Jets co-owner Chipman missing the mark
THREATENING FANS ISN’T NEARLY AS EFFECTIVE AS TRYING TO IMPROVE THE CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE
The higher-ups within the Winnipeg Jets organization didn’t like me writing about their crashing attendance earlier this season.
Four months later, they’re sounding the alarm bells themselves. Pulling at the rope in the bell tower is coowner Mark Chipman, who in an interview with The Athletic said the franchise can’t last the way things are going.
“We’ve got to get back to 13,000,” Chipman said of the team’s season-ticket base. “This place we find ourselves in right now, it’s not going to work over the long haul.”
And there you have it. For the first time, the man in charge at True North Sports has said it: The Jets will leave Winnipeg for a second time if the current trend continues. He didn’t say how many millions of dollars the franchise is expected to lose this season, or even that it’s going to lose money.
Just that a season-ticket base of some 9,500 isn’t sustainable.
It’s a similar message to the one the organization put out last spring, except with more of a punch to the bottom line.
The Forever Winnipeg campaign included a reminder of what happened in 1996, the first time the Jets packed up and left town.
Some saw that as a veiled threat. Chipman has now pulled off the veil.
That ad campaign didn’t move the needle in the least, as last season’s attendance dip became a full nosedive this season.
Crowd counts have regularly come in around 12,000, or even less.
Fierce division rivals like Nashville, teams with marquee attractions like Edmonton, even Original Six teams with huge local followings like Montreal aren’t always sellouts anymore.
There’s been a recent bump, with four sellouts of 15,225 since Christmas (Minnesota, Chicago, Toronto and Pittsburgh).
But on average, the Jets have drawn 13,098 fans per game, which ranks 31st in the NHL.
That’s down about 1,000 fans a game from the 14,045 the Jets averaged last season, when they ranked above Arizona and San Jose.
Even when you factor in Winnipeg’s small arena, the numbers are sobering. The Jets are averaging just 86 per cent of capacity, down from 94 per cent last year.
Every time we cover the issue in this space, I hear from fans who’ve stopped going to games. Their reasons cover everything from the price of tickets to the state of the downtown to the quality of the product.
One response from early this season stands out.
“COVID didn’t do in the Jets,” the fan told me via email. “The fear of the downtown area after dark didn’t do in the Jets, nor the play on the ice . ... The Jets brain trust and their lack of love towards their fans that got them to where they are today is what is doing in the Jets.”
I’ve heard that over and over again: The Jets took their supporters for granted.
In his chat with The Athletic, Chipman acknowledged they haven’t exactly been all-stars of customer service.
“We’ve had to reinvent ourselves,” he said. “For 10 years, we weren’t a sales organization. We were a service organization, and I’m not sure we were that good of a service organization, to be honest with you.”
Based on the collapse from last season to this one, they’re not a very good sales organization, either.
Or a reader of rooms. Chipman acknowledged last spring’s campaign turned people off.
“Because of the history, it’s a bit of a tinder box,” he said. “In retrospect, we weren’t trying to be dramatic, but it got people’s hair up. That wasn’t the intent, but our bad.”
If their hair was up then, it’ll be on fire now. That must be the goal. To get Winnipeggers to take this seriously. It’s puzzling how the Jets boss chose to do this, though.
Having alienated himself from more than one local media outlet, he chose a Toronto-based reporter to get his message out, instead of holding a news conference and taking questions from the people who cover his team every day.
Chipman wouldn’t do an interview with Postmedia, but if I had the chance to ask, one question would be, why?
Why, when the team is backed by the wealthiest man in Canada and one of the wealthiest on the planet in David Thomson, do a couple of down seasons after a pandemic threaten the very existence of this franchise?
After all, the value of it has gone from the US$170 million Chipman and Thomson paid to north of $700 million.
This decline in support shouldn’t have come as a shock, either.
Chipman’s team has underachieved and shown all kinds of dysfunction the last few years.
But with the whole team pulling in the same direction now, crowds are rebounding.
In the 10 games since Christmas, the Jets are averaging a healthy 14,320 fans, just 900 shy of capacity.
That’s how it’s supposed to work: Put out a good, honest product, and Winnipeggers will buy it.
Try to pull the wool over their eyes and you’re on your own.
Threaten to close the doors?
We’ll see how that goes over.