I think that can only rationalize things a bit. 4400 represents what is likely a far smaller season ticket base we are talking about 4100?, maybe 4000? When the arena first opened the sth base had to be capped at 5200 or 5300. Ottawa is in their last year of playing in the Canadian Tire Centre, I was in Kanata for the Ontario Junior Baseball Championships and was a 5 minute walk from the arena and practice facility(Canadian Tire Centre). One early afternoon my buddy and I made the trek from Kanata to downtown Ottawa and the area where the 67s primary/future arena is, it was probably a 35 minute drive and this was kind of rush hour but at 230pm. Trust me nobody is making the trek from that area to the Civic Centre.
An example of their poor marketing was last Saturday they had a deal against the Otters a ticket, hot dog and drink for $24 which is a fair deal. I later read that this deal is only available until Friday and not on game day. I wouldn't trust that group to run a lemonade stand.
Yes maybe Branch and his "new OHL" has turned off some fans but I think there's a bigger message.
I'll agree that the ticket promotions need some work. I think there was a deal recently for 2 tickets and 2 hats for $44. Well two tickets at face value costs roughly $44 so the 'deal' essentially only gets you the free hats. Do they honestly think that the free hats are going to lure crowds in there?
I think that with the early bird pricing, tickets work out to about $16-17/ea, so I understand that promotional deals that are cheaper than that price point may be a slap in the face to STHs, but they have to come up with something to get butts in the seats, that's for sure.
I notice that this year we are seeing empty suites on a regular basis for the first time. Each game, there seems to be about 6 or 7 suites that are completely unused.
My old seats used to be in Section 109 Row O. Back in 2009 those seats were completely surrounded by other STHs. The experience was great, however just about everybody around there has since either not renewed or moved elsewhere in the arena. My seats ended up surrounded by Group Sales which meant we'd be surrounded by busloads of 30 or more children kicking us in the back of the seat, dropping popcorn on us, yelling back and forth to each other across our seats, etc, paying 0 attention to the game itself. It got to the where I no longer enjoyed going.
So last year I emailed Lynne Rozario about switching to Platinum Seats for this season. Apparently they must have been desperate for platinum seat sales because she offered to move my seats to platinum mid-year if I purchased a package. The seats would cost $1125/seat per year with a 4 YEAR CONTRACT. They would be $1325/seat/year for a 2 year contract. That's over twice as much as regular seats (with the early bird discount) so I pretty much said screw that. I'm really not sure how they can justify those prices and I'm surprised that they sell any of those packages.
In the end, I ended up moving to section 119. I've enjoyed the gameday experience far more.