Ticket/Attendance Discussion: The Sequel

TCsmyth

Registered User
Mar 25, 2011
1,330
257
I've never seen a number, but he and Chipman are the sole owners. Thompson has a minority stake, but I guess that could still be as much as 49% and as little as 1%, sorta thing.
TNSE is a 50% / 50% proposition between the Thomson Family interests (Woodbridge & Osmington) and the Chipman Family interests (Megill Stephenson). Chipman plays the role of Chariman/Managin Partner of the Entity
 

lotwwpg

Registered User
Jan 10, 2024
10
21
Certain seats went up while others went down.
I'm fine with the nose bleeds going down and the P1s going up. If this is one of the reasons that the nosebleeds are not filled. Might as well experiment. My tickets went up 296 dollars from last year. I guess they are trying that method.
 

WpgSteve

Registered User
Nov 5, 2018
545
1,218
I'm fine with the nose bleeds going down and the P1s going up. If this is one of the reasons that the nosebleeds are not filled. Might as well experiment. My tickets went up 296 dollars from last year. I guess they are trying that method.
I'm not convinced cost is the issue. I believe season tickets are available for as low as $59 per game. This is less than many markets, especially considering that the nose bleeds here are still decent seats.

I'm not saying that everyone can afford that, but compared to the cost of other things it doesn't seem unreasonable. This is NHL hockey after all.

The fact that tickets have been available for as little as $30 on many occasions this year and the building still isn't full reaffirms that cost isn't the issue. I think its mostly fan fatigue coupled with some disgruntled fans. If TNSE can re-invigorate the product and mend a few fences, this will all work out okay.
 

Yukon Joe

Registered User
Aug 3, 2011
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TNSE is a 50% / 50% proposition between the Thomson Family interests (Woodbridge & Osmington) and the Chipman Family interests (Megill Stephenson). Chipman plays the role of Chariman/Managin Partner of the Entity

That's never been announced. TNSE is a privately held company and doesn't need to announce who owns what.

Personally I suspect that Thomson is the majority but silent owner, while Chipman is the minority owner who is active in running the team - but that's only an educated guess on my part.

The one piece of info someone did point me to: if you look at TNSE's Board of Directors you'll find 3 are associated with Osmington (Thomson), 2 associated with Chipman (Megill Stephenson), with 1 seemingly independent director (CEO of New Flyer Industries). Which suggests Thomson has a majority stake.

 

cbcwpg

Registered User
May 18, 2010
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Between the Pipes

“We feel like we need to get back to 13,000 and the reason for that is that it’s not an issue of do or die — or viability or not, it’s long-term health and competitiveness is dependent on a healthy season ticket base,” said Chipman. “We’ve been a (salary) cap team now for several years and there’s not a direct correlation between dollars spent and winning. In other words, spending to the cap doesn’t guarantee you win the Stanley Cup but spending well below the cap pretty much ensures that you won’t.”

That’s why restoring the season ticket base is so important.

“It just doesn’t allow us to be healthy. What do I mean by healthy? It doesn’t give us the ability to continue to invest in payroll, to continue to invest in the building. To keep up, because the cap is going to spike,” said Chipman. “It’s coming quick and that’s a reality, in terms of many, many millions of dollars in increase coming in the cap. We just want to be able to keep up at the competitive level of this league. I don’t want to fall behind.

***

JMO, but this is how I see it as well. Not filling the building on a night by night basis doesn't necessarily mean the team is moving to Houston....but it does means the team can't compete financially with the best teams in the NHL. And not having the financial resources to pay the players what you need to, especially in Winnipeg that has a hard enough time getting players to want to play here, is going to mean always being on the outside of success looking in.

Yes , spending to the cap doesn't guarantee success, but spending to the bottom will most likely guarantee failure.
 

robertocarlos

Registered User
Sep 19, 2014
26,344
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That's never been announced. TNSE is a privately held company and doesn't need to announce who owns what.

Personally I suspect that Thomson is the majority but silent owner, while Chipman is the minority owner who is active in running the team - but that's only an educated guess on my part.

The one piece of info someone did point me to: if you look at TNSE's Board of Directors you'll find 3 are associated with Osmington (Thomson), 2 associated with Chipman (Megill Stephenson), with 1 seemingly independent director (CEO of New Flyer Industries). Which suggests Thomson has a majority stake.

And Thomson was always about not losing one dime on this project and if it didn't work out he was going to move the team to Toronto.
 

pegcity

Registered User
Feb 9, 2011
1,139
379
Winnipeg
I'm not convinced cost is the issue. I believe season tickets are available for as low as $59 per game. This is less than many markets, especially considering that the nose bleeds here are still decent seats.

I'm not saying that everyone can afford that, but compared to the cost of other things it doesn't seem unreasonable. This is NHL hockey after all.

The fact that tickets have been available for as little as $30 on many occasions this year and the building still isn't full reaffirms that cost isn't the issue. I think its mostly fan fatigue coupled with some disgruntled fans. If TNSE can re-invigorate the product and mend a few fences, this will all work out okay.
Or almost no one wants to go to a game on a Tuesday/Monday.
 

jetsmooseice

Up Yours Robison
Feb 20, 2020
1,941
2,507
Bring back the JetsTV subscription once the current TV deal is done. Force the TV watchers to pay their share.

That's the English Premier League model. You have to dig deep if you want to see all of your club's games on TV. But the difference is ticket prices are pretty modest compared to the NHL.

Right now, if your only interest is watching the games without regard for where you're watching it from, staying at home and watching NHL games on TV is a no-brainer. You have a view equivalent to the best seats in the house and you save thousands compared to buying season tickets.
 

