Winnipeg Sun: Jets, Mark Chipman, call for help as attendance decreases

[WarriorofTime]

The whole point of the AHL is to be a farm development league. Aside from the indepedently owned AHL teams, the revenue stream from ticket sales for teams owned by their NHL parent orgs isnt crucial. Relocating the Moose to a further city that will increase travel expenses for callups is not going to solve anything what so ever and theres no financial nor logistical incentive for TNSE to move the AHL team they own in their building they own to somewhere else. They already tried in St. Johns and were poking around at the idea of hosting the AHL in Thunder Bay but it clearly didnt work for a reason. The current Jets-Moose arrangement is fine and its not going to change.

I’ve always thought the Moose should be in Saskatoon or Regina.

 

[Rob]

Time to bring our team home to The Gathering at South Forsythe


maybe Winnipeg just doesnt care about hockey…

I know this is a troll attempt but that is easily disproven.

 

[Boonk]

We never lost our team friend. You did. Either live up to the standard Canadian fans set for other fan bases or go away. The excuses & hypocrisy is most taxing. For years, I heard Canadian fans whine & start every negative thread under the sun regarding certain US markets. They touted how any Canadian market would be a gold mine. Well guess what, that has been thoroughly disproven. So apply the standard back on yourselves or stop complaining about other markets. What goes around comes around.

Okay and?

The team is here and not leaving "friend". You yapping "Canadians should set the standard and attend games blah blah blah" when Pittsburgh almost lost a franchise with 2 cups up to that point and a bigger market is pretty pathetic "friend". Speaking of hypocrisy. The networth of the team has only increased since relocating from Atlanta in 2011 "friend". The company that owns them also owns a ton of property downtown and is currently buying more, doesnt scream broke ownership whose preparing to leave town anytime soon regardless of attendance and gate revenue now does it "friend"? Sounds like you need to stop living in fantasy land and quit it with the tantrum youre having.

 

[BKIslandersFan]

No. Either live up to the standard you set or you go away.


Precisely

I disagree. Jets fans should stay away if product is bad. So should every other fans Canadian or not.

I just have problem with people who think any fans who are not dumb enough to pay to watch bad product should have their team taken away.

The team is here and not leaving "friend". You yapping "Canadians should set the standard and attend games blah blah blah" when Pittsburgh almost lost a franchise with 2 cups up to that point and a bigger market is pretty pathetic "friend".

Look I don't agree with him but where is the hypocrisy? He isn't the one out here demanding teams move to Canada because fans won't pay to watch a bad team (and neither are you as far as I can tell so this argument is silly).

 

[edog37]

Okay and?

The team is here and not leaving "friend". You yapping "Canadians should set the standard and attend games blah blah blah" when Pittsburgh almost lost a franchise with 2 cups up to that point and a bigger market is pretty pathetic "friend". Speaking of hypocrisy. The networth of the team has only increased since relocating from Atlanta in 2011 "friend". The company that owns them also owns a ton of property downtown and is currently buying more, doesnt scream broke ownership whose preparing to leave town anytime soon regardless of attendance and gate revenue now does it "friend"? Sounds like you need to stop living in fantasy land and quit it with the tantrum youre having.

Done whining yet pal?

Fill your damn arena.

Pittsburgh still holds the record for longest sell out streak.

We never lost our team.

 

[edog37]

I disagree. Jets fans should stay away if product is bad. So should every other fans Canadian or not.

I just have problem with people who think any fans who are not dumb enough to pay to watch bad product should have their team taken away.


Look I don't agree with him but where is the hypocrisy? He isn't the one out here demanding teams move to Canada because fans won't pay to watch a bad team (and neither are you as far as I can tell so this argument is silly).

No they shouldn’t. They should fill the damn arena regardless. They set the standard. Now live up to it. Otherwise, they shouldn’t be bagging on any other fan base about attendance. Can’t have it both ways.

See this is the load of crap I’ve seen on these boards for years & guess where it comes from?

