fans would come out! Well my friend they are winning and they STILL can't attract fans to the games. I know "the bible belt" and "college football". It's all BS, very few people care about hockey in the south. VERY VERY few.

boy, almost like it takes time to grow the sport in an area where it isn't traditionally played by the masses.

but by all mean, it makes much more sense to move a few teams to where "hockey works" and contract the rest, while the NHL melts into sub-mediocrity in the USA. that's a top notch business plan you got yourself there

 

[Rob]

boy, almost like it takes time to grow the sport in an area where it isn't traditionally played by the masses.

but by all mean, it makes much more sense to move a few teams to where "hockey works" and contract the rest, while the NHL melts into sub-mediocrity in the USA. that's a top notch business plan you got yourself there

Yes, because when the NHL expanded to places like Atlanta, Phoenix and Florida they really felt that it would take decades before the sport caught on.
NO, I'm not saying move/contract all the non-traditional markets. But at some point you have to recongnize failure.

 

[Rob]

What do you call seats that are empty that are fully paid for? Is that reverse padding? You have to count those too!!!

Yeah, it seems like that is an epidemic down there.

 

[GetPucksDeep]

Yeah, it seems like that is an epidemic down there.

You miss my point.

The point is made over and over again in these threads that some of the people in these seats are paying sharply discounted or are getting comped altogether. The complainers of this suggest such results are 'bad.'

So - if a team can sell a seat at full price AND the buyer doesn't show up, isn't that the opposite of what is being complained about here? That must be good business? Of course it is!

One common theme of this thread is posters from North of the border who have no clue about marketing a combined NBA/NHL product draw conclusions based on faulty information or no information at all.

 

[btn]

I'm always amazed how many excuses and the lengths the 100 non-traditional fans will go to and try to justify the southern teams. You yourself said if the Threshers were winning the fans would come out! Well my friend they are winning and they STILL can't attract fans to the games. I know "the bible belt" and "college football". It's all BS, very few people care about hockey in the south. VERY VERY few.

I guess when Tampa was 3rd in total home attendance three years ago, and 2nd overall in attendance 4 years ago all 100 of us moved there and they padded the attendance by almost 20,000/game?

But we would also road trip to Atlanta for the first three years after the lockout, and all 100 of us would go to Thrashers games and padded the attendance by almost 16,000/game.

And for the record, if you want to bother reading my posts earlier in this thread, I have always said that attendance is a trailing indicator. A good season will increase attendance the following season, which is why for example the Thrashers averaged almost 16k/game when they had the 3rd worst record in the NHL 3 seasons ago.

 

[JoeBag84]

Yes, because when the NHL expanded to places like Atlanta, Phoenix and Florida they really felt that it would take decades before the sport caught on.
NO, I'm not saying move/contract all the non-traditional markets. But at some point you have to recongnize failure.

but at what point is that? when a team has never had success (atlanta and for the most part, phoenix)? or when they haven't made the playoffs since the clinton administration (florida)?

throwing in the towel without trying to get it to work isn't a good business strategy. if a team's been doing well for a while (more than 2 months ) and still not selling selling well despite very low ticket prices and whatnot (read: when the only excuse is that people just don't care), then it might be time for a change. but moving a team should be a last possible ditch effort. period. attendance lagging after years of trouble on the ice should not be a surprise, and most certainly is not evidence of a population not caring about the sport.

 

[Rhodes 81]

this whole thing can be summed up quite easily

southern franchise haters-the second a team that has been bad for a decade gets better they should have near sellouts every night
southern franchise supporters-it takes 3/4ths of a season of winning to bring fans back to a team that has been as bad as many of the southern franchises have been and possibly as much as 2-3 years of winning consecutively for these franchises to compete with the high and mighty canadian and northeast US markets that sellout every game.

the major problem most southern markets have is that they have been placed in the hands of incompetent owners and general managers. is it really a surprise to anyone that the teams that are consistently out of the playoffs and in the bottom fourth of the league also struggle in attendance?

