Didn't realize panthers were so far. That being said they're in a huge metropolis probably still people everywhere. Always heard Ottawa was basically playing in the sticks.
I was over a decade ago that I drove by it, but looking at the google street view, there is a vast expanse of nothing on the other side of the highway.
Lol “massive amount of people”? Ok so you and may differ on what we consider a massive amount of people. If 50% of the population of stittsville went to a game they would sell out. If you lump in Kanata together with the stitts it would take 20% of that whole pollution to fill the stands. Thats a significant population but not a massive amount of people.
The distance from the CT centre to the nearby ranger outlet mall, which is the closest public thing to it is about the same distance as the scotiabank arena to the Eaton centre. Think of all shit between those two places. There is nothing between CT centre and tanger.
100% agree with toddpsyd. I lived literally right across the street from the arena for 4 years and it is one of the most densely populated areas in south Florida given that it’s also right next to an international mall that people from all over the world visit. There’s the Everglades right next to it, but there isn’t a cornfield within like 50 miles of the arena lmao
I was talking about Ottawa.
And I have been corrected. It's not corn fields, but there is a massive expanse of nothing across from Canadian Tire Centre in Kanata (outside Ottawa)
I'll be that guy here but Kanata isn't outside of Ottawa, it's a neighborhood. It used to be outside over 20 years ago but yeah, it is within the city proper.
>I'll be that guy here but Kanata isn't outside of Ottawa, it's a neighborhood. It used to be outside over 20 years ago but yeah, it is within the city proper.
The boundaries of the city of Ottawa are ridiculous and don't really matter in this discussion. The rink is surrounded by car dealerships, malls, swamps and a gravel pit. 99% of the Ottawa population is east of it, most of it more than 10km.
Their arena is right next to a swamp. It's incredibly far from downtown Miami in traffic. They really could be called the Fort Lauderdale Panthers, South Florida Panthers, or Broward County Panthers.
The team still caters to white suburbanites and transplants and their org has never really known how to properly market to a more diverse city fanbase. Having their arena in downtown Miami wouldn't be very convenient to their season ticket holders. Their arena still isn't in the best spot -- it'd be better if it was further east.
I think most sunbelt teams are gonna be catered towards a more exclusively-suburban market. I’m a Hawks fan but originally from Dallas and feel like the vibes at Stars game are pretty different with how many affluent looking people show up in golf polos and button downs.
With how expensive the sport is, I guess it mostly attracts a richer crowd and it’s a harder sell to the more diverse crowds that shows up to NFL/MLB/NBA games due to the lack of a historical hockey culture in the region.
This fact tends to influence discussions on the suitability of a suburban location in the Phoenix, Atlanta, Broward County, and Raleigh markets in particular.
Unironically though if the panthers were more centered in the city of Miami they'd probably sell out more. Miami has a huge population and of course hockey isn't their favorite sport but look at how well tampa has done. Tampa has a great team sure but they also have prime relastate smack dab in the middle of tampa.
They'd actually be a better fit in Ft. Lauderdale honestly. Close to their practice facility but also a good in between for fans in the Miami areas and fans in the broward, boca and west palm area.
Couldn’t agree more. When I was living in Miami I only went to their games with rangers just because it was so out of the way. If they played in Fort Lauderdale they’d sell out all the time, especially with the tickets being as reasonable as they are
My point is that i think the majority of the attendance woes to the panthers is location really at this point. Your team is insane atm but still struggles to sell out at points?
We averaged 18,632 per game which is pretty much right at sold out in terms of capacity. So the team has been able to fill seats. But location could absolutely be better in some ways, in others not. The team likes the arena because the lease is a very good deal for them and because they get their own arena and don’t have to share with other teams.
It’s also right off the highway so it’s a fair -ish compromise between Palm Beach, Broward, and Miami. If it was near downtown the traffic would be horrendous.
This graph used 10 years of data, the attendance issues were because the team was amidst a 25 year rut for a handful of the years in the graph.
Last year’s regular season was pretty mediocre so this season and the President’s Trophy season are the only 2 in our existence where we’ve looked like *real* contenders (2-3 other solid seasons thrown in there too). Crowds have been very good all year.
With that said, of course a downtown Fort Lauderdale arena would be better, put a Brightline station attachment and it’d be easy to get fans from West Palm and Miami.
Don’t see that happening any time soon, but as long as the team remains truly competitive (this season made it the first time we’ve made the playoffs 4 straight years) then the attendance will remain near 18,000 per game.
It’s right off the Sawgrass Expressway and close to I-595, and is across the street from a tourist destination mall (Sawgrass Mills). It’s far away from downtown, but it’s not necessarily out there by itself.
I live 10 minutes from Amerant Bank Arena (Panthers) and it is nowhere near anything. Its waaaay out in the sticks, a solid 25 minute highway drive from downtown Fort Lauderdale and 45 minutes (ish) from Miami. West Palm Beach is an hour by car. Even Boca Raton is a 30 minute drive. Its in a bedroom community (Sunrise) that is adjacent to the Everglades (there is literally nothing but grass on the other side of the highway the arena abuts). AND, all of that said, there is no way our attendance is 75%. That number must be flawed.
The sticks? Do you even know what the sticks are? Amerant is next to one of the largest malls in the state and thousands of homes. It’s suburbia, not the sticks.
but it is easy really easy to get to. There is 75, 595, and the Sawgrass Expressway right there. On a side note, is it really 25 minutes of driving on 595 to/from Downtown lauderdale to Sawgrass Mills/Amerant Arena?
Yes. From downtown Fort Lauderdale it is at least 25 minutes. Because it will take you at least 10 minutes, maybe even 15 to get from downtown Lauderdale to 95 or 595. Game times tend to coincide with shitty traffic into an out of downtown Then it's another 15 to 20 minutes out 595 and a couple minutes up the Sawgrass to the exit.
I've had season tickets for years and I rarely miss games. When I lived downtown, I left 40 minutes before puck drop. And that's just to make sure I get inside the stadium before the anthem is over.
That said, it is really easy to get into and out of the stadium area. It has to be one of the best planned parking situations in all of major sports. Admittedly, I have a 20 year season ticket holder parking pass so I can park immediately in front of the stadium,l. But you can leave after the stars are awarded and be at your car in five minutes and be out of the parking area in two or three, unless you park to the extreme west end of the stadium.
Took an Uber from Hollywood once when I was down there for work and wanted to go to a game, and the ride wasn’t bad. I live in the same city the canes play in and it still takes me 25-30 mins to get down to the arena.
Click on the graph and you’ll see it shows the data is from the last 10 seasons, without the Covid year factored in.
Hence the poor numbers as the team was perpetually mediocre and sometimes bad for half the years the graph measures.
This is a massive overstatement. One of the largest malls in the country is across the street. Some of the wealthiest neighborhoods in Broward are within 10 minutes of the arena. Huge suburban centers within 15 minutes (Pines, Davie, Springs, Margate).
Wonder why you made such an off base comment.