 

[ColinM]

The whole point of the AHL is to be a farm development league. Aside from the indepedently owned AHL teams, the revenue stream from ticket sales for teams owned by their NHL parent orgs isnt crucial. Relocating the Moose to a further city that will increase travel expenses for callups is not going to solve anything what so ever and theres no financial nor logistical incentive for TNSE to move the AHL team they own in their building they own to somewhere else. They already tried in St. Johns and were poking around at the idea of hosting the AHL in Thunder Bay but it clearly didnt work for a reason. The current Jets-Moose arrangement is fine and its not going to change.

I get the point of the AHL's existence. When I was a teenager our family went to several AHL games in Saint John. The point though is there is only so much money for hockey tickets to go around, thus the AHL team and NHL team can cannibalize the other. We have these conversations a lot on this board with respect to whether certain markets are saturated. The difference here though is Winnipeg has gone all in hockey rather than asking if there is room for NHL team where an NBA one exists.

Personally I hope both the Moose and Jets succeed, but True North would be fools if they are not constantly re-asking themselves if they both should exist.

 

[FeatherHead]

Life isn’t fair…. It’s called karma.

Karma is exactly what makes life fair.

 

[BMN]

It never ceases to make me raise an eyebrow when the people whose teams never left are more hurt by the online razzings they got about relocation than the people who have honest-to-goodness seen their teams leave (or never had one to begin with). It's like watching Yankees fans equate their World Series heartbreaks with Cubs fans.

 

[Boonk]

Done whining yet pal?

Fill your damn arena.

Pittsburgh still holds the record for longest sell out streak.

We never lost our team.

Are you done crying?

Its not my problem that you have a problem over people ragging on US teams with dogshit owners who havent done anything positive for growing their teams brand or the NHL brand for in their location.

Piss and moan all you want about the team leaving and the low attendance and blah blah blah, the current state of the current team we have even with low attendance is still better than their predecessor org currently playing in a college arena, or Atlanta who couldn't hold down 2 franchises.

TLDR: They arent going anywhere and you can keep crying about it all you want from under your troll bridge, it wont change

 

[Boonk]

I get the point of the AHL's existence. When I was a teenager our family went to several AHL games in Saint John. The point though is there is only so much money for hockey tickets to go around, thus the AHL team and NHL team can cannibalize the other. We have these conversations a lot on this board with respect to whether certain markets are saturated. The difference here though is Winnipeg has gone all in hockey rather than asking if there is room for NHL team where an NBA one exists.

Personally I hope both the Moose and Jets succeed, but True North would be fools if they are not constantly re-asking themselves if they both should exist.

TNSE would have relocated the Moose already if that were the preferred option but its clearly not. They have the inhouse NHL facilities and venue at their disposal and TNSE clearly values the prospect of having their AHL farm team in house instead of further away in another city/province. They host enough events at CLC and other venues such as the Burt that rake in other profits outside of NHL/AHL gate revenue to offset that concern.

 

[Ciao]

I get the point of the AHL's existence. When I was a teenager our family went to several AHL games in Saint John. The point though is there is only so much money for hockey tickets to go around, thus the AHL team and NHL team can cannibalize the other. We have these conversations a lot on this board with respect to whether certain markets are saturated. The difference here though is Winnipeg has gone all in hockey rather than asking if there is room for NHL team where an NBA one exists.

Personally I hope both the Moose and Jets succeed, but True North would be fools if they are not constantly re-asking themselves if they both should exist.

Chevrolet and Cadillac both live in the same marketplace but at different price points.

Same thing with the Moose and the Jets.

I don't think one hurts the other.

 

[ForumNamePending]

It never ceases to make me raise an eyebrow when the people whose teams never left are more hurt by the online razzings they got about relocation than the people who have honest-to-goodness seen their teams leave (or never had one to begin with). It's like watching Yankees fans equate their World Series heartbreaks with Cubs fans.

