NHL commissioner Gary Bettman makes regular stops throughout the season at arenas around the league, but his planned appearance in Winnipeg Tuesday evening carried more weight than his past visits.
Bettman’s appearance — which included meetings with Jets brass and the media, and a pre-game “fireside chat” with fans — comes on the heels of Jets owner Mark Chipman’s candid comments about the team’s struggles with season-ticket sales.
In an interview with a national sports outlet Friday, Chipman said the Jets need to get back to a season ticket base of 13,000, and that the club’s current attendance numbers are “not going to work over the long haul.”
The Jets famously sold 13,500 season tickets in mere minutes upon their arrival in Winnipeg in 2011, but are currently struggling to draw fans to Canada Life Centre.
The good news, according to economist Moshe Lander, is that Winnipeg has a leg up on many other cities around the league — the city is full of Jets fans, so the team needs to focus on bringing them back downtown for in-person games, rather than going out and finding new fans altogether.
“I don’t think, in Winnipeg, you’re going to discover new fans or somebody that’s unaware of hockey or the role of the Jets in the city,” Lander, a senior lecturer at Concordia University in Montreal, told 680 CJOB’s Connecting Winnipeg.
And with a team poised for the playoffs — two points out of the top spot in the Central Division as of Tuesday morning — the Jets’ front office needs to take advantage of the on-ice success the team is having this season, as it could be a much harder sell if the team struggles on the scoreboard in future years.
“It’s making sure there’s a marketing team there that is reaching out to fans and finding every way to get them out there,” Lander said.
“Whatever promotion is necessary to do it … do it. It’s a good product.”
Sportswriter Stephen Brunt, who memorably broke the news of Winnipeg’s new franchise in 2011, says he can’t see the team moving any time soon, as the league is more focused on expansion than relocation.
“I don’t think anybody wants to relocate the team. There’s a bunch of reasons from the league’s business point of view,” Brunt told 680 CJOB’s The Start.
“They want to be out selling expansion teams to people for $1 billion. That’s their goal. They want to put a team in Salt Lake City or Houston or places where they might be able to get full market value and they get to keep all the money. They don’t want to relocate.”
Brunt shared Lander’s view that it’s an ideal time to push ticket sales, with the team just outside of the NHL’s top five in points and number two overall in points percentage.
“The team’s really good right now — you’ve got a team that could win the Stanley Cup. So if you’re going to go and make a pitch to the market about supporting the team and driving ticket sales, it’s a pretty good time to do it … rather than if the team is lousy.”
The Jets (36-15-5) take on the St. Louis Blues (30-25-2) at 7 p.m. Tuesday at Canada Life Centre.