Failed ECHL franchises

[vanaznminorhockey]

Hello everyone,
can anyone especially the respected BCranztilla shed some light as to why the once-proud ECHL's Louisiana Icegators folded as well as other franchises that once posted above average attendance? Thank you !

[Pounder]

Why? Because attendance wasn't stable. With some markets, once it goes down, it stays down.

Usually, people blame management for such issues. Color me skeptical of that one.

The ECHL is one of those leagues that kind of has to keep expanding to avoid shrinking. 25 franchises currently operate. 23 others, just since the turn of the century (I'm using 1/1/2000, not 1/1/2001), are either dead or dormant.

[nksports]

They also went into a lot of markets with a high novelty factor the first couple of seasons (deep south). Once that novelty wears off, so does attendance. CHL suffered same problem. You may get a loyal corps of fans (2,000 to 3,000) but nothing to sustain profitability.
Their problem in the rust belt is, while knowledge and interest is high, the local economy may not be sustainable (the UHL has this problem in places like Michigan), so that leads to instability.
The management problems is when the team ownership and management doesn't do anything to stoke the interest long term (like starting youth programs) when the novelty factor is still high.

[vertix]

Cover Story | Sunday, May 08, 2005

The Fall of the IceGators Empire

Louisiana¹s Fight Club is down for the count.

How does a minor league ice hockey franchise in Lafayette become the sport¹s
third-hottest ticket in all of North America in just two years of existence?
And how does this same franchise cease to even exist just eight years later?

By Don Allen
Staff Writer

When the Louisiana IceGators officially became a memory last month, they put
an end to one of the most unique success stories in sports history. By
thriving in a culture that thought ice was just something you poured Jack
Daniels over, the IceGators redefined entertainment not only in Louisiana
but in the Deep South. At the time, it was widely believed hockey was best
appreciated by fans who actually had to shovel their driveways. It was a
cold-weather sport for a cold-weather climate played by especially manly
men, whose threshold for pain was legendary. An NFL receiver may miss half a
season with turf toe, and a hangnail has been known to send an NBA forward
to the bench for weeks. But a 10-inch gash to the forehead just meant a
hockey player might miss a couple of minutes of ice time while he was
getting stitched up.

The fans of Lafayette gobbled it up puck, line and sinker. They got to drink
beer and watch guys with sticks hit each other. There were more fights than
goals, and that was fine because they knew damn well the value of a good
fight. The IceGators led the ECHL in attendance their first four years of
existence, and it¹s no coincidence the team led the league in game
misconduct penalties every year. In 1996, the club averaged a record 11,433
fans while leading the league in penalty minutes ‹ by almost 12 hours.

But by 1999, IceGator fans had noticed a trend: They were attending fights
and hockey games were breaking out. As penalty minutes decreased, so did
Cajundome attendance. It wasn¹t the lack of winning that was costing the
team tickets, it was the gentler style of play. The tradition and roots of
the sport, discounted as unnecessary in the glory years, weren¹t enough to
sustain an interest to a fandom enamored with the perception of the World
Wrestling Federation on skates.

By their fifth season the IceGators were gliding into oblivion. They just
didn¹t know it yet.

³I think part of the decline can be attributed to the novelty wearing off,²
says Greg Davis, Cajundome director since 1993. ³I don¹t think we would have
been able to sustain average attendances of 10,000-11,000 per game over a 10
year period, that would have been unrealistic. But I never expected it to
get as bad as it did. I always thought we¹d end up in that 5,000-6,000
range.²

For one season, they did. In 1998, the actual attendance for IceGators games
was 7,017, but it dropped to 5,201 the following season. By the time the
club closed its doors in March of 2005, average actual attendance had
plummeted to 1,432. Only in the season opener did the team draw as many as
3,000 fans (3,081), and they actually played one game with only 579 diehards
to watch them.

³With what I know now,² says John Lingo of Gator Play Inc., ³I don¹t think
there¹s anything we could have done to bring it up to the 3,200 people we
needed to break even. You know, we had a huge attendance there the last
night (2,924 actual), but I¹m told that more than half the tickets were
redemption tickets. If they¹re not going to show up for that, well...²

Lingo and his investors at Gator Play Inc. were the fourth of five owners to
guide the franchise in its 10-year history. The club originally was formed
by the partnership of Ernie Parker, Logan Nichols and Bob Wright in 1995.
Wright took over in 1999 and sold to Orlando Predators Entertainment in
2002, which held on for less than a year. In hopes that local ownership
might provide a life raft, Gator Play Inc. purchased the club in 2003 before
giving up in January, 2005 when the ECHL took over team operations.

