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Sunday, October 31, 1999
Marketing, commitment make WPHL only hockey league in Fort Worth
By Mark Button
Caller-Times
The Fort Worth Brahmas won the war, now they figure to cash in.
Fort Worth is a sizable city, but it just wasn't big enough for two minor-league hockey teams. This summer, the Western Professional Hockey League's Brahmas drove the Central Hockey League's Fort Worth Fire out of town.
It was quite a coup: The Fire was a Fort Worth fixture for seven years while the Brahmas had only been around since 1997.
"They (the Fire) finally realized this was not a two-team market," Brahmas general manager Mike Barak said. "They came to realize that we were committed to make this happen. I think we won the war by out-marketing and out-hustling them."
Barak pointed to customer service and marketing the franchise to newspapers, radio stations, television, direct mail, advertising and three nifty grass roots programs, including one that rewards area school children with free tickets for good grades. They call it "Grades for Blades."
Both the Fire and Brahmas lost money last season, neither drawing particularly well at the gate. The Fire averaged about 2,300 a game and the Brahmas drew an average of 2,400.
With the Fire extinguished, the Brahmas are looking to make money for the first time. Fort Worth, for example, leads the WPHL in attendance with an average of 6,880.
With exclusive use of the Fort Worth Convention Center, site of 33 of the team's 35 home games, the Brahmas should continue to draw well. Last year, the Brahmas averaged 4,500 fans for Friday and Saturday night games but only 1,800 on weeknights. With the team's average ticket price being $10, the difference between a weeknight and weekend game came to around $27,000 a game, or more than $500,000 over the course of the season, Barak said.
This was because the Brahmas had only nine weekend dates while the Fire had more than 20.
"They had preference because they had been around longer," Barak said.
This year the Brahmas scored 26 weekend dates.
Another benefit of being the sole hockey tenant of the convention center is permanent signage. From now on, the Brahmas can sell permanent advertising signs to sponsors that will be displayed at nearly every event at the convention center.
"That's phenomenal," Barak said. "The Brahmas are the first entity in the history of the convention center, which was built in the early '70s, to gain a permanent signage rights for the facility."
Now the only game in town, the Brahmas added seven corporate sponsors for this season. The corporate sponsorship sales for the franchise have topped $500,000 and Barak expects to top $700,000 by season's end.
POINT MADE: Turns out that all the Central Texas players wanted to do was make a point that they were growing tired of the slow sale of the team to local businessman Bob Carlson.
That's why the team walked out of practice Wednesday and threatened to boycott Friday's game against Corpus Christi.
With home games Saturday and today, there was almost no chance that the players were going to officially strike.
"They didn't want to disappoint the fans," said Jeff Bowerman, Central Texas public relations director. "They felt like they made their point to ownership. The players came down here (Corpus Christi) because Bob Carlson told them to. He told them he was going to get the deal done."
Stampede coach Todd Lalonde said the sale is imminent.
"We're just waiting for documents to be faxed from one lawyer to another," he said.
'IT'S JUST ONE WORD': IceRays forward Geoff Bumstead was nervous before addressing the Corpus Christi fans about refraining from using the word "suck" in a popular, taunting chant heard at IceRays home games.
"I'm all for heckling the goalie and having a good time," he said. "Everyone in that room loves playing here and playing for these fans. If it weren't for the fans, we wouldn't be here. Personally, I respect all the fans and that's why I was nervous about speaking. I didn't want to come off like I was telling people how to cheer.
"But there's probably about 500 little kids at every game and we heard that there were some problems at schools with kids using the word, and it does have offensive connotations. We're supposed to be positive role models, and we take that seriously."
Bumstead said he would like to see the chant return, only slightly altered so as to not to offend.
"They could say, 'You're brutal,' or 'You're horrible,' and it would mean the same thing," he said. "It's just one word that is the problem."
PENALTY LEADERS: As of Saturday, the IceRays were tied with Fort Worth for the league lead in major penalties with 17.
Odessa led the WPHL with 309 penalty minutes. Corpus Christi was fourth with 267 minutes in the box.
Staff writer Mark Button can be reached at 886-3613 or by e-mail at buttonm@caller.com
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