Attendance and Revenue Down This Season in Carolina

Too bad for those who lost their jobs.

I don’t really see the crowds getting any bigger the rest of the season. Trading away some fan favorites soon aren’t going to help either. I look more at it in a positive way being in 30th and playing like it for the most part but maintaining @14,000 says alot. Although its not my wallet its affecting. Maybe bringing in alot of young, skilled players will be exciting to watch and feel the seats in the remaining months.

From that same source (which is one heck of a good Canes stats site, by the way), the ‘02-’03 season attendance average was 15,607 (compared with 14,770 YTD this season).

But, there usually is some pick-up on attendance as the basketball season winds down. Maybe we’ll pick up some of the Carolina fans a bit earlier this year. :-D

   I think the fans who are avid supporters of the Hurricanes could help increase attendance. An average of 2,000 more people per game would make an enormous difference even if the Hurricanes are almost certain not to make the playoffs. Some of us have various personal and professional mailing lists or have newsletters. The team is much more solid now than during the doldrums at the start of the season.

   Hopefully, a grassroots effort will begin. It’s been hard enough to see the Hurricanes play poorly at the start of the season. It would be a shame to have the loss of revenue result in the organization lacking the resources to rebuild quickly.

Any feel as to whether the entire league is down on attendance due to the economy? Seems like I saw something a while back that was talking about an average 4 percent decline for the league.

And, of course, the rebirth of the Chicago market is skewing things a bit league wide, as they went from rattling around inside their arena to selling the place out.

Here’s where the league is on a team-by-team basis, both in raw numbers and percent of arena capacity.

Very eye-opening article Bob, especially the part about cutting staff. You don’t really think about the struggles of a team on the ice affecting the off ice staff, but they do. Unfortunately, like canescup said, trading fan favorites is probably going to make things worse, even if young talent is brought in. I just don’t see the numbers getting any better unless the team gets better, especially with the economy the way it is. Perhaps the team needs to look at more ticket discounts to bring people in.

And as an aside, excellent choice for the picture Bob. It’s funny how superstitions start, but last season, if I didn’t see that guy (who has been dubbed double stick flag guy in my house) before warm-ups started, we were in for a loss. So perhaps this means we’re in store for a win tomorrow night?! :)

I think they should create a better salary cap. One that fluctuates. It would be nice to see cup condtendors come back the year after – but to me it would also be boring to see a hockey team be like the NY Yankees as well.

like I said before…winning is important on many levels. I think the rebuilding efforts (Staal with the C, Rats, trades etc….) will put fannies in the seats. If they offer exciting brand hockey, the numbers will go up. Fire MO, and watch the seats fill up.

Interesting article. 14,700 is not good, but based on the teams play and the economy still isn’t great; that number could be worse. From what I’ve been reading recently, the attendence has gone up over the past couple of games. Maybe that can continue and push our average attendence number up ever so slightly.

Where did you come up with the $100 per person value? I sit in the lower section and based on my ticket, beers, and part of parking – I’m not that high and my buddies are less than me. Just trying to figure that out because the higher value make the revenue difference higher.

I think the Canes should do a $5 ticket in the upper end-zone for the rest of the season. Get some people out to see the “new and improved” Canes. The ticket price in those sections would go down, but those people would buy beverages and food. You could get more revenue by having fans at the game and hopefully develop some more “hockey rednecks.”

The next CBA should allow a more flexible ability for management to release players they don’t want midseason at a percentage of salary and therefore cap hit. Maybe firing one Multi-million $ player improves team performance and/or financing and therefore saves Lots of staff from sales to parking. It would add more GM decision making. Not to mention improving my overall mood.