Rochester: Interesting articile on their teams

I agree with Curt Styres that a winning team is the best marketing tool for a sports franchise.
The thing that blows my mind is that Rochester had just over 3000 for a weekend playoff game last season.
Maybe there are too many teams in Rochester.
The good thing about Syracuse is we get at least 5000 per game no matter how good or bad our team is playing.
You would think competing against a nationally known top tier basketball program that our attendance
should be bad, but I guess it proves how dedicated we are as hockey fans.

lettucehead wrote:

I agree with Curt Styres that a winning team is the best marketing tool for a sports franchise.
The thing that blows my mind is that Rochester had just over 3000 for a weekend playoff game last season.
Maybe there are too many teams in Rochester.
The good thing about Syracuse is we get at least 5000 per game no matter how good or bad our team is playing.
You would think competing against a nationally known top tier basketball program that our attendance
should be bad, but I guess it proves how dedicated we are as hockey fans.

Getting 3000 for a first round AHL playoff game is the norm. Actually it might be slightly above average. Even back int he Amerks "glory days" in the 80's, they would draw 3-4,000 in the first rounds. Crowds pick up as you go along.

Jeez your right. It looked like every team in the playoffs besides a few, had attendance drop offs.
I wonder why people would stop going to games when it matters the most?

Less free tickets for the playoffs?

Also some teams tally tickets sold, not necessarily used, in their regular season attendance figures. This includes sponsor's unused season tickets. Whereas I've read playoff games are true turnstile numbers.

I believe I have also read that Howard demands that our regular attendance figure be accurate, not padded. Free tickets or not, our numbers are true.

Mike you nailed it [ less free tickets ] . In Syracuse and most other AHL cities they sell several hundred season tickets to Corporations and businesses.

I guess I'm just suprised that people won't pull out their wallets for playoff tix.

You don't have group sales in the playoffs for starters. That's the biggest. Second, you have very little time to sell tickets. It's just always the way it's been. And in Rochester, at least prior to the last few years, seeing the first round of the playoffs was the norm, and people didn't get excited until the Amerks got to the 2nd or 3rd round.

Do they really think that soccer and lacrosse and even minor league basketball (if thats what its called)
are going to be successful? I know they tried some of this stuff here in Syracuse and none of it worked.

Playoffs are playoffs, there`s no argument anymore. It`s showtime. No matter which round.

lettucehead wrote:

Do they really think that soccer and lacrosse and even minor league basketball (if thats what its called)
are going to be successful? I know they tried some of this stuff here in Syracuse and none of it worked.

Soccer and lacrosse are very successful. The NLL has the best players in the world and is pretty exciting. No idea how that didn't work in Syracuse.

The basketball team will go away eventually, same with the indoor football team. Ideally, Rochester would be better off with 4 teams. The Red Wings, Amerks, Knighthawks and Rhinos.

Kalvinators wrote:

Playoffs are playoffs, there`s no argument anymore. It`s showtime. No matter which round.

We think that way. But minor league sports are driven a lot by group sales. There's no group sales in the playoffs. Teams just don't draw in rounds 1 or 2.

Amerks6 wrote:

Kalvinators wrote:

Playoffs are playoffs, there`s no argument anymore. It`s showtime. No matter which round.

We think that way. But minor league sports are driven a lot by group sales. There's no group sales in the playoffs. Teams just don't draw in rounds 1 or 2.

You can allways compare the stats with other teams and say how good they are in the league

Kalvinators wrote:

Amerks6 wrote:

Kalvinators wrote:

Playoffs are playoffs, there`s no argument anymore. It`s showtime. No matter which round.

We think that way. But minor league sports are driven a lot by group sales. There's no group sales in the playoffs. Teams just don't draw in rounds 1 or 2.

You can allways compare the stats with other teams and say how good they are in the league

Not really. A team that doesn't see the playoffs much will probably draw better in round 1 as they are not used to it. Like I said, back even when the Amerks were the top draw in the league they struggled to draw crowds in round 1.