If you’ve been with us for a while, you might have been expecting this blog, it’s something I’ve put together for the last four years as it’s something that, as someone with a passing interest in number crunching, I find quite interesting.
Last year I included figures from the cut-short Covid season and I think there is some merit in including them here as it provides an indication of how the respective fanbases have recovered now that there are a full two seasons in the books. By now it’s reasonable to assume that people will have made the decision to return to hockey or not following lockdowns, social distancing and the various other life changes that will have inevitably have affected people’s decision-making process.
The table below shows the gains, or losses since the 19/20 season, it’s a good sign that all teams have made gains on the previous season where, it’s fair to say, there would have still been some folks who didn’t feel that they were quite able to return. Sheffield are a small anomaly here but that minus figure wouldn’t be there if I took out the decimal places so it’s hardly worth mentioning, in addition, they have held steady over the whole period which makes that 0.1% even more insignificant.
Whether it be returning fans who now have the confidence to mix and mingle with other humans or that the respective fanbases have been able to tempt new fans into their buildings, everyone looks to be on the up which bodes well.
A graphical representation is quite helpful here in terms of determining each team’s success, or lack thereof, now that we’re adequately removed from Covid restrictions, it was certainly helpful for me!
Half of the teams have managed to exceed their pre-Covid levels, one team much more so than the rest but then back-to-back league wins never hurts your footfall! Cardiff are so close to attendance perfection, you have to wonder if this is the year that Todd Kellman will finally admit that he wants a bigger arena and in my opinion there were a couple of surprises here but I think I will leave that for the summations below.
Belfast Giants
It’s difficult to place any criticism at all in the Giants direction in terms of their attendance, frankly, it’s never been this good. Aside from one slightly erroneous Wednesday game back in October, there’s not even anything to pick at in terms of what day of the week they scheduled their games on, even the usually much maligned Sundays have seen a significant improvement. Clearly there was enough of a buzz to carry them through an entire season and the only question now is whether they can maintain it following the departure of a several players who made it all happen.
The new benchmark has been set.
Cardiff Devils
When does the satisfaction of the sell outs counteract the knowledge that you’d be able to fit more folks in if you had a few more seats? I’d be surprised if this wasn’t a question being pondered by the Devils organisation because they’re edging ever closer to demand outstripping supply. Be that as it may, it’s interesting that the only criticism is that their arena isn’t big enough.
If you were to look at the charts in isolation you could be fooled by the dips in some of the bars but for the worst performing bar on each, over the three games against Dundee they had 46 empty seats and for the two Thursday games, 45 seats went unsold. The eagle-eyed amongst you may have noticed that the per-team attendance chart for last season isn’t set to zero on the vertical axis, if it was, you wouldn’t be able to make any distinctions between the attendances!
The only comment I can make on similarities is that for both of the last two seasons, the games against Sheffield were all sell outs, who the opposition is doesn’t seem to be of much consequence to Devils fans.
Can it be maintained? Will consistently hitting the ceiling get boring? Is that relatively small attendance limit responsible for the decision to fill the ice pad with a Sheffield-esque level of sponsorship in order to maintain the quality of team they’ve come to expect in South Wales? All are distinct possibilities I feel.
Coventry Blaze
Until their final game of last season against Cardiff, which saw a buoyant turnout of just over 2500 as demonstrated by the sharp spike for April in the top chart, the Blaze’s per-game average was sat just under the previous season and although it’s nice to see that small gain, it is small and I’m not sure how concerned the Blaze organisation should be. Seasons prior to the records I have displayed here have seen the Blaze consistently punching into the high 70’s in terms of percentage capacity achieved, so maintaining the lower 60’s doesn’t exactly point towards a recovery.
The two Monday games are a red herring in terms of analysing the best hockey day as one was the festive fixture against the Devils and one the New Year’s Day visit from the Panthers. Sunday generally appears to remain the day of choice and, similarly to least year, an argument could be made for Saturday showing a little more interest but until you have a similar number of games for each day, it’s difficult to make a conclusive definition.
The Blaze appear to be maintaining a healthy rivalry against the Devils, that particular bar sticks out like a sore thumb, closely followed by Panthers, while interestingly, the attendance against the Steelers for the last two seasons is pretty much exactly the same, it’s isn’t much different for the Giants games either, there was much more balance against all teams in season 21/22.
Perhaps the Blaze need to look at some ‘speculate to accumulate’ type of initiatives as it’s pretty clear that there hasn’t been the natural progression back to the Skydome that they would probably have hoped for now that life has returned to something like normal.
