Snatch Attendance

[BE Friend]

Yes, that's we call it here for summer road trips. Even made the urban dictionary.
Surprised the numbers are not better this far in. They are going to groove out in high gear with the draft picks back in the line up AND Benson still a possible. This could be an all in year - again. They will be parched for picks for a few years after this season

The US clubs always get good numbers and the team had the top attendance with the BCHL team. Maybe some local sour grapes perhaps , the coach debacle didn't help right out of the gate. Still US teams carry the league with gate numbers.

We need a correspondent in the apple capital to report in. Wonder if they jacked up the beer cost too much

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[jetsmooseice]

Man, it sure was a genius move to force the team out of Winnipeg for that glorious 1,000 fans a game attendance bump. /s

Nevermind the fact that the Winnipeg owners offered to expand Wayne Fleming Arena on an interim basis. Could have had the 2,700 fans a game in Winnipeg, the WHL didn't have to move the team to Wenatchee for that.

What a joke.

 

[BE Friend]

Man, it sure was a genius move to force the team out of Winnipeg for that glorious 1,000 fans a game attendance bump. /s

Nevermind the fact that the Winnipeg owners offered to expand Wayne Fleming Arena on an interim basis. Could have had the 2,700 fans a game in Winnipeg, the WHL didn't have to move the team to Wenatchee for that.

What a joke.

Man you are still HOT on that topic. You need to make a road trip for a Wild playoff set to pay your final respects. Suggest THIS year. The league needs fans like you, but it sounded like in the end the ICE owners were in it just for a quick flip and the league called them out on it. Pack up all the old ICE jerseys you can find and sell them to the locals. You would become a media story - 100%.

 

[jetsmooseice]

Man you are still HOT on that topic. You need to make a road trip for a Wild playoff set to pay your final respects. Suggest THIS year. The league needs fans like you, but it sounded like in the end the ICE owners were in it just for a quick flip and the league called them out on it. Pack up all the old ICE jerseys you can find and sell them to the locals. You would become a media story - 100%.
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I'm hot on the topic because we got SCREWED. In a world where a f***ing NHL team is playing at the Mullett Arena there was 100% room for Winnipeg in the WHL.

As I've said before, the owners here in Wpg got blindsided by a pandemic, massive construction inflation and high interest rates. A lot of people would have walked away but they kept going. As has been noted in this forum, they wanted to expand Wayne Fleming Arena on their own dime to make it better suited to the WHL for the interim.

Of course the WHL board of governors couldn't live with that threat to their little pyramid scheme so they yanked the team. And now in their PNW promised land they are attracting a grand total of one thousand more fans a game. If the WHL had allowed Fettes and Cockell to expand their rink in Winnipeg they would be drawing a similar number here.

Anyway, I have zero interest in ever going to Wenatchee, there is no chance of that happening.

 

[mrshootthepuck]

I'm hot on the topic because we got SCREWED. In a world where a f***ing NHL team is playing at the Mullett Arena there was 100% room for Winnipeg in the WHL.

As I've said before, the owners here in Wpg got blindsided by a pandemic, massive construction inflation and high interest rates. A lot of people would have walked away but they kept going. As has been noted in this forum, they wanted to expand Wayne Fleming Arena on their own dime to make it better suited to the WHL for the interim.

Of course the WHL board of governors couldn't live with that threat to their little pyramid scheme so they yanked the team. And now in their PNW promised land they are attracting a grand total of one thousand more fans a game. If the WHL had allowed Fettes and Cockell to expand their rink in Winnipeg they would be drawing a similar number here.

Anyway, I have zero interest in ever going to Wenatchee, there is no chance of that happening.

Care to elaborate on this? What exactly is the pyramid scheme?

 

[BE Friend]

Pyramid might refer the general playbook for professional sports is most teams lose money year to year (over the long term) but the real goal is to make the league stature such that the buy in costs (team values) increase over time. And Expansion fees keep going up.

Of course you get zero transparency in this league, local reporters are the stars for that, but I expect Winnipeg being a decent sized media market should be playing in a facility to that level. It didn't look good on TV. I wonder if ICE put the powerplay on and said you keep giving us the gears, here are the keys you take over. Wenatchee was a win win in the end. Did the ICE make money on the sale? They did well on the dollar conversion at least. Is WPG media doing a final chapter on the team? Maybe on the one year anniversary of the move.