From the concourse outside the 300’s on the far side of the entrance, you can literally see the endless swamp that is the Everglades with nothing for miles.
The arena is literally the last structure before you hit the Everglades. You can’t go farther west, unless you’re looking to hang out with the gators and snakes
Ottawa's stadium is out in the middle of fucking nowhere, like, you go my miles of basically empty fields and suddenly BOOM there's a stadium on the side of the highway. It's so ridiculous.
Huh? The Wild are in downtown not .4 miles away.
Edit: Center of downtown? Sorry to be annoying this is actually interesting info, but it is reddit so being annoying is my duty.
All good man, I put the center of downtown at the intersection of Fort+Robert, which from that point Xcel is roughly .4 miles away walking. Still very close and Wild fans are crazy packing the barn 104.5% over the last 10 years
What makes it even more insane is that Fort Rd is a secret name of 7th St and googlay maps says Fort Rd but all the signs say 7th St, so that's annoying for out of town people.
Lol this was what I looked at too, Kellogg and 7th is pretty damn downtown! Gotta pick a point though, so I get it.
Maybe the better way to show this would be grouping the distances... Like a big chunk of teams there might be in the 0-2km distance, for example...
Or maybe distance from edge of suburbs would be sweet but probably really hard to assemble this info.
Sunrise is really fucking far from majority of the fan base. I’m looking at an hour each way from Palm Beach and that’s with minimal traffic. With that said it’s a really nice area but with nothing but an outlet mall and a chic filet
>with that said it’s a really nice area but with nothing but an outlet mall and a chic filet
Seriously they need to open some bars and restaurants similar to the Battery in Atlanta in that area. That way fans can catch the game and then go celebrate afterwards. I went to game 3 of the SCF last year and after the game was over, everyone just packed out and went home. Kind of took away from the atmosphere and mood of that (one and only) win we had. Had that happened in Nashville, Broadway would have been a party.
I can’t imagine it’d be easy to draw people there outside of games though. Looks like it’s literally at the edge of the metro area, and half surrounded by swamp.
People give the Braves shit for being outside the reach of MARTA but it’s still surrounded by a decent number of other suburbs that probably support commercial activity during the off-season.
You’re missing the point. The most exciting places to see a game are arenas that have a vibrant neighborhood around them… not a short drive away. At Capital One arena in DC, you could walk three blocks to probably 50 bars, restaurants, nightclubs, or walk 5-10 blocks to hundreds of cool places and it has 5 metro lines at 3 stations nearby. Easy in, easy out and great food and energy all around before and after every game.
Yeah of course it’s not walking distance but close drive. The traffic and parking surrounding Sunrise is pretty horrible. The arena has built out a few bars and are designed to attract everyone for $20 beers with some live music and TVs posted up. Most Panthers fans watch from home and come out when schedules are convenient
There’s really no easy obvious solution. It’s a consequence of sprawling suburbs and public transport only being reliably present in some areas, rather than the region as a whole. Hopefully that will change in the future…
Florida problems. i don't see this changing anytime soon. It's just getting worse tbh. Everytime I go down there it's just more and more sprawl, more and more subdivisions. People in Florida want their space and people down there move down there for their own slice. The places that have density down there are continuing to do so but a lot of the hubs are still growing outwards more than upwards. The brightline is neat but not really addressing sprawl at all.
To maximize profits and attendance, Teams need to be near hubs and those hubs preferably should have mass transit that is reliable and effective. It's not really rocket science. More people = more potential butts in seats. This would certainly help teams like the Panthers putting them closer to Miami or Ft lauderdale or whatever. But having said that sports fans will drive and sit in traffic in giant parking lots if they really want to - see football teams in Florida. So i do think that continued success will move this average up even in the current home in Sunrise. Note that this graph is really somewhat misleading since its a 10 year average and the attendance recently for the panthers has been pretty great, not near 80%. My understanding is most games are near sellouts anyways which is great.
I mean going to the arena you can see that there are loads of construction developments, but that basically applies to most of south-Florida these days. And it’s not ever entirely really been exactly “the middle of nowhere”- I mean yeah it’s suburbs as far west as they’re legally allowed to build, but they’ve still got Sawgrass Mall nearby which is still a local draw even in 2024. Plus on the way there you’ve got a FBI office and I think NBC6 local news has their station there?
If anything, the problem is that much of the urban planning around the area is still built as if it was for the 1950s, and not for the current day reality where the population is exponentially larger and there’s gridlock all the time- “rush hour” is now practically everything from 6am to 8pm
To be fair, in a lot of these cities, it’s over an hour to commute into downtown to get to the arena from the majority of fans (who live in the surrounding suburbs). Especially in the biggest cities with arenas right downtown like Toronto or NYC (or cities with crazy urban sprawl and poor transit like LA or Dallas).
Curious though, would having the Panthers play in an arena in the heart of downtown Miami or Ft Lauderdale actually boost attendance though? Parking would be harder, costs presumably higher (since the land would be worth more), rush hour traffic would be an issue for some games, etc…
IMO the Islanders are not a NYC team they are a Long Island team IDK where you would say “downtown” is for Long Island. While UBS isn’t centrally located it’s easy to get to from all three major highways on Long Island plus the LIRR.
Edit: Rangers are in Midtown not downtown
I would say though that the Colosseum was pretty centrally located. I always hated that they refused to build a new stadium and then two years later Nassau constructs a new one
Agreed. I grew up 5 miles from the Coliseum and it was great. After that, it became a pain in the ass. Now you have to walk almost a mile from where you park or get let off on the train just to enter the arena. UBS is a nice place to see a game though for sure.
So stupid. I remember Nassau County bitching that the Islanders wanted too much and were paying too little but then they cancelled the deal and went and built a new one? Made no goddam sense.
I grew up in MN, but moved down to TX. I usually explain to people that Hockey in MN is bigger than Football in TX. The state hockey tournament has the largest attendance of any high school championship in the country.
We’re Blackhawks fans but my parents have a condo in Ft. Lauderdale and always go there for Panthers/ Blackhawks games because it’s so much easier/ cheaper to get tickets (especially true from like 2010-2016). They love it haha
As a former resident of Downtown Ottawa (Elgin St), the sooner the better the Arena gets moved to Lebreton. It's a ballache to get to and it's no craic when you're there.
No sense of a game being on in Ottawa then they play.
When you see what it's like walking to and from games at Lansdowne for RedBlacks games, it's a no brainer to get 'er built.
The canes can just be taken out of this analysis completely because our downtown is not exactly the population hub of this sprawling suburb we call a city.
This is something that is just not well understood at all about this area, especially by people up north (Northeast US or Canada). There's no accounting for the fact that the majority of the metro population isn't *anywhere near downtown* in Raleigh. The arena is actually in a really good location for the car-centric suburban sprawl we have here. The population is mostly spread over northern and western Wake County and the arena is right in the middle of that population with plenty of freeway access around it. The low attendance in the 2010s had everything to do with a bad team laboring under bad ownership and zero to do with location relative to downtown Raleigh. The proof is in the fact that the Canes have been selling out like crazy in the last several years and nothing has changed about the arena at all from the poor attendance days. The team just got good and became contenders every year. If Dundon, the Centennial Authority, and the city can fulfill the big expectations of their plans for the arena area, it will create its own center of gravity that will act like a downtown anyway.
