Frequent Flyer #310 "20 People in the Building"

0:00Checked at 3.45 traffic 2 miles, final without delay. Cross runway 30 left, runway 30 right, clear for takeoff. OK, cross 30 left, clear for takeoff, 30. You mentioned the attendance dance, so I quickly went to hockey reference and I've got some attendance figures on there. So in terms of like average attendance, Montreal leads the way in first place. Tampa and Florida are number two and three, but they also don't forget had an outdoor

1:05game. So the attendance numbers are skewed because they had the baseball stadium in Miami and the football stadium for Tampa. Detroit Vancouver is still up there for whatever reason and average attendance. Chicago is right there as well, 18,751. Philadelphia is 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12th and they are at 18,075. So again, but their capacity of their arena is 19,537. So there are about 1500 away from capacity. If you go to percent capacity, Vegas is number one in the NHL, 102.4%. Wow, yeah, I would not have guessed that.

2:06I guess it's a hot ticket in town and I guess all the people that travel there go to see the gold nights and whoever they're playing that night. So if you go to a percent capacity though, the flyers are closer to the bottom. They are only 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, they are 8th from bottom, wow. So 92.5% capacity. So based on their capacity of the arena and how many tickets have been sold in the amount of games. The flyers are listed at, and again, they'll spin that as we're at over 90% capacity, 92.5. The lowest is Columbus at 89%. So literally, you know, 3% or so. Hey, man, I don't know if you can, if you can toggle this on the website you're at on

3:06on hockey reference. Can you toggle by a year? Because I think one of the questions that we had was when a team is actually, you know, in year 1, 2 or 3 of your year build, of a rebuild when they suck, what does that attendance actually look like then? I mean, we go in down, you know, it seems like something in the high 80s, 80% is what we're seeing now with team like Columbus. But are we talking about like 60% capacity for an extended period of time for those types of rebuilding teams or I mean, I would probably venture to guess it's still probably somewhere in the 80s. So, you know, there's certainly margins there, but it's not like, you know, you're taking a bath where, you know, 60% of your audience isn't showing up. That's what I would guess, too. I also think that the numbers are a little bit skewed because like, those are the tickets sold. Yeah. But how many, how many season ticket holders are like, fuck this? I'm not going on a Tuesday night to see this shit. And that still counts as a sale, the sold ticket. If you're watching the flyers on TV, that arena is not 90% capacity right now.

4:11See and like, and then you hear of all the times that like Nick, for example, I got free tickets or Katie or whoever, right? You know, that's kind of a thing that skews everything, too. Dan Hilford is good at putting those selling points like, oh, we had 90 something percent season ticket renewals. Like he's good at using those numbers. Yeah. I'm just, it'd be really interesting to see like, these are averages over all the home games. And you got to remember games like the Anaheim when cutter gochase in town, like that's going to be a sellout. Yeah. Like those, those also will, you know, anytime you do really well, it'll impact the average. And then every time there's a Wednesday night game and against Ottawa, it, that also plays a role, too. You know what I mean? It is interesting, though, that there's a couple of teams that are over 100% capacity. And those teams, those teams at 100 or greater, Utah, Boston, Dallas, Carolina, Montreal, Seattle,

5:18Nashville, Colorado, Vegas, and then they put Tampa and Florida. But again, they had the outdoor games. Interesting. So I guess, you know, like the fear with the flyers, like the reason they don't want to do a traditional rebuild is because there is this amorphous fear in that building that they're going to lose a bunch of money. And possibly they think that brand reputation is at stake, too. Like those are the two things that I can think of. Yes. Right? So like the brand reputation, I don't necessarily think that's, that's a legitimate risk because you've had other teams that are, yeah, like this is just how the league works. Like I wish it wasn't that way. Like I fucking hate that you have to do this. It sucks horribly that this is the formula, but it's the fucking way the league works. That's how it is. So then, you know, if that's a low risk, then how risky is it actually that they're going to be losing substantial money for a period of time during that initial rebuild?

