Winnipeg Jets

[cheswick]

Originally Posted by blueandgoldguy

If ticket prices increase at a greater rate than the rate of economic growth in a same region/city it is an economic certainty demand for the product will
eventually decrease....and that is what is finally happening

In the first few years of the franchise, season ticket holders at the various price points were guaranteed an annual yearly rate of increase of 3% if they locked in for 3 - 5 year commitments. In more recent years, I believe that rate increased to 5% even with a multi-year commitment. Over at HFBoards Jets, I think it was discovered that the rates for some (possibly all?) the season tickets for this past season had increased by 7%. Add in the increases in concessions and beverages, increased rates with parking, the no re-admittance policy (people forced to spend more money at Bell MTS) and typical economic growth in Winnipeg/Manitoba hovering around 2% annually and you have the current situation as it stands.

There will be more non-sellouts this year..that is all but assured.

Yeah a few years ago they switched to 5% maximum increase on contracts. Some folks were given 5% increase and some were still on 3% contracts. Upon the expiration of the contracts that were still on 3%, between the contract signing they increased the prices to match the missed 5% increases so they were in excess of 7%.

[dmacc]

This is my last year of 3%, after the first 3 years I resigned for another 6 years. If I can expect a 5-7% increase you can be sure I won't be committing to another year.

The issue is it is difficult to commit that many days to sporting events, especially during the week. Now that tickets are so easy to come by for below face value it doesn't make as much sense for me to commit to games I may not want to go to when I can have greater freedom to choose the games I want.

[esquire]

Originally Posted by dmacc

This is my last year of 3%, after the first 3 years I resigned for another 6 years. If I can expect a 5-7% increase you can be sure I won't be committing to another year.

The issue is it is difficult to commit that many days to sporting events, especially during the week. Now that tickets are so easy to come by for below face value it doesn't make as much sense for me to commit to games I may not want to go to when I can have greater freedom to choose the games I want.

This will be the breaking point for many, I suspect.

Realistically, there are no games that you can't get tickets to via the resale market... the only question is whether you have to pay full face value (playoff games, maybe games vs. the Leafs/Habs and the occasional marquee matchup although really those are rare in the regular season), whether you pay the STH price (most games), or whether you can get away with buying tickets at a discount (some weekday games, games vs. lesser opponents). So unless you are so hardcore that you really want to attend 20, 30, 40 games a season, you are no worse off just buying your games a la carte. There's no shortage of sellers.

It's a far cry from seasons 1-3 when you practically needed connections to land resale market tickets, or had to be prepared to pay through the nose for them.

I doubt this matters to TNSE though, I'm sure they are probably chuffed knowing that they are charging the absolute maximum price the market will bear. Having a few hundred unsold seats confirms this.

[cheswick]

Originally Posted by dmacc

This is my last year of 3%, after the first 3 years I resigned for another 6 years. If I can expect a 5-7% increase you can be sure I won't be committing to another year.

The issue is it is difficult to commit that many days to sporting events, especially during the week. Now that tickets are so easy to come by for below face value it doesn't make as much sense for me to commit to games I may not want to go to when I can have greater freedom to choose the games I want.

They've done 2 5% increases, while you've had a 3% ones. If they go with a third 5% increase at the end of the season, to catch up you'll be looking at an over 9% increase at the end of your term.

[bomberjet]

From my perspective.

We have 3 seats in P6. We buy season tickets to a.) get dibs on playoff tix and b.) pay discounted prices for reg season tix. We sold all but 1 game on the seat exchange last year. Went to 12, sold 27, went to 1 extra game that didn't sell.

This year, with the glut of games right at the start, we've sold all our tix for games to date on seat exchange except for Arizona on the Tuesday. We still have LA Kings for next Tuesday for sale. The games tend to sell. We monitor seat exchange and adjust the price based on other tix for sale. End up selling the crappy games for our cost. Make a bit of profit of the other games that are more attractive.

In terms of price increase, I haven't done the math. But yeah, it gets bumped every year.

[esquire]

^ I used to do reasonably well selling my extra P6 seats on SeatExchange - I basically sold at cost for the games I'm not willing or able to attend, and I sold most of the games I put up for sale that way along with a couple of others sold to friends and coworkers through word of mouth.

But it seems like way more people are selling via SeatExchange now. I've only sold two of my extra games via SeatExchange so far... it feels like it's getting harder to sell that way.

[bomberjet]

As we have 3 seats, there are a lot less available looking at it that way. And since we monitor and lower the prices so we're at or near the cheapest, we do pretty good.

But if you had 2 or 4 seats, there's so many for sale it's easy to get lost in the mix.

[Jammon]

Originally Posted by bomberjet

As we have 3 seats, there are a lot less available looking at it that way. And since we monitor and lower the prices so we're at or near the cheapest, we do pretty good.

But if you had 2 or 4 seats, there's so many for sale it's easy to get lost in the mix.

I opted out of our season ticket group this year and bought two mini-packs instead. I'm going to less games, but I got way better seats. I sat in section 321 and I couldn't sell those tickets to save my life if I couldn't go. It was REALLY frustrating paying all that money and having to give tickets away.

[LakeLocker]

Originally Posted by dmacc

The cap is currently at $6,186,041, if Buf is to return we would need $7,600,000. If Buf did return he would take a current roster spot, likely Niku's which would add $775,000. Every game he misses brings our cap up $92,682.93. Every game Little and Beaulieu misse adds $64,532.51 and $12,195.12 to the cap.

