The Phoenix Coyotes are so desperate to fill seats (despite the fact that the home opener sold out) that they are giving away free tickets but there’s a catch – they have to win certain games.  The first of these singled-out contests (there are five in total) is the game against the Los Angeles Kings on October 24, 2009.
The promotion, which has been dubbed “join the pack,” is meant to create a more loyal fanbase and it could work.  When you’re facing bankruptcy and being sold/moved to another city, you’ve got to try everything.
With all of the drama over the …read more

Wow!  This is great news for hockey fans.  There are 500 tickets up for grabs for Tuesday night’s game between the Pittsburgh Penguins and the Detroit Red Wings.
 
The tickets go on sale on Monday, June 8, 2009 at 10am and Game 6 takes place the following day at the Mellon Arena in Pittsburgh.  Fans are encouraged to order online at www.ticketmaster.com. Tickets also are available by calling Ticketmaster at 1-800-745-3000; at all Ticketmaster locations; and at the Mellon Arena Gate One box office.
image: TSN

Whether it’s next year or five years from now, the Nashville Predators will be leaving Tennessee. It’s just a matter of time after Craig Leopold conceded defeat by selling the team to Jim Balsillie. There’s no other conclusion after Leopold made this concession:
“I have come to the conclusion that I cannot make it work here. As hard as we tried and as good a team as we had – I mean, we are one of the elite teams in this league, and we [have] by far the lowest revenue. It doesn’t work”.
If this doesn’t symbolize the death of NHL hockey …read more

For NHL clubs that enjoy playoff success, one of the dividends is ticket revenue flowing in the door at a time when you don’t have to pay your players. The Ottawa Business Journal has a good story looking at how the Ottawa Senators are cashing in now that they’ve advanced to the Stanley Cup final.
Senators COO Cyril Leeder said the team start to make a profit last week, which means every additional home game is pure gravy. Leeder said another benefit is success encourages season ticket sales for next year. “We had 200 separate transactions last week, which is …read more

In the wake of the Nashville Predators’s successful 2006/07 season, the team and owner, Craig Leipold, announced this week they have entered into a multi-year naming rights agreement with Sommet Group, which will see the name of the team’s arena become known as “The Sommet Center”. The partnership gives Sommet Group prominent signage inside and outside the arena and a variety of business development opportunities.
“In its first year as a sponsor, Sommet Group saw first-hand the value that the Predators can deliver to the company’s business-to-business strategies and became the Predators first title partner for the playoffs in 2007,” …read more

Nothing like a winning hockey team and the NHL’s best player to get fans excited about a team’s prospects. The Pittsburgh Penguins are reaping the benefits as season ticket sales have jumped a staggering 60% over last year. “Full-season ticket sales are up 60 percent over this past season,” Penguins vice president of communications Tom McMillan told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. “We haven’t seen anything like this since the [Stanley] Cup years. We anticipated a spike. We didn’t know it would be anything like this.”It’s a good news, bad news kind of thing for some season-ticket holders, who suffered through some …read more

Let’s be honest here: the NHL as a business has been spinning its wheels in the U.S. for years. You’ve got no national television contract and a half dozen teams struggling in artificial markets (Atlanta, Nashville, Florida, Tampa Bay, Phoenix, Columbus). Yet the NHL continues to insist it’s only a matter of time before the sports fan south of the border realizes what an exciting game hockey can be. Maybe this will pan out; maybe not. In any event, Norman Chad (writing in the Seattle Intelligencer) has two suggestions to save hockey in the U.S.:
1. televise the games north-south, …read more

With the first round of the playoffs now firmly behind us, I thought an update would be interesting on how teams are faring financially from making it to the post-season. This is based on my analysis, The Value of Making The Playoffs, previously posted here.
As a reminder, while previous analysis was a back-of-the-envelope exercise, it serves as a proxy for a team’s financial success in the post season. One of the most significant realizations of the number crunching below is that while we do not necessarily want to see teams go deep into series, it is in the financial best …read more

Looks like the fans masquerading as empty seats in New Jersey are also alive and well in Detroit as well judging by the attendance during Game #1 of the conference semi-final against San Jose. Is there a trend here? Does this suggest that once hockey fans in the U.S. have seen a Stanley Cup winner or two, they lose their zest for the team? Maybe the situation in Detroit has something to do with the resurgence of the Detroit Tigers baseball team, which struggled badly for years before winning the division title last year. The Red Wings may also …read more

Are hockey fans in New Jersey bored with the team’s success and the fact the Deveils have won three Stanley Cups? You’d think they were suffering from a bad case of fan fatigue given there were several thousand empty seats for last night’s conference semi-final game against the Ottawa Senators. Maybe tickets are too expensive? Or maybe hockey fans in New Jersey are just pragmatic given there could be another six weeks or so of playoff hockey so why rush to a game if there could be more games later. In any event, it’s got to be fairly embarrassing for …read more