Chiefs’ Win At The Gate Reveals Trend

Need your help on this one. I’m still trying to digest a couple of statistics that jumped out of Sunday’s paper - specifically, 4,013 and 10,115.

The first number is the final fan accounting for Saturday afternoon’s Washington State-Gonzaga basketball game at the Spokane Arena, a once-bitter-now-benign rivalry that dates back 90 years.

The other number is that evening’s gate in the same joint for a hockey game between Spokane and Tri-City, a festering sore that just turned 10.

To review:

College basketball 4,013;

High school hockey - hey, that’s what the owner calls it, with a laugh track - 10,115.

Which poses the question: Huh?

I’d love to hear your theories.

Frankly, though, I’m inclined to go with the one advanced by a friend who attended both events.

“Hockey fans get to wear big, oversized jerseys that cover your whole body and come in XXXXXL,” he said. “If you’re a basketball fan and you want to show the colors, you have to put on a shirt tailored for guys who are 6-5 and 180 pounds.”

True enough. I’ve yet to a see a hockey fan in a Chiefs top who wouldn’t have been arrested for indecent exposure in a Zags jersey.

Though the tattoos would get better display.

Of course, it can’t all be haberdashery. That none of the four NCAA Division I basketball teams in our region last year ever once approached the 8,048 attendance the Chiefs averaged in 36 dates is likely a grand conspiracy involving superior marketing, splintered loyalties, television, taste, our subconscious jones for violence and, OK, alcohol.

Yes, they sell beer at the hockey games at about $4 a swallow, but never at basketball. Why beer is a no-no at Arena events where at least a few of the participants are of drinking age and yet the taps flow unchecked when teenagers lace up the skates is an irony beyond my ken.

But being able to enjoy a cold one with your favorite game after a hard week is a nice perk - though it doesn’t account for the fact that there were probably as many minors at the evening hockey as there were fans of all ages at the afternoon hoops.

“It’s just a hockey town,” another friend insists.

Probably. Wonder if anyone’s ever tried making it a basketball town?

“It’s all about selling tickets,” said Chiefs owner Bobby Brett. “Sales people generate revenue - they pay for themselves - so we try to hire as many revenue generators as we can.”

And, boy, do they generate.

The Chiefs have a season-ticket base of about 3,000, but have sold a slew of “mini-plans” - 20-game weekend or seven-game packages. Brett noted that for each weekend game, the club already has 5,500 seats sold. That’s an increase even over last year, when the Chiefs used the Memorial Cup as an enticement.

“Then most nights we’re looking at about 2,000 in group sales,” he said, “and that leaves 3,000 for people who walk up and buy a ticket.”

To do all that selling, Brett employs a sales and marketing staff of seven - who peddle sponsorships to businesses, sure, but also seats. Colleges long ago jumped into the sponsorship pool, but have yet to aggressively market tickets in the manner Brett’s people have turned into an art form.

Maybe that happens when you have a student body for a captive audience.

Gonzaga - the host of Saturday’s game - has a development director for fund-raising, but no marketing person per se to fill seats for its six spectator sports. To promote the Cougars game and Tuesday’s Arena date with Washington, the school entered into an agreement with G&B Select-A-Seat.

“The one thing with colleges,” said Brett, “is that maybe they’re not in the business of hiring sales or marketing staffs. You need people out banging on doors and, frankly, I don’t know if that’s their mission.”

Wazzu has a marketing department, but given the evidence of its Spokane basketball ventures no grasp of how to make an event really take off away from its campus. Blame the product all you want, but remember that 10,000 turned out to watch a 7-15-4 hockey team playing its way back toward the cellar.

Of course, there was the inevitable fight to hold their interest. Maybe if people knew Matt Santangelo and Blake Pengelly would be duking it out in the waning minutes, they’d be more likely to wind up at a basketball game.

It’s easy to make fun of hockey’s appeal to, well, the more base instincts, but appeal is appeal. Whatever college hoops has to sell here it’s not selling nearly as well.

Or maybe there’s just too much of it to sell in the region - the four D-Is, Whitworth, CCS, NIC, all the high schools. The Chiefs are, virtually, the only hockey game in town.

And then there’s television, which imports the best college matchups from all over the country into your living room - often, at least when it’s not narrated by Dick Vitale, capturing much of the electricity you’d feel being there in person.

Hockey, by contrast, is dreadful TV. Fox tried to enhance it by tacking a blue tail on the puck - finally abandoning the practice because it cost the network $50,000 a game.

Heck, that’ll buy you two or three beers at your next hockey game at the Arena.