We’re living in strange and interesting times in the lacrosse world.
On the one hand, lacrosse is the fastest-growing sport in North America, the NLL got pretty good TV coverage for the 2015 season, and big plays have begun showing up with increasing regularity on major sports channels “Highlights of the Night” packages.
On the other hand, if you can pry your eyes away from the magnificence of John Grant Jr.’s play, take a look at the stands at the Langley Event Centre in that clip. Here’s one of the finest athletes of our time making a jaw-dropping play and there’s no one there to see it.
The Vancouver Stealth—the team on the receiving end of that Grant goal—drew a league-worst 3,734 fans per game for the 2015 season. Even in a small barn like the LEC, which has a seating capacity of 5,200, that’s not very impressive. Especially when you consider that Vancouver is one of the true hotbeds of box lacrosse on Earth.
The Stealth moved to BC after several years of unremarkable attendance a couple hours south, in Everett, WA, where they were bringing in 4,184 fans per game in 2013. Comcast Arena in Everett holds 8,149, so they were barely filling another relatively small place to half capacity.
As I understand it, moving the Stealth to Vancouver has helped their profitability as their new digs are giving them a better deal than they were getting south of the border, so the team is now better off in spite of the poorer attendance. However, they’re just one of several teams in the league who are continuing to settle for less and less.
The Philadelphia Wings—the only team in the NLL that was an original team in their original home—left the Wells Fargo Center after years of declining attendance (6,864 per game in 2014, down from 11,605 in 2008 and haemorrhaging almost a thousand fans a year after that) to become the New England Black Wolves, playing at the Mohegan Sun Arena in Uncasville, CT, with a seating capacity of just 7,700. In 2015, playing at the casino didn’t do much for bringing in a new fanbase, as they drew just 3,914 per game.
That would be awful if it weren’t for the piss-poor attendance in Vancouver.
To make matters even worse, both the Edmonton Rush and the Minnesota Swarm—teams that are both under the league average for attendance—have announced they’re moving.
The Swarm are going to Atlanta to play in The Arena in Gwinnett Center, with a capacity of 11,500. While this is a decent-sized facility and they therefore at least have the potential to draw as much as the league average next year (8,970 in 2015), it’s still a big step down from the XCel Energy Center’s 18,064 capacity.
Edmonton, who are currently battling the Toronto Rock in the Champion’s Cup finals, drew just 6,578 during the regular season. Considering that the former City of Champions hasn’t had a champion of any sort in many, many, many years, it seems incomprehensible to me that Edmontonians are showing this little interest in one of the very few successes in their city these days.
Instead, talk is that the Rush may be headed for Saskatoon and the Credit Union Centre. Like the Swarm, they’d be moving to a smaller venue (15,195 compared to 16,000 in Rexall Place). The Rush would also be moving to a location with one quarter of the population to draw from compared to Edmonton. Neither of those factors add up to bigger crowds, although a province starved for pro sports might bring the Rush some love, at least in the short term.
What does it say about a league that is more than a quarter century old that four of its nine teams will have relocated in a three-year span, that all four have or will be moving to smaller venues, and that two of the four teams in question will have played their last game before relocation in the league championships (Edmonton this year; Washington in 2013)?
Championship-calibre teams shouldn’t be forced to move due to lack of interest. That tells me there is something fundamentally wrong with this league’s business model and that they are quickly heading for a complete failure. That breaks my heart because, as I have said any number of times over the last decade, box lacrosse is the best spectator sport ever devised.
It isn’t the product on the floor that’s the problem—the game is nothing short of fantastic. So the problem has to lie with the league. Whether it’s inconsistent TV coverage or spotty promotions or a combination of factors, the bottom line is that the NLL should be growing, not shrinking.
Lacrosse is the fastest growing sport in North America. With the ranks of lacrosse players and fans growing every year, there is no reason why the NLL should be struggling to draw crowds. But they are. (Maybe it’s just me, but perhaps the way to bring in a new generation of lacrosse fans who are just getting into the game as kids isn’t putting a team in a casino…)
I wish I was a visionary business guy and I could drop the solution to everyone’s problems here, because I believe the NLL should be blowing up. If Denver and Buffalo can continue to draw more than 14,000 fans per game, in spite of neither team getting a sniff of a championship in ages, it seems to me that the rest of the league should be doing better than they are.
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