Which franchises wouldn't suffer attendance issues under these conditions?

[Kritter471]

People mentioning the Red Wings clearly don't remember/know about the Dead Things era.

Would not suffer at all: Toronto, Montreal
Would suffer minimally: Philly, New York

Have suffered under those conditions in the past or currently: Ottawa, Edmonton, Calgary, Detroit, Minnesota (NS era), Pittsburgh, Boston, Chicago, St. Louis, Carolina, Washington, Florida, Tampa, San Jose, Anaheim, Dallas, Phoenix, LA, Colorado, Buffalo, Islanders, Devils, Atlanta, Nashville, Columbus, Vancouver

Seriously. You can point to a period of prolonged futility leading to attendance issues in almost every market in the league with the exceptions being ridiculously huge markets with at least 50 years of history, and even that is not enough in some cases (Chicago, Boston, St. Louis, LA). The "dearly departed" markets of Hartford, QC and Winnipeg also really struggled to draw under these circumstances.

People who think attendance issues for bad teams are new or somehow limited to non-traditional markets haven't paid enough attention to NHL history.

 

[Spawn]

The Oilers now are at 1/2 a decade of futility. Easily the worst 5 years in franchise history. This will be the first time in franchise history the team will miss 5 straight years. All 5 years have been 100% capacity for attendance at home games.

This hasn't always been the case, as has been pointed out, the Oilers had attendance issues in the early/mid 90's. I wonder what has changed in Edmonton.

 

[Metzen]

The Oilers now are at 1/2 a decade of futility. Easily the worst 5 years in franchise history. This will be the first time in franchise history the team will miss 5 straight years. All 5 years have been 100% capacity for attendance at home games.

This hasn't always been the case, as has been pointed out, the Oilers had attendance issues in the early/mid 90's. I wonder what has changed in Edmonton.

IMHO, it's an ownership that cares; even if management is inept. The difference between a toxic owner selling off your best players year after year for a cheap 2nd/3rd liner + cash and yearly threats of relocation. From that to an owner(ship group) that was honest about what they could do with the team given their limitations.

The TB Lightning almost went through this with their previous ownership group. But they should thank their luck stars cash isn't allowed in trades anymore. If it was allowed when Barrie was running the show St. Louis would have been sold for $Millions as well as Lecavelier and the fans would have left in droves. Stamkos/Hedman would be sold after their cheap ELC's came off and they wanted real money. How could any team survive with this?

 

[Metzen]

To my knowledge, tickets distributed is usually the metric by which attendance is computed, both now and historically.

IIRC in the 80's the paper for the Oiler's would have "attendance" and "announced attendance (turnstile count)" in their boxscore section.

 

[tarheelhockey]

IMHO, it's an ownership that cares; even if management is inept. The difference between a toxic owner selling off your best players year after year for a cheap 2nd/3rd liner + cash and yearly threats of relocation. From that to an owner(ship group) that was honest about what they could do with the team given their limitations.

The difference between these cannot be overstated, and Edmonton is a classic case of how much change can take place with a simple ownership upgrade.

 

[SirQuacksALot]

Which franchises wouldn't suffer attendance issues from being absolutely horrible? I'd think they all would. It happens in all pro sports. England is MAD about football in a way most North American sports fan can't possibly imagine (even you Habs fans) and yet they stop drawing crowds when the teams turn horrible. Manchester City currently averages 45,500 for league matches. In 1995 they averaged 22,000. Does that mean that England doesn't really love football? No. It means the team isn't worth as much to the fans as the beer it takes to wash their sorrows away. When the lightning won the cup they averaged 20,500. Last season they had 15,100 show up on average. Put out a reasonable product and people will show up to watch it.

 

[nyrmetros]

Habs, Leafs, Rangers, Flyers, Minnesota.

Anything else can and have been run into the ground.

