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November 15, 2010
Selling Tickets the New Jersey Way
The Wall Street Journal
by Sophia Hollander
An article about the ticket-selling challenges faced by the New Jersey Devils and the New Jersey Nets is most noteworthy for this factoid: the Nets may actually have managed to unsell some Barclays Center suites in the past four months!
"It's all about Brooklyn and it's all about the building," said [Fred] Mangione [Nets senior vice president of ticket sales and marketing], who said the team has commitments for 30 suites, though they have not begun selling regular tickets to the new building. "Yes, the team is there, but it's just as important for us to pitch the concerts and the boxing and everything else."
Regular readers of NoLandGrab or Atlantic Yards Report will recall this AYR item from July 12:
Either Nets Sports & Entertainment CEO Brett Yormark was spinning very, very hard back in 2008 or Nets suite sales have really slowed down--or both.
Since May 2008, 26 months ago, they've only sold nine suites, by my count, given that 26 were sold to insiders and the total sold is now 35.
(It's also possible that some who initially committed have backed out.)
Opening promises
On 5/5/08, Crain's New York Business reported:
Already, 20% of the 130 luxury boxes have been sold to “friends and family,” says Nets Sports Entertainment CEO Brett Yormark.
That's 26 suites.
In an 11/17/08 interview with the never-skeptical Alexis Glick of Fox Business News, Yormark stated, "We’ll be in Brooklyn for the 11-12 NBA season. We’ll probably be in Brooklyn actively in the summer of 2011. So give us a little time to gain some traction. We’ve presold our suites to the tune of about 30 percent."
That would mean 39 suites, if the total at that time was still 130. Or that would mean 30 suites, if the number had dipped to 100 (as was announced ten months later, in September 2009).
Posted by eric at November 15, 2010 12:40 PM