6:23You know, I don't think it's, I think with the proper marketing and stuff and it's a pretty rabid fan base, like I mean, people are still buying tickets to go to these games. Is that a real risk not to try this? Like I'm sure they've had that conversation at some point, but I'm just skeptical. I don't think that it's, it's that serious of a risk. I think that you have to try it. There's not a good old toggle feature here on any of this website, the ESPN used to be really good at that. They don't do that anymore. I took that down when the NHL brought him back because they probably hiding those numbers for a reason, but like none of the, none of these toggled to kind of just see the trends over the years. I feel like we would have heard about something like with just teams. I don't know. Maybe no one's really looked into it, but I think it's a great question is like, like when the avalanche, like, I mean, just take them, for example, because they're kind of somewhat recent in time and we can go to, you know, with, with McKinnon's very early years, you know, around the time in the land of scog were drafted. Like, what do the avalanche's attendance figures look like?

7:24That's a pretty big market out in Denver as well. You know, were they, were they taking a bath, you know, 50% seat sold for those years? I don't think so. I mean, it probably wasn't 100% like it is now, but it wasn't 50. Maybe isn't the high 80s. So there's, sure, there's a bit of a margin there, but is that margin enough where the risk isn't worth it? I think the answer is no. So I'm now on hockey DB and they're listing the sharks. I think that this was the same data as hockey reference. So they said the sharks have average 15,750. They're building though is only 17,000 and change. So they're off by about selling out by about like probably 13, 14, 1500 tickets. I plugged in just randomly. I said, okay, show me the data for 2022, 23 season.

8:24So three years ago, the sharks were at 13,988 for that season average. Okay. So they went, they went from 14,000 to 15,700 right now. Okay. So that's an extra 1700 tickets that they're selling on average every game. Yeah. And then during that, that downtime too, that's what percentages give you like a percentage of the, like the 13,000 out of a capacity is what you say, 17,000, I mean, that's fairly dramatic, I guess. It doesn't, yeah, their website is not, you can't play with any of the data, but just to give you an idea, the flyers were in 22, 23, 17,635. And this season, 18,775, okay, gotcha.

9:28So I mean, even with Zegris and Vladar and Briere and all this other stuff, like their average attendance really only increased a couple hundred. So Colorado here, their worst season of their full length rebuild was 16, 17 where they won 22 games. Their average attendance was 14,835. They're won the cup in 21, 22 and their average attendance was 17, 4, 99. So about 3,000 difference. Interesting. So I mean, which 14 was pretty low, there's 1, 2, 3, 4, 6 from the bottom and 16, 17. See that sounds about, like if that's the number for Colorado and that's pretty close to the number with San Jose and Chicago and other teams like that, then that's pretty

10:29much what it is. Like that's the range. Yeah, that's filling your building. That's good barometer of what you could expect. Look, is there a bit of a hit, yeah, but I just don't think that they hit like it's not like there's going to be 20 people holding and you lost billions and billions of dollars of it. It's not going to be that insane. It's a business cycle. It's like, that's just how it works, like there's an ed and flow. There's up and down and you cannot just constantly have, you know, that 98% to 100% capacity every single freaking year. The league doesn't work like that. It's just like you don't have teams that do that and that's just that's just part of the business. That's industry standard and so yeah, that's an interesting exercise is to see how extensive is the reduction in tickets sold slash attendance when you do engage in a real rebuild and how

11:29disparate is that compared to when you are winning, you're going to get some lean years, I guess, but I think it's a calculated business risk and I think that I think it pays off at the end of the day and it at least shows that you're doing everything you can to try to win and do what the rest of the league is doing to produce winners. Yeah, and then the market dictates it too. If you're a team like Colorado was in that pathetic season, you know that it's going to be a struggle to get people to sign up for season tickets. No, so what do you do? Let's lower the season ticket price, you know, I don't know how many percent. Yeah. And you can try to get some people back that way or but if you drafted, you know, Macar or a McKinnon and they're starting to look good, how many jerseys at, you know, 200 bucks a pop, are you going to be selling? That also hits your bottom line too, like that's also a good thing.

