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With attendance down throughout the NHL, let's take an analytical deep dive into why this is occuring.
Since the COVID-19 pandemic has begun, the daily lives of every single person on planet earth has shifted some way or the other. No matter who you ask, everyone has been affected somewhat by this historical event in human history.
The pandemic has affected all of us in different ways. For some, the pandemic has resulted in economic disaster, and for others, it has resulted in the death of dear loved ones. No matter how you've been impacted by the pandemic, it has been a difficult time for all of us to say the least. During the early and grim days of the pandemic back in March of 2020, it seemed as if life as we know it today would never return. As COVID-19 cases engulfed our society, governments worldwide took action by implementing stringent COVID protocols in order to combat and limit the spread of the virus. Some of these protocols included total lockdowns, which had dire effects on industries that rely on service and large in person gatherings. Earlier in the year, during what some may now call the climax of the pandemic, I wrote an interesting piece on how the event industry had been struggling due to the pandemic and lockdowns, I highly encourage you to check out that piece. It provides key insight into the financial battles that were taking place behind the scenes during the pandemic, as desperate business owners fought to keep their businesses alive. It'll allow you to gain an understanding into how an industry that employs millions throughout the country, that relies on in person attendance, found a way to survive. Just like the NHL, and many other sports leagues during the pandemic.
But regardless, not too long ago it seemed as if life as we know it would not be returning anytime soon. However, the last half year has provided a reason for optimism for all citizens in developed countries throughout the world. As vaccination rates have gone up throughout first-world countries, case numbers for COVID have steadily been on the decline in regions with higher vaccinated rates, and government protocols were loosened. Most specifically, lockdowns became a thing of the past as governments began to re-open society, as life as we know it was slowly returning.
Until Omicron hit.
I mentioned a moment ago that 'vaccination rates have gone up throughout first-world countries', which brings me to Omicron. A few weeks ago we first heard of an emerging and rapidly spreading variant of the virus, that was mutating out of South Africa, and spreading like wildfire. Now I mention the fact that 'first-world' countries have seen vaccine rates go up, while case numbers go down, because if you don't live in a first-world country you're unlikely to have been able to get vaccinated. South Africa for example has a national fully vaccinated rate of about 26%, which is roughly 50% lower than Canada's national vaccination rate. This information is key, because if we want to limit the potential for further variants to develop around the world, we must do our part to help those living in less privileged countries to have the ability to get vaccinated at a much more rapid pace.
We've already seen some NHL teams reduce capacity due to the surge of Omicron, which is why we must follow the story of this variant to see whether it'll have a substantial effect on the NHL and its ability to allow fans to attend their games.
The good news with Omicron, is that it appears to be less dangerous and serious, which means we are likely in store for a much better result against this variant, than previous variants that we've faced. This hopefully means that governments worldwide will not be forced to impose strict COVID protocols, such as lockdowns, once again.
Now that we're all caught up on the COVID situation from the present and the past, let's take an analytical look at how the attendance in the NHL has recovered since fans have been allowed to return to games.
Before I begin going through the data that I have discovered, I want to discuss my methodology in gathering these numbers and data. Transparency is the most important element in journalism, and I want to be as transparent as possible with you.
So in order to gather my data, I went over to ESPN's NHL attendance page, copied the attendance data from the 2019 season and 2021 NHL season, and imported the data into this Google Spreadsheet. Once this was completed, I cleaned the data set for any errors, and then used Google functions to gather the data that I'm looking for, which is to see whether NHL teams with higher local vaccinated rates, have higher attendance compared to teams with local vaccination rates that are lower. The benchmark for local fully vaccinated rates was 70% in my study, as I am following what President Biden deemed as the 'floor' for national vaccine rates.
Before I began to dig through the data, I had a feeling that average attendance would be lower for teams that had local fully vaccinated rates of below 70%. This is because during my interview with Brandon Maki, who works in Public Relations for the Ottawa Sports and Entertainment Group (OSEG), he alluded to the fact that making fans feel safe is the most important element of bringing fans back.
“Our (Ottawa 67's) attendance has been pretty good, it started off slow, but it started to really pick up in October and November. Now with Omicron, it’s tough to see where we’ll be at after the Christmas break. However, what I have noticed is that the implementation of the vaccine passport has helped our attendance go up", he'd later as well mention that he believes people are more confident in attending games if they're surrounded by vaccinated people.
