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Sabres' attendance slipping


PASabreFan

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1 hour ago, jsb said:

 

Ticketmaster is it, I've been on the computer and phone for hours trying to find a way to get this done. The cheapest tickets I could find are around 175 bucks apiece before the markup unless you want to sit in the highest row in the arena and that's only if you live in their TV market. I checked Stubhub but at 175 bucks the markup with them is $50. I would prefer if I drive a thousand miles to go to a hockey game that I don't sit in the highest row in the arena but paying approximately $230 apiece for 6 tickets is pretty outrageous if you ask me plus going thru the Predators ticketmaster site, you have to buy a 6 game package with them to get tickets to the game even if you're in the market. Trust me there isn't any $6 tickets available either. 

 

38 minutes ago, Eleven said:

Get creative.  Call the marketing director or community relations manager and tell him/her that Mike Vrabel gave you their number or something.

Working in the Predators Box Office is someone named Eric Schmitz. He is from Buffalo and used to host the Third Man In Podcast about the Sabres. You might want to contact him. 
 

Or if you are on Twitter, try contacting Ben Mathewson who posts Gifs during the Sabres Games. He lives in Nashville and might be able to set you up with something. 
 

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4 hours ago, Weave said:

Buffalo will never institute Buffalo metro only ticket purchasing.  Since the Rigas era they've worked hard to expand their market as far as possible to compete revenue-wise with the competing NHL cities.  No stinking way they go back to local ticket revenue only.  Too many tickets to be sold at higher prices to Canadian ticket purchasers especially.

It's almost like you're saying the Sabres love southern Ontario Leaf fans.

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1 hour ago, Brawndo said:

 

Working in the Predators Box Office is someone named Eric Schmitz. He is from Buffalo and used to host the Third Man In Podcast about the Sabres. You might want to contact him. 
 

Or if you are on Twitter, try contacting Ben Mathewson who posts Gifs during the Sabres Games. He lives in Nashville and might be able to set you up with something. 
 

Truly appreciate the ideas and I am on twitter but Ben Mathewson can't be messaged. I wouldn't know how to contact Eric Schmitz. So I'm back to square one again.

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On 12/3/2019 at 5:21 PM, nfreeman said:

It's also a pretty expensive night out for millennials carrying heavy student debt.  There aren't any $6 seats in the oranges anymore (and IMHO there should be -- I'd encourage the Sabres to sell all unsold upper-deck seats on game day for $10 to anyone with a student ID ).

This is a great idea, and should be extended to military(active, retired, reserves) & first responders.  It would help fill the empty seats, and maybe bring a little more atmosphere into the building...and IMO, it's great PR.

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5 hours ago, LabattBlue said:

This is a great idea, and should be extended to military(active, retired, reserves) & first responders.  It would help fill the empty seats, and maybe bring a little more atmosphere into the building...and IMO, it's great PR.

Why not just make it anyone...if they are unused seats?  

The die hards/regular ticket buyers aren't going to make sitting in the upper deck corners a habit...so its not like you are going to lose sales from them. Get people in the seats anyway possible...offer that deal to everyone.

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9 minutes ago, mjd1001 said:

Why not just make it anyone...if they are unused seats?  

The die hards/regular ticket buyers aren't going to make sitting in the upper deck corners a habit...so its not like you are going to lose sales from them. Get people in the seats anyway possible...offer that deal to everyone.

Chet and Muffy made a wrong turn once and ended up by 307, not even the worst of the worst slums. She was mortified, and Chet was seen with beads of sweat on his stiff upper lip.

Edited by PASabreFan
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On 12/3/2019 at 5:00 PM, Zamboni said:

I’ve always hated the “tickets sold” number they announce. It’s such a farce. 
It’s always gonna be 15,000+ because there are over 15,000 season ticket holders. Those are bought and paid for before opening night. 
I know it’ll never change, but it would be nice if they reported the number of tickets scanned at the entrance. Not the tickets sold.

My understanding is season ticket numbers are on the decline relative to last year, and are now at a *relatively* low level.

As far as actual in-game attendance is concerned, the chunks of empty seats everywhere in the building are noticeable and alarming.  I have heard folks mention a ring of empty seats around the entire building up high, and there are always big gaps down low near the glass that can easily be seen on TV.  

When Pegula first bought the team, he had the entire community including many non-Sabres fans on his side.  The building was packed and people were expecting to see immediate success based on pure emotion and adrenaline.

Since then, the systemic mismanagement of the franchise has seen fan enthusiasm, particularly among non-traditional Sabre fans, dwindle to a trickle.

I get the impression word has finally worked its way around the community that it is not worth the bother/cost to go to a Sabres game as the show sucks on most nights.

There is a core fanbase, of course, of Canadians and loyal Sabres fans that are impervious to all this.  They'll show up no matter what happens.  Whatever that number is is pretty much what we see in the building on most nights these days.