12:30So I mean, I don't know, there seems to be like a limit, like a floor and a ceiling of how bad it can get. The real disaster would be like Utah, they're building, I didn't realize how small it was. And that's the basketball building. So they're averaging, you know, 12,000, I don't know, 900 or something like that. They're building and they're at about 100% capacity. And that's with it's a brand new team, essentially, they're going to the second year. And people are excited and they want to see the games and they're fairly competitive. I think they're in a playoff spot right now. So if they go through a dry spell, like do they have that 3,000, 2,500, 3,000, do they dip below 10,000? And then how worrisome would that be for that franchise? If they can't get 10,000 tickets sold average in a building that's 12,800 or whatever it

13:30is, it's in the 12s, that could be concerning for them. But then there's a limit to how much they can spend on players and everything else. Because other teams like the Flyers can sell 18,000 tickets if they want it to. That's it. You toss another example of a team that you can make the salary cap 300 million. They're not going to be spending that. They can't. When a peg can't, there's no way with the building that they're in. They're already gouging people as it is. Like it's just it's a strange economic model. But it just show you that the league is still very much gate driven. If people stop going to the arena, that's when real alarm bells start going off. Dude, that when when they fired Fletcher and all the craziness was happening, remember those pictures with the empty sections in the Wells Fargo Center, dude, that is concerning. Like that is the biggest red flag that Dan Hilferdy can see.

14:32If there's an entire section in the upper bowl that is just empty, like that's brutal. If there's sections where there's three people sitting in there, that's not good. And that's where that's unfortunate. People can talk all they want about, we want changes, we want this, we want that. If you still go to the games and pay for a ticket, then whatever, it is what it is. People that don't go, that's the real message. That's when people start to get worried because then you got to work harder to get those people back into the building. I think the fan base here is like the Philadelphia fan base is pretty sophisticated. Like a lot of the northeastern cities are and people, there's enough eyeballs on what front offices are doing that if there's like a concerted effort to like, hey, we're going after Gavin McKenna this year, like people are going to be interested in what

15:35they're doing. Which is like we've talked to this before is that, you know, these front offices, especially the flyers, like, oh, well, no one's going to be interested in, it's like, no, there actually is a big interest when you go through that phase. It actually can be exciting. You know, the team may not be winning during those years. It is exciting because people are interested in buying into what you're building and they can get on board with the young players and they can, like, all the fans in Philadelphia I think would understand, hey, the flyers are building in an unbelievable nucleus right now. Like, you know, like if they were to get, you know, like three or four really awesome young players, like, yeah, like, like San Jose has, people will get around that and the coverage is going to be really positive too because all of all of all the bloggers and all the websites and and podcasts are going to be like, holy shit, like this team's building something and that stuff gets out and then the community is like, oh my god, like look what the flyers have done. Like, like, we may not win next year, but we've got a core that we need to go watch and you get off balls on that shit.

16:36So I just think that the flyers historically have discounted that as a viable mechanism to keep fan interest, even if there is a temporary slowdown in terms of ticket sales. That's a good point too and I think even to add on to that, if you look at the behavior of the flyers organization, the whole gritty thing was done to try to bring in a younger audience, right? But then that quickly gets jettisoned and then the new era of orange is we're going to get Jones and Briar, Rick, talk it and we're going to bring it back to the beginning or whatever that was and that's geared towards the guy, the fans that were there in the 70s and 80s and 90s. So it's like a really schizophrenic kind of marketing campaign where you're trying to get everybody, but you still need the execution of the plan and the front office and unless

17:44you go out and get those, where are you going to get your new fans from if it's not the older fans bringing younger people to the arena? Like again, to your point, if you went out and drafted a Gavin McKenna, that's a good jumping on point for somebody who's like, you know what, I never really liked the flyers, but I don't know, this McKenna guy kind of seems okay. I mean, he punched the guy's lights out and brushed it up his jaw. I mean, I kind of interested in this guy. This guy sounds like a flyer to me. I want to go to the arena and see him. That's what he being like of a Penn State is a huge tie. You know, like that's a way to bring people in who haven't necessarily been exposed to hockey before or for whatever reason didn't like it before. Instead, you're getting like, we got Rick talk it and it's like, yeah, great. I really like hockey. I don't need Rick talk. I fucking hate Rick talk it now. Yeah. I hate Ron Hextal. Yeah. Yeah. Like, I hate all of these people now.

