Andrew “Hustler” Paterson discusses his thoughts on the low attendance (11,226) at Tuesday night’s Winnipeg Jets game vs. the LA Kings and what this means for the future of the franchise. Originally streamed October 18, 2023.
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37 Comments
Troubling
It's the flavor in town to crap on the Jets. Just like 1.0. It's what everyone is doing, complaining about the Jets. They are not even bad. Imagine Ottawa, buffalo or islanders. Years of terrible. Can't believe the city is happy to complain. The fun has gone. Where's the heckling. "Crosbys better" was the best. It's tough to see that. If the fans give up. So will the players. Then it's done.
It has nothing to due with support!
If you can't afford FOOD your not going to a game!
$10 beer has nothing to do with it
Some thoughts…
1. Knowing what the economy is like…. Instead of 13 MILLION $ in renos they should have lowered ticket prices.
2. What went on last year may have been resolved within the team but it hurt the fan base.
Fans expected changes… basically apart from the PLD trade not much has changed.
3. A lot of fans are angry about the PLD thing and may have stayed away because of it.
4. A 5-1 loss last night won’t help.
5. A lot went for the atmosphere… at least on TV… it’s quiet. The chants are gone, the excitement is gone… hockey now not entertainment. The party pretty much ended years ago.
I honestly can't stand this topic because I was one of the butts in the seats in 316. I put money into this team that hurt in a way a huge corporate entities would never understand.
As a 50 year fan of this team I would not ever desert my team because I felt the hurt when they were gone. I did my part..
I purchased a 4 game pack for my small business to show support for the Jets. I was shocked that my choice of tickets were only in the 100 or 300 section. Why not 200? I was shocked once again I could not select my own seats. The preselected seats were obstructed. For $1,750 I was able to do 4 equals payments with no interest which was nice, but not being able to select the seats I want especially in the 200 section did leave a sour taste with me. Yet, this can be expected from True North and why fans feel the way they do.
Few things.
A Pandemic into a recession. Into increase prices's. Into massive inflation topped with terrible marketing into mediocrity of team play. Sprinkle on small Arena and choice of tickets….
My only question is. Why is it okay for Florida and Arizona and Ottawa? But not jets?
I guess I’ll post this here as well.
Hus, can you please stop with this fear mongering BS. The Jets aren’t going anywhere. Considering your age and the fact that you worked for 1.0 it amazes me that you forget some pretty simple things.
1.0 didn’t own their own building. They paid rent and didn’t get the concession or parking revenue. 1.0 was, and still is, a shit business. It’s currently playing out of a college rink waiting for a municipality to hand them hundreds of millions of dollars just like they were in the mid nineties.
2.0 however, owns their own building, they own the majority of parking around the arena, they are close to completing their $400 million True North square project that includes 2 towers and a luxury hotel that will take the NHL business from the Fairmont when it’s open. They own Shark Club which has a mini casino generating millions per year. They have a total monopoly on concerts between the arena and the Burt. By comparison, 2.0 is a juggernaut of a business. Stop comparing these situations. They aren’t anywhere close to each other. Fear and guilt isn’t going to get people back to the arena. It’s fucking lazy and dishonest.
Do you really think they are going to build a billion dollar entertainment district and sell the team, their biggest draw to that area because of a couple bad years of attendance? They aren’t entitled to the profits from the first 9 seasons that helped build True North Square. They are in this situation because of their own failures. I am fully confident it will turn around as long as they start respecting their fans and the business community. You can keep being pro True North and anti fan all you want. But at least be honest about the differences between 1.0 and 2.0.
Hate to say it but if they keep playing like they did against LA it isn't going to get better. Also if the unrest gets worse in the middle east the gas prices will skyrocket and drive everything else up – that won't help.
Its inflation plus pissed fans
A bumpy ride ahead.
We have a decent team, we will be on the bubble making it to playoffs.
Got to win. Build the winner
Ticket and beer prices are cheap compared to real NHL markets. Go to Toronto or MSG, and get a beer, and it’ll cost you significantly more than at Canada Life Centre…
This is bad. Writing’s on the wall, Winnipeg.
I love the Winnipeg Jets and I’ll support this team to the best of my ability, but I am a 25 year old who cannot even come close to affording season tickets, nor do I want season tickets as I curl 2 times a week and have other obligations to attend when I’m not curling. That being said I love attending Saturday games and I will try to get to at least 4 or 5 games this year as that’s all I can do to support this organization. I’m sad to see the declining attendance but there are many people like me who can really only attend a handful of games every year. That being said, GO JETS GO!
The Jets averaged 15,276 in 2018-19 and 14,045 in 22-23. If TNSE rolled out their "Forever Winnipeg" campaign because they were concerned about 14k, then they'll be very concerned if they get numbers like 13,410 and 11,226 going forward.
