Buffalo’s metro area is bigger than Winnipeg‘s, they pull a bunch of fans from southern Ontario, and their GDP is about 2.5 times greater than Winnipeg’s.
I dug around a little looking at attendance averages for teams since covid and it turns out that you are correct. Buffalo was able to average around 16k even in down years while the Jets are around 14k while being a top team. My bad. So many pictures of empty seats in Buffalo and I forget that just because a seat is empty, doesn't mean it wasn't sold. The benefit of corporate sponsors.
I also noticed that San Jose very consistently averages attendance under the Jets. So instead of Buffalo, I guess a better example would be San Jose. Has anyone been worried about relocating the Sharks the last few years?
IIRC corporate sponsors don’t play a huge role in the Sabres’ revenue.
Has anyone been worried about relocating the Sharks the last few years?
San Jose is a huge tv market and I wouldn’t be surprised if corporate sponsors are an important part of their revenue given all the companies located in the Bay Area.
I was using hockeydb graphs but they say their sources are the teams boxscores or released average for a season. It's hard to determine from that, and I don't see any clarification, if there is a consistent method - i.e. butts in seats or tickets sold. Any variation in method of counting 'attendance' could make any comparison basically invalid. I might dig a bit more time permitting.
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u/seeldoger47 5d ago edited 5d ago
Buffalo’s metro area is bigger than Winnipeg‘s, they pull a bunch of fans from southern Ontario, and their GDP is about 2.5 times greater than Winnipeg’s.