 

 

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We may like to think that this is a Sabre problem, and to some extent, it is.  But attendance across the league is down too, and I'm guessing you'll see similar numbers in other leagues over the last few years.  The average attendance has dropped from last year for 21 out of the 31 teams.  It's early, so those numbers can catch up.  There's also the issue of what numbers actually get reported in each building, but either way, whatever they're reporting, it's down.

A lot of the numbers are fairly small, so for the hell of it, I'll look at those with a change of +/- 1000 fans per game.  You have 8 teams who decreased by over 1000 fans per game vs. only 2 teams that increased by over 1000.  I'm not sure if there are any new arenas or if there were any renovations that drastically changed the capacity of any arenas, but I doubt that would explain away all these drops.

 

And one completely unrelated note while looking at the attendance figures.  Minnesota has played 10 home games and 20 road games so far.  That must suck for them.

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3 hours ago, shrader said:

We may like to think that this is a Sabre problem, and to some extent, it is.  But attendance across the league is down too, and I'm guessing you'll see similar numbers in other leagues over the last few years.  The average attendance has dropped from last year for 21 out of the 31 teams.  It's early, so those numbers can catch up.  There's also the issue of what numbers actually get reported in each building, but either way, whatever they're reporting, it's down.

A lot of the numbers are fairly small, so for the hell of it, I'll look at those with a change of +/- 1000 fans per game.  You have 8 teams who decreased by over 1000 fans per game vs. only 2 teams that increased by over 1000.  I'm not sure if there are any new arenas or if there were any renovations that drastically changed the capacity of any arenas, but I doubt that would explain away all these drops.

 

And one completely unrelated note while looking at the attendance figures.  Minnesota has played 10 home games and 20 road games so far.  That must suck for them.

I imagine it is a league wide trend other than a couple of outliers here or there (teams expected to suck end up surprisingly good and ticket sales get boosted or vice versa). Professional sports leagues in general have been killing off the golden goose that is fandom for decades. Prices are ridiculous and seem to rise faster than inflation year after year. Meanwhile tvs with high definition, or ultra high definition give you a comparable if not better experience at home, plus then you don't have to burn gas, factor in time to drive there and back, find parking, overpay for parking, deal with traffic, and get ripped off with $10 beers, $8 nachos, $9 burgers (or whatever they run these days).

So you can drop a hundred bucks on a single ticket and spend 5 hours going to watch the product in person or watch the game on tv for $2 (per game) or less (depending on whether you have cable, Nhl.tv, Center Ice, etc). You're done in half the time, no extra gas, plus you can make that even less if you wait a while to start the game and fast forward through the nonsense. I'm honestly surprised attendance hasn't dropped more, especially when it seems like the only perks you get from showing up in person are coupons to give those greedy pigs even more of your money. For the price of going to one game or two in person you can get the entire season on television, even if you're out of market and have to pay for the package.

 

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50 minutes ago, Drunkard said:

I imagine it is a league wide trend other than a couple of outliers here or there (teams expected to suck end up surprisingly good and ticket sales get boosted or vice versa). Professional sports leagues in general have been killing off the golden goose that is fandom for decades. Prices are ridiculous and seem to rise faster than inflation year after year. Meanwhile tvs with high definition, or ultra high definition give you a comparable if not better experience at home, plus then you don't have to burn gas, factor in time to drive there and back, find parking, overpay for parking, deal with traffic, and get ripped off with $10 beers, $8 nachos, $9 burgers (or whatever they run these days).

So you can drop a hundred bucks on a single ticket and spend 5 hours going to watch the product in person or watch the game on tv for $2 (per game) or less (depending on whether you have cable, Nhl.tv, Center Ice, etc). You're done in half the time, no extra gas, plus you can make that even less if you wait a while to start the game and fast forward through the nonsense. I'm honestly surprised attendance hasn't dropped more, especially when it seems like the only perks you get from showing up in person are coupons to give those greedy pigs even more of your money. For the price of going to one game or two in person you can get the entire season on television, even if you're out of market and have to pay for the package.

 

They are not killing off the golden goose. Thry just replaced it with a platinum one. 
They just don’t need people in the stands anymore. Sure, they would like more but they have gone away from thinking that they need fannies in the seats buying concessions and stuff. The business model is completely different. The NBA was the last league to start to see the shift but they are now in lock step. Baseball attendance has been down for at least the last five years.

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4 minutes ago, tom webster said:

They are not killing off the golden goose. Thry just replaced it with a platinum one. 
They just don’t need people in the stands anymore. Sure, they would like more but they have gone away from thinking that they need fannies in the seats buying concessions and stuff. The business model is completely different. The NBA was the last league to start to see the shift but they are now in lock step. Baseball attendance has been down for at least the last five years.

