Quote:
Originally Posted by jayswin
I'm much more skeptical of the Calgary hockey market, especially as our city looks to be heading to a new economic reality rather than a two to three year recession.
Ticket sales have cooled immensely over the past few years despite some exciting hockey and making the playoffs twice. The Flames have sucked literally as much money as they could out of this city for years (nothing wrong with that) and it's starting to show with many nights having thousands of unsold seats and upwards of 5k actual empty seats.
Beware the writing on the wall with this city's ability to support the Flames at the level to which this organization has grown accustomed to. The warning signs are there, and without a major rebound in oil the expected excitement to jump into a new building at much higher cost isn't going to be there in this city like it was in Edmonton. (They had perfect timing with McDavid).
And certainly beware the mostly mythical wait list. There's a waitlist for specific seats and sections, there's no waitlist to get season tickets in the building. They wisely sell the former as the latter.
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Great post.
I remember years ago, I think it was cowboy89 posted soemthing about the flames hot house membership was $100 per year and the ticket agent he spoke with said the hot house had 20k members at the time.
I think I saw King say two different numbers so far this spring/summer about season ticket renewals, but both numbers (~95%) would be less than they were ~7 years ago (98%).
It would be interesting to know the hothouse membership today.