Does this help answer why no one went to Coyotes games? The arena is 45 minutes outside of the city. Hockey belongs in the desert… but just not in the middle of the desert
I didn't realize what the Canes had was weird until I lived elsewhere.
Now I totally get it. There is almost nothing around PNC, save for a few small restaurants. Thankfully the owner is working to fix that
It's an interesting premise, but the fact of the matter is that the teams on the far right are there because they have a history of *sucking shit:*
* Florida's found some success of late, but they were completely irrelevant for a generation. They failed to win a playoff series for 26 years, including a stretch where they missed the playoffs entirely 18 out of 21 years
* The Coyotes made it out of the first round *one time* in their 28 years in Arizona. Excluding the Covid season where they benefited from the expanded playoff format, Arizona has missed the playoffs for the last 10 years, and 17 of the last 21 seasons. Like Florida, irrelevant for a generation
* We all know about Ottawa since 2017, not to mention the anti-Melnyk revolt
* Carolina's been competitive for the last 6 seasons, but missed the playoffs 13 out of 15 seasons (including 9 years in a row) immediately before that
I lived in Ottawa in the Sens heyday, and they had no problem filling the barn when they weren't awful. Likewise, the Carolinas and Floridas and Arizonas of the league do just fine at the gate when the team isn't shitting itself on the ice. It's just been rare for much of the existence of these teams.
It begs the question of can you still fill seats with a bad team in an urban location though. I mentioned this in another comment but you can likely still draw some attendance with people looking for something to do on a Thursday - Sunday night with a downtown stadium rather than asking fans to go very far out of their way to see a bad team (exception being some sunbelt markets with nuanced demographics/urban layouts).
Not shocking but really interesting to see the data!
My only criticism is a lot of these teams within .5km of downtown *are* within their city’s ‘downtown’ boundaries, the Leafs are for sure anyway. Out of curiosity is the downtown Toronto point Yonge & Dundas or Nathan Phillips?
As much as I loved the Joe, and hate what the Illitch family has done since moving, it was so far away from anything that was cool to do before/after the game. It was a pain to walk to.
I was wondering the same thing. I had assumed city hall, but it looks to me like this chart has Rogers Arena listed as closer to “downtown” than Scotiabank Arena in Toronto, which is technically not true (1.8km in Toronto vs 3.0km in Vancouver). But both are just a few blocks from what I would call the heart of downtown in both cities.
I think this chart is really only useful/interesting for the outliers like Ottawa….
>I had assumed city hall, but it looks to me like this chart has Rogers Arena listed as closer to “downtown” than Scotiabank Arena in Toronto, which is technically not true (1.8km in Toronto vs 3.0km in Vancouver).
nb - Vancouver's City Hall isn't downtown, it's at Cambie & 10th Ave. Rogers Arena is about 500m from downtown (Granville & W. Georgia).
Yep, government center is 0.6 miles from TD garden. And that's honestly a reasonably objective place to pick if you're looking from the outside in. Dunkies at govt center is almost dead center in the peninsula...
Remember when back bay used to have two dunks fifty feet from each other. You can tell we are nearing an economic cliff when one of those closed. Dark times man.
Fenway is considered a downtown venue too, even though it’s not. Both are in the city proper in heavily mixed commercial and residential neighborhoods, so maybe that passes as downtown. Foxboro on the other hand…
We went to see the Leafs play in Ottawa.
One of our buddy's volunteered to be the DD thankfully. I checked after the game, it would have been $240 for an Uber back to our hotel in downtown Ottawa.
I would be curious to see how they are measuring "distance from downtown" as if you asked me today where the Sharks' arena is located I would have said "right at the edge of downtown."
How did you identify the center of downtown? Also, I'd be curious to see how that location compares to the center of a city's population distribution. Cool data!
In the Hawks, FLyers and Ducks defense.... they suck this year. I would expect otherwise a decrease of the down angle if they were better. Though, yeah, it's obvious, anything over 10 miles hurts your attendance.
The Tank may be downtown, but I’m not sure how much downtown San Jose ACTUALLY counts as a downtown considering very few people actually live there relative to the city’s suburbs
There are \*very quiet\* whispers about moving the Blues out of the downtown area and into St. Louis county in the next 5-7 years. For reference, St. Louis City and St. Louis county are different municipalities, so the tax situation is quite different and there is a lot of available space for a big new stadium.
Well... I do believe that by law, downtown Montreal is defined by wherever the Habs are playing, just like it is illegal for Mount Royal to be higher than the Habs tower. That said, either the graph dots cannot be drawn over the axis line, or this is the distance between the main building entry and the edge of the ice (which actually seems accurate).
Another person here wondering where 'Downtown' is located for the Isles. The original fan base is Nassau and Suffolk counties. The team logo even omits the NYC portion of Long Island. And now, Suffolk has more population than Nassau, opposite of what the split was when the team was founded. Elmont/Belmont/UBS Arena is way on the edge of the traditional fan base, on the border with Queens. I would either use Uniondale or Melville as potential 'Downtowns' just due to work commuting patterns. Lots of communities have downtowns, but none are thought of as a 'Downtown' for the Isles fan base.
Used to have Panthers season tickets because I worked in the Sawgrass corporate park, the arena is surrounded by the Everglades on one side and a mall on the other. It’s well beyond where the Ft. Lauderdale suburbs stop, it’s literally the last building before the Everglades start.
At least the expressway runs alongside it otherwise nobody could get there, regardless it’s almost impossible to make it for a weeknight game if you work anywhere in Dade county or northern broward/palm beach
Not sure if this really paints whole picture. (Correlation vs Causation).
Would be interesting to see what the winning percentage is as well related to this.
Example: yes the coyotes are on the lower end here. But they also haven’t been good in a while.
Panthers have been good recently- but has that been going on long enough to affect analysis.
Anyway- cool visual.
The Blue Jackets are pretty much right in the center of the downtown area, what even is this chart. The Arena District is damn near as close to a centerpiece as there is.
I have questions about several teams here, but particularly Minnesota - are you counting the players, staff, police etc? I could understand a small sample size having a miscount over 100% if every game was a sellout but to be that far over 100% over a 10 year sample? I smell something fishy and this time it's not coming from your mum...
Data is from ESPN, sellouts over 100% are typically due to fans buying standing only tickets is my best guess so they aren’t part of the seating capacity
Standing room only. The Blackhawks sell standing room only tickets too but the only time I’ve seen them purchased this year was for the red wings game when they retired Chelios’s jersey and Kane came back to the UC
Well tbf the sens and coyotes are terrible and the panthers play in a city full of transplants/casuals/care about the nightlife scene people. Miami teams often have shit attendance across sports, with the exception of the hurricanes
Kids, this is. Good example of causation versus correlation!