Agreed. Chicago fans were boycotting the owner. Boston fans melt away when the team does. Detroit needs to remember life before the 90's.

http://www.andrewsstarspage.com/ind..._average_attendance_since_1989_90/118-2008-09

 

[htpwn]

Which franchises wouldn't suffer attendance issues from being absolutely horrible? I'd think they all would. It happens in all pro sports. England is MAD about football in a way most North American sports fan can't possibly imagine (even you Habs fans) and yet they stop drawing crowds when the teams turn horrible. Manchester City currently averages 45,500 for league matches. In 1995 they averaged 22,000. Does that mean that England doesn't really love football? No. It means the team isn't worth as much to the fans as the beer it takes to wash their sorrows away. When the lightning won the cup they averaged 20,500. Last season they had 15,100 show up on average. Put out a reasonable product and people will show up to watch it.

 

[SirQuacksALot]

If you look at Toronto's attendance since the lockout it has been trending down. Slowly, but it is. That and the team has been nowhere near as bad as people like to make out (aside from last year). They were 2 pts out in '05 and '06. In '09 they were a full 20 points above the last place team. With the exception of last year Toronto has not been as horrible as their fans like to make out.

 

[GQS]

If you look at Toronto's attendance since the lockout it has been trending down. Slowly, but it is. That and the team has been nowhere near as bad as people like to make out (aside from last year). They were 2 pts out in '05 and '06. In '09 they were a full 20 points above the last place team. With the exception of last year Toronto has not been as horrible as their fans like to make out.

According to Wiki, the ACC's capacity for hockey games is 18,819. And according to this list

http://www.andrewsstarspage.com/ind..._average_attendance_since_1989_90/118-2008-09

Leafs have only ever been under 19,000 attendance in 2001-02 since moving into the ACC. So where's the attendance drop unless you mean a couple of hundred fans difference from year to year?

 

[TaketheCannoli]

The Oilers now are at 1/2 a decade of futility. Easily the worst 5 years in franchise history. This will be the first time in franchise history the team will miss 5 straight years. All 5 years have been 100% capacity for attendance at home games.

This hasn't always been the case, as has been pointed out, the Oilers had attendance issues in the early/mid 90's. I wonder what has changed in Edmonton.

The Oilers made the playoffs 4 times in the last 10 seasons, and of course went to the Stanley Cup Finals. This may be the worst run in Oilers history but it pales in comparison. Several teams have either not made the playoffs at all or made them once and never have won a single game, much less advance.

The situations just aren't comparable.Seven more seasons in Edmonton with no playoffs would be a reasonable test of the effect.

 

[Angelus*]

The situations just aren't comparable.

Yeah, keep telling yourself that. There are some markets that don't even sell out every game after winning the Stanley Cup, let alone losing in the SCF.

I'd like to see how many teams wouldn't see attendance absolutely plummet with the Oilers recent fortunes whether they lost in the finals 5 years ago or not.

Including 2006 the Oilers have placed on average, 23rd overall in a 30 team league (including 30th overall for successive seasons). Their fans should be applauded, not degraded.

 

[Moobles]

A lot has changed in Canada post-90s. I think when we talk attendance, we often discount some of the significant demographic and economic changes that we've gone through since the early/mid-90s, and honestly- hockey has never been so popular at least here in Vancouver. So I guess you can still grow the game here .

The Oilers now are at 1/2 a decade of futility. Easily the worst 5 years in franchise history. This will be the first time in franchise history the team will miss 5 straight years. All 5 years have been 100% capacity for attendance at home games.

This hasn't always been the case, as has been pointed out, the Oilers had attendance issues in the early/mid 90's. I wonder what has changed in Edmonton.

 

[jacketracket*]

Including 2006 the Oilers have placed on average, 23rd overall in a 30 team league (including 30th overall for successive seasons). Their fans should be applauded, not degraded.

Up to and including the 2009/2010 season the CBJ have placed on average, 25th overall in a 30 team league. Only one season with a record better than 0.500; one playoff appearance (as an eighth seed - swept in four games). Yet they've averaged 16.5K a night, over that span. Their fans should be applauded, not degraded.

 

[Confucius]

And they'd still lead the league in ticket prices........

 

[Canadian91]

Ottawa is one team that is going to go through some tough times in the next few years, and is showing no signs of slowing down attendance wise. In fact, their attendance is up from last year.

