"Change is Coming" seems to be working as a marketing hook for the Vancouver Canucks.
The Vancouver Sun is reporting that the Canucks' season-ticket base for the upcoming campaign is now sitting at 16,300—about 1,000 tickets below the team's usual target.
According to the article, a typical renewal rate is about 95 percent. This year it dropped to 90 percent. If the total base for 2013-14 was 17,000, that means they would have lost about 1,700 clients, then sold about 1,000 new packages over the summer.
"If you had asked me six months ago, I would have been a little more sheepish about where we are (with season-ticket sales)," COO Victor de Bonis said. "But it has been a really good summer and support is building."
From the summer's advertising, I think it's safe to assume that a good portion of those new sales have come in the form of Ice Packs, where fans are buying partial ticket packages. But that's not a bad thing. I want to see enthusiastic, engaged fans at games—and I'm not sure how much it benefits the team when the tickets they sell to corporate outlets go unused, like they did so much towards the end of last season.
DeBonis says the Canucks will launch a big campaign next week to try to reach its goal. According to the article, the team still has a waiting list of about 1,5000 people who did not want to purchase this year—so I guess they'll get to keep their place in line. The team sounds pretty optimistic about hitting its goal.
I have a couple of friends who are ticket-holders and took advantage of the lower renewal rates to pull off some sweet relocations to better seats. Have any of you had similar renewal experiences, or taken the plunge to purchase tickets for the first time?
All About the Food
One thing we know—the organization has been hard at work on an upgrade to the food and beverage experience at Rogers Arena.
I spoke with Victor de Bonis and arena general manager Michael Doyle about the strategy behind these changes for BCBusiness. Click here for the story, which also includes some video footage of the areas under construction. The race is on to get everything finished by opening night.
If you'd like to take a closer look at the food that'll be on offer, I've got you covered there as well. Click here to take a look at some of the new options.
As far as pricing goes, the final numbers are being set this week but I was told that regular hot dogs will be the same price as last year—and should be better quality.
If you're a White Spot fan, don't fret. The Triple O's kiosks will live on.