For example, I can show you a graph proving that people that wear a suit to work make much more than those that don’t. Does that mean wearing a nice suit to the job site tomorrow will increase your pay? Or is it possible that there’s something else in play?
I think it would be interesting to track weekday vs weekend games especially when compared to downtown location. I’m a canes STM who just reduced our package from full to half season because of how tired we got of dealing with weekday traffic. The location of the stadium mixed with how the only option is to drive makes going to the games the worst part of the game day experience.
Honestly getting in is worse from my experience since you have to deal with rush hour traffic on 40 as well as arena traffic. For anyone not from the area, 40 is the main highway connecting the area. The times it takes me to get to PNC goes from 30 minutes on non game days to an hour 15 on game days.
Out of those three attributes this is obviously the easiest and quantifiable though. A solid starting point to dissect the outliers and what other factors might be at play (though I think non-downtown location is always going to be a compounding negative factor on top of others, with the exception of a few markets with nuanced layout/demographics).
Do you believe that if the maple leafs or Canadiens arenas were moved 25 km from their respective downtowns that attendance would plummet, and that they would have a tough time filling seats?
A team’s performance, the prevalence of hockey in the area, and its ability to market itself have a much, much higher impact on attendance than “distance from downtown”.
Not to mention that getting to and parking at downtown rinks is a major PITA. I’d rather Edmonton’s be on the outskirts, frankly.
I’m not arguing they would struggle to fill seats, but I could easily see demand fall from their astronomical levels right now, especially considering that those are cities that are traditionally laid out in a hub/spoke model (unlike american sunbelt cities) and have higher shares of the population using multi-modal transit given their size. Coming from the perspective of a Hawks fan in Chicago I’d almost never go to games if they were in the suburbs (since I only travel out to the suburbs maybe one or two times a year). The suburbs here are so sprawling that the central location makes it equally inconvenient for anybody to travel in from the Northern/Western/Southern suburbs, rather than prioritizing one segment of the city at the expense of others (less of an issue in sunbelt cities like Phoenix and Atlanta where most of a sports franchise’s fans are located in a certain segment of the city, northern burbs in Atlanta’s case and eastern burbs in Phoenix’s case). Anyways this is the point where we’re getting into nuances of which markets are outliers for this hypothetical rule and why, which is the whole point of the original graphic.
Also I think the Senator’s make a great example of the two factors of bad management, and bad location hurting attendance, despite the popularity of hockey in the area. Yeah sure the bad management holds a majority of the blame, but having a downtown location makes it easier to draw attendance from people just looking for something to do on a Thursday - Sunday night, rather than the team’s current proposition of asking fans to go super out of their way to watch a bad team.
Yeah but typically when we say this we tend to imply that in not rejecting the null hypothesis it is because we can point to other variables which might be influencing both the dependent and independent variables, or that there is another variable which is the root cause of the independent variable’s interaction: for example in your example a variable “job status” causes both the need to wear a suit and higher levels of income.
Anyway, I think we can both agree you can’t ignore the power of this finding given the r squared is 0.7 and there is a logical explanation that people don’t want to travel far away to see a game. I do think that an OLS multivariate analysis with games won, cost per ticket and price of beer would flush this out, but it’s a fine for Friday afternoon Reddit.
Didn't realize panthers were so far. That being said they're in a huge metropolis probably still people everywhere. Always heard Ottawa was basically playing in the sticks.
I drove by it once on the way to Pembroke. You're way past the burbs. Basically cornfields and then suddenly and NHL arena.
It's been 20 years since I have been to Ottawa, but I heard a lot of development has happened in Kanata.
Yea instead of looking like an arena in the middle of cornfields it now looks like an arena in the middle of a random neighborhood
It's not even a neighborhood. It's just car dealerships and offices.
There is about 60,000 peOPLE with in a 5 min walk of the CTC.
Ooo it’s actually spelled Canada*
General Cannoli you are a bold one
It's what Canada gets its name from.
No no believe me, I know the word, it means nation and Ca-na-da is its name
No it’s Kanata, ON.
They were just being funny.
Looking at their avatar they don’t seem to be the humour type
Apologies.
Just making a goof
No apologies necessary. Sometimes humor is hard to catch through text.
Even so, it’s still on the literal edge of Ottawa and makes it really hard to want to go to a game Edit: horrible spelling
I was over a decade ago that I drove by it, but looking at the google street view, there is a vast expanse of nothing on the other side of the highway.
That’s part of the Everglades on that side of the highway. Dead serious
This is 100% false. I live 10 minutes away from the Arena. Suburbs all around, massive amounts of people.
Dude, I live just inside the greenbelt at Greenbank and don't want to drive out there for a game. The arena is in a stupid spot.
Lol “massive amount of people”? Ok so you and may differ on what we consider a massive amount of people. If 50% of the population of stittsville went to a game they would sell out. If you lump in Kanata together with the stitts it would take 20% of that whole pollution to fill the stands. Thats a significant population but not a massive amount of people. The distance from the CT centre to the nearby ranger outlet mall, which is the closest public thing to it is about the same distance as the scotiabank arena to the Eaton centre. Think of all shit between those two places. There is nothing between CT centre and tanger.
Have you even been to the area? Doesn't sound like it. Sounds like you live in BF Canada
bro..cornfields..
I'm not from Ottawa, but have done a lot of work in the area. My opinion is that it is in the heart of the burbs. but that's just my outsiders opinion
No. It is not. Just one of the several suburbs and the further one.
It's outside of the farthest suburb
Do you know what corn looks like?
Lol. No. It's IN the burbs. Kanata and Stittsville are suburbs
100% agree with toddpsyd. I lived literally right across the street from the arena for 4 years and it is one of the most densely populated areas in south Florida given that it’s also right next to an international mall that people from all over the world visit. There’s the Everglades right next to it, but there isn’t a cornfield within like 50 miles of the arena lmao
I was talking about Ottawa. And I have been corrected. It's not corn fields, but there is a massive expanse of nothing across from Canadian Tire Centre in Kanata (outside Ottawa)
I'll be that guy here but Kanata isn't outside of Ottawa, it's a neighborhood. It used to be outside over 20 years ago but yeah, it is within the city proper.
>I'll be that guy here but Kanata isn't outside of Ottawa, it's a neighborhood. It used to be outside over 20 years ago but yeah, it is within the city proper. The boundaries of the city of Ottawa are ridiculous and don't really matter in this discussion. The rink is surrounded by car dealerships, malls, swamps and a gravel pit. 99% of the Ottawa population is east of it, most of it more than 10km.
yes all the corn fields in South Florida. lol
username checks out
OP is talking about Pembroke, Ontario, bud.
Well a short drive away from the Panthers arena is a city called Pembroke Pines so that’s an easy mistake for any south Floridian.
Yeah it's a funny mix-up. Long live the Pembrokes
Florida does have a massive farming community. Most of the communities inland are just that. They even plant corn
I remember working a week in a Florida orange grove, my blood is too thick for central Florida in June
Took an Uber from Miami Beach out there to catch a game and it’s fucking far.
