Begininning with the letter "A"

Today’s word of the day is “Attendance” and can be defined as: (1) the number of people that are present. (2) the frequency with which a person is present.

In today’s entry I would like to once again take a small look at my parent’s recent trip (via photo’s) to Florida and their attendance at a Tampa Bay Lightning game. While they weren’t the only ones there, my step-dad was surprised at the amount that was not. As mentioned in my last entry, my parents estimated that the St. Pete’s Forum was about half full with a lot of empty sections throughout the arena. How does this compare to other relocated or expansion teams in the NHL and what PR methods are they using to draw in the crowds? It seems that in Tampa, having undressed girls skate and cheer that either once dreamed of being in the Ice Capades or on a professional football field but clearly settled in life hasn’t worked, has anything?

The obvious choice to start with (but I won’t because we already know what happened) would be the Phoenix Coyotes. Lets just all agree, whatever PR methods were used to increase attendance failed and will likely remain that way until the team is relocated (again). Lets then move to the Atlanta Thrashers that joined the NHL in 1999 as an expansion team and compare that to the Calgary Flames that were actually a relocation team from Atlanta in 1980. So, Atlanta had a team then lost the team then got another team. See where I’m going here?

The Atlanta Thrashers play out of the Philips Arena which has a capacity for NHL games to hold about 18,500 people. The average attendance in the 2008 playing season was about 14,600. The home website offers all kinds of promotions for tickets with the average ticket price on the second level ranging from $62 to $84 US. One of the marketing things used on this site that caught my attention was the promotion of “4 tickets and 4 combo’s starting at $89”. This sounded great until I drilled in and realized that the tickets were at the very top of the arena (the players would look like ants) and there was all kinds of restrictions on the food you were allowed. I’m not sure this would turn out as enjoyable as the price sounds.

In comparison the Calgary Flames play out of the Pengrowth Saddledome which has a capacity to hold about 19,500 people. The average attendance in the same season was 19,289 which tell us things are going well in Calgary. Average ticket prices for the same section ranged from $49 to $66 CAN with many group promotions as well. What I didn’t see on the home website were the same marketing grabbers that the Atlanta Thrasher had to boost ticket sales. Clearly Calgary doesn’t need them because the city supports the team already.

The main point in this entry is if you can’t fill the seats you can’t have a successful franchise. How much sense did it make to put another NHL team in Atlanta when years before you moved one out? Did something change in the city’s culture towards the game of Hockey that indicated a franchise would then succeed when it hadn’t before? With leaving an average of 4,000 seats empty per game I would say not. Perhaps the NHL and Bettman should have looked at what was wrong in Atlanta before pretending that “attendance” didn’t really matter.