18:44Like I wouldn't have breakfast with any of these morons. I'd be disgusted. I wouldn't even show up. Brear. I'm still like, I'm starting to really not like him. But I'm not at the hate point yet. But I don't want it to get there. Like he's got to start making moves. But where do you go and get people's interest and peak it in a city where you've got the Eagles and the 76ers and the Phillies and all those. And instead, it's like they're relying on the old, all the old tried and true fans. But they're not really going and grabbing attention of a younger demographic and granted the older demographic has more money to spend right now. But I don't, I don't see how they're going to sustain that over the long haul. That's almost exclusively the people that I've seen that are like the hardest-talking defenders are like the older people that watched him, you know, in the fucking 80s. Those are like almost consistently the people that are left going after him because they've

19:46like a connection to the guy, right? They were meant for it. It's disappointing because he was such a great fan favorite and it's just, it's hard to come to grips with the fact that, hey, he may not be the best head coach for this team right now. So, yeah, there's certainly that rift. No question about it. It's like everyone else on the young guys that like I was, I think, talking second-tenure here ended in 2002, 2003, Ish, I would have been six or seven at the time. You know, like I don't have any connection to rent-talk it. Like, you know, it got like Danny Breer, like that was peak, that was peak like childhood growing up years, watching the Danny Breer era flyers and like I just fucking hate this guy now. I talked about this on one of these shows, like Sam Ran to take over this fucking team for like care. And like I would still, if you did a shitty job, I would tell you, like I don't know why if you were like a hero to this fan base, to any team, any team you could have played for, you were a hero to them. Why would you come back to the front office and then purposely not do a good job?

20:47There's the flyer, like they did, there's such a whole other than that shit with this front office and I just don't, they hire these formifiers so they can sit here and pander to the fan base. But then they don't do their jobs as front office members and coaches to build a better product. So you end up everyone fucking hates them when they're done. I just, I don't understand. Like the whole former flyer thing could work out, you know, if you brought in these form, if you brought in Chris Pronger to be your GM and Rod Brenda Moore to be your coach and all these guys that are hired for more reasons than just exclusively because they're former flyers and have some kind of track record of the jobs they hold and they did great. Imagine how fucking beloved Danny Brear would be if he built a fucking competitive hockey team here rather than pretending he built a fucking competitive hockey team here than using the media to manipulate fans and to thinking that he did, you know, it's just like this could have been something so good and they just, they were refused to do it right. They just want to be a gimmick tries the shit.

21:48This is the shit that drives me nuts about this team more than anything else is like the hiring patterns. There are pieces upon pieces upon pieces on the website because I cover this extensively at the time because I thought it was bullshit when they hired the other this whole, the Chuck Fletcher goes down and they just fill the front office with former flyers. That was a problem from day fucking one. And here we are three years later. Just about three years later. I think early March was the one day when Danny Brear got brought up like March 10 or something like that. Just about three years later and it's all come crashing down because they didn't, nothing to differentiate, differentiate themselves from, from previous regimes, the failure, to abject fucking failure of the failed off of flyers. And if you think about it, the whole Mitch Cove and talk at thing is a microcosm of the fandom. Yeah. It's the old fan versus the guy that can bring people, how many people have bought tickets just to go see Matt and me and Mitch Cove? A whole bunch. See, and that's my point. You know, buddy is buying tickets to see Sean Caterier. I'm sure there's one of those other things.

22:49I'm sure there's one of those other things. But it's a big stats or so good. Yeah. Like, that's what I mean. He's so much fun to watch. People are intrigued and they're like, hey, I want to see this Mitch Cove guy. He had a really good rookie season last year. So you're going this year and then you're like, fuck, I barely noticed the guy. Oh, look, he played 11 minutes. You're like, great. But you got to back the old horse, the guy that was played here in the 80s and early 90s because he's the older fan that is supporting that part of it and believes and has the same attitude and culture and all that other bullshit. But that's interesting. Like, you would want younger people to gravitate to Matt V. Mitch Cove and Porter Martin and some of the other guys coming up. But for whatever reason, it's not working. Their new era of orange is basically, they're repackaging the old, the old models and trying to sell you like it's brand new. Yeah. I think they just struggle with understanding like a balance on what to do because like