³This franchise had two feet in the grave when we took over,² says Lingo.
³Regrets? Anytime you do something and you¹re not successful with it,
there¹re things now that I would probably do different. I wish I would have
gone with my business instincts more, and I probably wouldn¹t have started
that second season. I¹m just speaking for myself, but sometimes I do things
that aren¹t real bright.²

If there was ever a franchise that succeeded despite itself, it was this
one. In its second season, the team had to forfeit its first nine victories
when it was found to have played an ineligible player. There were
allegations of under-the-table payments to players, and in 2002, the
Associated Press reported that a Lafayette woman had filed a $600,000
lawsuit against the IceGators, the ECHL and others after alerting league
officials to alleged salary cap violations. The cap determines a team¹s
weekly salary payroll, and the alleged violations could have cost the team
as much as $400,000. But the fine was never levied. Two years earlier,
another lawsuit was filed by former Daily Advertiser publisher Richard
D¹Aquin, who claims he had the newspaper promote the team but didn¹t receive
his share of the profits that were promised to him. D¹Aquin claims he
peddled his sports department¹s influence to promote ice hockey in the area,
a charge Wright says was discussed but never consummated. The suit is still
pending.

Then there were the adventures of former owner Logan Nichols, who, during a
six-year span, got the attention of both a hit man and a federal jury.
Nichols was targeted in a 1997 murder-for-hire scheme by a man who claimed
Nichols cheated him out of stock. In 2003, Nichols was sentenced to five
years probation after being found guilty of insider stock trading.

see part two

[vertix]

From day one, the IceGators assaulted Lafayette¹s entertainment dollar like
the reincarnation of P.T. Barnum. The rough and tumble style of play favored
by head coach Doug Shedden struck fear into opponents and turned the
Cajundome into a gold mine. The arena was transformed into one big party,
and in less than a season, IceGators games had become Lafayette¹s flavor of
the month. Half the crowd donned team jerseys while the other half dressed
as though every night was a Mardi Gras ball. The newly-discovered fad played
right into the hands of the Berrymans, general manager Dave and marketing
guru Tim, who were hired by the ownership trio to run the club. The
Berrymans brought experience in game management, entertainment and
marketing, and it was under their guidance that the IceGators climbed the
success ladder at such a rapid pace.

³When we began, a lot of work had already been done by people like Greg
Davis,² says Dave Berryman, currently in his third season as president of
arenafootball2¹s Wilkes-Barre/Scranton franchise.

³Lafayette just embraced the Gators, and it turned out to be one of those
Cinderella stories. We did a lot of things to keep the entertainment segment
active plus we did a ton of things for our corporate sponsors. Even when the
season ticket base got as high as it did, we still tried to get the message
out to the community so we could sell the few tickets we had available.²

³I thought it would be successful, but I don¹t think any of us anticipated
the overwhelming initial acceptance from the community,² remembers Tim, now
an executive with UBS, a brokerage firm in Birmingham, Ala. ³Then again, we
probably had the best staff in minor league hockey.²

But neither brother will discuss the details of exactly how and why they
left the IceGators family after just three years for another ECHL
expansion-franchise in Little Rock, Ark.

³I don¹t know the details,² recalls Davis. ³But the Berrymans made an offer
to Nichols and Parker, who weren¹t willing to sell. So it¹s my understanding
the Berrymans, who were minority owners, were bought out instead. That
happened in the third year, and that¹s when the team began to show some
decline. And the Cajundome got word that the Gators were cutting back on a
lot of sales and marketing and ticket-sales areas, and that caused us a lot
of concern. They¹d maxed out on revenues because they were selling out as
much as they could, and I think they were also maxed out on what they could
get for corporate sponsorships. About the only thing left to do to grow your
net number is increase ticket prices and cut back on expenses, and I think
those two things were a mistake.²

Attendance for the 1997-98 season, while still high, had already begun a
downward turn. During the next few seasons, it would continue to plummet.

³We never saved for a rainy day,² laments Bruce Levine, who handled the
team¹s broadcasting for the first four years and final two. ³We made a lot
of money the first few years, and we spent it all. If we¹d saved some of it,
there were a lot of things we could have done in marketing and publicity. In
a lot of ways, we were starting at zero dollars every year because we spent
it as fast as it came in.²

In the beginning, it cost a fan $525 for a rinkside season ticket, but by
the third season, the price had jumped to $595. Prices for individual
tickets also rose. By 1999, attendance had dropped 40 percent in three
years. In 2000, the average actual attendance shrank to 4,038 ‹ less than
half of what it had been just three seasons before.