$6,186,041 Current Cap
$ 775,000 Niku's Cap
$6,961,041 Combined Cap
-$7,600,000 Buffs Cap Hit
$ 638,959 Cap Relieve Required for Buff to Return
/$ 169,410.56 Every Game Buff, Little & Beaulieu Miss
3.77 Number of games for Buff to fit under the cap

I'm new to this whole thing but couldn't the jets do well if Buffs out for about 30 games.

Wouldn't that give them the wiggle room to get another D for $2 million?

With buff returning and a new top 4 D you could pretty much drop your bottom 6 to the AHL?

If they can wiggle through at .500 by january wouldn't they still have a good shot to be cup contenders. Especially if the new Laine maintains his abilities.

[bomberjet]

I thought when Buff returns his cap hit will be pro-rated backwards so it'll still include the full 7.6 million. His yearly cap hit would be like $10 mil. Similar to what happens with contract hold-outs. Such as Nylander last year. Their yearly cap hit is higher to account for the missed games.

This prevents teams from circumventing the cap in this way. Basically the whole situation is screwing the team from resolving the defensive issue.

Such as the examples given here:
https://www.capfriendly.com/faq#rfa-caphit

This is for RFA's. But from what I've seen it's the same for Buff's situation.

[optimusREIM]

No because he's suspended without pay, he'll essentially get the percentage of his contract remaining in the season. His cap hit will still he 7.6 mil for the whole year. Pro rating it to make his real cap hit higher than his AAV would be a really unfair rule

[bomberjet]

Cap hit and salary are 2 different things though. In a lot of cases they don't align.

But I don't think it would be unfair at all. The team could suspend someone, mutually agreed upon outside of any paper contracts or deals, to purposely lower their cap hit so they can manipulate the cap.

I will ask the cap friendly people and see what they say.

[cheswick]

Originally Posted by bomberjet

I thought when Buff returns his cap hit will be pro-rated backwards so it'll still include the full 7.6 million. His yearly cap hit would be like $10 mil. Similar to what happens with contract hold-outs. Such as Nylander last year. Their yearly cap hit is higher to account for the missed games.

This prevents teams from circumventing the cap in this way. Basically the whole situation is screwing the team from resolving the defensive issue.

Such as the examples given here:
https://www.capfriendly.com/faq#rfa-caphit

This is for RFA's. But from what I've seen it's the same for Buff's situation.

Is that correct? An RFA's cap hit is higher in a shortened first season because the cap is equalized across all years, but the first year is shortened, so its the same cap hit is proportioned out over a shorter period.

Byfuglien is not getting paid for his missed days. Are you sure it would work the same way?

[bomberjet]

.

[CoryB]

Basically the Jets have entered their third phase.

Phase One: we got an NHL team back I NEED tickets.

Phase Two: We are on the verge on winning the cup/going deep in the playoffs I need to part of that.

Phase Three: Wow the team has turned into a dumpster fire and its really time I started doing something different with my cash/time.

The interesting piece here is why did True North not push people from the wait list into season tickets for all those unsold seats? Reality is they have struggled to have 100% sellouts for every game since they added the loge seats as those are rarely 100% sold. Also offering mini packs v full and half seasons was another telling marker that support was drying up.

[esquire]

^ There is no way TNSE didn't see this coming. You don't have to be a genius to realize that the smallest market in the league combined with some of the highest average price points in the league wouldn't sustain sellouts on an indefinite basis, especially with two other fairly significant hockey teams sharing the market now. I guess they'll have to rev up the marketing machine and start making a bit of an effort to sell tickets, which is something they really haven't had to bother doing up to now.

A few empty seats won't make a big difference as long as the critical mass of support remains. There isn't much of a difference between 97% sold vs. 100% sold. Now if those numbers really start dropping then there might be a problem.

[dmacc]

Originally Posted by bomberjet

I thought when Buff returns his cap hit will be pro-rated backwards so it'll still include the full 7.6 million. His yearly cap hit would be like $10 mil. Similar to what happens with contract hold-outs. Such as Nylander last year. Their yearly cap hit is higher to account for the missed games.

This prevents teams from circumventing the cap in this way. Basically the whole situation is screwing the team from resolving the defensive issue.

Such as the examples given here:
https://www.capfriendly.com/faq#rfa-caphit

This is for RFA's. But from what I've seen it's the same for Buff's situation.

Buf being suspended works similar to to a player being on LTIR, the salary doesn't count against the cap and is prorated to provide relief to the team. This is because the team shouldn't be punished because of a situation/event that is out of their control and would be unfair to punish them accordingly.

Most teams don't use this to circumvent the cap however some do in the case of LTIR. Pronger, Clarkson, Savard are all players that have been used to prop up teams that couldn't hit the salary floor.

In this case, if I'm right, the team shouldn't be punished because a player can't commit to playing for you when you have an agreement in place and the team should have the right, if they choose to, to use the cap space to fill a roster spot. The team would also have right to hold out hope that the player would change their mind and if they did so the team shouldn't be punished with that players full cap space because they didn't get the benefit of that players services for the period of time they were gone.

If I'm right and I think I am, this could be a clever way to circumvent the cap, though very shady and if the NHL were to find out this was all a ruse I'm sure they would be very pissed with the Jets. If true I'm sure buf would have only agreed to this if there was the promise of making him whole somewhere else. Again this is all speculation but Buf watch starts on Sunday depending on recalls and LTIR.

[esquire]

^ I'm not familiar with this manoeuvre... what changes on Sunday that results in an increased chance of Byfuglien returning?

[dmacc]

He would finally fit under the cap.

[dmacc]

Now that Nogier has been called up it affects things and pushes the timeline unless Bitteto is put onto LTIR.