Trouble Brewing in Kootney's
Jeff Bromley's Ice Chips
HOCKEY - KOOTENAY STYLE
Sunday, July 13, 2008
Deja vu all over again....
No, it's not the summer of 2004, it's 2008 and the summer of clauses are back.
The Kootenay Ice have exercised their 'escape clause' contained within their 15-year lease with the Cranbrook Rec Plex for the second time in the contracts eight-year lifetime. The clause enables the club to serve the City of Cranbrook, now the sole owner and landlord of the facilty, notice that the club's attendance has fallen below the paid 2800 benchmark over the past season.
Once the club has informed the city of its intentions the notice triggers an escape clause enabling the club to leave the city or at least explore any possibilities of such if there are two consecutive seasons of attendance below 2800. If the club's attendance stays below the 2800 watermark next season the team could get out of its lease with the Rec Plex and move.
The 2800 figure is paid attendance of all 36 regular season home games plus playoffs and reports are that the number is 30 below the line.
For you attendance number crunchers out there there is some conflicting figures. www.mib.org an attendance website that tracks almost all hockey leagues states that the club's attendance for this past season was 3026.5 for the regular season, a .44% drop from the season prior. Those numbers are however taken from the WHL website which include three of the team's games that were ticket nights - aka - freebie night - in which an average of 1200 exchanged tickets were given out.
If you take out the inflated numbers of those three games you get 2964 per game. Add in the four playoff games of an average 2906 per game and you get 2958.
Well above the magical 2800 figure, right? Not so fast, you also have to subtract the comps or complimentary tickets given to players families, billets etc. which brings the number down further to about 2770.
Number crunching aside, the results are alarming in a world of spiralling expenses for major junior hockey clubs and a market that is the second smallest in the WHL and third smallest (Swift Current; Acadie-Bathurst, New Brunswick - QMJHL) in the CHL. Owen Sound (OHL) is only slightly bigger than Cranbrook, according to Stats Can.
The numbers don't lie and the club's not drawing what it used to, with the gaudy numbers of 3500 per game when the facility opened to even 3300 in 2003-04 long gone.
There is talk of the two parties rejigging the agreement but those are preliminary and at the early stages.
I'll have more in a story late tomorrow...
the second half of all this crap
Tuesday, July 15, 2008
Kootenay invokes attendance clause
For the News-Advertiser
Ice invoke attendance clause once again
by Jeff Bromley
The Kootenay Ice are not leaving Cranbrook, at least not yet.
Informed of by the club some 30 days following the conclusion of the playoffs but only surfacing last week the Kootenay Ice notified the City of Cranbrook of their intention to invoke a clause in their 15-year lease at the Cranbrook Rec Plex that allows the club to be released from it should the level of attendance drop below the 2800 paid mark. Though the number wasn’t announced reports have put the actual paid attendance for last season at 2770 per game, including playoffs.
“It’s a big concern to us,” said Ice GM Jeff Chynoweth after his club invoked the clause for the second time in the eight-year history of the team’s Rec Plex lease. “We’re down 11% the last two seasons and that’s after a 49-win season and a 42-win season. If you’re down that much and you’re winning, what does that say when we have an off-year? Everyone knows that junior hockey is a cyclical business and we’re all going to have off-years at one time or another. Fortunately, we haven’t had that yet during our ten years in Cranbrook.”
“We think we have 2500-2600 of the best fans in the entire CHL, unfortunately it’s not enough to make a go of it.”
Though the announced attendance brings the club’s average to 3026, according to figures compiled from the WHL website - that number includes three ticket nights averaging around 1200 freebies for the three nights this past season – as well as the club’s complimentary tickets given to players’ families and billets. Take away those tickets and the average attendance including four playoff games this season drops below the line of 2800 per game.
The notification of the club’s use of the clause means that if two consecutive seasons are below that threshold the team can get out of its 15-year lease with the City-owned facility and explore options of relocating the team to another city, something that wouldn’t be good news for the $22.5 million, 4264-seat facility or the city itself.
Chynoweth was adamant that the clause is not a “gun to the head of the city” but instead strictly a business decision that protects the team should the fan base completely fall off. When asked how the lower attendance affected the club’s bottom line - whether or not the club lost money this past season - he chose not to comment. When asked if the club had held talks with other markets about possible relocation Chynoweth offered an emphatic no and instead focussed on the optimism of talks between both the club and the city to help secure their future in Cranbrook. “None whatsoever,” he said about relocation rumours, specifically to Victoria and to a lesser extent, Penticton. “We’ve stated from day one and it’s no different from the last time this clause was activated, we want to be here for years to come.”
“We are in lease negotiations with the city right now and we’ve had some good conversation. Hopefully we’ll have something at the end of the summer that we can announce that will work for both parties.”
Chynoweth does admit that having to deal with the city over this issue and other concerning the Rec Plex has been a pleasant surprise compared to what they had to deal with when Keen Rose ran the facility. The public-private-partnership that built the complex in 2000 ceased to exist when the city took sole control of it last year. “Right away we aren’t dealing with people out of Toronto and that’s where the entire decision making was based when Keen Rose ran the facility. Quite frankly I don’t think they cared that much about Cranbrook,” said Chynoweth. “That hurt everyone in the building but from our end it’s been great since the city took over last year. We have a great relationship and that’s what you want in a partnership.”
In a city of 20,000 – the second-smallest market in the WHL and third smallest across major junior hockey – are the expectations of a small centre in a big centre league too high? “We, as a city, have set that bar,” he said. “The on-ice success, a rich hockey history that’s based in this region (the fans) expects good teams and they’ve had that at all levels of hockey over the years. Look at the numbers. We’ve got a great season ticket base and a great marketing base. What we’re missing is that casual fan of 800-1000 fans a night. How do we get that back? That’s the question.”
Fast Facts – Kootenay has had six, 40-win seasons since relocating to Cranbrook in 1998... Attendance when the Rec Plex opened in 2000 was 3641; 2001 it was 3473, the year of the Memorial Cup win; while 2002-03 topped 3442. In 03-04, the first year the club invoked the clause, attendance fell a whopping 15%... Based on the given numbers average attendance in 2006-07 was 3064 a differense of 11% over 2007-08... Over the ten seasons that the club has been in Cranbrook the Ice are the WHL’s leading franchise in regular season wins... According to the announced numbers four clubs finished behind the Ice in attendance in the 22-team WHL. In order, Swift Current, Prince Albert, Moose Jaw and Prince George all sported lower average attendance. The first three do not have buildings that can support crowds over 2900... The City of Penticton, which currently has a BCHL team, the Vees, is currently constructing the 5100-seat Southern Okanagan Events Centre, thus the speculation a WHL team could move to the city of 32,000.
Posted by Contact - jeffbromley_@hotmail.com at 10:49 AM
funny you would say that..................
i heard the same thing about the pg cougers the other day. a friends son got drafted to the cougers and the rumor is that they will play one more year in pg then move the team to,( for so reason bellingham comes to mind).i know it was somewhere south of the border.......whether it true or not is another matter............................that definately has to suck for the diehard fans......................