IceArizona - Year One: Performance Evaluation

[Fugu]

you mean Fugu the 14000 tickets the averaged last year come on i'm talking about real butts in the seats. Arizona last year gave away 2500 free tickets a game and sold 8000 corporate tickets .Last year they added these 10500 tickets to their attendance records. last year they averaged just over 5000 actual people a game last year.

I think MNN dug up the numbers for you, based on the reports that the city of Glendale has to file. It was ~12,000, iirc.

http://espn.go.com/nhl/attendance

Now the NHL did tell teams to stop papering the house, last year,....not sure if it went into effect or not.

Jet, you don't have to use that for the Coyotes attendance.

 

[jetfan77*]

You how they now how many are in the area simple the fire marshal they have 2 know 4 Safety reason's how people are in the area 4 recue reason's mostly if theirs a fire and Thiers 6678 people in the arena and they do a head count and they come up with 6667 then they know Thiers 11 people Still Trapped in the building.

 

[Fugu]

You how they now how many are in the area simple the fire marshal they have 2 know 4 Safety reason's how people are in the area 4 recue reason's mostly if theirs a fire and Thiers 6678 people in the arena and they do a head count and they come up with 6667 then they know Thiers 11 people Still Trapped in the building.

It was MNN who provided the info:

Jetfan77,

I am not sure how to respond to this. I am not sure if you want the real numbers, or if you just want a platform to rant about US attendance.

But, in case you want facts...

Coyotes attendance according to ESPN, which is also NHL numbers, and I assume Forbes also, was about 13500/game last year.

However, since the team pays a surcharge to the city for each ticket, and we can track the surcharge, we know how many paid tickets there were.

From the city's numbers, there were approximately 1200 comp tickets per game, and the city averaged about 11800 or 12000 surcharges paid per game.

So, that is your paid attendance. About 12000 per game.

Thank you.

 

[ucanthanzalthetruth]

I think barneyg dug up the numbers for you, based on the reports that the city of Glendale has to file. It was ~12,000, iirc.

I was trying to find that post. It was 12k. NVM, Fugu is too fast

 

[Desert Ice 11]

You how they now how many are in the area simple the fire marshal they have 2 know 4 Safety reason's how people are in the area 4 recue reason's mostly if theirs a fire and Thiers 6678 people in the arena and they do a head count and they come up with 6667 then they know Thiers 11 people Still Trapped in the building.

They don't need to do a head count prior to any incident. There is turnstiles counters and scanned ticket numbers that have that information.

 

[jetfan77*]

look their have been numerous ex gm's how have said that every game twice a game that they have 2 turn in a in Xact head count every game. Iv'e heard Doug Mclean explain it a couple of times on Sportsnet hockey central at noon how the system work's.

 

[cbcwpg]

All "attendance" discussions are pointless IMO for the business of hockey because "attendance" means nothing.

- First off NHL teams have been lying about attendance forever, so historically no one really has accurate numbers to compare to. Unless the NHL decides to or has been more accurate, there is nothing people can use with any validity. In the case of Arizona, we have the ticket surcharge which tells us exactly how many tickets sold.

- Secondly, it's not really "attendance" it's actually "tickets in use". It's how many tickets are out in the public that people can use to attend the game. Doesn't mean they will, it means they can, and those will be counted. IE: there could have been 15,000 tickets sold to an event and 2,000 people show up because of whatever reason... the NHL will still see it as 15,000 for "attendance".

- But most importantly, attendance doesn't matter, it's butts in seats and how much did those butts pay to sit in those seats.IE...gate revenue is the same if 20,000 people pay an average of $50 OR 10,000 people pay an average of $100. Obviously there are other revenue streams that can be taken advantage of when more people are in the building, but the whole argument is that it's all about attendance.... and it's not. There is more to it than that.

 

[Llama19]

MOD

Can you [jetfan] provide a link to the 'fire Marshall' records for Jobing.com Arena?