 

[htpwn]

According to Wiki, the ACC's capacity for hockey games is 18,819. And according to this list

http://www.andrewsstarspage.com/ind..._average_attendance_since_1989_90/118-2008-09

Leafs have only ever been under 19,000 attendance in 2001-02 since moving into the ACC. So where's the attendance drop unless you mean a couple of hundred fans difference from year to year?

That's actually a typo. The correct number is 19,338 not 18,338. I calculated it using NHL.com game sheets last summer.

 

[Ogopogo*]

Exactly. There are only maybe 4 or 5 places in the league which seem to be "automatic" when it comes to attendance. Toronto, Montreal, NYR, Philly, Minneosta. Maybe Edmonton, though they showed in the early/mid 1990s that they aren't a given.

The 90s situation was far from just being a losing team. Very different situation from where the team is today. 5 years out of the playoffs, 2 years at #30 overall and it is still hard to get a ticket at Rexall.

 

[Fish on The Sand]

No organization can claim that they have had a worse start than the Ottawa Senators, who were the absolute laughing stock of the league for almost a decade since inception, which included an appauling 24 point season (in 82 games) in 1992-93, yet they still had solid crowds and didn't dip to the levels that we're seeing some teams dip to right now.

Washington Capitals can. I would also argue that the Thrashers and Blue Jackets have been worse.

 

[Fish on The Sand]

And percent of capacity? The Oilers arena only holds about 16,000 seats, and during 94 or 95 it underwent renovations which could explain the huge dip in 95...

per cent capacity is only relevant if you are selling out. If you have 12, 000 people in a 20k arena, its the same number of tickets that would be sold in a 15k arena.

 

[Moobles]

Definitely, but that was in the '70s. Mark Recchi was a freaking top prospect on the Pens at the time when the Senators sucked. It's still in the NHL's living memory .

I agree though, if you don't look at absolute comparisons in management (i.e. worst point seasons) and overall futility, the experience for a Thrashers or Blue Jackets fan is definitely worse. They've never sucked enough to get that #1-#=3 overall to do a Pens-style rebuild, but they both have yet to win a game in the post-season . Not a jab at fans of these teams either- I wanna see both of you win games.

Washington Capitals can. I would also argue that the Thrashers and Blue Jackets have been worse.

 

[Kimota]

While I still feel that going south was dumb it's hard to argue against the thinking that the lack of public support in some arenas was the reason of poor showing. Teams like Florida, Phoenix, Atlanta, Tampa Bay have been incredibly badly managed for years resulting in crappy teams after crappy teams. Tampa won the cup but they've been in a down spiral after that and only the Yzerman/Boucher era has turned it around. Carolina is a strange case where Rutherford has run it competent enough but they're like the Devils, it's a tight ship but nothing to write home about. Dallas won championships but they've been the example of boring style ever since Gainey managed them, hard to get a fanbase excited. I mean sure they won a cup but for a new market it hasn't been "oh here come to Gretzy LA Kings!" with all the excitement and showmanship. Dallas has been for so long the icon of boring trapping hockey "southern version". All those reasons haven't helped those franchises.

About the question, the rarity has been Quebec City. Five years straight last in the league, the arena still filled. And I mean not like the big markets where it's companies buying all he best seats. No it was average folks spending their hard-earned money to go to the games. Such a strange phenomena. I think these fans must have been S & M afficados.

 

[Kyle McMahon]

A lot has changed in Canada post-90s. I think when we talk attendance, we often discount some of the significant demographic and economic changes that we've gone through since the early/mid-90s, and honestly- hockey has never been so popular at least here in Vancouver. So I guess you can still grow the game here .

I can't believe it took four pages for this to get mentioned!

Look at attendance across the board for the NHL, going back into the 70's, 80's, 90's. Sellouts were far from guarantees, even in successful markets. The sports world has simply grown enormously in the last 10 years. It is now acceptable, and common, for people to devote huge amounts of their disposable income to sports teams.