What makes me go is that in a "Jets' attendance" thread (one of multiple that have popped up recently), where plenty of posters are questioning/debating Winnipeg's mid/long term viability as a NHL market, other posters are still whining about how mean everyone was to their favourite team a decade ago. Like climb down off the cross and save the martyrdom for something worth while... The piling on your team took at the time wasn't much different than what we are seeing in this thread, (some defending the market, some questioning it, others trolling). Bottom line is, most markets, regardless of location, are going to have to run the HF gauntlet if the team has soft attendance, and/or shaky ownership.

 

[AtlantaWhaler]

What makes me go is that in a "Jets' attendance" thread (one of multiple that have popped up recently), where plenty of posters are questioning/debating Winnipeg's mid/long term viability as a NHL market, other posters are still whining about how mean everyone was to their favourite team a decade ago. Like climb down off the cross and save the martyrdom for something worth while. The piling on your team took at the time wasn't much different than what we are seeing in this thread, (some defending the market, some questioning it, others trolling)... Bottom line is, most markets, regardless of location, are going to have to run the HF gauntlet if the team has soft attendance, and/or shaky ownership.

Eh...Lost me until the last sentence. I don't see that at all. It's pointing out that, all the excuses given in this thread (economy, bad team, treatment of fans by ownership) were all dismissed when other teams had similar excuses. Now, all the sudden, they should be accepted. It was basically beaten to death that all the Sunbelt teams would fail and should relocate while all the Canadian teams would sell out forever.

Now, I do totally agree that pretty much every market will go through ebbs and flows in attendance. We've seen this with juggernauts like Pittsburgh, Chicago, Boston, NYI, Buffalo, San Jose, Washington to name a few.

 

[mouser]

Sorry if this was already brought up in the past 28 pages, but what are the odds the Manitoba Moose relocate? It seems like an easier lose for True North to eat and there will always be a market out there ready for an AHL team.

The Moose are not relocating and have no reason to as an AHL farm team.

They are AHL but they are redirecting ticket sales that could be going to the NHL team. Now that we see empty seats for the Jets, how many of those tickets would have been sold if not for the alternative of having been able to purchase Moose tickets.

The whole point of the AHL is to be a farm development league. Aside from the indepedently owned AHL teams, the revenue stream from ticket sales for teams owned by their NHL parent orgs isnt crucial. Relocating the Moose to a further city that will increase travel expenses for callups is not going to solve anything what so ever and theres no financial nor logistical incentive for TNSE to move the AHL team they own in their building they own to somewhere else. They already tried in St. Johns and were poking around at the idea of hosting the AHL in Thunder Bay but it clearly didnt work for a reason. The current Jets-Moose arrangement is fine and it’s not going to change.

I find this an interesting hockey business question. I believe only Winnipeg and Calgary share the NHL arena with their AHL team?

Could the Moose be cannibalizing Jets ticket sales? If the Jets were selling out every game I’d say that’s an easy No. But when the Jets aren’t selling out, would more people choose to buy NHL tickets if there wasn’t a cheaper AHL ticket option in the same location?

Lots of variables in play like ease of location for the farm team and maybe drumming up Jets interest by also having the AHL club as a option,

 

[ForumNamePending]

Eh...Lost me until the last sentence. I don't see that at all. It's pointing out that, all the excuses given in this thread (economy, bad team, treatment of fans by ownership) were all dismissed when other teams had similar excuses. Now, all the sudden, they should be accepted. It was basically beaten to death that all the Sunbelt teams would fail and should relocate while all the Canadian teams would sell out forever.

Now, I do totally agree that pretty much every market will go through ebbs and flows in attendance. We've seen this with juggernauts like Pittsburgh, Chicago, Boston, NYI, Buffalo, San Jose, Washington to name a few.

Eh... I dunno... The reasons being given for Winnipeg perhaps not being worthy of NHL hockey are different than say what Nashville fans had to deal with back in the day, but like I said, other than that this all looks pretty familiar... Some questioning the market, others defending it (aka making excuses), and others having nothing of value to add and just trolling. The reason why there was so much piling on of the sunbelt teams at one point was because those where the teams that were having issues, and in some cases those issues where more then just soft attendance... It was like a conveyor belt.

