The Jets are staying — but…

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This article was published 01/03/2024 (614 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

“Let’s not try and make this into the crisis that people have been trying to make it into.”

His sentence structure during a between-periods interview on TSN may have been cryptic and perhaps even unnecessarily convoluted, but the message NHL commissioner Gary Bettman sought to deliver during his visit to Winnipeg this week was fairly straightforward:

Relax. Stay calm. As far as the people in charge of the National Hockey League are concerned, Winnipeg is in no immediate danger of losing its beloved big-league hockey team.

Bettman appeared on the sports channel on Tuesday during the first intermission of its broadcast of the Jets’ home game versus the St. Louis Blues — one of a few interviews granted to local media outlets during his brief stopover in Winnipeg — and his responses to repeated queries about the league’s perspective on sagging attendance at Canada Life Centre were measured, conciliatory and clearly intended to ratchet down the currently elevated stress level regarding the well-being and long-term viability of the franchise.

Whether the city might once again lose its NHL team has been the subject of considerable debate and consternation in recent weeks as the Jets continue to play in front of the league’s smallest crowds (other than those in the woeful Arizona Coyotes’ current college-sized accommodation in Tempe). After enjoying 332 consecutive sellouts during the first nine seasons after the return of NHL hockey in 2011, the Jets have seen attendance slump as season-ticket uptake has declined from 13,000 (with a waiting list of 8,000) to slightly less than 9,500 (and no waiting list).

On average, nearly 2,000 seats remain unsold for home games this season, despite the Jets owning one of the NHL’s best winning percentages. In a recent interview with the online sports journal The Athletic, True North Sports and Entertainment chairman Mark Chipman said the current attendance trend is “not going to work over the long haul,” adding it’s essential to return season-ticket subscriptions to the target figure of 13,000.

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That comment, combined with earlier clumsily worded pleas for greater investment from the business community (corporate interests account for just 15 per cent of the Jets’ season-ticket base, compared to 50 per cent or more in most other markets) and the timing of Bettman’s visit, created worry among some fans that the city that lost its NHL franchise in 1996 might once again see its team fly south in search of a more lucrative market.

To say those fears are unfounded would be unwise — a continuing downward trajectory of ticket-buying interest would surely bring an eventual end to Jets 2.0 — but Bettman’s reassurances seem to be based in a real perception that the team’s owners are gaining an understanding of why attendance has dropped and are seeking genuine solutions that will bring wayward fans back to the downtown arena.

It’s often said that the first step toward any solution is admitting there’s a problem, and Chipman has been forthright in his assessment of the Jets’ failure to do enough, in terms of customer service and game-day fan experience, to reward fans for their loyalty.

Whether True North will be able to reverse the current attendance trend — either by rebuilding relationships with individual disaffected patrons or motivating the corporate sector to step up its support — remains to be seen.

But as those efforts proceed, fans should take the commissioner at his word when he says, “This is a franchise in a place where hockey matters … and I believe in the strength of this market as an NHL market and I think it will correct itself.”