Or lack thereof.
The Charlotte Business Journal supplies a vital snapshot of where the Bobcats are in Charlotte in 2006 and the picture is not pretty. Turns out the team drew fewer paying fans than it did in the new old coliseum, falling below the 10,000 mark. Folks, that is bad. That is scary bad. Details:
The Charlotte Bobcats’ move to the new uptown arena not only failed to generate an uptick in season-ticket sales — it also led to a 19.7% drop in paid attendance from the team’s 2004-05 debut at the Charlotte Coliseum.
The franchise’s average paid attendance, which is the actual number of tickets sold, fell to 9,930 from 12,362, according to industry experts with access to the latest league sales reports.
“This has to be terribly disappointing to ownership and to the league,” says Marc Ganis, president at Sportscorp, a Chicago-based consulting firm. “You almost always get a sales bump in all areas in a new building.”
The ownership and the league. Uh, yeah. Don’t forget City Manager-for-Life Pam Syfert, who put the arena deal together, and Mayor Pat McCrory, head cheerleader for the effort. And does this finally explain why Bob Johnson had to do a complete 360, stow his ego, and go get Michael Jordan to try pump some life into a franchise that Charlotte is basically indifferent to?
What else would you call a 20 percent drop in paying customers besides a complete disaster?
The stakes are huge — even if you hate the NBA and basketball in general. The city of Charlotte has constructed a huge Ponzi scheme using hotel-motel taxes, the restaurant tax, the car rental tax, as well as future (and current) property tax revenues to pay for about a half-billion dollars worth of Uptown attractions.
But if the attractions do not, in fact, attract warm bodies — well, the scheme crashes to Earth while the city goes into free-fall. Strap in.