Their arena is right next to a swamp. It's incredibly far from downtown Miami in traffic. They really could be called the Fort Lauderdale Panthers, South Florida Panthers, or Broward County Panthers. The team still caters to white suburbanites and transplants and their org has never really known how to properly market to a more diverse city fanbase. Having their arena in downtown Miami wouldn't be very convenient to their season ticket holders. Their arena still isn't in the best spot -- it'd be better if it was further east.
In their defense, everywhere is extremely far from downtown Miami in traffic.
I think most sunbelt teams are gonna be catered towards a more exclusively-suburban market. I’m a Hawks fan but originally from Dallas and feel like the vibes at Stars game are pretty different with how many affluent looking people show up in golf polos and button downs. With how expensive the sport is, I guess it mostly attracts a richer crowd and it’s a harder sell to the more diverse crowds that shows up to NFL/MLB/NBA games due to the lack of a historical hockey culture in the region. This fact tends to influence discussions on the suitability of a suburban location in the Phoenix, Atlanta, Broward County, and Raleigh markets in particular.
Unironically though if the panthers were more centered in the city of Miami they'd probably sell out more. Miami has a huge population and of course hockey isn't their favorite sport but look at how well tampa has done. Tampa has a great team sure but they also have prime relastate smack dab in the middle of tampa.
They'd actually be a better fit in Ft. Lauderdale honestly. Close to their practice facility but also a good in between for fans in the Miami areas and fans in the broward, boca and west palm area.
Couldn’t agree more. When I was living in Miami I only went to their games with rangers just because it was so out of the way. If they played in Fort Lauderdale they’d sell out all the time, especially with the tickets being as reasonable as they are
My point is that i think the majority of the attendance woes to the panthers is location really at this point. Your team is insane atm but still struggles to sell out at points?
We averaged 18,632 per game which is pretty much right at sold out in terms of capacity. So the team has been able to fill seats. But location could absolutely be better in some ways, in others not. The team likes the arena because the lease is a very good deal for them and because they get their own arena and don’t have to share with other teams.
It’s also right off the highway so it’s a fair -ish compromise between Palm Beach, Broward, and Miami. If it was near downtown the traffic would be horrendous.
This graph used 10 years of data, the attendance issues were because the team was amidst a 25 year rut for a handful of the years in the graph. Last year’s regular season was pretty mediocre so this season and the President’s Trophy season are the only 2 in our existence where we’ve looked like *real* contenders (2-3 other solid seasons thrown in there too). Crowds have been very good all year. With that said, of course a downtown Fort Lauderdale arena would be better, put a Brightline station attachment and it’d be easy to get fans from West Palm and Miami. Don’t see that happening any time soon, but as long as the team remains truly competitive (this season made it the first time we’ve made the playoffs 4 straight years) then the attendance will remain near 18,000 per game. It’s right off the Sawgrass Expressway and close to I-595, and is across the street from a tourist destination mall (Sawgrass Mills). It’s far away from downtown, but it’s not necessarily out there by itself.
Miami would be a terrible place to move the team. Ft. Lauderdale would be much better.
I live 10 minutes from Amerant Bank Arena (Panthers) and it is nowhere near anything. Its waaaay out in the sticks, a solid 25 minute highway drive from downtown Fort Lauderdale and 45 minutes (ish) from Miami. West Palm Beach is an hour by car. Even Boca Raton is a 30 minute drive. Its in a bedroom community (Sunrise) that is adjacent to the Everglades (there is literally nothing but grass on the other side of the highway the arena abuts). AND, all of that said, there is no way our attendance is 75%. That number must be flawed.
The sticks? Do you even know what the sticks are? Amerant is next to one of the largest malls in the state and thousands of homes. It’s suburbia, not the sticks.
it's also across the street from wetlands that basically stretch to the other coast
TBF behind it is swamp for hundreds of miles
If you live in a city, suburbia is the sticks.
but it is easy really easy to get to. There is 75, 595, and the Sawgrass Expressway right there. On a side note, is it really 25 minutes of driving on 595 to/from Downtown lauderdale to Sawgrass Mills/Amerant Arena?
Yes. From downtown Fort Lauderdale it is at least 25 minutes. Because it will take you at least 10 minutes, maybe even 15 to get from downtown Lauderdale to 95 or 595. Game times tend to coincide with shitty traffic into an out of downtown Then it's another 15 to 20 minutes out 595 and a couple minutes up the Sawgrass to the exit. I've had season tickets for years and I rarely miss games. When I lived downtown, I left 40 minutes before puck drop. And that's just to make sure I get inside the stadium before the anthem is over.
That said, it is really easy to get into and out of the stadium area. It has to be one of the best planned parking situations in all of major sports. Admittedly, I have a 20 year season ticket holder parking pass so I can park immediately in front of the stadium,l. But you can leave after the stars are awarded and be at your car in five minutes and be out of the parking area in two or three, unless you park to the extreme west end of the stadium.
Took an Uber from Hollywood once when I was down there for work and wanted to go to a game, and the ride wasn’t bad. I live in the same city the canes play in and it still takes me 25-30 mins to get down to the arena.
Yes, I used to work in sawgrass and lived off las olas, 25 minutes was the commute almost exactly every day
Click on the graph and you’ll see it shows the data is from the last 10 seasons, without the Covid year factored in. Hence the poor numbers as the team was perpetually mediocre and sometimes bad for half the years the graph measures.
This is a massive overstatement. One of the largest malls in the country is across the street. Some of the wealthiest neighborhoods in Broward are within 10 minutes of the arena. Huge suburban centers within 15 minutes (Pines, Davie, Springs, Margate). Wonder why you made such an off base comment.
From the concourse outside the 300’s on the far side of the entrance, you can literally see the endless swamp that is the Everglades with nothing for miles.
The arena is literally the last structure before you hit the Everglades. You can’t go farther west, unless you’re looking to hang out with the gators and snakes
Yeah, it's like a solid 35 minutes from Fort Lauderdale, not close to anything near the beach or downtown areas
What a speculative, useless, incorrect comment. Hur dur take my updoot
You have described reddit.
It's almost like NHL franchises should know exactly how this is supposed to be set up...
It’s Sabres god damnit.
It's Sa-Bray
We weren’t sure before we recorded the song, sorry.
Right!? Like wtf. Not that hard to spell.
Ottawa's stadium is out in the middle of fucking nowhere, like, you go my miles of basically empty fields and suddenly BOOM there's a stadium on the side of the highway. It's so ridiculous.
The sooner the better that a stadium is built in the Lebreton Flats the better. Kanata is a nothing shit hole of a place.
I love crapping on the Sens, but this is objectively false. It’s in the middle of one of the bigger suburbs in the Ottawa area
It's way on the edge of town. There's a reason they're listed that way on the graph lol.
Yeah it’s in a shitty location way outside of downtown, but it’s not sitting the middle of a bunch of empty fields as you described.
It certainly was when I left the city in about 2014.
It certainly was when I left the city in 2014. Might be different now, but... not according to the graph.
