A followup to 2008’s How I’d Fix the Islanders, after a visit to Nassau Coliseum over Thanksgiving Break this year.
Girls: The Ice Breakers are gone. Good riddance. The Ice Girls are still around, but as they’re tasked with cleaning up the ice during commercial breaks, at least they’re functional.
T-Shirts: The T-shirt Tommy Gun is gone, but the tee overabundance remains. I caught a shirt during the first intermission, bringing our family total to three tees in the past two games.
Polite Ushers: The ushers didn’t bother us. We bought four tickets at face value, and one in the nosebleeds. To no one’s surprise, there was no problem seating all five of us together down in the lower levels.
That said, pricing on said one general admission nosebleed seats hovered around $40. That’s the cheapest ticket in a half-empty stadium? Maybe someone’s gotten wise to the fact that folks are just going to come in and sit wherever they please.
New “Goal!” Cheer: It’s different again this year. Still incomprehensible. Better than ’08’s “Hey, you suck!” What the heck was wrong with Rock & Roll pt. 2?
Free Chili: It worked, I guess. Folks in our section were legitimately excited about the Isles scoring a third goal. Too bad we only won 2-0 and snapped a 14-game losing streak. I think everyone left disappointed.
Victory Plan: Haven’t seen any word of it. Too bad; I thought this idea was brilliant.
Tailgating, fighting gloves, tagging the visiting team’s best player: No word, yet. But I mean, I don’t know if it’s wholly reasonable to expect the Islanders to keep tabs on the best blog on the whole entire internet.
///
Now, onto some new business:
Door Prizes: Every now and again, just after passing through the stadium gates at a sporting event, you’ll be greeted with a promotional freebie – a hat, umbrella, keychain, whatever. I’ve actually once received a full-size Louisville Slugger at a Mets Game. As for the Islanders? I walked in and was immediately handed a 4×6 ad flyer for electronics at PC Richard. Yuck.
T-Shirts: Seems to me that the only time anyone’s motivated to stand up and cheer is once the t-shirt launchers are on the rink. Why not shoot them off after goals?
WiFi: Several times throughout the game, the Jumbotron ran ads for Optimium Wifi, excitedly explaining that you could connect your smartphone or laptop to available free wifi during the game. Really? Who’s bringing their laptop to games? And we’re encouraging this?
Mass Transit: This one’s a biggie.
How are you supposed to get to an Islanders game if you don’t have a car? This only occurred to me last game after a year and a half of experience driving all over St. Louis, or taking public transit whenever I needed to. What if you don’t want to drive? Or pay $10 for parking? (By the way—$10 for parking?)
I did some basic internet research, and found this quote from a Nassau Coliseum Yelp review:
Getting there EVEN FROM MANHATTAN, is like the plot to the Steve Martin + John Candy classic: Planes, Trains, and Automobiles. 1) Subway to Penn Station, 2) LIRR to Hempstead, 3) N70 to outside the arena, 4) 1/4 mile walk to arena. Really? Am I in Cleveland yet?
Some follow-up research on Google Maps suggests that the transit from Penn Station to the Coliseum will take between 1.5-2 hours each way. Why would anyone living in the downtown NYC Metro area ever consider going to an Islanders game instead of a Rangers game?
You’re a thirty or forty minute drive east of perhaps the biggest hive of sports fanatics in the western world, and it’s nigh impossible for any of them to show up for a game. What a disaster. Why not set up a bus service from downtown direct to the coliseum? How hard and how expensive could that be? Getting people to the game has to be about as important as putting on a good show once they get there, no?
I can’t think of any other professional sports team that has this problem. Granted, I’ve never visited the Columbus Blues Jackets. But I mean, the Memphis Grizzlies are a few minutes’ walk away from Beale Street. The Cardinals, Blues, and Rams are all in the heart of downtown St. Louis. The Cubs and WhiteSox each have their own stops labelled on the metro line. The Mets are reasonably far out from downtown NY, but New Shea Stadium is right on the 7 line, and the team actively promotes taking the train during every game.
I know there’s currently a big movement pushing for the Islanders to get a new arena. I hope they keep the mass transit-ers in mind.
(I wonder if I’m going to end up working for a transit company once I grow up. I keep finding problems here that seem to have easy solutions. They pay money for fixing stuff like this, right?)
Jerseys: From my post on the Pittsburgh Steelers:
Maybe 95% of the Pittsburghians fans wear a black (home) jersey. Even the Steelers’ 3rd Jersey is black & gold in color. Everyone wears black and gold. The result is overwhelming—for opposing teams, and for any poor fans who aren’t part of the tribe yet. It’s as if you’ve got to buy a jersey as a prerequisite for buying a ticket.
On the other hand, maybe (generously) 15% of the fans at the Islanders game show up in uniform. Dad’s comfortable wearing an Islanders windbreaker, Zach’s in street clothes. Mom and I are in uniform, but I’m wearing orange and she’s wearing blue.
I’ve already talked about how a uniform sea of uniforms (hah!) makes for a more intimidating environment for opponents. We could talk about how putting on your uniform psychologically amps you up for the game and ties you closer to the team. So instead, how about we drive jersey wears, jersey sales, and ticket sales all at once? How about a 10% discount on tickets to anyone wearing a uniform? Or, since that’d be hard to measure with online sales, a voucher given out at the door to anyone in jersey for 20% off their next game?
///
Maybe, someday, the Islanders will put together a team decent enough to keep my attention on the game and away from all of the marketing things they could be doing better.