With Canadian Teams Having The Highest Average Ticket Prices – The Maple Leafs Are Twice The League Average – Canadians Should Look To Other Sports To Follow
Canadians are crazy about their hockey. Photo: Simon Leung, Vancouver Photographer.
This isn’t a slap shot. It’s a slap to the face.
Followed by a body check to the behind.
There are seven National Hockey League teams in Canada, and six of them have the six highest average ticket prices in the league. That’s one thru six. If only the teams looked that way in the standings.
The biggest offender is the Toronto Maple Leafs. The team that has not won a Stanley Cup in more than 40 years has an average ticket price of a whopping $123.77 (general seating categories according to Team Marketing Report). That far and away blows away the rest of the league. The defending Stanley Cup Champion Boston Bruins, for example, are at $58.94 (12th in the league). Even the New York Rangers, which one might think would be among the highest in the league, is a relatively modest $66.20. Then again, every other teams’ prices are “relatively modest” compared to what tickets cost in Canada.
The league average is $57.10.
On top of that, when Toronto started Leafs TV it initially wanted to charge almost five grand to sports bars to show the games. The bars, to their credit, blocked that shot attempt better than any of the Leafs’ goalies.
Yet the Leafs sell out every single game. In fact, you can’t get a ticket to a Leafs game. Walk down the streets now in Toronto and you’ll see Leafs jerseys all over the place. Don’t they know they are getting ripped off at the box office?
The Leafs are hardly alone in their pursuit of the almighty Canadians’ dollar. The five other teams also have ticket prices nearly twice the NHL average: Winnipeg, $98.27; Montreal $88.67 (and have you seen this team play lately? Sideline Sam has and let’s just say the current skaters hardly live up to the team’s storied past); Edmonton, $70.13; Vancouver, $66.38 (at least this team actually made it to the Stanley Cup Finals last year); and Calgary ($68.18). The long wolf here is Ottawa, which comes in nicely in 15th place at $55.51; perhaps that’s because all those government officials are the team wants to keep the politicians happy.
The first American team on the list, Philadelphia, is seventh at $66.89.
Canadian fans are either too obsessed with hockey to care or just don’t want to put up much of a fight to combat the situation.
Actually, it’s likely a combination of both. One of the enduring qualities of Canada is the friendly, non-controversial demeanor of its citizens (the behavior of some in Vancouver last year after the final Stanley Cup loss stands out as a negative but every country has a few nuts).
But the fact of the matter is Canadians need their hockey the way some people need their coffee. They simply can’t get through the day without it.
Go to Canada and about the only thing on TV is hockey. If teams are not playing hockey, there’s someone talking about hockey. Even in the summer. So they buy the overpriced tickets, the merchandise and buy into the team’s PR speak that “we’re doing everything we can to bring a Stanley Cup to (insert city name).”
The Toronto situation is the most mind-boggling of them all. The Leafs haven’t won the Stanley Cup since 1967, making them the Chicago Cubs of the NHL. Except the Cubbies are lovable; the Leafs are arrogant.
A few years ago, the Toronto Star printed what was reportedly an internal Leafs e-mail stating that all the team had to accomplish was to make the first round of the playoffs to keep the fans selling out the arena. In most places, that would have caused an uproar; in Toronto it passed almost as quickly as a pre-game beer at Jack Astor’s.
More recently, 2012 in fact, not one but two Leafs players were sited in Sports Illustrated player polls as being “Easiest to Intimidate” and “Most Overrated.” Instead of doing a little personnel evaluation, Toronto GM Brian Burke instead blasted the source, saying on The Fan radio: “It’s Sports Illustrated. They don’t know squat about hockey,” and “what player votes in a poll … what imbecile. Whoever filled out the ballot has a room temperature IQ.”
Well, nice chatting with you Brian!
Part of the problem is that Canadians don’t really have any other sports to follow. There’s Toronto FC, a MSL soccer team that is popular, but that’s among a relatively small and loyal group and outside of a few countries soccer is, by and large, a second-tier sport.
Auto racing was huge at one time and Canada was putting out Indy Car drivers the way the Dominican Republic puts out baseball players. But the Canadian government put the brakes on that when it banned Players (a Canadian cigarette company) from auto racing, thereby eliminating a highly successful driver development program.
Track and field? Yawn.
Curling? Hey, it’s great for beer drinking but is hardly a huge spectator sport. And you don’t see people buying curling jerseys with their favorite curlers names on the back.
Basketball? Toronto has an NBA team but it’s hard to build a fan base when you’ve always got one of the worst teams in the league.
Baseball? The Blue Jays have won the World Series a lot more recently than the Leafs have a Stanley Cup, but the hardball is but an occasional blip on the Canadians’ sports world. The Blue Jays have to contend in the same division as the Yankees and Red Sox, and once the Devil Rays passed them, fans threw up their arms in disinterest.
What the Canadians need is football. They need to get into the NFL. Oh, the NFL played a game in Toronto this past season but the organizers took the lead from the Leafs and made ticket prices so high the average Toronto sports fan did not even look up from his beer.
Still, road trips to Bills games, about two hours away, have great promise. Or sports fans across the country should just adopt any NFL team to follow and watch those games with enthsiasm on Sundays.
College football, with its passionate fan base and following, is actually more suited to Canadians’ mindset. Pick a perennial winner – the Alabama Crimson Tide comes immediately to mind – and follow it as if it were the Canadian National Hockey Team.
That way, when the Leafs start playing again in the fall, Canadians’ attention would be on something other than hockey.
Then, and only then, will the Canadian NHL teams start to adjust their outrageous ticket prices.
Now, let’s all be like a Canadian and drink a beer to this idea.