That would be a great reference for comparison to the other reported figures.

 

[TheLegend]

There was exactly ONE game last season where the Coyotes had attendance under 10K and that was the Oct. 31 game when attendance was 7401. The following link takes you to the team's website listing each home game.... with attendance.

http://coyotes.nhl.com/club/gamelog.htm?gameType=2&season=20132014&srt=date&venue=H

 

[Llama19]

All "attendance" discussions are pointless IMO for the business of hockey because "attendance" means nothing.

- First off NHL teams have been lying about attendance forever, so historically no one really has accurate numbers to compare to. Unless the NHL decides to or has been more accurate, there is nothing people can use with any validity. In the case of Arizona, we have the ticket surcharge which tells us exactly how many tickets sold.

- Secondly, it's not really "attendance" it's actually "tickets in use". It's how many tickets are out in the public that people can use to attend the game. Doesn't mean they will, it means they can, and those will be counted. IE: there could have been 15,000 tickets sold to an event and 2,000 people show up because of whatever reason... the NHL will still see it as 15,000 for "attendance".

- But most importantly, attendance doesn't matter, it's butts in seats and how much did those butts pay to sit in those seats.IE...gate revenue is the same if 20,000 people pay an average of $50 OR 10,000 people pay an average of $100. Obviously there are other revenue streams that can be taken advantage of when more people are in the building, but the whole argument is that it's all about attendance.... and it's not. There is more to it than that.

CasualFan's previous analysis sums all this up nicely...

 

[awfulwaffle]

you mean Fugu the 14000 tickets the averaged last year come on i'm talking about real butts in the seats. Arizona last year gave away 2500 free tickets a game and sold 8000 corporate tickets .Last year they added these 10500 tickets to their attendance records. last year they averaged just over 5000 actual people a game last year.

More politely put, that's just not true.

 

[BeardedCanuck]

Really??? So where are these records you refer to???

There was exactly ONE game last season where the Coyotes had attendance under 10K and that was the Oct. 31 game when attendance was 7401. The following link takes you to the team's website listing each home game.... with attendance.

http://coyotes.nhl.com/club/gamelog.htm?gameType=2&season=20132014&srt=date&venue=H

Are those the actual number of people in the building or just tickets "sold"? If you look at the Canucks numbers from last year it says that every game sold out and there were games with a fair amount of empty seats so that would lead me to believe that those numbers are tickets "sold" not actual attendance.

Canucks list: http://canucks.nhl.com/club/gamelog.htm?gameType=2&season=20132014&srt=date&venue=H

 

[TheLegend]

Are those the actual number of people in the building or just tickets "sold"? If you look at the Canucks numbers from last year it says that every game sold out and there were games with a fair amount of empty seats so that would lead me to believe that those numbers are tickets "sold" not actual attendance.

Canucks list: http://canucks.nhl.com/club/gamelog.htm?gameType=2&season=20132014&srt=date&venue=H

I've seen lots of empty seats at the ACC in Toronto, yet they sell out and have a waiting list that's stretches over years.

From a pure business standpoint....does it really matter if a ticket is sold and then not used?

 

[BeardedCanuck]

I've seen lots of empty seats at the ACC in Toronto, yet they sell out and have a waiting list that's stretches over years.

From a pure business standpoint....does it really matter if a ticket is sold and then not used?

The difference between Toronto and Arizona is no one really knows what % of the Coyotes reported tickets sold are actually sold, and not just handed out, because all that matters in the case of tickets sold is really distributed. So if Arizona is handing out tickets for free those numbers would be the numbers you posted and not really showing an accurate number of people at the game. I'm not saying what jetfan is saying is true on numbers, but if there is an actual count of people entering the building that would be the way to go on saying how well the games are doing, not the number of tickets "sold".

Edit: So yea from a pure business standpoint it doesn't matter if the ticket is actually sold and not used but it's my understanding that not all of the tickets the Coyotes are distributing have been sold so the actual number of people in the building experiencing the product would be the better way to go.