Huh? The Wild are in downtown not .4 miles away. Edit: Center of downtown? Sorry to be annoying this is actually interesting info, but it is reddit so being annoying is my duty.
All good man, I put the center of downtown at the intersection of Fort+Robert, which from that point Xcel is roughly .4 miles away walking. Still very close and Wild fans are crazy packing the barn 104.5% over the last 10 years
Too bad they disappoint us in the playoffs every year they make it. One of these years they out it all together...someday...
What makes it even more insane is that Fort Rd is a secret name of 7th St and googlay maps says Fort Rd but all the signs say 7th St, so that's annoying for out of town people.
For the Leafs, the downtown point is likely Union Station and their arena is attached to that building. It should be 0km.
Lol this was what I looked at too, Kellogg and 7th is pretty damn downtown! Gotta pick a point though, so I get it. Maybe the better way to show this would be grouping the distances... Like a big chunk of teams there might be in the 0-2km distance, for example... Or maybe distance from edge of suburbs would be sweet but probably really hard to assemble this info.
More nuance if you think about Minneapolis too!
Sunrise is really fucking far from majority of the fan base. I’m looking at an hour each way from Palm Beach and that’s with minimal traffic. With that said it’s a really nice area but with nothing but an outlet mall and a chic filet
>with that said it’s a really nice area but with nothing but an outlet mall and a chic filet Seriously they need to open some bars and restaurants similar to the Battery in Atlanta in that area. That way fans can catch the game and then go celebrate afterwards. I went to game 3 of the SCF last year and after the game was over, everyone just packed out and went home. Kind of took away from the atmosphere and mood of that (one and only) win we had. Had that happened in Nashville, Broadway would have been a party.
I can’t imagine it’d be easy to draw people there outside of games though. Looks like it’s literally at the edge of the metro area, and half surrounded by swamp. People give the Braves shit for being outside the reach of MARTA but it’s still surrounded by a decent number of other suburbs that probably support commercial activity during the off-season.
Yardhouse, Innfield, Quarterdeck are all good options within a couple miles
>Within a couple of miles You rest his case.
No, literally all of those are within a 5 minute drive.
You’re missing the point. The most exciting places to see a game are arenas that have a vibrant neighborhood around them… not a short drive away. At Capital One arena in DC, you could walk three blocks to probably 50 bars, restaurants, nightclubs, or walk 5-10 blocks to hundreds of cool places and it has 5 metro lines at 3 stations nearby. Easy in, easy out and great food and energy all around before and after every game.
There are literally 20 restaurants and bars across the street from the arena. Look it up on a map, lmfao
Yeah of course it’s not walking distance but close drive. The traffic and parking surrounding Sunrise is pretty horrible. The arena has built out a few bars and are designed to attract everyone for $20 beers with some live music and TVs posted up. Most Panthers fans watch from home and come out when schedules are convenient
There’s really no easy obvious solution. It’s a consequence of sprawling suburbs and public transport only being reliably present in some areas, rather than the region as a whole. Hopefully that will change in the future…
Florida problems. i don't see this changing anytime soon. It's just getting worse tbh. Everytime I go down there it's just more and more sprawl, more and more subdivisions. People in Florida want their space and people down there move down there for their own slice. The places that have density down there are continuing to do so but a lot of the hubs are still growing outwards more than upwards. The brightline is neat but not really addressing sprawl at all. To maximize profits and attendance, Teams need to be near hubs and those hubs preferably should have mass transit that is reliable and effective. It's not really rocket science. More people = more potential butts in seats. This would certainly help teams like the Panthers putting them closer to Miami or Ft lauderdale or whatever. But having said that sports fans will drive and sit in traffic in giant parking lots if they really want to - see football teams in Florida. So i do think that continued success will move this average up even in the current home in Sunrise. Note that this graph is really somewhat misleading since its a 10 year average and the attendance recently for the panthers has been pretty great, not near 80%. My understanding is most games are near sellouts anyways which is great.
A few years back Viola and co brought a concept to the county with apartments, neighborhoods, shops etc. not sure what happened
I mean going to the arena you can see that there are loads of construction developments, but that basically applies to most of south-Florida these days. And it’s not ever entirely really been exactly “the middle of nowhere”- I mean yeah it’s suburbs as far west as they’re legally allowed to build, but they’ve still got Sawgrass Mall nearby which is still a local draw even in 2024. Plus on the way there you’ve got a FBI office and I think NBC6 local news has their station there? If anything, the problem is that much of the urban planning around the area is still built as if it was for the 1950s, and not for the current day reality where the population is exponentially larger and there’s gridlock all the time- “rush hour” is now practically everything from 6am to 8pm
It is a pretty damned big mall though...
To be fair, in a lot of these cities, it’s over an hour to commute into downtown to get to the arena from the majority of fans (who live in the surrounding suburbs). Especially in the biggest cities with arenas right downtown like Toronto or NYC (or cities with crazy urban sprawl and poor transit like LA or Dallas). Curious though, would having the Panthers play in an arena in the heart of downtown Miami or Ft Lauderdale actually boost attendance though? Parking would be harder, costs presumably higher (since the land would be worth more), rush hour traffic would be an issue for some games, etc…
IMO the Islanders are not a NYC team they are a Long Island team IDK where you would say “downtown” is for Long Island. While UBS isn’t centrally located it’s easy to get to from all three major highways on Long Island plus the LIRR. Edit: Rangers are in Midtown not downtown
Also, 3 arenas over the 10 years the average was taken. Cool graph, NYI are just a bit of a “needs additional context” data point.
I would say though that the Colosseum was pretty centrally located. I always hated that they refused to build a new stadium and then two years later Nassau constructs a new one
Agreed. I grew up 5 miles from the Coliseum and it was great. After that, it became a pain in the ass. Now you have to walk almost a mile from where you park or get let off on the train just to enter the arena. UBS is a nice place to see a game though for sure.
That was a horseshit move.
So stupid. I remember Nassau County bitching that the Islanders wanted too much and were paying too little but then they cancelled the deal and went and built a new one? Made no goddam sense.
Looks like a lot of full barns. Good for the sport
I grew up in MN, but moved down to TX. I usually explain to people that Hockey in MN is bigger than Football in TX. The state hockey tournament has the largest attendance of any high school championship in the country.
Opened this wondering how much farther the panthers were gunna be than the rest of the league and did not disappoint.
We’re Blackhawks fans but my parents have a condo in Ft. Lauderdale and always go there for Panthers/ Blackhawks games because it’s so much easier/ cheaper to get tickets (especially true from like 2010-2016). They love it haha
As a former resident of Downtown Ottawa (Elgin St), the sooner the better the Arena gets moved to Lebreton. It's a ballache to get to and it's no craic when you're there. No sense of a game being on in Ottawa then they play. When you see what it's like walking to and from games at Lansdowne for RedBlacks games, it's a no brainer to get 'er built.
For the islanders is it downtown NYC or elmont?
The canes can just be taken out of this analysis completely because our downtown is not exactly the population hub of this sprawling suburb we call a city.
