One of last year’s most obnoxious playoff story-lines was attendance, or lack thereof, at Ottawa Senators playoff games.
Realistically, it was only an issue for one game but any time there was an empty seat in that building, it seemed to become a major talking point for the national media. Surely you recall the wall-to-wall coverage of the boring ol’ Senators and their terrible fans that followed the team throughout the playoff run.
It was mostly Toronto-centred garbage, of course, but the lingering attendance issues that surrounded the Senators last year have led the team to make a fairly significant change at the Canadian Tire Centre for this season.
During a media tour, Senators President Tom Anselmi explained that the team has removed a whopping 1,500 seats from the CTC for this season, leaving capacity somewhere close to 17,000. Looking at some of the pictures on Twitter, it appears that they’ll do this mostly by blocking off large sections of the 300 level.
The Sens have eliminated about 1500 seats for the upcoming season. The top of both ends pic.twitter.com/nmIGgNrsHG
— Brent Wallace (@tsn_wally) September 7, 2017
This seems like a smart move by the organization.
The Canadian Tire Centre (or Scotiabank Place or Corel Centre or Palladium) has always been a little bit too big and downsizing will help increase demand and maybe make life a bit easier for the sales staff.
The sections that are being blocked off are traditionally the cheapest seats in the building but have also been the slowest moving the last few seasons so it seems like a good place to start.
A few other things from today’s media tour- the banners hanging from the ceiling have been changed to match the era (makes sense) and the =O= logo that is now featured on just about every public-facing communication from the organization is still the secondary logo (sure it is, Sens). Oh and apparently Eugene Melnyk casually dropped a hint about a return to the 2D logo in the future (outdoor game maybe?)
Also, they have new hot dogs!
