Habs’ lacklustre season hits some retailers hard
‘Fickle fans’ are less interested in games, downtown bar owner says
Enrique Santana gestures around his store.
“Look, game day and the store is completely empty,” he said.
In other years, a Montreal Canadiens game at the nearby Bell Centre usually meant a busy day at Sports Crescent, the Ste-Catherine St. sports merchandise store that Santana manages.
But not today. The Habs may be playing at home in a few hours, but no one is shopping for jerseys, shirts or hats with the team’s logo.
It’s not that people are buying less Habs gear, he said, “they don’t buy at all.”
Overall, sales are down about 70 per cent from years when the Habs were playing well, Santana said.
“Game day, we used to do $3,000 to $4,000 a day,” he said. Sales are so low, he’s worried about how the store will pay its rent, he said.
Santana has marked down Canadiens merchandise — much of it is 25 or 30 per cent off. Jerseys with Max Pacioretty’s name and number are 50 per cent off, as are plain jerseys.
Two P.K. Subban jerseys — one with the colours and logos of the Nashville Predators, the other with those of the all-star game — hang near the centre of the store.
Subban may have been traded, but his jerseys still sell.
People are “buying Subban more, buying other players, but not Canadiens merchandise. Canadiens merchandise has stopped completely, completely,” Santana said.
At downtown bars, things aren’t quite as bad.
Stuart Ashton, a co-owner and the general manager of McLean’s Pub on Peel St., said business is down on hockey nights, but the bar hasn’t seen an overall decline in business.
“We still have a fair bit of people that are watching the games. There’s certainly less interest. That’s always been the case when the Habs are losing. We have fickle fans in general in Montreal,” he said. “No one’s asking us to change the channel, that’s for sure.”
With the Canadiens effectively out of playoff contention, business won’t be as good this spring as it would be if the Habs were still chasing the Cup.
The Habs making the playoffs is “as important as good weather is,” Ashton said.
“It’s beyond our control, so it’s just a bonus. If we would have gotten it, that would have been great, but we’re not going to get it, so it’s just too bad.”
Ashton said the Habs don’t factor into his business plan. While the team’s success on the ice can give his business a boost, at the end of the day, the focus is on things like customer service.
“If we depended on forces that we couldn’t control for our business success, we’d be out of business, so it’s not in our overall plan, but it certainly helps,” he said.
At Bier Markt on René-Lévesque Blvd., business “went down a little bit, but not as much as we expected,” waitress Eve Mangin said.
“There’s a lot of conferences, tourism has been better this year than in the other years and we also have a lot of the fans from other cities that are playing against the Habs.”
While the Winter Olympics gave the bar a bit of a boost, with the time difference, events weren’t taking place at hours when customers were looking to drink.
When it comes to the Habs, people drink “less when they’re losing. When they win, people come and party, for sure,” Mangin said.
Ticket resellers are also feeling the effect of the poor season.
“Of course” it’s bad for business, said one man who was selling tickets outside the Bell Centre Wednesday evening and refused to give his name.
“We’re selling tickets for half price,” he said.
Santana said he thinks some of the flavour of downtown Montreal has been lost.
No one on the street is wearing Habs jerseys or T-shirts and there are no Canadiens flags on cars.
“They have to not just play better, they have to be better all the way,” Santana said.