Season-ticket sales up more than 10% for Crunch

CNY Business Journal (1996+), Oct 15, 2004 by Rombewl, Adam

SYRACUSE - The Syracuse Crunch minor-league hockey club is enjoying a bit of a box-office boom as it embarks on its new season.

The Crunch - who open their 80-game schedule Oct. 15 at the War Memorial at Oncenter against the St. John's Maple Leafs (from the Canadian province of Newfoundland) - expect to have sold between 2,400 and 2,500 season tickets by the time the puck drops on opening night. That's more than a 10-percent increase over last year's total.

"Season ticket sales are very strong," says James Sarosy, vice president. This is the fourth straight year of rising season tickets sales. Sarosy credits the increase to winning - the Crunch won 38 games and made the playoffs last year.

The Crunch and its minor-league hockey rivals in the American Hockey League (AHL), hockey's top minor league, are also benefiting from who's not playing. The National Hockey League (NHL) labor lockout has idled the world's best hockey players and shone more media and fan attention on the new AHL season than is usually the case.

"Obviously because of what's going on there's going to be a lot more eyes on us," says Sarosy. "All eyes are on us."

The NHL lockout, which could cancel out the entire NHL season, has also provided AHL teams with an influx of top young players that normally wouldn't be donning the uniforms of AHL teams if majorleague hockey were open for business. About two-thirds of the 90 players selected in the first rounds of the last three NHL drafts were on AHL team rosters as the new season began Oct. 13.

"As a rule of thumb, every team will have three or four guys that would not have been here if there was an NHL season," says Sarosy.

In addition to ticket sales, the Crunch is also seeing strong results on the corporate-sponsorship front. The Crunch expects to sign up 200 or more sponsors for this season, compared to last year's total of 192, according to Sarosy. The sponsorships range from $1,500 to $80,000.

New sponsors for this season include: East Coast Resorts, the U.S. Army, Nestle Power Bar, Proshred Security, and Paul Revere Life Insurance, Sarosy says.