23:53during the Val Camillo era, I think that was a big problem in terms of the like all the stuff off of the ice and not recognizing at Snyder and alienating alumni and that was a huge issue because they went too far and just ignored their history. But then you get a knee jerk reaction back in the other way, which can also be a problem because you may not be understanding what the next chapter of the Flyers organization really looks like. So I think that they have just done a horrible job of marrying or combining the future with their strong history. And it goes back to the roster really, but I think for the off-ice stuff, there's got to be some sort of combination of that. Maybe they're trying to that to some extent with some things, but yeah, like the people that are hired in terms of the key leadership, that's got to be a balance. That can't just be all people from external or all people internal, because you're just

25:01getting the same sort of group think in that scenario and people aren't really being held accountable in ways that they probably should be. But maybe a lot of teams, like weren't the Oilers like that, like for a while they were just like a super incestuous front office and ownership group and I think with some of these teams, like you get that sort of thing and you fall into your roster and winning can mask a lot of that stuff. But if you reach an era of futility, the orange era of futility that we have right now, then you're not doing something right and you got to think about how to get some other folks in there. Like there's just, I mean, we just have, we have so many rookie leaders in this organization now that it is not going to be easy for that paradigm to shift at any point. I mean, like we're going to be dead by the time it's, I wonder how like the new arena is

26:08going to play an end of that. I just think, I think the building of that is, which by the way, I haven't heard anything about that. Like we're, we're only a couple of years out from when they're supposed to move in and I haven't seen shit like, no, not something I haven't seen a design, like there's no design, there's no architecture. Like usually you'll see, I think they had like a plan of what, of what the whole campus was going to look like, but that's with an entire restructuring of the, of the current South Philadelphia sports complex, but like what the new actual arena is going to look like, like that has not come out yet. And there's no construction going on. Will all of Garden be in the con course? Yeah, yeah, yeah. The never ending postable. It's going to be so damn good after the first period. You go home and you smell like post the whale. God. Yeah. To like garlic. Yeah. Yeah. You smell like garlic. All the raccoons chase you home.

27:10But like, you know, I wonder how that is going to, see, I think that's probably a bad thing for the team because it's just going to be another thing they can use to obfuscate like the roster, like like, hey, look at this big new arena we have now and everything's new and different, but that is nothing you do with the fucking team on the ice. Like, yeah, it's still like the core issue is there because we're just, we just care about the roster. I think the arena's fine. There's that one person I'm talking with. It doesn't like the X-Fidity one arena now. It's awesome. It's a great place. Makes for a billion dollars in upgrading and it better be good. Yeah. I mean, it still stinks when you walk out, but that's weird. I don't understand that, but there's like the recirculation of the fryer oil air is just weird to me, but when you go in there, the seats are great. The con course is really good. It's generally pretty good, like, it's fine inside of the parking still sucks, but, you know, I don't know.

28:11It's just, I don't think that's going to help, you know, this new arena is not going to help this roster out and the issues that we're talking about, like it's just a totally separate thing that's, I think, going to obfuscate the real errors. It is kind of damning that the people in charge at the very, very top of making these decisions are more than willing to say, you know what we can do to stir up interest? Let's spend a billion dollars on a new arena instead of actually hiring a real competent president of hockey operations and a general manager and getting, you know, scouting and player development guys and actually building a team, which would be a hell of a lot cheaper, but they have zero expertise in that. None. Yeah, for sure. All they know is marketing and the ins and outs of business and accounting and everything

29:11and how much we can write off when we make this new arena and that's what it's going to be. It's going to be the bread and circuses. It's going to become see the new arena and that's going to be the selling point and you're right, Mike, it's nothing to do at all whatsoever with what the actual quality and product is on that ice that's going to be played period. They're more than willing to, you know, blow a billion dollars and all kinds of stuff to build a brand new arena, but they can't focus on, you know what, let's, here's a blank check. Let's fix the scouting department right now. Who can we go out and get and hire and put in charge of this? What do they need? What are some of the resources that we can give them, but they won't. They just don't know how to, the only thing they know how to do is let's give it to these guys because they played here. That's their plan. That's, that's their whole, well, we don't know what to do. These guys know what to do because they actually played the game.

