Re: Maine Black Bears - Return to the Glory Years or On to Oblivion?
These are questions I asked here and in other fan forums 2-3 years ago and the answer was always "Put a better team on the ice." That doesn't help John Diamond and the other marketing guys sell tickets. It handcuffs them. Then people complain when attendance suffers. Well, if you'd either tell them how you want them to build value into the season ticket or tell them that you don't care if they do promotions during the season that slash ticket prices, then they can go after the attendance problem. Or you can continue to give wise-@s$ answers and they will continue to be handcuffed; attendance will continue to drop, the Alfond will continue to be a morgue and the resources Red and Ben have to "put a better team on the ice" will get smaller and smaller. We're already at a point where the budget is a joke in Hockey East. Are you hoping it will become the laughingstock of the AHC as well?
What do they expect people to say, though? Why are season ticket holders expected to subsidize the team by paying a higher ticket price than those who buy single game tickets? I understand that they need to slash prices on single gamers to make it look like there are fans in the stands. But you are treating your core costumers like dirt. These people who are complaining aren't newcomers to the area or the product. They are season ticket holders since the early 1980's. They've spent a lot of money on tickets, on concessions, on parking, on donations, on merchandise. Most of us who are still around don't expect national championships anymore. I think we'd all settle for a basic competitiveness.
Asking these people who have been there for you for 30+ years to shell out more just because the team needs it is fine. That's called a donation. You have a list of everyone who has season tickets, and you know their addresses. Send them a letter saying "our budget is tiny compared to the HEA average, here's what we need to compete!" THAT is how you raise money from your core customer, not by making them pay more for the same thing that everyone else does. I would wager that every single person here is now or once was a regular donor to either UMaine hockey, UMaine athletics generally, Friends of Maine Hockey, etc. And I bet everyone felt good about it because at some level, that was their choice. They were invested in the team, they felt they were being treated fairly, and they were happy to help. Charging your season ticket holders more than it would cost for them to go to games isn't a voluntary contribution, it's a shakedown. But for a shakedown to work, the victim has to have no other options. Here, there are options.
It would be nice for season ticket holders to have free parking near the arena. It would be nice to get a hat or a scarf. But that isn't the "thank you" you give a donor (other than maybe the parking spot).
The level of trust between the athletic department and the fans in Orono is incredibly low. When Maine was first establishing itself as a hockey power, when the baseball team was going to Omaha, there was a feeling of "us" that pervaded the whole thing. And the athletic department fostered it well. "We" were going to Omaha. "We" were going to the Frozen Four. "We" were going to have a pregame pep rally at a bar outside the arena. When the NCAA came down on Walsh, it was an affront to us all.
That eroded slowly (then quickly in the Whitehead years). Shawn's death probably started it, but there were the off-field and off-ice incidents, there was the hiring of AD's from outside the program who didn't understand the effect of screwing over WZON, there was the Whitehead/Cosgrove/Woodward/Blodgett era of cozying up to major donors and keeping them happy at the expense of fans who just wanted to go to games and see wins and have fun. None of this is the current marketing team's fault, but it's what they are battling against. We are nearing our second decade of taking for granted that the fans would be there, so why listen to how upset they are about the direction of Maine hockey and Maine athletics?
Of course they are going to get wise *** answers. People are mad. It's going to take a lot more than a questionnaire to change that.
