Quote:
Originally Posted by Rhettzky
In the dressing room at hockey 3 out of 5 season ticket holders are canceling. One long term holder and two 7 to 8 year. I was kind of surprised to hear that. We'll be keeping ours but I ca understand why some don't want to stick it out. I wonder what the retention rate will be this year.
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I think they're more vulnerable to cancellations this time around versus the dark years pre-2004 because they've been pretty aggressive in their pricing of the more expensive tickets.
It's a fairly hefty, easy discretionary expense for a household or a business to drop and re-apply those monies elsewhere.
What might save them, as I said earlier, is that most non-business season tickets are shared among multiple partners and some of those other partners might take on the burden even as some drop out.
The Flames probably still have a year or two to flounder before a non-renewal pullback would really pick up speed.
Season ticket holders are the bread and butter of any franchise. They are the raving fans. They're in the habit of renewing and they find it difficult to break that habit. But they're not impervious to abuse and they're very hard and expensive for a team to replace once they're gone.
2004 was a very interesting and somewhat unusual development.
Truthfully and brutally, this team has been past the first round of the playoffs only once in 24 years bu 2004 was placed very nicely in the middle of that.
By the time 2003-04 rolled around, people actually in the building was probably around the 13,500 range, even though they were selling more tickets than that. 2004 was a manic shot in the arm for the franchise and they've coasted on that for about nine years.
They probably don't have a lot of grace left before season ticket renewal habits start to be broken, just as happened in the seven year playoff drought pre-2004.
And they have a new building coming up.
Lots of internal pressures and sweating right now on the business side I would think.
Cowperson