Quote:
Originally Posted by Jay Random
To put it in perspective: Average attendance at NHL games so far this year has been 15,859. That's the lowest in at least 20 years, excluding the no-fans COVID season. (I don't have numbers handy before that.)
At the tail end of the dead puck era, when games were boring, most small-market teams had no hope, and a third of the teams in the league were reportedly in danger of relocating or folding – with all that, average attendance for the same period in the season bottomed out at 16,122 in 2003-04.
This year is worse, and if you look at the figures so far, there is no sign of a rising trend from game to game:
https://soundofhockey.com/2021/11/16...cross-the-nhl/
I stand by my choice of the word ‘crisis’. |
I could be wrong, but I suspect other sports are going to go through similar things.
I think the gate-driven model was precarious even before COVID, but COVID has accelerated what was going to happen eventually. The NHL needs to find ways to make money other ways. Not an easy task of course, but it's not like they will have a choice.