 

[MAROONSRoad]

Are you being intentially obtuse or do you know understand that an entire summer devoted to bankruptcy hearings is about the worst marketing campaign a franchise could have?

Remind me again what happened to Jets attendance after it was announced they were likely to move? Did they go up or down? Not exactly rocket science.

The last year of the Jets' franchise the average attendance in Winnipeg per game was about 11.5K (compared that to the Coyotes' actual attendance of 10.9K for all years in Phoenix). However, unlike the Coyotes this season, it was known to everyone from the beginning of the seasons that the team would in fact be relocated at the end of the season.

Are you too obtuse to see the difference or maybe you didn't know? In the case of the last season of the Jets, Bettman was not saying, "support the team and we will try to find an owner to keep it here." Also, average attendance league-wide back then was much lower than it is today. Apples and oranges.

GHOST

 

[vivianmb]

The NHL plays a preseason game in Winnipeg in 2006 - attendance - 15,015. A sell-out.

They come back in 2008, attendance - 12,621.

and then again in 2009. Curiously, the wiki for the MTS centre, which reads like a shill for bringing the NHL back to Winnipeg, doesn't mention the attendance for this year's pre-season NHL game. I wonder why? I guess because the economy is in the tank, the same reason attendance is down all over.

A little googling and I found the number. 11,644. That's pretty pathetic for hockey attendance in Canada in a town where the NHLers only come once a year. Mod: deleted.

when we found out that ONE preseason game in winnipeg was essentially funding the whole preseason for these teams (coyotes/lightening), many of us refused to go.and again if you would do some research...the manitoba economy is certainly NOTn in the tank. we actually had slight growth this year.

 

[MAROONSRoad]

The NHL plays a preseason game in Winnipeg in 2006 - attendance - 15,015. A sell-out.

They come back in 2008, attendance - 12,621.

and then again in 2009. Curiously, the wiki for the MTS centre, which reads like a shill for bringing the NHL back to Winnipeg, doesn't mention the attendance for this year's pre-season NHL game. I wonder why? I guess because the economy is in the tank, the same reason attendance is down all over.

A little googling and I found the number. 11,644. That's pretty pathetic for hockey attendance in Canada in a town where the NHLers only come once a year. Mod: deleted.

Actually, if you had done any meaningful research you would know a) that NHL exhibition games are meaningless -- to a sophisticated hockey market like Winnipeg that had the NHL for 17 seasons -- and generally half or more of the rosters for such exhibition games are full of AHL, not NHL, players, b) Winnipeg already has an AHL team for 40 games per year, which team averages about 8K per game, c) the ticket prices for the NHL exhibition games in Winnipeg ranged from about $139 to $39, a ridiculous price for such games. I certainly wouldn't attend that, and didn't, for those prices for a pretend NHL game. Finally, you forget to mention that the Winnipeg numbers for such exhibition games were among the best for the NHL and likely brought in a lot more revenue than many franchises' do for regular season games.

BTW, here's one of the exhibition games in Winnipeg, for example, that you mention:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Lxu3uV3If8

That's 15K fans that actually showed up for an exhibition game.

And now a regular season game in Atlanta:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IvaKv0v30yw

LOL.

I'll try to post a pic of a Phoenix exhibition-game, later. Is it possible that there's next to no one at all at an exhibition-game in Glendale!? You bet. Could they sell tickets for $139 to $39 for that game? I doubt it. LOL.

I've been to Glendale and purchased tickets for $15 for regular season games and sat in the lower bowl. Why? Because no one bother to checked my ticket as there were so many empty seats.

GHOST

 

[BadHammy*]

Let me end this thread now, it's about league attendance, not individual team attendance. And WINNING sells more tickets, in every sport, in every city, in every nation.

 

[LadyStanley]

http://slam.canoe.ca/Slam/Hockey/NHL/Ottawa/2009/12/06/12061776.html?cid=rsssportsslam! hockey

Melnyk on attendance

“The attendance is down, which is not surprising. I talked about this a year ago September when we were in (Sweden),†said Melnyk. “I saw this coming down with tough economic times. A 10% drop means that somebody who goes to 20 games a year, and is considered a good fan, is now going to 18 games a year.

