‘Still need to knock on people’s doors’
Are Canucks owners doing enough to promote lacrosse and hype their rebranded Warriors?
Dan Dawson might know more about the National Lacrosse League than anyone.
The 37-year-old forward from Oakville, Ont., is in his 18th season in the winter box lacrosse loop, brought in by the expansion San Diego Seals to provide a veteran presence.
This is his eighth different stop. Five of his former teams no longer exist, including the fabulously named Columbus Landsharks and the Portland Lumberjax.
Dawson has seen things work and he’s seen things flop.
“I think we in lacrosse still need to knock on people’s doors and remind them that we are here,” said Dawson, who has 490 goals and 1,335 points in 276 regular-season games heading into this weekend’s NLL action.
“If we get complacent, it’s not going to work. We need to market, we need to promote. We’re not in the top-five mainstream sports — yet.”
That brings us to the Vancouver Warriors. They’re halfway through their first season since the Vancouver Canucks bought the Vancouver Stealth, moved them from Langley Events Centre to Rogers Arena and gave them a new name and new moniker.
Their social-media game is expanding.
They’re pushing the Warriors brand more and more at Canucks games. And they’re ramping up their schools program, which sees players give clinics at elementary schools. We’ll see where this goes. The Warriors (3-6) will play their fifth home game of the season Saturday night, when the Saskatchewan Rush (3-4) visit Rogers Arena.
Vancouver’s announced attendance average is 7,700.
That total is bolstered by a 9,902 crowd they listed for the Dec. 21 home opener, a 14-8 loss to the Calgary Roughnecks. There was probably something closer to 7,500 in the building that evening.
Canucks chief operating officer Trent Carroll declined to get into exactly how many bodies were in seats that night, but allowed: “We’re growing our paid attendance every game.
“We are happy. We knew that it would take time to build a fan base.
“We know there’s a core fan base in this market, but we also knew it was going to take more than that. We knew we were going to have to find new fans (to the game), and we feel like we’re doing that.
“We have fans who had never been to a game before who came on the first night and have since come to other games. We have fans who had never been to a game before this year who are talking about getting season tickets next year.”
The Warriors are listing ticket prices on their website as starting at $19.95.
Another selling point has been $5 beer and $2 food items.
Carroll sounded like that will remain a constant in some form. “We are testing different price points,” he said, “and I think you have to keep testing things. You have to find a way to pay the bills, but this is also a different experience so you have to have different prices (than NHL games).”
It will never be announced what the Canucks paid to purchase the Stealth.
There were reports the expansion fees for the Seals and the Philadelphia Wings were $5 million apiece, although there are people around the league who quietly will tell you those numbers are grossly inflated.
Each team has a salary cap of $431,600 for its 21-man active roster, so that gives you an idea of the kind of numbers teams are playing with.
It’s easy to suggest there’s potential good return on whatever the Stealth investment was for the Canucks.
They’re bringing people into the building that they likely weren’t attracting before.
They can try game-day activities with the Warriors and work out the kinks before using them with the Canucks.
There’s certainly an argument that having Carroll, who’s high up the Canuck food chain, doing media about lacrosse reveals how interested they are in making it all work.
“We’re getting to do things we don’t normally do,” Carroll said. “It’s trending in a positive way.”
The league lists its average attendance this season at 9,318.
The Stealth, for comparison, reported in at 3,507 last year. They finished last in the standings with a 2-16 record.
One of the more successful franchises every year is the Colorado Mammoth. Like the Warriors, they are owned by the local NHL team, the Colorado Avalanche.
Steve Govett, who’s from Burnaby and played in the summertime Western Lacrosse Association with both the Burnaby Lakers and Coquitlam Adanacs, was president with the Mammoth for 15 years before jumping to the Seals when the franchise was starting up in 2017.
When asked about franchises that have success in the NLL, he replied via Twitter direct message: “Common factor is a focus on attracting non-endemic consumers. Casting a wider net to bring new people to the game.
“There can’t be a myopic focus on simple advertising tactics. It’s a holistic approach that includes grassroots, community engagement, social media and traditional old-fashioned advertising quality.”