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It’s been quite the year for the Arizona Coyotes, who were seemingly on the verge of being locked out of their own arena in the middle of last season as the result of the extended clash with the city of Glendale that ultimately led to the franchise being forced to find a new home.
After examining its options, the team was forced to settle for a fairly unconventional solution by linking up with Arizona State University and inking a deal to set up shop on the school’s campus at Mullett Arena.
While it’s hard to think of a better name for a venue that will host NHL games, there was one glaring issue: the arena in question can only hold around 5,000 fans (for the sake of comparison, the Winnipeg Jets—who play in the league’s second-smallest arena—can fit upwards of 15,300 spectators inside Canada Life Centre).
When you consider the Coyotes have routinely trotted out a wildly underwhelming product on the ice over the past decade, it’s pretty easy to understand why plenty of people scoffed at the fairly hefty ticket prices fans will have to pay to get into a home game featuring the NHL’s equivalent of the Sudbury Bulldogs from Shoresy.
With that said, it’s also a bit hard to not be intrigued by the idea of watching NHL teams face off against each other in such a unique setting. A virtual tour shows the worst seats in the house are still better than the majority of the options at other arenas in the league, and there’s been plenty of speculation that the aforementioned price of admission wouldn’t actually be a huge barrier to entry thanks to hockey fans who would be happy to pay it to experience a game inside such a cozy venue.
Now, we have some proof that suggests that’s exactly the case.
According to ESPN, Xavier Gutierrez (who serves as the team’s president and CEO) said Arizona has already raked in 50% more season-ticket revenue than it previously garnered at Gila River Arena—and likely could have generated even more if it wasn’t for a long-term plan that will ensure some tickets will be available for fans looking to attend a single game:
“We know this is going to be sold out for every single game and we never had any doubt that was going to be the case. We could have sold this out to our existing season-ticket base, but we didn’t think that was the right approach.
We want to make sure that fans who have never experienced a game could experience it. That’s a very tricky thing when you’ve downsized capacity.”
It’s also worth noting the Coyotes will be reserving 400 seats for ASU students, who will only have to spend between $25 and $50 on a ticket.
We’ll have to wait until Arizona hosts Columbus on October 28th for its first home game of the season to get a sense of the atmosphere we can expect, but it seems like this experiment is shaping up to be a success.
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