30:15That's, that's their whole thing. Buying a new arena, don't worry. We can take care of that. We could, a new scoreboard and sound system, yeah, no problem. We got that. They can spend all kinds of money in that regard, but they, when it comes to actually building a team and an office to actually implement a plan, that they have no idea what they're doing. Zero. Yeah. And I feel like their strategy is that if they can just invest a ton of resources and butchers, the non-hockey op stuff, to such an extent that they'll just be successful financially because look, the hockey stuff is shit. We don't understand and there's too many variables in that and we've done our due diligence because we've hired former flyers, people that know the industry, that's going to take care of itself. But let's try to swallow that up with a bunch of fancy bells and whistles and new toys

31:15and, you know, incentives and all sorts of stuff like that. And like I, it sucks, but I think that's kind of what they want to do. Like, yeah, like to me, it should be the opposite. And I think to a lot of people that follow the team and say, I could, I could, I go in there and send fucking bleachers if the team's entertaining, I don't, I don't fucking care. But all the creature comforts and, you know, keeping up with the Joneses with the new arenas and all that stuff. I think that's strategy. I think they're like, look, we just swallow the fucking hockey team. The hockey team is just this little vessel that, you know, plays on the ice, but let's, let's try to swallow them up with everything around it. Hmm. I don't want to go around here, but I think it also has to do with the nature of the NHL because NHL is just such a, it's a difficult league. It's a conservative league. It's hard to maneuver the GMs are like super conservative for the most part. They don't like take risks. It's a risk averse type of environment and like that just kind of plays into what the

32:20flyers do is just that like the forum that they operate in is not one that a lot of movement happens anyway. It's, it's, it's, it's, it's a much more stagnant league than the other three big leagues, like the NFL MLB and NBA. There's, those leagues are way more fluid. Yeah. But the NHL doesn't do that. And I think it's, it's really, it's frustrating and suffocating when, when you have that framework in place and then you also have a team that's very stubborn with how they want to do business and how they want to build their team. And those are like two really bad pinch points, you know, from a bird's eye view with the flyers. Hmm. One day they'll figure it out, right? Sooner or later. They're 20 years. Yeah, I don't know. I mean, you know, the Red Sox had had the curse of the Bambino for a long time. And you had, you had a lot of generations that died for the Red Sox every one of these that it's, it's, it's possible that like it's been, what, 50 some years or whatever

33:24now. Since the fire is one, it could be another 50, like, 51, it's not, yeah, 75, that's 75. Yeah. Pop, pop, Nick and his wheelchair won't be there wanting. I'll, I'll be, I'll be in the wheelchair right beside him too, maybe even be roommates. We can get our pills at the same time. Good. That's not the lovely nurse that brings us her, our slop to eat in the morning. Yeah, it's going to take all, I mean, it sucks like, like, I thought that there was a chance that I was never going to see a Philadelphia championship in my entire life. I was pretty convinced of that until the Phillies won in 08.

34:25I was like, why, like, there's a, like, it's just, like, I, it's like, they're just to operate this way. That's, that's going to be in sucks, but, um, yeah, but I, flyers are in, they are not fucking even close. Like, we talked about that, uh, that's got wheeler, uh, quote, last time we got together earlier this year and like, he's like, this team is as far off as anybody. Like, yeah, it's like, it's us in Vancouver is what everybody's comparing it to. Right. I mean, maybe, maybe that's being a little bit overreactionary, but at its, at its base, like, shit, that's some company right there. And it is weird. Somebody pointed it on to her, like, didn't, didn't we have, like, their last, like, couple coaches, like, and we brought them here, tortorals, they're two, it's like, ooh, the apple

35:30doesn't far fall from the tree, doesn't, yeah, it's just, it's the way that it, it, it's a way they're owned and managed, you know, it's, it's crazy, but Vancouver is, they're going to have a pretty high pick though, right? Yeah, I imagine they're, they're going to be in top three for sure. Yeah. So they'll get somebody something, but still their whole roster, so as backwards. So, let's see here, the season where to end today and the conucks would indeed be picking first lottery permitting, yes, the highest lottery odds by a hefty margin it looks like. I got a seven point lead on the blues for that one. Wow. Set the holy shit. Yeah, that's a lot. 42 points. 42 points. Nothing's guaranteed. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You can't guarantee it. So do this other way that's even less reliable.

36:31Yeah. Yeah. I know. Imagine telling a Vancouver fan. Yeah. No. No. We can't lose. We have to try to win every game to get to the playoffs. OK. Welcome back.