Dundee Stars
The Dundee Stars have made pretty consistent progress over the past few seasons, enjoying a steady upward trajectory towards a healthy 70% capacity despite a very disappointing season under a new coach who, I’m certain was hoping to build on the progress of his predecessor.
Last season I briefly mused on the potential ripple effect that may hit following Omar Pacha’s departure south of the border but the Stars fans appear to have shown that they are loyal to the team and not the man running it, so the organisation need to start repaying that faith with a consistent run towards the top of the table as I feel that the goodwill of the fan base will only go so far, you only have to look a little further south to see what they have to look forward to should they test the fans patience.
The per-team attendances are definitely more along the lines of what you would expect, still can’t fathom what happened with the Guildford games in the 21/22 season, but the rivalry games are the ones back leading the way with the Belfast games just behind and, without any background knowledge or insight, I’d be tempted to attribute this to a healthy away contingent. On a further positive note, and for comparison, in the 21/22 season only 3 team attendances were close to, or exceeding 4000 for the three games, last season they all did.
In terms of the preferred game day, aside from the two festive period Mondays, either weekend day still looks good for the Stars fans, the chart might not make the difference as clear cut but the indication is that Fridays are not nearly as well though of, potentially more so than weekdays but given they appear to be able to schedule weekends without much trouble, they really should continue to.
Fife Flyers
The Flyers thankfully saw an improvement in their overall attendance last season, if it had got any worse, I’d have been genuinely concerned for their survival as the trend was heading dangerously close to the levels experienced by the Edinburgh Capitals just prior to their demise.
they’re not quite back up to pre-Covid levels but I’d venture that this is performance based rather than the pandemic having any real effect on the fans desire to take in a game in person.
Similarly to the Stars, the attendance for the rivalry games are way above that of any other team, they need each other, it’s as simple as that. The games against the remaining teams are more balanced with them all sitting between 3000-4000 for the three games, a simple explanation for this is the three games in January 2022 that the Flyers had to play in front of just 200 fans due to Scottish Covid restrictions. For clarity, I added some average theoretical figures into those games to see if it made any difference to the overall 21/22 attendance on the top chart. It barely moved so this wasn’t a factor in the very disappointing overall average.
Perhaps this is something to be encouraged by, the fact that last season bucked the trend?
Being the main attraction in your rink has its perks, it means you can do some very savvy weekend scheduling of all but one of your games, the one Tuesday game was a festive fixture that went some way to restoring balance to a frankly horrifying looking December which saw three games of under 1000 attendees.
You have to hope the new coach can restore some life to this fan base and bring those back that they’ve lost because the attendances they’re experiencing currently surely can’t be sustainable.
Glasgow Clan
Well, for the second year in a row, I have to say I’m baffled. Even a scandal isn’t enough to put a dent in the attendances. The Clan haven’t just exceeded the previous season’s average, they’ve pushed beyond pre-Covid levels and the per-game totals are all up on the 21/22 season.
To buck the trend ever so slightly amongst the Scottish teams, the rivalry games aren’t quite as stand out as the Stars and Flyers figures thanks to elevated figures from the Giants games and, to a certain extent, the games against the Storm. I’ve already surmised that a successful season for the Giants may have contributed to a buoyant travelling support but there’s also the possibility that proximity has a part to play, although neither of these factors explain the the Storm attendances. Is it a rivalry? As I already said, I’m baffled.
One quirky little fact is that the Clan were the only team to play a game on every day of the week, I’ll leave that up to you to decide how interesting that is!
Quirks and scandals aside, it’s positive that at least one team has been able to elevate their attendances and do more than sustain their business model, it’ll be interesting to see if they’re able to continue that upward trend. Will all of the changes have a positive or negative effect on the interest levels of the fans? Watch this space.
Guildford Flames
I’m struggling to make sense of some of the attendance figures for Guildford, they had a steady rise in general throughout the season, which was to be expected given the good run they had, but there doesn’t seem to be any logic to the figures for the opposition. All attendances are up on the previous season except for the games against the Clan, although there seems to be a fairly defined spike for the Cardiff games. I always thought proximity and the M4 played a part in boosting the travelling Devils support but a quick consult of Google Maps rubbishes my theory as Coventry is actually closer to Cardiff than Guildford so perhaps there is something of a rivalry bubbling away under the surface. Geography has never been my strongest subject!
