Stop Criticizing Avs Fans

An article by Mark Kiszla that ran in today's Denver Post seems to have sparked a lot of irritation among loyal Avs fans. As an Avs fan, quite frankly I am sick of all the criticism from the local newspaper media (the only media source that regularly covers the Avs in depth). I've read plenty of articles recently citing low attendance at Avalanche games and using that as an excuse to say how bad we are as fans. It's a ridiculous argument to start in the first place. These professional writers are being paid to attend the games and they get in for free, so they're not exactly contributing to ticket sales themselves. In fact, one reporter has stated that he wouldn't pay the prices that we do to get into games.

I think the lack of attendance is not a sign that there is a lack of passion for the Avalanche. Certainly, there is no lack of desire to attend games on my part. If the money was there, I would buy season tickets and be there every night to the end, win or lose. It would be awesome for me to be able to support our boys in burgundy in person all the time, but financially, I just can't do it. There are ticket deals out there if you get on the right mailing list or read the right blogs, so you can find cheaper than usual tickets, but it's still not inexpensive to go to a game. Frequently I see offers for upper bowl seats for only $20 apiece. That's pretty affordable, but if you take a friend with you, there's $40 already and if you then pay $10 for parking, you're in for $50. I don't ever eat or drink at the games because the food prices are ridiculous. $50 for two people to attend a hockey game doesn't sound too bad, but I can't afford to do that all the time and those offers are certainly not there for every game.

Kiszla also criticized fans and went so far as to refer to them as "fans", which is just downright insulting. The criticism was that the crowd was flat and quiet early in the game. Well duh, the Avs were playing horribly and losing by a two goal margin. I'm sorry, but if the Avs are not playing well, why would I want to jump and scream and make noise? I'd feel like an idiot for mindlessly screaming just to make noise when the team is not doing anything good. The article even cites Avs' captain Adam Foote as saying the team wasn't giving the fans much to cheer about.

Fans might not be showing up every night and filling the seats, but there's no denying that the economy is not great right now. The Avs have a couple of promotions where they sell cheaper tickets that are available to all (Family Night and Guy's Night Out), but their marketing is horrible. Sure they put up some billboards around town this year (which Kiszla in his article said there were none), but the whole "It's All About the A" ad campaign is pathetic. I've heard a couple commercials where one of the players is narrating and sounded incredibly bored with the whole thing (not criticizing the players here, just saying) and that's certainly not going to make people want to go to a game.

The Avs need to start thinking about having more events to pull in the casual fans. They have charity events where fans can interact with the players, but you have to pay $250 to get in. It's understandable that the events are raising money for charity, but the fans who won't pay $50 to go to a game certainly can't go to those events. They used to have a team skills competition where you could pay $5 to watch the team do an All Star style skills competition. It was cheap and entertaining and the players probably had fun too. The first time I ever got to see the Avs in person was at one of those competitions because I was young enough to not have a job yet and my parents thought that was affordable for the whole family to go enjoy, whereas $150 for us to all sit in the nosebleeds at a game was not. Something needs to change at the organization to try and draw in more fans. Obviously doing the same thing (very little) to entertain the fans over and over is not working.

It's ridiculous that the media members would criticize the fans and call them apathetic for not buying tickets to the game, when the team is clearly just as apathetic about trying to draw fans in. I'll give them credit this year for doing the puck drop contest to give away season tickets prior to the start of the season and a few other giveaways on Facebook. Maybe they're finally getting the idea that they have to do more to get people to come to the games. If you win free tickets to a game and enjoy yourself, you're more likely to buy tickets to a future game. I don't know if the Avs will ever try to do more to have the casual fans interact with the team at some sort of event that average people can afford. Such a thing may not draw in more fans anyway, but it couldn't hurt to try. It just seems like something needs to change, something new needs to be tried to get more people in the seats. I don't see them ever dropping ticket prices to a more reasonable level, so they need to do more to make the current prices worth it (because let's face if, if you've been to more than one game, you know the in-game entertainment is going to be pretty much the same every night).

We may never know if the point of Kiszla's article was just to get a rise out of people and get more attention on the Denver Post's website. If that was the point of it, bravo, you've done it. However, if Kiszla really just feels that Avs fans are lame and cheap, then he doesn't know what he's talking about. I know every single player on the team and consider myself a pretty dedicated fan, since you probably couldn't pull a random person off the street and have them know who Kevin Shattenkirk or Jonas Holos are (and probably most of them wouldn't know who our starting goaltender is). The fact that the team is made up of so many young and unheard of players probably contributes to the lack of disinterest in the non-hockey nuts fans around town. Maybe the article wasn't aimed at people like me, but it seems that the audience that probably reads the Post is the audience that is at least somewhat fanatical about the Avs, so why criticize your readers? It seems pretty pointless to call the fans out for not buying more tickets and not cheering when the team was playing poorly. What has it accomplished besides making the more loyal fans, who can't afford to be there night in and night out, mad? Not going to every single game does not make a fan lousy, so the local newspaper media should stop insinuating that it does.