I assume in your description the platinum goose is their model to stay fat and happy off tv deals, right? Or are you talking about the overpriced merchandise they sell? You know, the ones that are made in some Chinese sweatshop, right across the street from a different Chinese sweatshop that is making the knockoffs for a fraction of the price?

If so, they'll kill that goose off too, it will just take longer. The bundling of cable tv channels has helped the tv market in general keep crappy channels afloat based off the demand for more popular ones but we're getting closer and closer to a la carte offerings with each year. I cancelled Directv earlier this year after more than a decade and I was honestly surprised at how close they are moving towards an a la carte system already. Spectrum offers a streaming service for all local channels plus up to 10 individual channels for something like $30 and just by giving them a working phone number, I was able to sign up for 2 free days of some streaming service called philo that offered basically every single non-sports cable channel (close to 60 channels) for $20 per month. It's amazing how much more bang you can get for your entertainment buck when you decide you're not willing to pay for 16 ESPN's so you can stay up to date on spelling bees, cricket matches, tennis, and 70 re-airings of Sportscenter ad nauseum.

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39 minutes ago, Drunkard said:

I assume in your description the platinum goose is their model to stay fat and happy off tv deals, right? Or are you talking about the overpriced merchandise they sell? You know, the ones that are made in some Chinese sweatshop, right across the street from a different Chinese sweatshop that is making the knockoffs for a fraction of the price?

If so, they'll kill that goose off too, it will just take longer. The bundling of cable tv channels has helped the tv market in general keep crappy channels afloat based off the demand for more popular ones but we're getting closer and closer to a la carte offerings with each year. I cancelled Directv earlier this year after more than a decade and I was honestly surprised at how close they are moving towards an a la carte system already. Spectrum offers a streaming service for all local channels plus up to 10 individual channels for something like $30 and just by giving them a working phone number, I was able to sign up for 2 free days of some streaming service called philo that offered basically every single non-sports cable channel (close to 60 channels) for $20 per month. It's amazing how much more bang you can get for your entertainment buck when you decide you're not willing to pay for 16 ESPN's so you can stay up to date on spelling bees, cricket matches, tennis, and 70 re-airings of Sportscenter ad nauseum.

The tv deals aren't with those providers though.  They're with the individual channels that you're selecting in that a la carte service.  The NFL ticket is really the only one that's tied directly to a specific provider.  So that tv money will still be there, even if it's someone else paying the league for the rights.  If streaming service X ultimately gets NHL broadcasting rights, they're still paying for it.

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46 minutes ago, shrader said:

The tv deals aren't with those providers though.  They're with the individual channels that you're selecting in that a la carte service.  The NFL ticket is really the only one that's tied directly to a specific provider.  So that tv money will still be there, even if it's someone else paying the league for the rights.  If streaming service X ultimately gets NHL broadcasting rights, they're still paying for it.

I understand that, but over time the move toward a la carte is going to putting a bigger squeeze on both the individual channels that offer live sports as well as the providers who offer the streaming/tv services. ESPN has always been one of the most expensive channels and it used to be automatically included (and put in the bill) of basically every package unless you got the most basic of basic packages and that's regardless of whether you got your tv from Spectrum, Comcast, Directv, or whoever. With the way things are trending, sports channels won't be able to continually raise prices by from getting $11 from every single customer (even the half that don't watch any sports), they'll have to get $20 from each of the households willing to pay for their service. People not interested in sports will start avoiding packages that include these expensive channels like ESPN, MSG, etc. and they will have to make up the difference by increasing the prices on the (soon to be smaller) customer base.

There will still be streaming services like Fubo that cater to sports nuts and services like Philo that avoid sports due to the higher cost to offer those channels. Right now Fubo runs $45/month and Philo runs $20/month with no sports. 10 years from now it could easily be $90/month for Fubo and $30/month for Philo. Over time, that may cause more people to ditch Fubo and other providers that cater to sports programming and the networks that offer live sports will have to increase their prices for sports programming to the providers even further which leads to the providers raising prices on consumers even further. Eventually, just like with the in person experience with sports, more and more people will decide it's no longer worth it and they'll kill off their next golden goose through greed.

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2 minutes ago, shrader said:

@Drunkard, that all assumes that the leagues themselves don't evolve as well over that time.  We're talking about experts at making money.  They'll find new revenue streams should things change like that, they always do.

I agree. I'm not predicting the demise of the NFL, MLB, NBA, or NHL by any stretch. They will find a way to adapt and survive. I actually like the way they do season packages for Sunday Ticket, Center Ice, and League pass or whatever they call the baseball and basketball ones. Let the die hard fans pay to see every game they want and let the people who don't want to pay for it more easily avoid the cost. Whenever the Sabres pull their heads out of their butts I will probably even go back to paying for NHL.tv because it's actually a good value in my eyes when the team isn't a tire fire. It's just not worth the money to me now. I will never shell out for Sunday Ticket ever again though because it's too expensive and no longer worth it to me. I won't pay for baseball or basketball either because I never watch them, but that's not a pricing issue because I have no clue what they charge.