This is something that is just not well understood at all about this area, especially by people up north (Northeast US or Canada). There's no accounting for the fact that the majority of the metro population isn't *anywhere near downtown* in Raleigh. The arena is actually in a really good location for the car-centric suburban sprawl we have here. The population is mostly spread over northern and western Wake County and the arena is right in the middle of that population with plenty of freeway access around it. The low attendance in the 2010s had everything to do with a bad team laboring under bad ownership and zero to do with location relative to downtown Raleigh. The proof is in the fact that the Canes have been selling out like crazy in the last several years and nothing has changed about the arena at all from the poor attendance days. The team just got good and became contenders every year. If Dundon, the Centennial Authority, and the city can fulfill the big expectations of their plans for the arena area, it will create its own center of gravity that will act like a downtown anyway.
I don't understand this. Pizzarena is in downtown and sells out every game
Does this help answer why no one went to Coyotes games? The arena is 45 minutes outside of the city. Hockey belongs in the desert… but just not in the middle of the desert
I didn't realize what the Canes had was weird until I lived elsewhere. Now I totally get it. There is almost nothing around PNC, save for a few small restaurants. Thankfully the owner is working to fix that
When Sens sees that list they're gonna rip out another 1,5k seats to be on top
It's an interesting premise, but the fact of the matter is that the teams on the far right are there because they have a history of *sucking shit:* * Florida's found some success of late, but they were completely irrelevant for a generation. They failed to win a playoff series for 26 years, including a stretch where they missed the playoffs entirely 18 out of 21 years * The Coyotes made it out of the first round *one time* in their 28 years in Arizona. Excluding the Covid season where they benefited from the expanded playoff format, Arizona has missed the playoffs for the last 10 years, and 17 of the last 21 seasons. Like Florida, irrelevant for a generation * We all know about Ottawa since 2017, not to mention the anti-Melnyk revolt * Carolina's been competitive for the last 6 seasons, but missed the playoffs 13 out of 15 seasons (including 9 years in a row) immediately before that I lived in Ottawa in the Sens heyday, and they had no problem filling the barn when they weren't awful. Likewise, the Carolinas and Floridas and Arizonas of the league do just fine at the gate when the team isn't shitting itself on the ice. It's just been rare for much of the existence of these teams.
It begs the question of can you still fill seats with a bad team in an urban location though. I mentioned this in another comment but you can likely still draw some attendance with people looking for something to do on a Thursday - Sunday night with a downtown stadium rather than asking fans to go very far out of their way to see a bad team (exception being some sunbelt markets with nuanced demographics/urban layouts).
Not shocking but really interesting to see the data! My only criticism is a lot of these teams within .5km of downtown *are* within their city’s ‘downtown’ boundaries, the Leafs are for sure anyway. Out of curiosity is the downtown Toronto point Yonge & Dundas or Nathan Phillips?
Agreed. The Caps definitely play in downtown DC.
As much as I loved the Joe, and hate what the Illitch family has done since moving, it was so far away from anything that was cool to do before/after the game. It was a pain to walk to.
The bruins are in north station though??? What’s counted as downtown, City Hall??
I don’t even know what you count of as center of downtown, the financial district?
I was wondering the same thing. I had assumed city hall, but it looks to me like this chart has Rogers Arena listed as closer to “downtown” than Scotiabank Arena in Toronto, which is technically not true (1.8km in Toronto vs 3.0km in Vancouver). But both are just a few blocks from what I would call the heart of downtown in both cities. I think this chart is really only useful/interesting for the outliers like Ottawa….
>I had assumed city hall, but it looks to me like this chart has Rogers Arena listed as closer to “downtown” than Scotiabank Arena in Toronto, which is technically not true (1.8km in Toronto vs 3.0km in Vancouver). nb - Vancouver's City Hall isn't downtown, it's at Cambie & 10th Ave. Rogers Arena is about 500m from downtown (Granville & W. Georgia).
Yep, government center is 0.6 miles from TD garden. And that's honestly a reasonably objective place to pick if you're looking from the outside in. Dunkies at govt center is almost dead center in the peninsula...
Dunkies at gov center? Which one haha
Lmao fair enough. Pick one!
Gotta go with the one next to starbucks. Not the one on the other side of starbucks tho fuck that one
People from outside of Boston probably think you’re making some sort of joke and you are but also completely dead ass true. This city is great.
Lol absolutely. The real best dunks is the popup in south though, idk how they do it.
Remember when back bay used to have two dunks fifty feet from each other. You can tell we are nearing an economic cliff when one of those closed. Dark times man.
The dunkin express!! Fuck man I miss that one. The other one is way too crowded
Dark times man. Dark times. We only have one Dunkin in Longwood medical but FOUR Starbucks. When does it end???
Fenway is considered a downtown venue too, even though it’s not. Both are in the city proper in heavily mixed commercial and residential neighborhoods, so maybe that passes as downtown. Foxboro on the other hand…
Not sure what the definition of downtown Toronto is here. The Leafs play in a building that is literally connected to Union Station downtown Toronto.
not to be that guy, but what is the main takeaway here...
For me, this demonstrates the necessity of a new downtown arena for Ottawa.
We went to see the Leafs play in Ottawa. One of our buddy's volunteered to be the DD thankfully. I checked after the game, it would have been $240 for an Uber back to our hotel in downtown Ottawa.
I mean, there are hotels in Kanata too.
Am I the only one perturbed by the spelling of Sabres?
I would be curious to see how they are measuring "distance from downtown" as if you asked me today where the Sharks' arena is located I would have said "right at the edge of downtown."
What are you using as the Islanders downtown?
How did you identify the center of downtown? Also, I'd be curious to see how that location compares to the center of a city's population distribution. Cool data!
I’m glad the Panthers attendance has improved this year, I was worried about them since they play at least 30 minutes outside of Miami
In the Hawks, FLyers and Ducks defense.... they suck this year. I would expect otherwise a decrease of the down angle if they were better. Though, yeah, it's obvious, anything over 10 miles hurts your attendance.
The Tank may be downtown, but I’m not sure how much downtown San Jose ACTUALLY counts as a downtown considering very few people actually live there relative to the city’s suburbs
There are \*very quiet\* whispers about moving the Blues out of the downtown area and into St. Louis county in the next 5-7 years. For reference, St. Louis City and St. Louis county are different municipalities, so the tax situation is quite different and there is a lot of available space for a big new stadium.
How does one have more than 100% attendance….
Standing room, I'm guessing🤷♂️
Capacity is based on number of seats. Attendance is based on tickets sold. If you have suites, it's not hard to sell more tickets than you have seats.
Well... I do believe that by law, downtown Montreal is defined by wherever the Habs are playing, just like it is illegal for Mount Royal to be higher than the Habs tower. That said, either the graph dots cannot be drawn over the axis line, or this is the distance between the main building entry and the edge of the ice (which actually seems accurate).
Them some high leverage points off to the right. Pretty influential too.