“We’re going to be working hard to replenish our season-ticket holder base and we’re going to do a full review to get back to the sellouts that we had a year ago.â€

 

[Canadian91]

I guess when Tampa was 3rd in total home attendance three years ago, and 2nd overall in attendance 4 years ago all 100 of us moved there and they padded the attendance by almost 20,000/game?

But we would also road trip to Atlanta for the first three years after the lockout, and all 100 of us would go to Thrashers games and padded the attendance by almost 16,000/game.

And for the record, if you want to bother reading my posts earlier in this thread, I have always said that attendance is a trailing indicator. A good season will increase attendance the following season, which is why for example the Thrashers averaged almost 16k/game when they had the 3rd worst record in the NHL 3 seasons ago.

This is not true. This year, some of the top teams in the league are Phoenix and Atlanta. Phoenix--who is in 6th in the west--has an average attendance rate that is about half of what it was in Winnipeg. Atlanta--who is in 5th in the east--is doing their worst, attendance wise, ever since they came into the NHL.

LA is of the biggest cities in the world AND they are in 4th in the west, yet they can only manage an average of about 16,000. Do the research.

Tampa was selling out because they were in the SCF, and every single team that makes the Stanley Cup Final, is going to preform attendance wise. There are many reasons for this, but most of it isn't advertising, which hardly goes up at all. Most of it are the news channels and papers broadcasting and pasting it all over people. Then people think, "Hey, it's the finals of a sporting event, it's got to be exiting". That is how they get attendance in the playoffs. Because of temporary interest.

Despite these points, Anaheim still had tickets available on game day during their Cup run in '07, and if you went on the street and asked anybody from Anaheim who Teemu Selanne was, or who the Ducks were for that matter.. they wouldn't know.

Like what Yooper is trying to say, I know that there are a lot of people in the south that care about hockey, but not that many to actually make a dent in the population.

 

[CC Chiefs*]

this whole thing can be summed up quite easily

southern franchise haters-the second a team that has been bad for a decade gets better they should have near sellouts every night
southern franchise supporters-it takes 3/4ths of a season of winning to bring fans back to a team that has been as bad as many of the southern franchises have been and possibly as much as 2-3 years of winning consecutively for these franchises to compete with the high and mighty canadian and northeast US markets that sellout every game.

the major problem most southern markets have is that they have been placed in the hands of incompetent owners and general managers. is it really a surprise to anyone that the teams that are consistently out of the playoffs and in the bottom fourth of the league also struggle in attendance?

Well Nashville blows your theory out of the water. They missed the playoffs last year but made the playoffs for 5 years in a row and are currently in 2nd place in the Central division and were on a winning streaks and here are their home attendance numbers:

10/08 Col 14797
10/10 Buf 14209
10/15 Chi 13103
10/29 Chi 13585
10/31 Dal 12520
11/14 Mon 15604
11/17 SJS 13324
11/19 NJD 13445
11/21 CBJ 13790
11/23 Det 14410
11/27 StL 13170
11/28 Fla 14120
11/30 Cgy 10581
12/05 Min 13145

14 home games and a 5 game winning followed by a 7 game winning streak and 0 sellouts.

The capcity of the Sommet center is 17113.

 

[jessebelanger]

Ahh, Ghost, so Winnipeg is too "sophisticated" of an NHL market to pay NHL prices for an NHL game.

To quote the southern-bashers, "that's the excuse?"

Also interesting how when the NHL is in Winnipeg, it's the leagues (organizations) fault for the product failing - "the NHL stole the team from Winnipeg!" and "prices were set too high for a pre-season game"

But when a team is in a southern market, it's the fans (markets) fault for the product failing!

An interesting viewpoint.

 

[htpwn]

Ahh, Ghost, so Winnipeg is too "sophisticated" of an NHL market to pay NHL prices for an NHL game.

To quote the southern-bashers, "that's the excuse?"

$39 for nosebleeds for a pre season game as supposed to the $10 nosebleeds I got in Tampa for a regular season game