With that said, Atlanta fans are a fan base I can't blame for kvetching in this thread... Atlanta is probably never going to be an amazing market for the NHL (neither is Winnipeg for different reasons), but with solid ownership/management it probably should've been able to do fine. Hard to blame the fans for feeling they were failed on multiple levels.

 

[Jets4Life]

Buffalo/WNY is significantly more populated. Manitoba has a population of about 1.4m, WNY has a population of about 2.8m (which includes areas like Rochester which is a drivable distance to go to games in Buffalo fairly often), and that's before getting into having about another 450k on the Canadian Niagara region, and Hamilton region just north of that has about 750k (although, I doubt many people are driving from Burlington to Buffalo often, but for people in Hamilton and Grimsby it's more reasonable.

Buffalo is a smaller market by NHL standards, but it has a fairly large drawing distance that is more inline with Vancouver than it would be the smaller Canadian markets like Winnipeg, Edmonton, Ottawa, and Calgary.

Nobody is going to drive from places like Syracuse and Rochester to see the Sabres play. It's too far. When the Jets first entered the NHL in 1979, some people argued that fans from Brandon, and other places would see the Jets. Almost nobody came on weeknights to buy tickets. Almost 99% of fans live within an hour drive from the arena.

"More inline with Vancouver?" LOL. Thanks for the laugh.

 

[Jets4Life]

We never lost our team friend. You did. Either live up to the standard Canadian fans set for other fan bases or go away. The excuses & hypocrisy is most taxing. For years, I heard Canadian fans whine & start every negative thread under the sun regarding certain US markets. They touted how any Canadian market would be a gold mine. Well guess what, that has been thoroughly disproven. So apply the standard back on yourselves or stop complaining about other markets. What goes around comes around.

The irony of some Penguins fans repeating a half dozen times that Winnipeg is too small to keep the NHL is not lost on me. For starters, it took the Penguins 20 years to average over 13,000 fans in one season. There were 6 seasons that Pittsburgh averaged less than 10,000 fans, and the team went bankrupt in 1975, and it took a miracle that they did not relocate to Seattle, Until the mid 80s, it was rumoured that the team would either contract, or move.

After Lemieux established himself as a superstar, the team had good seasons, but once he left, the Pens were again losing tons of money, and rumoured to be leaving by the end of the 90s. By 2004, the team was again averaging 11,000 fans/game, and the rumour was that the team would be relocating to Kansas City, and it was only Crosby who saved Pittsburgh from moving.

Compare that to the Jets, who sold out nearly every game until COVID hit. If we really look at it, this is the first season the Jets 2.0 have averaged under 14,000 fans per game (2021-22 often had games without any spectators, due to COVID restrictions). The team has been in Winnipeg for 13 years, and there is absolutely no talk about moving the team.

 

[ColinM]

I find this an interesting hockey business question. I believe only Winnipeg and Calgary share the NHL arena with their AHL team?

Could the Moose be cannibalizing Jets ticket sales? If the Jets were selling out every game I’d say that’s an easy No. But when the Jets aren’t selling out, would more people choose to buy NHL tickets if there wasn’t a cheaper AHL ticket option in the same location?

Lots of variables in play like ease of location for the farm team and maybe drumming up Jets interest by also having the AHL club as a option,

Another variable is arena availability. Weekends are prime time to sell hockey tickets and there are only so many of those in the winter. It's likely why you will never see an arena that has both the NHL and NBA import an AHL team to their arena on a regular basis.

But more to the point, attendance for both the Jets and Moose has dropped since 2016 according to this link: Manitoba Moose [AHL, 2015-2024] yearly attendance at hockeydb.com

I am sure the current living arrangement was great from 2016 to 2019. But coming back to the Cadillac / Chevrolet analogy, which vehicle is really the Cadillac if they both can be had for $25 to $30. Also at this point could you sell more Chevrolets in another market?

 

[ColinM]

Eh... I dunno... The reasons being given for Winnipeg perhaps not being worthy of NHL hockey are different than say what Nashville fans had to deal with back in the day, but like I said, other than that this all looks pretty familiar... Some questioning the market, others defending it (aka making excuses), and others having nothing of value to add and just trolling. The reason why there was so much piling on of the sunbelt teams at one point was because those where the teams that were having issues, and in some cases those issues where more then just soft attendance... It was like a conveyor belt.