 

[awfulwaffle]

The difference between Toronto and Arizona is no one really knows what % of the Coyotes reported tickets sold are actually sold, and not just handed out, because all that matters in the case of tickets sold is really distributed. So if Arizona is handing out tickets for free those numbers would be the numbers you posted and not really showing an accurate number of people at the game. I'm not saying what jetfan is saying is true on numbers, but if there is an actual count of people entering the building that would be the way to go on saying how well the games are doing, not the number of tickets "sold".

Edit: So yea from a pure business standpoint it doesn't matter if the ticket is actually sold and not used but it's my understanding that not all of the tickets the Coyotes are distributing have been sold so the actual number of people in the building experiencing the product would be the better way to go.

Why does it matter how many tickets they might be handing out? End of the day, all that matters is the actual finances. Why is the actual attendance even being discussed?

 

[ucanthanzalthetruth]

I've seen lots of empty seats at the ACC in Toronto, yet they sell out and have a waiting list that's stretches over years.

From a pure business standpoint....does it really matter if a ticket is sold and then not used?

Well I mean teams make lots of money off concession sales, but aside from that, I don't see how it would matter, except people care about optics.

The difference between Toronto and Arizona is no one really knows what % of the Coyotes reported tickets sold are actually sold, and not just handed out, because all that matters in the case of tickets sold is really distributed. So if Arizona is handing out tickets for free those numbers would be the numbers you posted and not really showing an accurate number of people at the game. I'm not saying what jetfan is saying is true on numbers, but if there is an actual count of people entering the building that would be the way to go on saying how well the games are doing, not the number of tickets "sold".

Edit: So yea from a pure business standpoint it doesn't matter if the ticket is actually sold and not used but it's my understanding that not all of the tickets the Coyotes are distributing have been sold so the actual number of people in the building experiencing the product would be the better way to go.

Except this isn't true, because we do know how many tickets are sold, because they have to report the surcharge to the city, and these records are made public. See:

Coyotes attendance according to ESPN, which is also NHL numbers, and I assume Forbes also, was about 13500/game last year.

However, since the team pays a surcharge to the city for each ticket, and we can track the surcharge, we know how many paid tickets there were.

From the city's numbers, there were approximately 1200 comp tickets per game, and the city averaged about 11800 or 12000 surcharges paid per game.

So, that is your paid attendance. About 12000 per game.

As established previously, in 2013 they comp'd 1200 tickets per game, and according to their owner via a twitter post that was posted here ages ago, this 1200 figure is common among southern teams.

I'm also curious, why would the actual number be better? If butts in seats numbers were used, the Leafs would only have 15-20 sellouts a year, which is unfair, because 100% of tickets were sold, it's not their fault the platinum seats don't care.

 

[Killion]

Why does it matter how many tickets they might be handing out? End of the day, all that matters is the actual finances. Why is the actual attendance even being discussed?

Bingo! Winner Winner Chicken Dinner! Its moot. No longer matters in Gary's Brave New World.

 

[gelu88]

Hey, I've been out of the loop for a couple months, I'm not looking for any summaries, but anyone mind telling me at what point/date the craziness really ratcheted up? I'd like to go back but not have to trawl through a thousand posts.

 

[BeardedCanuck]

Except this isn't true, because we do know how many tickets are sold, because they have to report the surcharge to the city, and these records are made public. See:
As established previously, in 2013 they comp'd 1200 tickets per game, and according to their owner via a twitter post that was posted here ages ago, this 1200 figure is common among southern teams.
I'm also curious, why would the actual number be better? If butts in seats numbers were used, the Leafs would only have 15-20 sellouts a year, which is unfair, because 100% of tickets were sold, it's not their fault the platinum seats don't care.

