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September 13, 2012
Meet the new Nets fans
With 10,000 season tickets already sold, Brooklyn’s new basketball team has won over the borough — and convinced Knicks supporters to abandon the Garden
NY Post
by Kirsten Fleming
Grey’s Anatomy” star Ellen Pompeo grew up following the Celtics during the Larry Bird era, had her first date with her husband Chris Ivery at an LA Clippers game and frequently goes to see the Lakers.
Ah, that's who Ellen Pompeo is.
“Basketball is my only sport,” an enthusiastic Pompeo, 42, tells The Post. “I’m such a fan of the game.”
But now she’s supporting the newly minted Brooklyn Nets. When season tickets at the team’s soon-to-open Barclays Center went on sale this year, Pompeo and her husband snapped up courtside seats.
...Pompeo isn’t the only basketball fan cozying up to the new-and-improved team. More than 10,000 season tickets have been sold to date, says Brett Yormark, CEO of the Nets and Barclays Center — and of those 10,000 season ticket holders, only 10 percent owned seats when the Nets were based in New Jersey.
...“When you look at our season ticket base, you’re talking about roughly 45 percent from Brooklyn, 25 percent from Manhattan, 12 percent from New Jersey, and the rest is from the outer boroughs and Long Island,” explains Yormark.
NoLandGrab: Wait! Didn't Bruce Ratner and his "sports economist" Andrew Zimbalist tell us that 30% of Brooklyn Nets' ticket buyers would be coming from New Jersey?
Related coverage...
Atlantic Yards Report, Have the Brooklyn Nets "won over the borough," as the New York Post asserts? Well, they've sold 4,500 season tickets to Brooklynites
OK, so the Nets are drawing new fans in a new market. But 4500 season tickets from a borough with more than 2.5 million people does not mean that the Nets have "won over the borough."
Posted by eric at September 13, 2012 11:51 AM