 

[jetsmooseice]

Pyramid might refer the general playbook for professional sports is most teams lose money year to year (over the long term) but the real goal is to make the league stature such that the buy in costs (team values) increase over time. And Expansion fees keep going up.

Of course you get zero transparency in this league, local reporters are the stars for that, but I expect Winnipeg being a decent sized media market should be playing in a facility to that level. It didn't look good on TV. I wonder if ICE put the powerplay on and said you keep giving us the gears, here are the keys you take over. Wenatchee was a win win in the end. Did the ICE make money on the sale? They did well on the dollar conversion at least. Is WPG media doing a final chapter on the team? Maybe on the one year anniversary of the move.

You nailed it re: pyramid scheme. Like any sports league the WHL is trying to make money through a variety of means and their plan clearly involves pushing communities to build them ever-larger and more luxurious rinks. These rinks boost the bottom line in the biggest, most meaningful way possible... by increasing revenue streams and increasing the value of the franchise. But in the WHL's case the communities they push are relatively tiny. Towns like Moose Jaw and Prince Albert. Building a 5,000 seat arena is a huge expense in a place like that. And it doesn't look good for the WHL if the ICE were making a go of it in an 1,800 seat barn... how do you convince the people of Prince Albert you need an expensive new building when that's the case?

As soon as it became obvious that the ICE weren't going to build a rink in the immediate future, that was the end of the franchise. That is a shitty way to do business. I'm sure it left a bad taste in the mouths of many. Why would anyone want to do business with a WHL team again as a sponsor, season ticket holder, etc. after that shoddy treatment?

As to any deep dives, I do not expect that at all from the local Winnipeg media even though it would be interesting. The ICE were basically the number six local team in the Winnipeg area and the media coverage they received was in line with that. There was one long feature newspaper article written about the team for their entire four year existence in Winnipeg. Beyond that it was just game reports, on rare occasions previews and player profiles, and that's it. The team had a decent following but it has been forgotten pretty quickly by the media... after all, this is a pretty busy sports market for a city its size.

In terms of how it looked on TV, I hate to say it but like 90% of WHL games you see seas of empty seats. I don't think the TV views last season were any less flattering in Winnipeg than they were anywhere else Connor Bedard wasn't playing.

 

[JMCx4]

This thread started with SO much hope for entertaining content ...

 

[jetsmooseice]

This thread started with SO much hope for entertaining content ...

Instead, it's just that asshole from Winnipeg griping about the ICE moving to Washington again, lol

 

[BE Friend]

This thread started with SO much hope for entertaining content ...

The DUB thread really needs some colour to compete with the O threads. Thought I would use some cheap internet marketing tricks. However that reference was highjacked by these two on the wrong side of the tracks in downtown Wenatch. Should make a movie about them.

 

[JMCx4]

Know your audience.

 

[PCSPounder]

I noted 4 years ago that fall is high school football season and those weren’t Wenatchee’s best crowds in the BC days.

But I’m considering that it wasn’t hard to get a ticket for their last home game of the season and I wonder. Possibly the change happened so fast that people haven’t had a chance to react yet? Eh, I’m guessing.

 

[BE Friend]

I noted 4 years ago that fall is high school football season and those weren’t Wenatchee’s best crowds in the BC days.

But I’m considering that it wasn’t hard to get a ticket for their last home game of the season and I wonder. Possibly the change happened so fast that people haven’t had a chance to react yet? Eh, I’m guessing.

Good call. I chatted with the TRI radio guy last year - he did double duty with football PxP when possible. He said HS Football was top dog in local sports. US is football mad.

 

[jetsmooseice]

Wenatchee is a distant last in attendance in the US division. I have a hard time believing that thousands of people are going to flock to WHL games as soon as high school football is done. And this team is still really good, where will the fans be when the Wild have a 12 win season in a couple of years? What a joke.

 

[The Marquis]

Wenatchee is a distant last in attendance in the US division. I have a hard time believing that thousands of people are going to flock to WHL games as soon as high school football is done. And this team is still really good, where will the fans be when the Wild have a 12 win season in a couple of years? What a joke.

if 300+ keeps you up at night because it’s “distant”, I suggest worrying about something else because that isn’t a thing. If it were Winnipeg it would be 1200+ lower than Tri City