Its not the cost of the games. Its the value of the entertainment. The arena experience sucks. When the team isn't winning its just not a great night out. It needs to be fun regardless of what is happening on the ice
True North is so woke and it makes people cringe. The land acknowledgment to start the game forced down everyone's throat, I know personally pisses most people off. I used to have season tickets for 6 years. In no way, can I support these politics forced on me. I'd rather go to 4 games a year, at a very discounted last minute price.
Maybe the fans have a budget for only one team, and right now the budget is pulled from the Jets for the sake of the Bombers.
There are thousands of Jets season ticket holders that chose to be unvaxxed. They weren't allowed in the building and they now had thousands of dollars worth of tickets to sell. Most of them didn't bother to renew, especially when Chipman still required proof of vax until April 30 2022 even after the provincial mandate was lifted on March 1st of that year. He marginalized a large section of his fan base when he didn't have to. Locked them out of his building during the most exciting stretch of the season.Way to go Mark. You failed miserably and now you're paying the price.
This is the best way I can put this. This fan base has been told for YEARS that "Oh well, players just don't want to come to Winnipeg", so we're expected to just take what we have and accept it. We are not treated as equals in this league compared to other teams. Canadian taxes don't help either. So when we are told to accept not improving defensively since 2019, when we are expecting a Scheifele and Helle trade all summer, only to have them locked up, again feels like a slap in the face. Sure, you have good players locked up, but Scheifele's attitude for the past couple years has soured a lot of fans perception of him. I think this fan base loves Hellebuyck, but yet again we're 3 games in and he still has no defensive help. This fan base has every right to expect mediocrity because that's what we've been told we deserve. We haven't had a top 10 pick since Laine outside of Perfetti, and if players don't want to sign here, you NEED to be more insistent on trying to draft well. Our management has been content with narrowly slipping into the playoffs, just to look incredibly mismatched and get bounced in the first round. This fan base would 100% show up if we had a scrappy team of younger players trying to prove something every night, but we have a group that gets deflated the moment the slightest thing doesn't go their way. We saw that the other night when Vilardi went down and the refs missed some very obvious calls right after. Even at resale prices, why would a fan pay $43 for nosebleeds, $15 minimum parking, $12 for a single beer and nearly $15 for any food at all? Nobody wants to spend $100 for a night of predictable mediocrity
Looks in other small markets Hus, there's a reason why people would fly out to Arizona (when they were in glendale) or Florida for hockey games in some markets its literally cheaper to fly to the states then to stay in their city to see a game live. There's literally smaller markets out there than Winnipegs that are still holding on somehow with abysmal attendance. There's a reason why 20% of Sabres STH'ers are Canadian, because Toronto priced them out and it's still cheaper to buy Sabres season tickets and drive across the boarder than it is to see Leafs games. The Jets marketing department are not doing a good job this year, literally havent heard shit marketing wise until like 2 weeks before the season, no hype from anywhere.
Like I went to Vegas last year for 1 game of the cup final and that crowd blew the absolute shit out of the round 1 crowd here ( I was at both games). Jets fans are just fairweather fans not hockey fans, they only watch Jets and only support the team when the team isnt a complete dumpster fire, plus I've heard the perks of being a STH have been shit for years. Hell in 2019 the Jets marketing had all these shitty grey hats with the Jets logo and nothing to hype people up for the white out. I had my mom and many others asking why they dont have them, tweeted them and literally a week later they had white hats in stock. Team needs to make some front office moves before things will be getting any better.
This team is hated sorry to break it to you, the GM who we hate signed two players long term who we hate! They have zero clue Mark Chipman needs to go he has no clue and doesn’t listen to the fans.
Mark "Woke" Chipman, overlord of public safety, made the brilliant business decision to extend a certain requirement to gain entry to his building. The province actually dropped the need to scan the QR code to get into events on March 1st 2022 but Wokeman decided to marginalize a large portion of his fanbase by unnecessarily extending the requirement until April 30th. Bar your season ticket holders from entering your sub standard building during the most exciting stretch of the season.Well guess what Mark? Those fans didn't renew their contracts, and they're never coming back.
Are the players interesting? Not really. Is the play exciting to watch? No at a all. We play bland hockey with bland players. Chevy and company are serving up the most mundane and uninteresting group of players in all of the NHL. I'm not paying 200$ a ticket to see players im barely interested in. Going to a Jets game has always been considered a premium entertainment. But getting 2 Tickets in the 200 section is 500$. 2 Tickets in Vegas in the 200 section is 224$. A single seat round trip to Vegas is about 300$.
