One of the fun discussion points about hockey as the stretch drive hit home is that wins now are so much more important. In some ways they are from a psychological point of view but in reality they are still worth the same 2 points as they were in October. The entertainment value is almost the same.
While a team may stumble and play inconsistent hockey fans still need to be entertained as much in October is they do in late March or early April. So why talk about this? On the Big Show on TSN 1290 the trio of Liebl, Westwood and Reuwicki brought up that when a team is out of the race and only hoping for a draft pick the game has to entertaining. Fans have paid for their seats and deserve to have something of value for their money...went the discussion.
It's true and it's wrong and it's right.
Fans make a commitment to the team. They simply can't return those tickets and say 'refund please, i'm done with this'. They can sell their tickets and hope to recoup their money back and let some one else enjoy the game. That's what happens when a team is not winning the regulars decide the value proposition is not there so they move on but what happens when it's not there for the other side? Is that the entertainment part?
If you go onto the Jets ticket market right now it's a tough lesson in supply and demand. There's lots of tickets for supply but not enough demand. Are fans simply not as entertained as they used to be?
If entertainment is nearly as important as wins in terms of attracting fans, are the Jets really this bad? Do you see what I mean? The games have not been boring, frustrating yes, but not boring. But if you are a fan that entertainment value buys your attention, or it should. However, does it buy as much as wins?
The fact is wins will always be the primary gold standard for fan attraction. If the Jets were winning by one goal every night in close but boring games this conversation would be moot. They are not and now is there anything left to keep fans engaged? In theory fans should need the same engagement in October as they do in March as the team is no closer to being in the playoffs by points than it is now but excitement builds up.
That to me would say that entertainment is not the same in sports and that it's not really an entertainment business. Entertainment matters, but it does not matter as much as results do and that's because fans attache themselves to teams for emotional reasons not entertainment reasons.
Go back the end of the road for the Jets after being swept by Anaheim lats April. The fans were emotionally invested and believed in the future but by the time the pre-season had rolled around how much was that investment worth? That's part of the team strategy and when you take away what the fans invested in, players and subsequent results, you affect entertainment value.
This is the downside of being really bad, as the Jets are right now at second worst in the league as of today. There's no entertainment value that will make the lack of results and emotional fan investment balance out. Ride it out Jets fans and hope that this time a true lottery ticket pays off come the spring. Sadly there's nothing entertaining about that.