Why are teams struggling to sell out games?
The NHL is a gate-driven league. You may have heard this said a time or two before. While leagues like the NFL and NBA generate a major portion of their revenue from broadcasting deals, the NHL still relies much more heavily on in-person attendance. It can’t be a great sign, then, that teams around the league have been failing to sell out early in the season.
The Vegas Golden Knights snapped their nine-year sellout streak on October 8, when they hit just 92% attendance for a game against the Toronto Maple Leafs. On Thursday, the Edmonton Oilers had over 2,000 empty seats for their home game against the Utah Mammoth. Multiple other teams have seen their attendance fall short of expectations.
On Friday’s episode of Daily Faceoff LIVE, hosts Tyler Yaremchuk and Carter Hutton discussed the possible reasons for the disappointing attendance figures across the NHL.
Tyler Yaremchuk: If you go back to Tuesday, I saw this from Puck Report NHL, of the 16 home games, because remember on Tuesday every single team in the NHL played, there were just as many teams that were sub-90% attendance as there were at 100% and sold out, which I just think is crazy. The Blue Jackets were at 75%, the Islanders were at 79%, the Senators were at 82%, the Sharks were at 82%. Last night in Edmonton, they were at 82% capacity for a Thursday night game. Usually those sell well. It’s Thursday, it’s the mini-Friday. The weather’s still good in Edmonton.
I don’t know. I think with ticket prices, they’ve lost the plot a little bit. I think that’s true across the board. We saw Vegas have their first game, I think in franchise history, that was not announced as a sell out the other day. I think Vegas has lost the plot a little bit with their connection to that fanbase. It’s crazy Hutts. I’m sure you’ve felt it before, too, but going to games now is wildly expensive and I think the league is starting to see the effects of what I would call price gouging.
Carter Hutton: I agree. I think that’s right where my mind goes when you start to look at attendance. It’s just the fact that the cost of living nowadays for people going to games, and people with families, and just putting gas in your car and figuring out how to manage life whether it’s you or it’s with a family, I think the prices are so high and as it goes up there has to be a happy medium for the NHL to navigate. Right now, we’re probably seeing the side effects of just prices being too high.
You can catch the full discussion and the rest of Friday’s episode here…