I'm definitely looking forward to true a la carte programming though. As I said earlier I had Directv for over a decade and I paid for crap I never watched like ESPN, the home shopping network, Oprah, CMT, and countless other channels, ESPN is just the most egregious example because they are so much more expensive than the other networks I was paying for without watching. Before I cancelled service I wrote down every show I had set to record off my dvr list. I think I had 48 shows in all and they all came from less than 15 channels with none of them being on a sports network. I'd rather pay those 15 channels $2 each than give some provider twice as much money only to have half of it go to fund channels I never watch. In fact the only show I had set to DVR I couldn't get with Philo (other than basic network shows I can get with an antenna) was Conan O'Brien but that could also be blamed on sports because it airs on TBS and either TBS still airs Braves games like it did 20 years ago or it has something to do with basketball playing on TNT and Turner owning them both.

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3 hours ago, Drunkard said:

I assume in your description the platinum goose is their model to stay fat and happy off tv deals, right? Or are you talking about the overpriced merchandise they sell? You know, the ones that are made in some Chinese sweatshop, right across the street from a different Chinese sweatshop that is making the knockoffs for a fraction of the price?

If so, they'll kill that goose off too, it will just take longer. The bundling of cable tv channels has helped the tv market in general keep crappy channels afloat based off the demand for more popular ones but we're getting closer and closer to a la carte offerings with each year. I cancelled Directv earlier this year after more than a decade and I was honestly surprised at how close they are moving towards an a la carte system already. Spectrum offers a streaming service for all local channels plus up to 10 individual channels for something like $30 and just by giving them a working phone number, I was able to sign up for 2 free days of some streaming service called philo that offered basically every single non-sports cable channel (close to 60 channels) for $20 per month. It's amazing how much more bang you can get for your entertainment buck when you decide you're not willing to pay for 16 ESPN's so you can stay up to date on spelling bees, cricket matches, tennis, and 70 re-airings of Sportscenter ad nauseum.

You are at least ten years behind. The revenue streams made possible by new technology seems endless at this point.

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Now that sports betting has become legalized, the Major Professional Sports Leagues will look at that as another major revenue stream. 

There will also be a shift on how fans watch the games in stadiums. I believe Kim Pegula mentioned that in the Bills/Sabres Stadium Surveys that fans want more open spaces to congregate and watch games, when the renovations happen at KBC and when the New Bills Stadium is built you will see that incorporated. 

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44 minutes ago, Brawndo said:

Now that sports betting has become legalized, the Major Professional Sports Leagues will look at that as another major revenue stream. 

There will also be a shift on how fans watch the games in stadiums. I believe Kim Pegula mentioned that in the Bills/Sabres Stadium Surveys that fans want more open spaces to congregate and watch games, when the renovations happen at KBC and when the New Bills Stadium is built you will see that incorporated.

Don't be at all surprised if the seating low between the blue lines gets replaced by table type (reserved) seating.  (Similar to the bar seating behind the Sabres end in the 200 level.)

The company running the fan surveys was pushing that hard.

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Disney/ESPN is already adapting and surviving anyway. Disney + has tens of millions of subscribers already and you can get that bundled with Hulu and ESPN+ for the same price or cheaper than Netflix.  I would have never subscribed to ESPN + alone, but now I have it and actually use it and enjoy it as part of this package.  Sabres games have been on it a few times already.  Just an example, but these mega conglomerate entertainment companies do have some positive aspects as well for consumers and they still get to make money.

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9 hours ago, Thwomp! said:

Disney/ESPN is already adapting and surviving anyway. Disney + has tens of millions of subscribers already and you can get that bundled with Hulu and ESPN+ for the same price or cheaper than Netflix.  I would have never subscribed to ESPN + alone, but now I have it and actually use it and enjoy it as part of this package.  Sabres games have been on it a few times already.  Just an example, but these mega conglomerate entertainment companies do have some positive aspects as well for consumers and they still get to make money.

Who calls the games when they’re on ESPN+? 

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21 hours ago, Thwomp! said:

Disney/ESPN is already adapting and surviving anyway. Disney + has tens of millions of subscribers already and you can get that bundled with Hulu and ESPN+ for the same price or cheaper than Netflix.  I would have never subscribed to ESPN + alone, but now I have it and actually use it and enjoy it as part of this package.  Sabres games have been on it a few times already.  Just an example, but these mega conglomerate entertainment companies do have some positive aspects as well for consumers and they still get to make money.

So, you say ... Sabres games have been on it a few times already. So ESPN+ doesn’t stream every Sabres game?

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