Like I said, there was a number of comp'd tickets per game didn't know how many but there it is. So based on that the numbers on the NHL site are 1200 more or less than reported. I would only say actual numbers would be better for teams like the Coyotes who are in some financial trouble where its more about the exact number of tickets comp'd and number of those comp'd tickets who actually show up to see the product and maybe spend some money at the game.

 

[awfulwaffle]

Like I said, there was a number of comp'd tickets per game didn't know how many but there it is. So based on that the numbers on the NHL site are 1200 more or less than reported. I would only say actual numbers would be better for teams like the Coyotes who are in some financial trouble where its more about the exact number of tickets comp'd and number of those comp'd tickets who actually show up to see the product and maybe spend some money at the game.

You say this like the Coyotes are the only team in the league handing out free tickets.

 

[BeardedCanuck]

You say this like the Coyotes are the only team in the league handing out free tickets.

I didn't mean it to come off as I only believe the Coyotes are doing this, I know that other teams do this as well. The post I originally responded to was talking about actual number of people in the building. So I brought up tickets being comp't because not every ticket the gets comp'd actually shows up to the game. And I believe any team who has some financial problems its much more important the number of people actually showing up to the game and spending money in the arena then it is to have the same number of people not show up to a leafs game for example where there is a large waiting line for seasons tickets so that revenue lost isn't nearly as important.

 

[hatterson]

Why does it matter how many tickets they might be handing out? End of the day, all that matters is the actual finances. Why is the actual attendance even being discussed?

Technically attendance does have a financial impact via parking and concessions. If I'm not physically at the game I can't buy a $10 beer. However, I'd think that would be a fairly minimal impact in the grand scheme of things, unless someone can prove that the yotes routinely had thousands of people pay for tickets and then not show up.

 

[awfulwaffle]

Technically attendance does have a financial impact via parking and concessions. If I'm not physically at the game I can't buy a $10 beer. However, I'd think that would be a fairly minimal impact in the grand scheme of things, unless someone can prove that the yotes routinely had thousands of people pay for tickets and then not show up.

So discuss the financial aspects. I'm tired of attendance numbers being thrown out randomly that just aren't true. It's getting pretty old.

 

[CasualFan]

Nobody is required to care about paying more in taxes but they should. If they do not care about government spending whatever they want on whatever they want and making the citizens pay for it and the citizens don't care, oh well, but they SHOULD care.

I get what you're saying. I just disagree. I think it's a pretty slippery slope when Person A starts telling Person B what they should care about. Conversely, the elected officials of Glendale and the administrative staff took an oath of office. I think it's entirely fair to evaluate their performance against the commitments they made as part of accepting a gig in public service.

Maybe it's a distinction without a difference - but to me, citizens are free to ignore the entire government operation. However, the government operation is not free to lie to the citizens.

Glendale willfully misrepresented essentially every aspect of the financial impacts of this franchise. Ed Beasley, Art Lynch, and Jim Colson colluded with Tom Hocking to fabricate entire data sets. Sherhammer and Goke were either willing or ignorant accomplices. The entire operation was pretty comical. The Mega-Thread archive is full of real time analysis of what they were doing and how glaringly obvious it was. It's somewhat ironic that they spent so much time trying to deceive an electorate that didn't really care to begin with. A properly functioning city administration would have simply presented the realities of the transaction. They would have had the integrity to cast their vote in favor of the subsidy after accurately accounting for how it would likely impact the GF ledger. Instead, Glendale went on a most amazing voyage of deceit.

As a social science bonus, a few psychos grasped onto the blatant misrepresentations and repeated them.

So tell us what you really think! That's quite a generalization.

Yeah, it's a bit embellished but I'm super comfortable with it. We are an internet message forum so it's probably okay to try to put some entertainment value in a post.

 

[Killion]

If I'm not physically at the game I can't buy a $10 beer.

... yer Beer Index Hatty? Arizona amongst the highest in the league at $9, couple of others charging $9.50 for domestic draft. Cheapest is Pittsburgh at $5.