Blue Shakehead

because lol Jets
Mar 18, 2011
3,126
1,957
www.becauseloljets.com
What do you think TN's net revenue is in a year - if the team sells out?

When you say 10M barely moves the needle, that could be the difference between profit or loss for this organization. It was always going to be a razor thin line between making money or losing money with this team.

There definitely are other revenue streams to continue to grow, but especially with us being a cap team, we have to maximize all streams, including butts in seats.
Good question. Forbes put TNSE's operating profit at $23M USD for 2023. We will never know the exact figures because we don't have access to TNSE's audited financials, but we do get a decent peek into the window of their business because the NHL is based on shared total revenues and also because they do a lot of business with public companies and governments, who are required to make this information public.

The point of my post was really to demonstrate how the business of hockey in Winnipeg (or Phoenix for that matter) is not all about asses in seats. Only 35% of revenues come from the gate and TNSE makes enough revenue to pay for the entire Jets payroll before they sell a single seat or kernel of popcorn. The Ottawa Senators have been running with just over 5,000 season ticket holders over the last 10 years and they were just purchased for $950M on the condition that they will never relocate from Ottawa. So there is a lot of value in NHL franchises that go way beyond each team's annual cash flow statements.

The hockey teams are basically the emotional asset that owners use to attract other significant capital, and more importantly to extract public subsidies to garner lucrative and permanent revenue streams and assets for their overall balance sheets. The NFL has written the playbook on this. After threatening to relocate the Oilers to Seattle, Darryl Katz found himself only having to cough up $135M over 35 years to keep all the revenue from his new $650M arena. The Flames just recently agreed to pay $356M of the $1.2B cost of their new arena and surrounding infrastructure but part of the deal was that the Flames have to stay in Calgary for 35 years (lol). Winnipeggers and Manitobans should start comforting ourselves now to this reality when its our turn for a new arena. But in the meantime, TNSE will continue to build $400M - $800M mixed-use commercial and residential towers and developments around TN Square and even Portage Place mall - backed by direct subsidies and property tax holidays with anchor tenants from crown corporations or even provincial government departments like Shared Health.

I don't blame them at all, that's all part of the game. But when they rollout the Remember '96 media campaign, with slogans like "not going to work over the long haul" and "the NHL is monitoring the situation" they deserve to be called out for the lying and shameful crony capitalists that they are. If they want to give speeches about how the season ticket base went from 13000 + 8,000 on the waiting list to 9,500, the speech should always start with an apology, not empty and veiled threats. .
 
Last edited:

castle

Registered User
Dec 2, 2011
2,289
995
Australia
Bring back the JetsTV subscription once the current TV deal is done. Force the TV watchers to pay their share.
The jets didn’t get that money, did they? I think it was a TV deal just like they have now. Only it didn’t pay near as much. TSN charged that and collected that revenue.
 

jetsairforce

Registered User
Dec 26, 2010
101
52
Would anyone have the breakdown of cost for P1 to P7 2023/2024 season tickets? I can't seem to find it online.
 

JetsNut

Registered User
Jan 28, 2015
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And Thomson was always about not losing one dime on this project and if it didn't work out he was going to move the team to Toronto.
Not sure where you’ve heard or read Thompson say that he didn’t want to “lose one dime on this project”. Or that he would “move the team to Toronto”. Firstly, can’t ever see him saying that nonsense. Secondly, the Leafs would NEVER allow another team to re-locate there.
 

Hunter368

RIP lomiller1, see you in the next life buddy.
Nov 8, 2011
27,401
24,553

Watched this, I thought this was really good. You can tell Mark is very sincere IMO, he's passionate about the city, team, fans and his investment (which is fair). He very readily admitted they made mistakes, misunderstood some of the situation, etc and are making changes. In the end, we all make mistakes in life, I can forgive anyone when they own their mistake and who are taking actions to fix their mistakes. I hope for the team, Mark and especially for the fans that this can be fixed and lasts a very long time in Wpg.
 

rve24

Registered User
Oct 26, 2022
1,782
2,081
Heading to Winnipeg next week from London Ont. Looking to catch the Seattle game. Any advice on best place to get a tic? PM if you like. Any info appreciated. Looked at ticket master and Sametime online sites. Anywhere else? Can you get tickets outside arena before faceoff?
 
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RetroWinnipeg

Registered User
Oct 27, 2016
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How did that work out for the CFL, ie. blocking home games on local TV, lost a couple generations of fans and will never (get them) back!
The Blackhawks didn’t air on TV when Bill Wirtz was in charge. Without the visibility, attendance was remarkably low. When Rocky took over, getting the games on WGN and the local RSN brought more people to the gates (plus some guy named Jonathan…)
 

robertocarlos

Registered User
Sep 19, 2014
26,344
14,031
Not sure where you’ve heard or read Thompson say that he didn’t want to “lose one dime on this project”. Or that he would “move the team to Toronto”. Firstly, can’t ever see him saying that nonsense. Secondly, the Leafs would NEVER allow another team to re-locate there.
He said both those things. I mean just look at his hair-cut. Do you think he spends his own money?
 

RestlessYoungZero

Registered User
Jul 10, 2011
685
1,003
He said both those things. I mean just look at his hair-cut. Do you think he spends his own money?
Gonna need a source on him saying that. I had been reading every article and interview I could find leading up to and after the return and I never read a quote from him saying that, and pretty sure a comment like that would get a ton of attention.

The only people I remember saying that was fanboys in southern Ontario that couldn’t get over the fact that lowly Winnipeg was getting a team and they weren’t getting a second one. Anyone remember that guy from the old return of the Jets site that wouldn’t shut up about how Hamilton was going to get the NHL over Winnipeg? And how Chipman was actively blocking an NHL return because he loved the Moose too much?
 
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