Since I've lived in the Edmonton area all my life, I can speak about their situation in detail:

Up until 2004, you could still usually grab a ticket to an Oiler game right up until game time for most games. Your big draws would sell out in advance, but other than that, if you had $50 in your pocket on a gameday morning, you could usually stroll up to the box office and snag a couple of nosebleeds. $25 a ticket, for an exciting team usually fighting for a playoff spot down to the last week of the season.

Things have changed dramatically. The economy boomed in Alberta big-time from about 2003-2008. The population of the Edmonton area has grown considerably since the mid-90's, the last time the team endured multiple poor seasons before the current stretch. This is a blue-collar, construction and industry-based city. Those jobs weren't paying nearly what they do now back in the 90's. This economic boom gave a lot of blue-collar people (the majority of Edmonton's populace) a lot of disposable income.

Ticket prices have skyrocketted ($100 for an average seat now). The team has gone in the tank, aside from 2006. Yet, you can barely find a ticket in town. There's a waiting list for season tickets with several thousand names on it. 2006 was the perfect timing to go on a playoff run and drum up fervor for the team like never before, as this year was also the peak of the economic boom. The organization is still riding this wave.

The Oilers are a much bigger deal now than they've ever been here. That's just the way the sports world has gone in the last decade in general. We've now got four normal cable channels (Sportsnet, TSN, TSN 2, the Score) devoted entirely to sports 24/7. Only TSN existed before ~2000. [And if you're like me, you've also made sure to specialty order RDS, NHL Network, NFL Network, Sportsnet One, and Big Ten Network. And you're mad that ESPN and ESPN 2 aren't available in Canada as well]. There are radio stations entirely devoted to sports programming in every major city now. Again, a phenomenon only a decade old.

Hockey, and all sports, are just a MUCH bigger deal than they were 10 years ago, let alone 20 or 30. Will this trend last is what the question is. Will we ever see the day where it's again acceptable for a crappy team to only draw 10 000 fans to games? Poor attendance in places like Florida (a decade of on-ice futility) never would have been used as a criticism of the market 20 years ago. If the team wasn't good, the fans weren't expected to still turn out in droves. For some reason, they are expected to nowadays, regardless of the quality of product. (Now, I'm not saying the NHL hasn't made suspect decisions with some of their franchise locations, but that's not the purpose of this discussion).

 

[Finlandia WOAT]

^^^

I quickly found that the economics side of the Business of Hockey is very often ignored on this board.

 

[mucker*]

Over the last several years, Tampa Bay, Carolina, and Dallas have won Stanley Cups. Florida made the Cup final against Colorado.

Despite that, Tampa (18th), Carolina (20th), Dallas (23rd), and Florida (22nd), all fall in the bottom half or third of league attendance.

Every Canadian team is in the top 11, save for the Oilers at #19...and that's despite the fact none of them have won a Cup in almost 20 years (Candiens last winning in 92-93, 18 years ago).

What's really troubling is that teams that have relocated south, or have come through expansion (Coyotes, Thrashers, Jackets, Stars, Panthers, Predators, Hurricanes, and Lightning) are no higher than 18th, or in the bottom 1/3 of the league, in average attendance.

I don't like it how people make major errors when it comes to Tampa.
The Lightning are not drawing too well this season, but several things:

1) This is coming off several bad seasons, next year will tell a different story (perhaps)
2) When the Lightning were good at the beginning/middle of the decade, they sold out nightly.

What is going on in Tampa is the economy. Tampa proved to be a good, supportive hockey town.
However, ALL SPORTS in that area despite good teams exceeding expectations have had poor attendance.

The Rays drew terrible last season, the Bucs used to have a waiting list of over 20 years, and they could not sell out ONE NFL game.
So if we are going to say "it is troubling that in the sunbelt Tampa can not draw ergo they are a bad hockey town and hockey does not belong there" I guess then football and baseball don't belong as well.

No, the problem in Tampa is the economy, which hit it really, really hard. Foreclousures, unemployment, and tourism have take major punches and Tampa deserves a mulligan OR at the very least, do your homework and mention that Tampa drew very well in the 2000s for hockey and that ALL sports team in that region have suffered...this is not a hockey problem alone.