It’s hard to have a lot of sympathy for a city that constantly votes for the liberals, doesn’t anyone there understand the reason everything is so expensive in Canada is directly related to this government’s ludicrous policies? Having said that, another thing that is causing the drop in interest is the American bias when it comes to officiating. It used to be if an American team was losing in their own rink the ref would make any call necessary against a Canadian team to get the home team the lead. Now it’s happening in our own rink! Seriously, we watch Perfetti get drilled into the boards and LA comes away with the pp for that, like, wtf?? Think that would be the call if it was Connor Bedard in Chicago? Of course not. The offending player would have gotten 5 and a 2 game suspension after. The officiating bias is getting so blatant now the game is unwatchable
This is an educational fact check lesson for people. Winnipeg is a sports city. Then talking about the CFL they say ''gotta get the younger kids into the crowd'' and Winnipeg does it well….. However the Winnipeg Jets is not. Avg age is around 48 -51 going to Jets games. Why? Answer that and you will find your solution.
Part 2 of the problem is everything TNSE does to improve the game atmosphere involves more $$ spent. Want to make a nice bar? pay for it! Want a nice lounge standing area? Pay more and more. You want new concessions? That will be more $$..
All Jets fans wanted was what the fans of the Bombers asked for decades. BRING BACK THE DAMN ORIGINAL JERSEYS/LOGO. Give us great perks for season ticket holders. No not discounts or more contests that just cost $$. How about a free jersey. Free tshirts? A damn hat?
And give the fans freedom to go outside. That was the start of it. Its small things that add up that get people thinking. And whats a sports fan thinks doubt creeps in and attitude changes.
You don't think 4k fans are staying away cause the organ player sucks and sounds weak unlike Chicago/LA/NYR/MONTREAL/old winnipeg arena? Then you do not know anything about sports fans and the culture of attending sporting events like myself.
Thank you
Here is a Serious Request I'd like to see Helly from 2018 compared to 2023 over the years showing is he really that slow? I'm thinking he might be done or needs Hip Surgery. If he was an Action Figure he would have Limited Articulation. Why is he going down so early or often? Is he playing curling does he think they can slide a puck on ice 15 feet past 10 players and sticks ;)? I was Big Jets Fan with Teemu Selanne would Win Cups in EA NHL with firend Brian playing entire season with him. They needed to move on from Connor. Why would you sign Dillon who I saw was washed up 10 years ago in SCF for Sharks? Guy was -3 is like -5 then got Schmidt with his 6M. Gotta move those D out. IF Kupari scored that SHG maybe they Win. Now Gabe is hurt. NHL showed they don't need fans anymore during Locked Out Fans Era. No Cups or Winning :).
The bottom line with any franchise is if you don’t have hope of a championship and you’re stuck in the middle, people get detached. Plain and simple.
TNSE became too complacent and neglected the fans, especially STH. The on ice product hasn't changed, the in-game experience hasn't changed, and the overall value to go to games is no longer there. The organization has been tone deaf to this fanbase for over a decade and this is the repercussions of that.
Once TNSE shows they care about the fan base and give the fans a REASON to go (besides the threatening with their ticket campaign), people will continue not to waste their money.
Why would NHL set prices for playoffs?
I wasn't shocked at all, the Jets got to be a legitimate team. We are tired of having a team that just barely make it. We pay for a team that wants to win, not for there paychecks. Chipman better start worrying about what you put on ice instead of a thing Called PRIDE night
The in-game product is lackluster. The concession prices are ridiculous. The owner doesn't support small businesses inside the arena like the bombers do. The GM makes good moves overall but they treat the fans and media like they aren't a part of the "community".
You get to run your team one of 2 ways – if you don't care about the fans, you don't get to rely on their ticket money. If you care about the money from the fans, you need to do MUCH BETTER at engaging the paying fan and treating them with honesty and respect.
The in-game experience is garbage. 2 young people screaming "make some noise". Garbage, and annoying.
Why can't they get more business support? That's not a question for the fans! That's a question for the CEO
A $13 hot dog? A $13 beer. There is no reason for that.
The team has stunk for a couple seasons. Win and people will come. They seem to lose a lot of home games. It's also disgustingly expensive.
Good takes I agree
But disposable income for some definitely unless house paid off or have money saving got down payment maybe like said gas,bills,cars has gone up.
And you can't make tickets to cheap cause Moose. No offence current players but imo Laine and Byfuglien would bring in fans even non hockey fans like a grandparent would know them is missing. Ex were missing a Giannis,LeBron,ect and those players wouldn't come anyway.
Not mention conversion of cdn dollar to US,imo if winnipeg can't support a team stop with Quebec rumors they have less people then here.
Wouldn't want team to leave but NHL doesn't care Airizona has no seats,Florida for along time,or other teams lose money but when wpg or Quebec will be so quick to move
Love this team and always will. However, the middle class doesn’t exist anymore. Many people (myself included) have been priced out. Even if I was willing to take out a second mortgage to attend a game the lacklustre fan experience makes it an easy decision. See you at the Bomber game.