Winnipeg Jets launch season ticket sales drive, citing pandemic-induced loss of paying customers

Demand to see the Winnipeg Jets has sagged to the point where True North Sports & Entertainment has launched a season ticket drive in an effort to fill 3,000 more seats for every game during the 2023-2024 NHL season.

The Jets, who sold 13,500 season ticket packages in 17 minutes when the NHL returned to Winnipeg in 2011 and placed hopeful buyers on a waiting list, are now actively courting prospective customers for the first time.

"We're no different than any other professional sports team in North America, but I think for us this feels new because ... for the first time in 12 years, we are actively and publicly launching a broad-based campaign to reestablish our season-ticket membership base," said Christina Litz, chief brand and commercial officer for True North.

For eight consecutive seasons since the NHL's return, Winnipeg sold out almost every game at the arena now known as Canada Life Centre.

Average Jets attendance during the 2018-2019 season, the last full season before the pandemic, was 15,276 — only a few seats shy of Canada Life Centre's 15,321-seat capacity for hockey.

This season, the average attendance for the Jets has dipped to 14,045 and only 13,428 fans paid to see the final home game of the regular season on Monday night, a 6-2 shellacking of the San Jose Sharks.

Pandemic drop in season ticket holders

Litz said the pandemic has changed the way people spend money on entertainment — or choose not to spend money at all.

"People got comfortable being at home. They got comfortable watching television and ordering in their food and so it's been a challenge for everybody who's in sports and entertainment to address that behaviour," she said.

Litz said the Jets lost approximately 2,000 season ticket holders during the pandemic for reasons that included economic challenges, discomfort with attending larger events and unhappiness with vaccine mandates.

While True North relies heavily on surveys and other data to assess what fans like and dislike, Litz would not say whether concerns about downtown safety and the on-ice performance of the Jets also led some season ticket holders to cancel their annual purchases.

Those surveys did lead True North to offer more incentives to season ticket holders. Last year, the club stopped demanding buyers commit to purchasing several years at once and started offering discounts on team merchandise sales and some food and beverage items.

During the 2023-24 season, fans should also be able to resell their games more easily, Litz said, thanks to a new ticket swap program and a resale platform enabled by pending changes to provincial legislation.

"It's more searchable for people who are looking to buy tickets to that individual game," she said.

True North is also leaning more heavily on Winnipeg's business community to purchase tickets. On Tuesday, True North chair Mark Chipman told a Winnipeg Chamber of Commerce audience the Jets sell proportionately fewer seats to corporate customers than do other NHL Canadian NHL teams, Litz said.

Promotions recall loss of Jets

Individual ticket buyers carry the bulk of the burden. True North also courted them in marketing materials that raised the spectre of the departure of the original Winnipeg Jets in the 1990s.

"So long as fans are in Canada Life Centre cheering on their team, the Winnipeg Jets will be in Winnipeg forever," True North said in a press release issued Tuesday.

A 90-second promotional video, also published Tuesday, included footage from the weeks preceding the Jets' departure in 1996.

"Never forget. Never again," implored narrator Kenny Omega. "So is Winnipeg an NHL city? You better believe it, but it takes all of us."

The campaign led some fans to take to social media, likening the campaign to guilt trip or even a threat to take the team elsewhere.

Litz said True North, which has spent hundreds of millions of dollars on downtown Winnipeg revitalization efforts, did not intend to send that message.

"It's by no means meant to be a threat in any sort of way," she said. "I want to make it very clear it has and remains the intent and the purpose of True North Sports & Entertainment to have the Winnipeg Jets remain in Winnipeg forever."

Season-ticket campaign rubbing some Winnipeg Jets fans the wrong way

2 years ago

Duration 2:28

After a big dip in attendance over the past few years, the Winnipeg Jets are getting more aggressive about selling season tickets ... and that's not sitting well with some fans.