Copps Coliseum eyed for minor-pro hoops squad

[Evad]

http://www.thespec.com/sports/local/article/709485--copps-eyed-for-minor-pro-hoops-squad

Talks are under way that could bring a minor-pro basketball team to Copps Coliseum in time for the start of the 2012-13 season.

An ownership group with an expansion franchise for the one-year-old National Basketball League of Canada met with HECFI CAO and interim CEO John Hertel last week at which time a number of issues relating to the arena and a lease were discussed. Nothing was finalized, but both sides say they felt good about the talks.

“We’re still in the preliminary study stage,” says owner David Cooper. “But we do have a confidence it could work.”

[brettinhalifax]

Uh oh.

This sounds like a disaster waiting to happen.

Attendance throughout the league in its inaugural season ranged from pretty good — about 3,000 a game in Halifax — to rather uninspiring in places like Quebec and Oshawa, which averaged about 700 a night.

In order to cover his roughly million-dollar annual operating cost, Cooper says he’d need 2,500-3,500 fans a game at Copps paying between $14 and $150 for their seats. But he thinks those crowd numbers are low for what the team would draw in the biggest market in the league. He’d be hoping for somewhere between 4,000 and 10,000 each game.

So he's planning on leading the league in attendance just to break even with a budget about double the league average? $150 a seat? 10,000 a game? Uh oh.

But it gets worse

A big part of that is based on Hamilton’s massive youth basketball programs which offer a ready-made, hoops-savvy market. Plenty of kids like the game. Presumably, their parents do, too. As a result, generating interest shouldn’t be terribly difficult.

Guys like this have been losing money, screwing fans and ruining soccer markets for years. The theory goes that kids play soccer, therefore they will all pay to watch soccer. It doesn't work in soccer, and it won't work in basketball.

The NBL is geared for small arenas with 1,500 to 2,500 in attendance. A business plan that uses an NHL size arena and 4,000 to 10,000 in attendance is a business plan destined for failure.

I hope I'm wrong.

[panchess]

Maybe not 2,000, but a 18,000 seat arena is going to look really empty with even 4,000 in the house.

[LightningMan]

Maybe not 2,000, but a 18,000 seat arena is going to look really empty with even 4,000 in the house.
In my conversation with the owner of the Sea Dawgs we talked about that. He could be playing in UNCW's arena, but the 2K people that make the Schwartz Center looked packed would make the UNCW building look half empty and that's not what you want.

[robster2001]

Copps is way too big for the NBL right now. Maybe a few years down the road... but right now, the NBL is a smaller-market/smaller-venue league. Moving into Copps will do one of two things: (1) force the ownership to spend heavily for name players to fill seats, thus forcing the rest of the league's budget to break or (2) create a situation where -- as panchess notes -- the building is going to look empty even if they are the biggest draw in the league.

Think of what the NY Cosmos wound up doing to the NASL. That's what a Hamilton franchise at Copps could do to the NBL.

[WallysWorld]

Copps is not necessarily too big for the NBL.

I'll chime in with my experience attending WBL Calgary 88's games at the Saddledome from 1988 until 1992. The 4,000-7,000 people that the 88's drew regularly did make a lot of noise in the Saddledome to the point that basketball games were louder than the Flames games with their notorious silent crowds at the time. One game at the Saddledome against the Halifax Windjammers drew 14,000. I think the last season in the WBL, the 88's were averaging 7,000 per game. The Saddledome was a great venue for the 88's. It's too bad the WBL folded around the 88's and the other Canadian teams.

Once the old NBL Calgary Outlaws played in the 3,000 seat University of Calgary gym in 1994, the feeling of pro basketball (even minor pro basketball!) seemed to vanish at least for me. I only attended one single Outlaws game and it just wasn't the same as being at the Saddledome.

It all depends what kind of lease a team can get at the Copps.