Ticket/Attendance Discussion: The Sequel

[pegcity]

Good Cyber Monday ticket deal from the Jets. $50 single seats for the Columbus game. But that's not the real attraction... buying a pair opens up $50 seats for several otherwise ludicriously overpriced games against Original Six opponents including the Leafs game, where tickets start at nearly $200 a pop on Ticketmaster. Would be nice for there to be some actual Jets fans at that game...

I keep on looking at the Blackhawks game on Saturday.

Still probably 2000 tickets on ticketmaster. I'd love to go. Cheapest is still $95.

It's hard to complain about the lack of sellouts when that is the lowest ticket price.

 

[Gm0ney]

Season ticket holders will still be the only ones getting discounted pricing for all the playoff games we'll have for our inexorable march to Stanley Cup victory.

And if those droves of STH were leaving so they could take advantage of all these "deals", then surely the arena would still be full every night, n'est-ce pas? I still think years of mediocrity on the ice and the belief by True North for too long that STH are easily replaceable has created widespread disinterest. Once a juggernaut gets rolling, it's not easy to stop and change direction. We are no longer a hockey mad market. It is quite possible we never were. Just a few thousand people who nostalgically romanticized the 1.0 era, and got caught up in all the hoopla of 5/31/2011.

Nah, there was a real appetite for hockey - the Moose regularly led the AHL in attendance after the Jets left. TNSE has just undermined it - rubbed a lot of STHs the wrong way with their treatment. And undercutting season ticket prices themselves is something they should never have allowed to happen...it eroded the value of the season tickets.

 

[bustamente]

Going forward STH's will have to be treated much better by the Organization, having said that the Jets see what is happening this year with all the empty seats. They are just not mission out of the ticket purchase but merch and concessions so they have to do what ever possible to put bums in the seats for the rest of the year.

 

[WpgSteve]

Can't really blame the org for trying to fill the seats. No one likes an empty building. Might as well use the soft attendance to try and draw new fans.

I think the team needs to flip the script so season ticket ownership is seen as a source of pride in supporting the team. Season ticket holders need to be patted on the back, given special perks and treated like royalty. That way they won't care that others might have cheaper tickets to some games.

 

[Jets4Life]

Does anyone here know the actual number of season ticket holders for 2022-23? Traditionally, Winnipeggers have waited until the last minute to buy tickets. It was like this for the Jets 1.0, and I don't believe they ever came close to having 10,000 season ticket holders. I know it was 13,000 for years, but I suspect it is only 1/2 of that at present.

 

[tbcwpg]

Does anyone here know the actual number of season ticket holders for 2022-23? Traditionally, Winnipeggers have waited until the last minute to buy tickets. It was like this for the Jets 1.0, and I don't believe they ever came close to having 10,000 season ticket holders. I know it was 13,000 for years, but I suspect it is only 1/2 of that at present.

I'm trying to find the source but I recall a number like 9,000 or so STHs this season.

 

[None]

I'm trying to find the source but I recall a number like 9,000 or so STHs this season.

WInnipeg Jets' Mark Chipman addresses team's low attendance, big picture focus in Winnipeg | TSN

Winnipeg Jets and True North Sports & Entertainment executive chairman Mark Chipman talks to TSN Hockey Insider Darren Dreger about the team's attendance issues and its commitment to bringing fans back into the building.

www.tsn.ca

Dreger's interview with Mark Chipman was the original source. I think Dreger later mentioned on a short segment between periods more specifically that it was a little above 9500.
That was the number I've used previously to estimate roughly how much corporate support is missing earlier in this thread.

 

[Jets4Life]

WInnipeg Jets' Mark Chipman addresses team's low attendance, big picture focus in Winnipeg | TSN

Winnipeg Jets and True North Sports & Entertainment executive chairman Mark Chipman talks to TSN Hockey Insider Darren Dreger about the team's attendance issues and its commitment to bringing fans back into the building.

www.tsn.ca

Dreger's interview with Mark Chipman was the original source. I think Dreger later mentioned on a short segment between periods more specifically that it was a little above 9500.
That was the number I've used previously to estimate roughly how much corporate support is missing earlier in this thread.

So we are only getting an average of 2,000 non-season ticket holders that buy mini packs, tickets before the game, or walk-ups? That seems ridiculously low.

