Two days before taking to home ice to begin the third round of the NHL playoffs, the Detroit Red Wings were scrambling to sell tickets for the game with the Dallas Stars.
In a late-night appearance on Toronto sports-talk radio station The Fan 590, Wings senior vice-president Jim Devellano was even pitching tickets to hockey-starved Toronto residents, telling them that plenty of seats were still available.
That wouldn't be a shock in so-so hockey markets such as Nashville or even Washington. And Thursday night's game did eventually draw a full house.
But this is Hockeytown, the self-regarded capital of the sport in the United States and the NHL's biggest television market south of the Canadian border. An NBC Sports official recently remarked, "If there is a [U.S.] national hockey team, it would be the Red Wings."
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The team has been so popular and successful - with 17 consecutive trips to the playoffs - that filling the Joe Louis Arena's 20,066 seats was never a problem. Yet this past season, the perennial sellouts ended and average attendance slipped to 18,912. That's a significant drop for a sport that relies so heavily on gate revenue.
At 94.2 per cent of capacity, the Wings fell from their traditional perch in the top three teams to 16th in percentage and seventh in total attendance. By comparison, the Stars, their opponent in the conference final, filled 97.3 per cent of their smaller stadium.
Detroit's numbers would have been even worse without an aggressive marketing push in the second half that featured such gimmicks as game-night giveaways, a promotion in March that offered certain food items for only $1 and an unheard of effort to attract group sales.
Until this year, the Wings hadn't even bothered with a group sales department.
And, for the first time, they are offering season-ticket holders discounts of up to 20 per cent on playoff tickets.
The team had only four sellouts before Feb. 1 and then nine of the final 15 regular-season games.
"I think we got some good traction in the second half of the year," said Steve Violetta, the Wings' senior vice-president of business affairs.
The culprits for the box-office malaise include a hard-hit local economy that is still dependent on the sputtering auto industry, stiffer competition for the entertainment dollar and a distinct lack of attention to such essentials of modern sports marketing as customer service. Their fan base is also aging, which is never a good sign for the future.
"We're certainly in a transition mode here now, being a little more proactive," said Violetta, who was hired away from the Nashville Predators in December to help correct the club's attendance woes.
Nashville, a small market with no hockey tradition and few head offices, was an extreme marketing challenge for the 22-year veteran who previously worked for the Pittsburgh Penguins and Ottawa Senators. Detroit presents a different set of problems.
"We have a little bit of the Atlanta Braves syndrome going on here," Violetta said.
Translation: Win often enough and fans become blasé, making it harder to attract them to regular-season games or even the early rounds of the playoffs. (Toronto Maple Leafs fans can only dream of such things.)
"The playoff crowds have been great," Violetta said. "We haven't just opened the ticket windows and sold out every playoff game the day of. But we've worked hard at it and we've had full houses so far."
The longer-term challenge: adapting a successful team to tough economic conditions and growing customer demands, while broadening the fan base of what is still, after all, only the fourth most popular team in the city.
Besides soliciting church groups and little-league teams for group purchases and hiring four people solely to look after the whims of season-ticket holders, the Wings are also working hard to attract younger fans, with a lot of online marketing, interactive web features, contests and the like.
The team is also revamping its entertainment during games to appeal to a younger crowd. But it can only go so far.
"This is a very traditional market," Violetta cautioned. "We're not going to have mascots rappelling in from the ceiling and that kind of stuff."
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