Maybe also include winning %. Cats sucked for a long time and now sell out many games
On what metric do you use for distance from downtown? The Jets arena is in the middle of downtown, so shouldn't they be at 0?
Did you make this man? Well done
My favorite team is now the Knights Kraken Stars.
You spelled Sabres wrong but also I get it
Another person here wondering where 'Downtown' is located for the Isles. The original fan base is Nassau and Suffolk counties. The team logo even omits the NYC portion of Long Island. And now, Suffolk has more population than Nassau, opposite of what the split was when the team was founded. Elmont/Belmont/UBS Arena is way on the edge of the traditional fan base, on the border with Queens. I would either use Uniondale or Melville as potential 'Downtowns' just due to work commuting patterns. Lots of communities have downtowns, but none are thought of as a 'Downtown' for the Isles fan base.
Seems a bit off. I think this is relevant to city Hall. The leafs play pretty much in the downtown core of Toronto about 5 blocks south of city hall.
What's off? 400 meters isn't far.
The relevance to downtown, it is physically in downtown. So the measure is just relevance to city hall
Cool graph. But just showing “distance” as a value doesn’t quite do the trek to the senator’s home arena justice.
That's what we in the business refer to as a Booty Call chart. If you're too far away, it prob ain't gonna happen.
It's nice to see the ducks at least decently up there. They might be a terrible team. But the fans are super loyal.
Used to have Panthers season tickets because I worked in the Sawgrass corporate park, the arena is surrounded by the Everglades on one side and a mall on the other. It’s well beyond where the Ft. Lauderdale suburbs stop, it’s literally the last building before the Everglades start. At least the expressway runs alongside it otherwise nobody could get there, regardless it’s almost impossible to make it for a weeknight game if you work anywhere in Dade county or northern broward/palm beach
Not sure if this really paints whole picture. (Correlation vs Causation). Would be interesting to see what the winning percentage is as well related to this. Example: yes the coyotes are on the lower end here. But they also haven’t been good in a while. Panthers have been good recently- but has that been going on long enough to affect analysis. Anyway- cool visual.
If you build it downtown, they will come
The Blue Jackets are pretty much right in the center of the downtown area, what even is this chart. The Arena District is damn near as close to a centerpiece as there is.
Kind of explains one reason we no longer have a team in Phoenix.
I have questions about several teams here, but particularly Minnesota - are you counting the players, staff, police etc? I could understand a small sample size having a miscount over 100% if every game was a sellout but to be that far over 100% over a 10 year sample? I smell something fishy and this time it's not coming from your mum...
Data is from ESPN, sellouts over 100% are typically due to fans buying standing only tickets is my best guess so they aren’t part of the seating capacity
Yeesh. This is like bosses who demand 110% - if you can fit more in/sell more tickets then clearly you're not at 100% capacity.
Standing room only. The Blackhawks sell standing room only tickets too but the only time I’ve seen them purchased this year was for the red wings game when they retired Chelios’s jersey and Kane came back to the UC
Fuck all to do in Minnesota but watch hockey I guess
Sounds like you jealous of all the hockey there is to watch in the hockey state.
What’s considered downtown for the islanders? If it’s Manhattan it doesn’t really correlate to a large percentage of the fan base.
Well tbf the sens and coyotes are terrible and the panthers play in a city full of transplants/casuals/care about the nightlife scene people. Miami teams often have shit attendance across sports, with the exception of the hurricanes
Hurricanes really do have a weak fanbase
Kids, this is. Good example of causation versus correlation! For example, I can show you a graph proving that people that wear a suit to work make much more than those that don’t. Does that mean wearing a nice suit to the job site tomorrow will increase your pay? Or is it possible that there’s something else in play?
So what's your point? I don't think saying a shitty arena location impacts attendance is incorrect, and this graph kinda shows that
I think it would be interesting to track weekday vs weekend games especially when compared to downtown location. I’m a canes STM who just reduced our package from full to half season because of how tired we got of dealing with weekday traffic. The location of the stadium mixed with how the only option is to drive makes going to the games the worst part of the game day experience.
Not to mention the hour spent just getting out of that parking lot.
Honestly getting in is worse from my experience since you have to deal with rush hour traffic on 40 as well as arena traffic. For anyone not from the area, 40 is the main highway connecting the area. The times it takes me to get to PNC goes from 30 minutes on non game days to an hour 15 on game days.
The traffic on 40 is always horrendous. I was there last weekend and it was the worst part of my drive.
Makes sense yeah
Now do a shitty owner graph. Then a “cities with shitty hockey culture” graph.
It's almost like there are multiple factors at play. Both can be true
Out of those three attributes this is obviously the easiest and quantifiable though. A solid starting point to dissect the outliers and what other factors might be at play (though I think non-downtown location is always going to be a compounding negative factor on top of others, with the exception of a few markets with nuanced layout/demographics).
Do you believe that if the maple leafs or Canadiens arenas were moved 25 km from their respective downtowns that attendance would plummet, and that they would have a tough time filling seats? A team’s performance, the prevalence of hockey in the area, and its ability to market itself have a much, much higher impact on attendance than “distance from downtown”. Not to mention that getting to and parking at downtown rinks is a major PITA. I’d rather Edmonton’s be on the outskirts, frankly.
I’m not arguing they would struggle to fill seats, but I could easily see demand fall from their astronomical levels right now, especially considering that those are cities that are traditionally laid out in a hub/spoke model (unlike american sunbelt cities) and have higher shares of the population using multi-modal transit given their size. Coming from the perspective of a Hawks fan in Chicago I’d almost never go to games if they were in the suburbs (since I only travel out to the suburbs maybe one or two times a year). The suburbs here are so sprawling that the central location makes it equally inconvenient for anybody to travel in from the Northern/Western/Southern suburbs, rather than prioritizing one segment of the city at the expense of others (less of an issue in sunbelt cities like Phoenix and Atlanta where most of a sports franchise’s fans are located in a certain segment of the city, northern burbs in Atlanta’s case and eastern burbs in Phoenix’s case). Anyways this is the point where we’re getting into nuances of which markets are outliers for this hypothetical rule and why, which is the whole point of the original graphic.
Also I think the Senator’s make a great example of the two factors of bad management, and bad location hurting attendance, despite the popularity of hockey in the area. Yeah sure the bad management holds a majority of the blame, but having a downtown location makes it easier to draw attendance from people just looking for something to do on a Thursday - Sunday night, rather than the team’s current proposition of asking fans to go super out of their way to watch a bad team.
Yeah but typically when we say this we tend to imply that in not rejecting the null hypothesis it is because we can point to other variables which might be influencing both the dependent and independent variables, or that there is another variable which is the root cause of the independent variable’s interaction: for example in your example a variable “job status” causes both the need to wear a suit and higher levels of income. Anyway, I think we can both agree you can’t ignore the power of this finding given the r squared is 0.7 and there is a logical explanation that people don’t want to travel far away to see a game. I do think that an OLS multivariate analysis with games won, cost per ticket and price of beer would flush this out, but it’s a fine for Friday afternoon Reddit.