 

[Jet]

So we are only getting an average of 2,000 non-season ticket holders that buy mini packs, tickets before the game, or walk-ups? That seems ridiculously low.

Probably a real indicator of the way people are feeling financially right now.

I make a decent living and my earnings have been seriously eroded over the past 2 years especially.

I've been cutting out luxuries to balance my budget.

The Jets only come to Florida once a year and as much as I would have loved to see them this time around I passed and watched it at home.

 

[None]

So we are only getting an average of 2,000 non-season ticket holders that buy mini packs, tickets before the game, or walk-ups? That seems ridiculously low.

I think some of it is a holdover from the time when tickets just weren't available. I've still had people assume that the only way to purchase tickets is 1st party where you're getting dinged another ~20% on top of sales taxes in fees and surcharges. People hate ticketmaster enough that they just don't even look.

I think it's fair to assume that there's probably a couple hundred seats that are purchased and not used for most games as well. The resale market is soft because again, True North pushed control over sales really hard and really made it seem to a lot of people that you can't sell your tickets through anyone but them.

As I mentioned earlier in this thread though, we'd still be around 13k season seat agreements if we had similar corporate support. People will say Winnipeg doesn't have the head offices/corporate offices to expect significant corporate sales but there's no way we should be worse than Ottawa where they legitimately have very few corporate offices. The next lowest percentage of corporate season seat holders is above 40% while the Jets are around 15% (~1400 of 9500).

2000 walk ups would fill the arena if our corporate support was anywhere close to average.

 

[Jets4Life]

Probably a real indicator of the way people are feeling financially right now.

I make a decent living and my earnings have been seriously eroded over the past 2 years especially.

I've been cutting out luxuries to balance my budget.

The Jets only come to Florida once a year and as much as I would have loved to see them this time around I passed and watched it at home.

I do not want to take this in a political direction, but there are ads running on TV by one party, comparing the price of housing to certain US cities to Canadian cities, and showing how ridiculously expensive it is to buy or rent as opposed to 2015. We have admitted 2,000,000 people over the past two years, and that in itself is crazy. People have seen their rents go up by $500/month in some cities.

In Toronto and Vancouver, it costs over $3000/month now for an average 2 BR apartment, and now in Calgary it had risen above $2200. A decade ago, I was living in Calgary and paying about $900/month for a 1 BR suite. How can people afford to go to games, with the price of housing so steep, and the fact that the country now is in a housing shortage?

It's pretty insane, but if one has to spend an extra $500/month on housing, one of the first luxury items that they would cancel, would be NHL season tickets, I would imagine.

 

[DRW204]

NHL attendance analysis: Biggest risers and fallers year-over-year

The two-month mark is the perfect time to analyze attendance figures for the first time in the 2023-24 regular season.

theathletic.com

Winnipeg Jets: -1,269 fans/game (9.1 percent decrease)

Outside of Mullet Arena, the Jets play at the smallest venue in the NHL, so their inability to fill Canada Life Centre has become an interesting talking point. This is a wild tumble to the bottom for a team that used to require a waiting list for season tickets. As our Jets beat reporter Murat Ates points out, the Jets sold out 32 of 36 home games in 2019-20. This season, however, they don’t have a single sellout to their credit, despite games against the likes of Connor McDavid, Connor Bedard and the defending Stanley Cup champion Vegas Golden Knights.

“A lot of markets can blame pandemic economics for the slide in their ticket sales, but Winnipeg’s reduction has been extreme,” writes Ates. “Why might Winnipeg be uniquely affected? A smaller regional fan base would be one item. Another is that the Jets sell a smaller percentage of their season tickets to corporate interests than other markets do. The ebb and flow of ticket sales is more closely connected to the day-to-day economics of the individuals, families, and friend groups who make season ticket commitments. There is also a perception that True North got complacent when the building was full, without fail, every single night: Fans who have stopped renewing their old tickets have cited customer service and game day presentation among their reasons. I guess that those fans’ experiences are lived, painful, and real, while Winnipeg’s dependence on people and not corporations for season tickets makes the Jets uniquely vulnerable to economic swings.”

 

[Andy6]

Winnipeg is drawing its STH's from much less affluent people than Toronto or many other cities so I imagine the Jets are really being affected by household belt-tightening. There is no way around it except maybe to try to squeeze more juice out of the business owners and rely less on individuals. Ticket prices are very unlikely to go down.

