<div class="quote_poster">Quote:</div><div class="quote_post">If you build it, will they come? In two months, the Charlotte Bobcats begin playing in a new, publicly funded uptown arena. Typically, new arenas boost home attendance for NBA teams, but so far that's not the indication for the Bobcats. Two informed sources say the Bobcats have sold about 7,000 season tickets -- roughly 2,000 behind last season's season-ticket base, when they had the third-lowest home attendance in the NBA. Several fans said they dropped their tickets in part because of a steep rise in ticket prices. So it's no surprise Bobcats President Ed Tapscott isn't sure the team will top last season's home average of 14,432 per game, at the Charlotte Coliseum. "It's difficult to assess," Tapscott said, when asked whether the new arena will attract more fans. "We definitely hope people will come see the team or the building, and find one or both appealing." The NBA doesn't release season-ticket figures, but it distributes home attendance counts. If the Bobcats fail to beat last season's attendance, they're breaking the norm. Sixteen of the past 17 NBA teams moving to a new arena in the same city saw home attendance rise in the first season. Most recently, the Houston Rockets sold an extra 1,844 seats per game, moving into the Toyota Center. The only team that saw home attendance fall -- the San Antonio Spurs -- did so intentionally, moving out of the Alamodome, a football stadium with poor sight lines for basketball. On average, those teams increased home attendance by 2,366 per game -- an extra 97,000 tickets, per team, over a 41-game home season. The Bobcats need that extra attendance, particularly in the suites and club seats that generate so much revenue. The Bobcats topped only Atlanta and New Orleans in NBA home attendance last season. Tapscott declined to discuss ticket sales, except to say the team recently put partial-season ticket plans on sale, and that could boost attendance. Tapscott takes a seeing-is-believing approach to marketing the team and the arena. The team asks potential customers to tour the new building to appreciate what makes it different from the Coliseum, which opened in 1988. "People who see the building understand how much difference two decades of technology evolution make," said Tapscott, whose team will operate the $265 million arena and accept whatever profit or loss results. "Almost invariably, people who tour the building end up buying or upgrading tickets." What's so different about the Coliseum and this new arena? "You'll hear a sound system and see a scoreboard that you've never had here before. Most seats will be closer to the game, you'll have more food options and better food," Tapscott said. "When the Coliseum was built, it was at the back end of the technology and fan-experience curve. And that's also because it was built to be a multipurpose facility, not primarily to serve as the home of an NBA team. "What has changed here is the team and building being developed simultaneously."</div> Source
