Panthers come up with genius marketing strategy
This just makes me laugh for some reason
Say you own a hockey team and you a) just traded away a No. 1 center two years after trading one of the best goalies in the world for peanuts, b) are going to be awful this year and miss the playoffs for the eighth year in a row, c) couldn’t draw fans if you lit half the team on fire and d) were in danger of moving out of the market it has been in since 1994. How would you fix this problem?
If your answer was, “Charge more for tickets,” please forward a resume to the Florida Panthers, c/o BankAtlantic Center, Sunrise, FL.
Visits by the defending Stanley Cup champion Detroit Red Wings, the New York Rangers and Montreal Canadiens are among the games that will carry a $25 surcharge on every single-game ticket.
Smart. But wait, it gets stupider.
Panthers Chief Operating Officer Michael Yormark, who announced the plan June 9, said he hasn’t heard any complaints.
“The only feedback I’ve heard so far on the premium games has come from the season seat-holders, and they’ve said, ‘Thank you, thank you, thank you,’ ” Yormark said. “They’ve felt it’s really enhanced the value of being a season seat-holder.”
No one on the planet would be that emphatic about not getting charged extra money that they never were never charged before. Why don’t I call up the US government and thank them profusely for not bumping me up to the 54 percent tax bracket?
The home opener - against Atlanta on Friday, Oct. 10 - typically draws a sellout crowd but will have regular pricing.
“That’s a night we want our hard-core fans to come out,” Yormark said. “We didn’t think it appropriate to put a premium on it.”
Umm, maybe it’s just me, but I’d want my hardcore fans going to every game, and certainly the ones against teams that draw well, so we don’t get embarrassed by the fan ratio quite as badly as we would normally.
Say I’m a casual Panthers fan (thankfully this is only hypothetical). On a whim, I decide I want to go see the Panthers play Montreal because Florida is literally the only franchise in NHL history with an above-.500 record against the Habs. Hypothetically, I might also be interested to see how these kids we traded Olli Jokinen for work out. I go up to the ticket counter, ask for the $17 seats I always get, and I’m told, “That will be $42.” I think the term “apoplectic rage” works best in that situation.
Good work, Florida. Hopefully that extra $25 a pop comes in handy when you’re shipping your franchise to Kansas City in two years.
