Seriously, what’s with all the Jets fans? Where were all you people 15 years ago, when the team couldn’t sell out its home games? Back then, the Jets couldn’t fill a 16,000-seat stadium. Now they have 3 million fans (give or take).
I call this phenomenon The Jet Effect. A mixture of nostalgia, along with fan-wagoning has led to legions of fans to celebrate that Winnipeg is getting an NHL team again. No one likes to share in the pain, but boy they do come out for the party.
I am happy for the city of Winnipeg.
But calling the new team the Jets is a bad idea. That’s like naming your new puppy after your old dog that passed away. It seems like a good idea, but in the end it leaves you sad and bitter.
Anyway, the surplus 2,500,000 Jets fans will fade away once they realize that their team is just the Atlanta Thrashers in different uniforms.
As for the remaining 500,000 Jets fans–enjoy your new team.
By the way, I’ve added a new poll–in the upper-right corner of this blog–about the Jets. Please take a moment to vote. (The poll has ended.)
Related Posts:
My favorite kind of fans are the bandwagon fans. They get so passionate out of the gate like they have been there forever but the second they hit "turbulence", they bail. Kind of like Pittsburgh fans in general…hmmmm. It's all good though. Canada needs a few more teams and when these guys tank, which inevitably they eventually will, we'll see where the fan base goes.
Although I do agree that calling them the Jets is probably a bad idea. I think they have warehouses filled with old Jets branded products that they wanted to finally get rid of.
In some defense of the city of Winnipeg and their fans, since most of their contracts were negotiated in American Dollars, they needed to get $1.40 Canadian to pay their players a $1.00 American. Of course with the dollars being roughly par, this isn't as big of an issue now as it was then!
plus back in the day, their arena held barely 14000 people, and they did sell out regularly, but they had no corporate support. And as we all know, you can have all the fans you want, but with no corporate $$$, you're doomed to fail.
Dave also brought up a great point in the dollar. From $1.40 to now par makes a huge difference.
During the regular season in 1995-96, the Jets averaged 11,316 fans per home game, according to these two sources:
http://winnipegjets.org/winnipeg-jets-attendance
http://www.andrewsstarspage.com/index.php/site/comments/nhl_average_attendance_since_1989_90/118-2008-09
Not trying to refute you guys…just saying that I did my homework when I made my "information" graphic 🙂
And DFG…if you wanted to see bandwagon fans, then you should have been at the Blackhawks parade last summer. I think about half of them only knew "Buff-lin" and "Nee-emi", but not the other 19 or so players.