Where are all the fans?

With salaries at an all time high it appears as though business is good. Look further go to any one of the FNHL's rinks and you will notice and awful lot of empty seats. Infact only 72.5% of the total seats in the FNHL are filled so far this season.

Going to an Colorado Avalanche game is like going to KD Lang concert at Madison Square Garden. Only an average of 8,632 fans show up per game. With a maximum capacity of 21,029 this an amazingly bad 41% fill rate.

Good thing the league has endorsement deals, advertisements and a solid tv deal to top bank accounts up as each team would be bankrupt in a season if they had to rely on their gate receipts alone. At last count each team would stand to loose an average of 5.7 million if the season ended today, this is not good business practice. Too many GMs are spending every cent on salary and this is driving up a fake market that is bound to crumble if owners do not control the spending of their team especially if endorsemens fall.

Here is the current percentage capacities of each team with the New York Islanders leading the pack with 94.3% fill rate and the Colorado Avalanche whose fill rate is sitting at 41%

New York Islanders 94.3%
Pittsburgh Penguins 92.4%
Tampa Bay Lightning 89.4%
Chicago Blackhawks 87.7%
Dallas Stars 86.5%
Edmonton Oilers 86.4%
Los Angeles Kings 84.3%
Nashville Predators 83.6%
Philadelphia Flyers 80.9%
Phoenix Coyotes 80.8%
Vancouver Canucks 79.5%
New Jersey Devils 79.1%
Florida Panthers 78.3%
Boston Bruins 78.3%
Detroit Red Wings 75.3%
Carolina Hurricanes 75.2%
St Louis Blues 74.4%
New York Rangers 73.2%
Calgary Flames 73%
Montreal Canadiens 69.6%
Toronto Maple Leafs 69.6%
Anaheim Ducks 69.4%
Minnesota Wild 69.2%
Atlanta Thrashers 67.8%
San Jose Sharks 64.8%
Buffalo Sabres 61.2%
Columbus Blue Jackets 60.6%
Ottawa Senators 49.5%
Colorado Avalanche 41%

In order for the FNHL to be a more successful professional hockey league more consideration has to be given to getting more fans into the building. One way to start that is to decrease salaries and in doing that decrease ticket prices.