I've been to three of the home games so far this season and I've been somewhat surprised by the attendance at those games.
The Red Wings and Oilers games were much less under capacity than I expected them to be. The Red Wings games used to always sell out it seemed, if nothing else due to all of the Red Wings fans.
The Saturday Matinee might have just been a wrong read for me, but I specifically took my family to that game because of the time and I fully expected to see it sold out with families in attendance. The second thing that surprised me was how many Oilers jerseys they were. I had joked a couple of times, "This is what it looks like to go to a game in Edmonton!" due to all of the orange and blue.
One thing that seems pretty obvious to me at this point in the season is that the lower bowl end zones are priced wrong. Those sections are almost always at 50% capacity. They need to adjust the pricing to find a way to encourage the people at the upper bowl in the same end zones to move down and fill those seats.
To their credit, the upper bowl seems full almost every game. Again, they need to figure out a way to get some of those people down in the lower bowl by making some of the less desirable seats in the lower bowl a closer competition financially.
Agreed on those points. I don't know how many people are abusing the deals they are offering. The Kings game I went to on Tuesday, through season ticket holders I know I was able to get $10 upper bowl tickets, or $25 lower bowl tickets. No way I was going to pass on that. There were 3 games they offered that for, and I just picked my poison. I don't want to think I cheated the team, I mean that's $50 more than what they wouldn't have had, plus $25 total from us parking in 2 different lots.
I wish I could go to more games, but currently I'm only a temporary employee, so I have to do it when I can. All signs point to going permanent here in April, and first on the list is upper bowl season ticket. I'll go when I can, and try to sell it off or give it away if I can't, but with my pay increase, I can handle paying for the cheapest ticket in town.
The numbers right now are promising though, so far no game under 10k fans. If we can have every game above 10k fans, that's really an incredible year compared to the normal of possibly between 6k-8k fans. Baby steps guys, we aren't going to sell out every night in the first year obviously, but if we improve year over year, that has to be positive news and has to allow the new boys in charge to see the light at the end of the tunnel.