From: "John Beamish" 

Wikipedia says the arena holds 17,113 for hockey, their average attendance
was 13,589.

The killer stat, from my perspective, is the near total absence of
corporate involvement (1,800 companies with season tickets) makes it a
tough slog.  OTOH, moving to Cambridge isn't going to be much help in that
regard.  RIM can't buy unlimited numbers of tickets (they're publicly
traded), Cambridge has a Honda (or is it Toyota) assembly plant.  There
aren't a lot of large businesses so corporate sales are going to be ones
and twos for the most part.  The Maple Leafs have access to a large number
of large corporations -- so much that they can charge premium prices for a
substandard product and still have people clammoring to get tickets.  If
the franchise is moved to Cambridge then I expect the same results as in
Nashville:  initially a good corporate support (Nashville got 4,000 season
ticket sales initially) but a subsequent fall off (they're now at 1,800).

As for NBC cutting away ... it's worse than that.  They were getting the
playoff feed for free (which royally pissed off the CBC which had paid
major bucks to get the Canadian broadcasting rights).


On Fri, 25 May 2007 14:05:08 -0400, Rich Gauszka
 wrote:

> Hopefully the new ownership will give the Nashville fans a chance. Hockey
> has had a hard time coming back after the strike even here in Detroit. In
> the midst of the playoffs there were over a thousand empty seats at the
> Joe
> Louis arena. You also know hockey's in deep trouble when the network
> (NBC)
> cuts away from an overtime playoff game for pre-race horse racing
> festivities at the Preakness
>
>

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