During an Ice Flyers weekend home game earlier this season, team owner Greg Harris looked around the Pensacola Bay Center that night in amazement.
Nearly every seat in the arena’s lower bowl and floor level along the ice was filled. The crowd of 5,187 who watched the Ice Flyers win against the Roanoke Rail Yard Dawgs in that game was the largest November crowd in franchise history.
It also continued a significant trend.
Two months into this season, which is the first in three years without issues related to the coronavirus pandemic, the Ice Flyers are on pace to approach their highest home attendance in franchise history.
“To see the kind of response we are getting this early in the season is amazing,” Harris said. “It just helps build for the future games here the last four months of the season. “Despite the fact we are having some high-price points through inflation and discretionary income is less than it has been, our goal has always been to give everybody the biggest bang for their buck when they come to an Ice Flyers game. We are really hitting our stride really well.
Loss of a Legend: Ice Flyers, Pensacola hockey community mourns loss of beloved Dan Buccella
More:New Era, Familiar Leader As Ice Flyers Ready For Season-Opener Thursday
The team has themed each game. The one last Friday (Dec. 2) against Huntsville featured the “Teddy Bear Toss” promotion following the team’s first goal..
The next night against the Birmingham Barons was the annual Big Brothers Big Sisters of Northwest Florida night. Proceeds from the auction of the specialty jerseys benefited the area’s local chapter of the national mentor organization.
The Ice Flyers next home game on Dec. 16 will be the popular “Peanuts Night” with the Ice Flyers wearing special-designed Peanuts character jerseys that will be available for sale with replica jerseys at the merchandise booths that night and game-worn player jerseys at the post-game auction.
Along with the promotions, has been the game experience. In the season’s first nine home games through October, November, and last weekend, the attendance total of 35,509 equated into nearly 4,000 per-game average. These are numbers the Ice Flyers were never able to hit in those same two months of past seasons.
The revamp of the Bay Center, which now includes the four-panel, high-definition videoboard above center ice, along with the large screen panels at each end, has enabled a visual production the Ice Flyers were never able to previously present with the former, matrix panel scoreboard.
The new videoboards were purchased by Escambia County for the Bay Center in 2021 for the first Sun Belt Conference men’s and women’s basketball tournament in March – part of the agreement to hold the SBC Tournament in Pensacola through 2025.
Along with improvements in the video images and sound system, the Ice Flyers have also benefited from collaborative efforts of Ice Flyers marketing director Brenden Arney, senior digital content creator Adam Waldron and digital content creator Alyssa Cherney, who bring a wealth of experience into sports game production.
They are joined by other new employees Harris has hired for the front office staff.
“They are a bunch of wizards in what they can do,” Harris said. “They all have extremely high expectations and standards as well. Sometimes I look at something, and think wow my team put this together. It is like a proud boss moment. We have a great team here.
“Our videos and graphics are on point right now. Brenden has a master’s degree in digital arts. He has changed my thought process on marketing. The research he does and what he has learned and some of the strategies has brought a new perspective on what we are doing.”
And those are elements that wow children and spur increase in family attendance, along with the trio’s game production ideas that appeal to a younger demographic.
An Ice Flyers game has a different experience feel than it did years ago when the HD video boards did not exist at the Bay Center, which meant replays, fan engagement and sponsorship promotions could not be shown, nor the non-stop variety of video productions.
“I’ve never had the mindset of, ‘Oh well, we’re a minor league hockey team.’ No, we are a professional hockey team and I want to do what NHL teams do,” Harris said. “People who have gone to NHL games have come to me this year and said, ‘We’ve never had this much fun at an NHL game.’
“I have friends from Canada who have come down to visit me and they live in very traditional hockey markets and the game is set a certain way. They say they never had so much fun at a game before.
“That’s the feedback we love to hear.” Harris added. “Hey, are we going to win every night? No, but we want to make the sure the value and quality of what (ticket buyers) receive walking through the door is extremely high when it comes to in-game entertainment and fun.”
Waldron, who was previously creative services director for the Pensacola Blue Wahoos, has used connections to get game-day, video camera operators, who bring experience of working UWF football, Blue Wahoos games, high school football, the SBC Tournament and every other sporting event in Pensacola that has used video production.
That element of quality camera operations has meshed with the ideas from the entire Ice Flyers front office on in-game entertainment and promotions.
“We have a great front office staff that is involved in the game operations side, the game script side,” Harris said. “We are getting the word out in different ways than we have in the past about our games. But also the in-game entertainment has elevated as well.
“Despite the fact we are having some high-price points through inflation and discretionary income is less than it has been, our goal has always been to give everybody the biggest bang for their buck when they come to an Ice Flyers game. We are really hitting our stride really well.”
The result is hundreds of more people are coming through the arena doors to see an Ice Flyers game and enjoy the fan experience of perhaps a first-time exposure to hockey.
The Ice Flyers lowest attendance (2,861) night this season was ironically the season-opener Oct. 20. That night, however, was also the opening night of the annual Pensacola Interstate Fair.
The next six home games through October-November featured crowds above 3,500, including the crowd of 3,769 on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving Day. That has traditionally not been a big draw night.
After this weekend, the Ice Flyers will have four more home games in December. The first three months of 2023 – January through March – have typically been the biggest attendance months in past team history.
“We all want to keep pushing and not be satisfied,” Harris said. “We’ve had some amazing games already in terms of attendance, but we still have a lot of games left and a lot of big games.
“It is not something we want to get complacent about. We’re seeing some things that are working and now it’s a challenge to find even more ways.”
Ice Flyers attendance
Through Nine Games: 35,509 (9 games).
Current Average: 3,945
Largest: 5,187 on Nov. 19 vs. Roanoke
Last Season Total Average: 3,487
Covid Season (2020-21) Total: 45,615 (21 games).
Bill Vilona is a retired Pensacola News Journal sports columnist and now senior writer for Pensacola Blue Wahoos. He can be reached at [email protected].