³When you have people beating down your door to be season ticket holders and
sponsors, you tend not to take care of them as well as when you really need
them,² says Levine. ³When this team¹s attendance started dropping, any other
business would have analyzed things more crisply. Like, ŒWhat are we doing
wrong?¹ and ŒWhat do we need to do to get it back up?¹ I don¹t think this
organization ever really did that.²

³When I came on board, I have a very vivid recollection of all of us sitting
together and talking about how the beginning of year three had already begun
to show signs of tapering off,² recalls Jady Regard, who replaced Berryman
as general manager in 1999. ³We saw a shifting of attendance, not much, but
enough to be concerned about. And we tried to address it. People really
bought into Shedden¹s style of hockey early on, and that was no marketing
plan, that just happened to fall into Dave and Tim¹s lap. But not even that
could keep them around.²

³Dave Berryman was probably the most influential of any of the front office
personnel the Icegators have had,² offers Davis. ³Those first two years, the
Gators were more successful, and I mean tremendous success, than anyone ever
imagined. And Dave was a key factor in getting them there. But I think he
did a poor job of doing what was necessary to stay there.²

In 2000, the team hired Dave Farrish, whose game strategy favored finesse
over brawn, as head coach. But even record-setting seasons couldn¹t stem the
outward flow as fans continued to stay home in increasing numbers. The
ever-popular brawls were all but gone, and for many, IceGators entertainment
was suddenly overpriced. In 2002, Wright, by then the majority owner, sold
the club to Orlando Predator Entertainment, a publically-traded company that
also owned the arenafootball2 Peoria Pirates and the Predators, an Arena
Football team. With the transaction came the return of Dave Berryman, OPE¹s
president and CEO, who was expected to run not only the Lafayette franchise
but the Orlando and Peoria teams as well. IceGators fans, sensing a rescue
from the cavalry, got Little Bighorn instead.

³OPE promised a lot of things,² remembers Tracey Girouard, who served as
general manager that season. ³Their plan was to use money from this team to
offset some of the problems they were having in Orlando. Based on the
numbers they were given, if they could increase season tickets by 500 and
sponsorships by, say, 30 percent, they would be able to turn a profit here.
But we got a late start, and everything ran behind schedule. And when we
finally got staffed, we got hit by Hurricane Lili and didn¹t even have our
home opener on time. So we didn¹t attain our goals for season tickets or
sponsorships, which put OPE in a cash-flow predicament.

³By mid-season here, we didn¹t know how we were going to even pay salaries
and the rest of the bills.²

Most of Girouard¹s marketing budget was gone after opening night. The
attendance for 2002-03 was listed as 4,001. But in reality, less than 2,800
fans were showing nightly. OPE was forced to sell both Peoria and the
IceGators, and shortly thereafter, Berryman was gone as well.

³The second time around was probably not the right time for Orlando Predator
Entertainment,² says Berryman. ³So many things were going on internally for
that company. They were advised to grow and expand their horizons, and quite
honestly, I don¹t think the company was prepared for that.²

³I know Dave was under a lot of pressure not only here but in Orlando,² says
Girouard, now the Cajundome marketing and sales director. ³I know he had the
best of intentions and some great ideas, and while I¹m disappointed with the
way things turned out, I certainly don¹t hold him responsible.²

³It¹s probably time for hockey to just go away in Louisiana,² says Lingo.
³It will definitely never happen playing in the Cajundome for $8,500-$9,000
a night. For two years, Greg Davis and the Cajundome have pounded us and
said we were the reason the Cajundome was losing money and that we took
dates away from them. Well, buddy, they¹ve got all the dates they want now.
Let¹s see how they do.²

There is no shortage of theories as to why the IceGators fell from grace in
such mercurial fashion. The novelty wore off, expensive tickets, bad
business decisions, lack of support from ownership, harmful publicity, poor
marketing, less fighting, unreasonable rent structure, a resurgence of
University of Louisiana and Louisiana State University athletics ... all of
the above.

The Louisiana IceGators, much like the concept of ice hockey in a climate
more suited to sunbathing, were an anomaly. Never built for long-term
survival, they nevertheless captured the imagination of an entire region and
more than tripled the shelf-life of any of the other half-dozen, modern
professional teams that briefly called Lafayette home.

³The rise of the IceGators is the most amazing story in the history of minor
league hockey,² said Brian Lund, general manager of the CHL¹s Oklahoma City
Blazers. ³And their fall is the most startling.

³I¹m just dumbfounded by what¹s happened.²

Don Allen is a staff writer with The Times. E-mail him at
don.allen@timesofacadiana.com. Read the column online at Web site
www.timesofacadiana.com.