With that said, Atlanta fans are a fan base I can't blame for kvetching in this thread... Atlanta is probably never going to be an amazing market for the NHL (neither is Winnipeg for different reasons), but with solid ownership/management it probably should've been able to do fine. Hard to blame the fans for feeling they were failed on multiple levels.

I always thought the most interesting litmus test was one's thoughts about the Montreal Expos. Fan support could have been better but they had cheap ownership, a not so great stadium, some bad luck on the field, and were tagged by not being the most beloved team in their own market. Reading the thread it's easy to see where else that could be applied to.

 

[JianYang]

I always thought the most interesting litmus test was one's thoughts about the Montreal Expos. Fan support could have been better but they had cheap ownership, a not so great stadium, some bad luck on the field, and were tagged by not being the most beloved team in their own market. Reading the thread it's easy to see where else that could be applied to.

It was probably a combination of things that led to the demise of the expos, but I'll highlight a couple main ones.

I believe bronfman sold the team in the early 90s which was the first red flag.

Then they built up a great team that led the league until the 1994 strike which killed the season. The expos then had a firesale when baseball was back and lost a good chunk of their talented players.

I don't think the fanbase ever forgave the ownership or the league itself for that strike, followed by the firesale.

 

[TheLegend]

Another variable is arena availability. Weekends are prime time to sell hockey tickets and there are only so many of those in the winter. It's likely why you will never see an arena that has both the NHL and NBA import an AHL team to their arena on a regular basis.

But more to the point, attendance for both the Jets and Moose has dropped since 2016 according to this link: Manitoba Moose [AHL, 2015-2024] yearly attendance at hockeydb.com

I am sure the current living arrangement was great from 2016 to 2019. But coming back to the Cadillac / Chevrolet analogy, which vehicle is really the Cadillac if they both can be had for $25 to $30. Also at this point could you sell more Chevrolets in another market?

Depends on the costs to have the dealership in said market. You may sell more Chevy's elsewhere but if the costs setting up and operating a dealership there are eating up the margins is it actually better??

For TNSE it simply might be more cost effective to have the Moose back in Winnipeg than anywhere else right now.

 

[Gnashville]

He applying the same standards that Canadian fans have created for sun belt teams.

The Canadian Standard
1. Sell out every game no matter the team record
2. No discounting tickets or comping tickets
3. Price gouge the fans, if fans aren’t willing to spend 2 paychecks on tickets and concessions to attend one game they aren’t real fans
4. Receive not one dime of Bettman’s revenue sharing scheme
5. No help from the local government or tax breaks team must build the arena and maintain it themselves.

If you can’t do all of these things then the city doesn’t deserve a team

 

[Gnashville]

Are you done crying?

Its not my problem that you have a problem over people ragging on US teams with dogshit owners who havent done anything positive for growing their teams brand or the NHL brand for in their location.

Piss and moan all you want about the team leaving and the low attendance and blah blah blah, the current state of the current team we have even with low attendance is still better than their predecessor org currently playing in a college arena, or Atlanta who couldn't hold down 2 franchises.

TLDR: They arent going anywhere and you can keep crying about it all you want from under your troll bridge, it wont change

Jim Balsille had God status in Canada when he tried to bully the NHL and Bettman into relocating to Canada with the Penguins and later my Predators. He and the media in Canada created this mess by saying Canadian teams and fans were infallible. The fact is all markets/teams can struggle with attendance, revenue, and fan apathy. Winnipeg and some extent Ottawa have become the perfect example of how that Canadian arrogance is not justified.

 

[Yukon Joe]

I’ve always thought the Moose should be in Saskatoon or Regina.

Nah. The Blades and the Pats rule those respective markets, and control the arenas. The NHL fandom in each city is split between the Jets, Oilers and Flames - but also the Leafs and Habs - so being the Jets farm team is not much of a draw.