 

[jetsmooseice]

It's pretty insane, but if one has to spend an extra $500/month on housing, one of the first luxury items that they would cancel, would be NHL season tickets, I would imagine.

For most people it's certainly a painless way to find an extra $2,000-$12,000 in the household budget considering you can still follow the team just as easily on TV, through networks that most hockey fans subscribe to either way.

 

[Cotton Eye Joe]

Question for all of you fine, entertaining folk:
I'm planning to travel in from western Manitoba and take my daughter to the Jets-Wild game on Dec. 30th as she loves watching them on tv. Likely our only game for the season. What's the best place to purchase tickets and any recommendations for seat location? I'd like to get decent seats being its a Christmas present.
Thanks.

 

[10Ducky10]

Question for all of you fine, entertaining folk:
I'm planning to travel in from western Manitoba and take my daughter to the Jets-Wild game on Dec. 30th as she loves watching them on tv. Likely our only game for the season. What's the best place to purchase tickets and any recommendations for seat location? I'd like to get decent seats being its a Christmas present.
Thanks.

I got my tickets for that game at fansfirst.

 

[Cotton Eye Joe]

I got my tickets for that game at fansfirst.

Thanks.

 

[jungles]

I got my tickets for that game at fansfirst.

Fans First is the right answer

 

[robertocarlos]

It only cost 6 USD for a ticket to the Panthers game yesterday.

 

[Buffdog]

Interestingly, I've been dealing with a ticket rep recently who is trying to get me to use $1500 on my account to buy a ticket package

Long story short, I gave up my season tickets during covid because I wasn't able to enter the arena. They claimed that I broke the STH agreement and kept my $750 per seat deposit that I put down in 2012

I told the guy that if they refunded the money, I'd happily put it towards a 6 game pack of P1s... worth $2200 (meaning they'd get that $1500 plus I'd pay $700 more out of pocket). They refused.

So I told them that I'm happy to let that $1500 sit there in perpetuity and never spend a penny supporting the team.

Seems like odd business tactics. I'm lucky enough to be in a positon these days where I have some disposable income (I understand not everyone is as fortunate as I am) and am willing to spend it at CLC.

We'll see how it shakes out

 

[jetsmooseice]

Interestingly, I've been dealing with a ticket rep recently who is trying to get me to use $1500 on my account to buy a ticket package

Long story short, I gave up my season tickets during covid because I wasn't able to enter the arena. They claimed that I broke the STH agreement and kept my $750 per seat deposit that I put down in 2012

I told the guy that if they refunded the money, I'd happily put it towards a 6 game pack of P1s... worth $2200 (meaning they'd get that $1500 plus I'd pay $700 more out of pocket). They refused.

So I told them that I'm happy to let that $1500 sit there in perpetuity and never spend a penny supporting the team.

Seems like odd business tactics. I'm lucky enough to be in a positon these days where I have some disposable income (I understand not everyone is as fortunate as I am) and am willing to spend it at CLC.

We'll see how it shakes out

This is crazy stuff. I can understand the hardball scorched-earth policy approach in 2013 or whatever when tickets were still in great demand. But to be acting like a rigid government bureaucracy that way and pissing off would-be customers with demand levels the way they are now, is just insane IMO.

 

[BobTheSolarsystem]

I still want to see the Jets ticket revenue versus other teams revenue - my buddy just wheeled into a Vegas game for $14USD.... I can guarantee you that if Winnipeg's upper bowl was $20-$30 it would be sold out every night.

 

[Gm0ney]

This is crazy stuff. I can understand the hardball scorched-earth policy approach in 2013 or whatever when tickets were still in great demand. But to be acting like a rigid government bureaucracy that way and pissing off would-be customers with demand levels the way they are now, is just insane IMO.

Yeah, customer service isn't TNSE's strong suit, it would seem...

 

[DRW204]

I still want to see the Jets ticket revenue versus other teams revenue - my buddy just wheeled into a Vegas game for $14USD.... I can guarantee you that if Winnipeg's upper bowl was $20-$30 it would be sold out every night.

average ticket price x attendance numbers?

 

[complex]

I also have recently heard from a ticket rep regarding unused money from my old wait list spot. The rep was wanting me to buy a ticket package for upcoming games using that unused money.

I responded saying that I was not interested in games this year, and asked if next year was an option. I have received no response now after about 10 days. I doubt that I will ever hear back from this rep.