Similarly to Cardiff though, I couldn’t set the vertical axis to zero as you would struggle to define the figures adequately, I’ve had to learn to live with it.
In terms of the game days at the Spectrum, the Tuesday was a festive fixture so in terms of analysing a trend it should probably be ignored, the remaining days all saw an increase, again logically attributed to the team’s good run, and while the difference between the Saturday and Sunday games could appear negligible at first glance, it’s quite significant when you consider the limited capacity of the Spectrum. On this evidence, I’d be looking to schedule more Saturday games if it were up to me.
Manchester Storm
Finally, a significant upward trend for the Storm. Looking back on my notes from last year there seemed to be something of a plateau, last season’s average sat evenly between the previous two but as you can see above, there is some genuine progress which I very much hope they can continue to build on. December seemed to have a curious nosedive though and interestingly, it was two games at the start of the month that did the most damage, perhaps that’s when the good folk of Altrincham do their Christmas shopping?
Both the Monday and Thursday games were festive fixtures and both also fell well below the average per game attendance so December was a bad month in general, but overall, it does seem that weekday fixtures aren’t particularly favoured by the Storm fans and the organisation have done well to avoid them.
As a fan of a team that heavily favours Saturday as a gameday, it’s always curious to me when Saturday isn’t the favoured gameday and, similarly to the Flames, although the difference between this and the days either side of it may seem negligible on first glance, the smaller capacity venues feel that difference more keenly and I would venture that if this continues as a trend this coming season, it would warrant investigation.
Nottingham Panthers
So, we now come to the team I can speak with most authority about as for the majority of the home league games, I was there. Nottingham still aren’t back up to pre-Covid levels but it’s interesting to see that there was an improvement on the 21/22 season despite the worst ever EIHL league finish and a generally poor performing team which lead to the coach being sacked mid-season.
However, there were other aspects of the club that underwent radical change and this apparently created enough of a buzz to keep fans coming through the door but by March the shine looks to have worn off slightly as there was a noticeable drop in the average which would have been even worse were it not for a well-placed Sheffield game at the beginning of the month.
The per-team attendances aren’t really anything to be surprised about, the Sheffield games stick out as usual, Coventry games are a rivalry of a sort, although the Manchester games are pretty much level with those which is maybe a touch out of the ordinary and, as already alluded to more than once, Belfast’s traveling support has had a noticeable effect on most other teams.
Saturday is still the gameday of choice for the Panthers fan base, and the organisation have pledged to get as many of them scheduled in as possible, but when things like a boxing match come calling the NIC will waste no time telling Panthers that a reschedule is on the cards, which I can imagine, looking at the difference for any other game day, comes with a hefty amount of frustration for Omar Pacha and the team. (Quick note for Leigh Wood, next time, at least have the decency to win next time you boot us out eh! 😉)
The Tuesday figure is a massive red herring, one of them was a festive fixture that propped up the attendances of the other two which were just as disappointing as the ones around it that weren’t on a Saturday, no prizes for guessing who that festive fixture was against!
Sheffield Steelers
There isn’t much to offer here in terms of analysis, perhaps the Steelers organisation would like to see the overall figure trend higher up but given everything that has happened over the last few years, to be as consistent as they have been is something of an achievement.
October was perhaps a bump in the road but there were only three games and two of them were weekdays games which often are well marketed or have ticket deals to entice fans through the door on days that traditionally need that extra push. It’s a month that seems to have had a noticeable downward trend over the years though and might warrant some investigation if the Steelers were looking for an easy win to push the capacity up a few more percentage points.
Obviously, games against the Panthers remain the standout, there was a slight increase on the Storm attendances and curiously, the games against the Flames seemed to have something of a surge, while, against the run of all others attendances, the games against the Giants saw a slight reduction. Sort of a ‘he giveth, he taketh away’ kind of balance to it.
In terms of the gamedays, the weekend days remain pretty consistent, as do the Wednesdays and I probably don’t need to go too much into the Monday game. It was a festive game; you can probably work it out from there.
And Finally…
I think it’s clear that every team has positives they can take away from the attendances they’ve managed to achieve this past season, some teams have managed to improve despite seasons they would prefer to forget for one reason or another and this may be increased confidence of people getting themselves back into the world, or perhaps teams across the board have been doing enough to bring the people in.
Whatever the reasoning, it’s good to see that everyone appears to be on the up, but everyone has work to do, and in some cases, decisions to make. I hope to be able to look at next year’s figures in as positive a light as the ones here.
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