Quote:
Originally Posted by saskflames69
I wasn't talking about visiting fans, I was talking about the fans at home. Of course I would love to travel to Phoenix and watch a bunch of games, but I'm not going to watch the Coyotes at the Saddledome because Phoenix is a nice, warm city.
It's been ~20 years since southern expansion. You would think these markets would have caught onto hockey by now.
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As was pointed out by Flames Addicition, he's not talking about people in Calgary, he's talking about people in less established markets. I can tell you from experience that the perceived desirability of a game is tied to the rivalry, or at least familiarity, that people have with the city from which a team is visiting. Tickets to Rangers games (and this is an established market) against the Jets are a heck of a lot easier to get than tickets to a game against the Flyers, and they both sucked this year (Jets were actually a better team). There's a reason those Jets tickets weren't appealing to the corporate seat holder that handed them off to me, and it's partly due to 'where the f is Winnipeg?' Certainly rivalries can develop despite geography, and this isn't a definitive reason to place a team in a market, but it's part of the equation.
People have outrageous expectations with how long it should take for an entirely foreign sport to set down roots in a community. It takes a tremendous amount of time, leadership, money and luck to introduce something foreign and have it flourish. Expecting any market to achieve that in 20 years is unrealistic. A few will do well, a few will fail and most will fall somewhere in the middle. The funny part about people complaining about markets having had enough time is that they have no personal investment in that location, so why do they care? Evidently the people who are putting in the time, money and effort think that there's an opportunity to succeed in that market, and as long as those people exist there will be a team there.