Chris McGowan state of the Blazer Union address - Must read.

Ticket prices have increased.

Some observations from the meeting with McGowan:

The Blazers, caught nearly in the act by Blazersedge.com's Ben Golliver, admitted that in December they quietly removed 700 seats from the arena. The Moda Center is still the third-largest arena in the league and McGowan said not only were there more seats in the arena than the official listed capacity but he felt "we had too many seats in this building." In games with major demand, standing-room-only tickets will be sold in some of those vacated areas.

Ticketmaster has become the team's new ticket vendor. I'm interested to know if that bothers people in some way.

McGowan spoke about the team needing "more sponsorship revenue."

There are three in-arena renovations that will be done this summer and completed prior to the start of next season. What are they? Don't know.

Salt & Straw is coming soon to the Moda Center, so if you like standing in long lines for your ice cream, you will soon be able to do that at basketball games.

The new restaurant in the Rose Quarter will be ready to go soon but it's going to be open only on game days. Sigh. My hope is that the Trail Blazers can eventually find a restaurant, night club, tavern, sports bar, taco joint or lemonade stand popular enough to be open all the time and be a magnet for more people coming there on days when there is no game or concert -- those days when it looks like a ghost town.

The Trail Blazers make no secret of their backing for the publicly-subsidized convention-center hotel being proposed and have seemingly even tied it into their all-star bid. My initial reaction to that is that it may not be a popular stance with many of the team's fans.

The Blazers included a bullet point stating, "Incremental revenue being generating (sic) as an organization is being reinvested into Trail Blazers facilities and fan amenities." Really? All of it?

www.csnnw.com/blazers/blazer-ticket-prices-go-dont-blame-team-blame-people-buying-those-tickets

 

A couple of months ago on this board, a couple of people said that the Blazers' home attendance is high on this list, but not in percentage of capacity.

http://espn.go.com/nba/attendance

I noted the impossibility of teams averaging over their capacity. A few Standing Room Only games wouldn't hike it that much. So the teams must be lying about their true capacities.

 

Hasn't been one of the better weeks for Blazers executives. Business and for Basketball Operations.

Seemed like they were on such a high there for awhile.

 

What did I miss?

 

...."Now where in the hell is that dead squirrel I used to wear on my head?"........

 

I don't think that it's just PR stuff because it raises prices to those who actually attend games. Anytime you remove seats, your price is going to go up amongst the seats that remain.

Anytime you do a renovation, a business charges more rent and this the consumer of those services go up.

Anytime that you raise costs of the arena, you're going to ask more when your new TV deal comes up.

Don't you watch games on TV? This means that your cable bill or satellite bill is going to go up exponential.

It's far more than just a PR issue because further actions are going to arise latter down the road as a result. Rather than call it a PR issues, call it open-disclosure of undefined action later.

It's all good, still a fan. Just makes me want to go to blazer games less.

 

I don't think he had the assets, but I think Neil missed out on an opportunity to put the team in further position to be successful this season.

Chris, has a lot of hopes and aspirations but so far that's all they are. I haven't seen the in game changes he was trumpeting at the beginning of the year. Him missing out on the All star game might his biggest defeat to date as President. But he is more than ok to raise ticket prices.

 

I actually like and appreciate Dwight. He's the last or one of the last people in the local media let alone the national media who remembers when the blazers could do so much more with so much less. It has to be frustrating from his stand point. As I get older, I get cranky as well when you meet people who are idealistic but don't actually have a clue in terms of the big picture as to what they are actually doing. I was young once as well and I don't agree with some of the stuff I did earlier in life.

I would love for someone to get Dwight alone and in a casual conversation where he's speaking truth and have that person ask if Wienberg was better or is Paul better? I have to believe that he would answer that Weinberg was far better from a production stand point.

 

I agree with you that Stotts's doesn't have the assets and as well with Olshey but I guess this comes down to what the business plans dictates for the next 5 years.

I am not sure what "In-game" changes you are writing about?

 

Of course you do.

 

Why are you (What appears to) trying to start a flame war?

Now that I know that you covered the first sentence of my post; care to respond to the rest of it? Those other sentences actually contain "Supportive Sentences".

 

Wow missed that part, that's really too bad. I love the live experience and sit in many different sections from top to bottom enjoying all of it. Anything that will stifle my ability too get cheap seats on a whim will definitely limit my attendance because when I go I'm always buying food and drinks in addition.

Out of his control. Fact is Portland is not set-up to properly host an ASG. The new convention center hotel is pretty much a requirement for it to be successful here.

 

Of course he would say that. Unless Paul was the previous owner. Then I imagine it'd be the opposite.

 

I like the Idea that Chris is getting behind, trying to turn the Rose Garden into a place more where there is more to do then just watch a game, but I do worry about the cost going up and getting to a point I won't be able to convince the wife its a good idea to go to a game.

 

Another reason why I rarely go to games. Just way to god damn expensive. Would rather stream online for free, or watch on regular channels when I get them.

 

I have always like the end seats in the 300 level. It's not that I am cheap, it just has a far different vibe than sitting down lower IMO. I listened to an appearance that McGowan made on 1080 the fan yesterday and he stated that the 300 level is going to get a face life. I was happy to hear that.

McGowan also stated that Portland has more than enough hotels, they (The NBA) just wants a hotel that fits around 500 people so that they don't have to be spread across the city. Not sure that I buy this but it sounds like an excuse for the NBA to say No, ain't going to happen. I still think that the NBA should rotate through cities to host an All-Star game in a round-robin setting.

 

Does the removal of seats maybe have anything to do with prep for NHL?