Ladies and gentlemen, your Brooklyn Islanders!

They should be called the Brooklyn Americans, in honour of the team that played in the NHL for one season in '41 to '42. Prior to that they were the New York Americans.

The team folded because of the war. I have a special place in my heart for the NY Americans because my late brother in law's father played for them

 

Oh good, attendance figures. We all know how accurate they are.

 

So they were accurate in past years and just not now?

 

Please tell me a time period in sports where they have been accurate?

 

Yeah so basically everyone exaggerates. But the point is that the Devils in their new building draw better than the old building. To me it looks the same, mostly half-full except against the Rangers, Flyers and a few other teams. Az is the one who says otherwise but unless he has his own numbers, it's simply wrong.

 

I think attendance numbers are so fungible as to be nearly useless. Still, here are some more.

www.inlouwetrust.com/2011/4/22/2125803/2010-2011-new-jersey-devils-attendance-analysis

www.inlouwetrust.com/2010/11/30/1843617/new-jersey-devils-home-attendance-better-or-worse-than-last-season

blog.northjersey.com/meadowlandsmatters/1485/the-state-of-the-devils-addressed/

All of which seem to indicate that the team is losing more money than ever - even though they get a more substantial cut of revenue - running more promotions to put an equal or slightly lower number of people in the seats.

So I think it's still worth asking if having the Islanders much closer to the city will have any effect on Devils ticket sales, which was my original point.

 

It's not the tickets sold or attendance that counts. It's the revenue generated.

The Islanders have been mismanaged for so long that they should be put out of their misery.

 

Any discussion of Devils attendance must have this mentioned for posterity's sake:

http://video.devils.nhl.com/videocenter/console?id=57876

 

I went to the last Jay-Z show (he played 8 nights in a row to officially open the place up).

Location is awesome because of the subway access. You get out of the subway, go up the escalator and whoomp there it is. About as effortless as MSG, but hellanicer.

There are a lot of shops in the ground floor level-not quite mall-like but it makes you scratch your head (not that I blame them). I was surprised at how much of the wall and floor space is a dark slate color, vs something brighter and airier like Staples.

My biggest surprise, though, was that the concessions (many of them BK-based like Nathan's and Fatty Cue) are relatively reasonable. Beers are like $10 apiece for the show. I was shocked at all of it, but I guess I was just conditioned by everything being so jacked up at Staples.

All that said, I wish they would've sacked up and gone with Frank Gehry's original design for the place.

 

This is my question, how much revenue will the Islanders generate from the arena? How much of the concessions will they get or parking, if there is any parking at all? Also, will they get any non-hockey revenue from concerts, etc. that many teams use to help prop up their bottom line. As a secondary tennant to the Nets I don't imagine they will be seeing a whole lot of that, especially sitting as far down on the New York sporting food chain. Not sure how great of a move this is for them. They better have a kick ass broadcasting deal being put together,

 

Islanders get $20 million from MSG. The NY Times Slapshot blog estimated the team can generate more than $34 million in suite sales and premium seats than at Nassau, but that seems to be a gross overstatement.

http://slapshot.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/10/25/islanders-brooklyn-move-raises-complex-issues/

 

Train-wise, the Devils are a lot more accessible in Newark.