“My impression is that people are more confident attending games, if they’re around vaccinated people.” -Brandon Maki
In order to understand how detrimental COVID was to the NHL's attendance figures, and more so to see whether Brandon Maki is right in his observation or not, let's first take a bit of a look at the NHL's attendance figures from the 2019 season. The season that was abruptly ended due to the emergence of COVID-19. These statistics provide a look at how the NHL was doing attendance wise prior to COVID, which will allow us see whether attendance has truly taken a sizeable dip since the pandemic begun.
During the COVID shortened 2019 NHL season, the National Hockey League saw a total of 18,805,362 fans attend 1082 regular season games. The average attendance during the 2019 season in the entire NHL was 17,380.
The key statistic from this data is the fact that the NHL as a whole was averaging above 17,000 fans per game. Most NHL arenas fit a capacity between 17,000-18,000 people...which means that the NHL was consistently on average selling at a near capacity average.
Now that we know how well the NHL was doing prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, let's take an extensive dive into the current numbers we see around the NHL when looking at average attendance.
As we can see from the graph above, attendance has taken a dip for nearly all NHL teams this season, other than Boston and Tampa Bay. It's important to note that the Tampa Bay Lightning did win back to back Stanley Cups during the pandemic, which definitely did not hurt their attendance numbers. However, as is illustrated above, it's clear that majority of the NHL's teams were substantially doing far better during the 2019 NHL season in regards to average attendance, when compared to 2021.
Let's take a deeper look into the average attendance for this season in the NHL.
As of Wednesday, December 22nd, 2021, the NHL's average attendance is 15,881 people attending per game. That is a staggering loss of on average 1,499 fans per game when compared to the NHL's 2019 average attendance of 17,380.
The only logical reason that I can think of for why attendance has dropped drastically throughout the NHL, is due to local fully vaccinated rates, and the ability for game attendees to feel safe in attending these games with such large crowds. As Brandon Maki mentioned in an interview "A large contingent of our fans still do want to come to games. It’s just about making them feel safe. Which is why the vaccine passport has been so important, as it has installed some confidence in our fans.”
When reached for comment via email, Vice President of Sales and Marketing for the Belleville Senators, Breanne Matthews, agreed with the sentiment attendance figures league wide (NHL and AHL) have a connection with local vaccinated rates, as she answered "Yes" when asked about whether there is a connection between attendance and local fully vaccinated rates.
With two highly respected individuals in the sports industry both agreeing that attendance has a correlation with local fully vaccinated rates, I wanted to see how cities throughout the National Hockey League stack up when it comes to their local populations fully vaccinated percentage. This could be the key reason as to why NHL attendance is down.
As can be seen from the graph above, over 60% of attendees at NHL games this season lived in a region with a local fully vaccinated percentage below 70%. This means that the vast majority of markets in the National Hockey League are situated in communities below the fully vaccinated threshold that many world leaders, such as President Biden, had called on communities to target. In fact, only 12 of the NHL's 32 markets have a fully vaccinated rate of above 70%. Which means that 65% of the cities that host NHL teams, have vaccinated rates below 70%.
The map below provides a visual into which of the NHL's 12 cities have hit 70% or more in local fully vaccinated rates. What this map shows is that majority of the 12 markets with an above 70% vaccinated rate, are situated often close to one another. It's also interesting that all 7 markets in Canada have hit this rate, but only 5 of the USA's 25 NHL markets have hit this vaccination target. A staggering difference between the two countries.
Our data has revealed that NHL markets with local vaccinated rates of above 70% have an average increase in attendance of 201 attendees per game when compared to markets with a below 70% vaccination rate. While there is an increase in attendance when markets have higher vaccination rates, the difference is not substantial enough to state that this is the clear cut reason as to why NHL attendance is down league wide. Even if the under 70% vaccinated rate markets have substantially more total games and total attendees, the over 70% vaccine rate markets still make up 35% of the league's teams. This means that there is enough data to validate whether vaccine rates are a factor in attendance, and our data is suggesting that it is a slight factor, but not a substantial one.
In light of this recent development, I interviewed former Ottawa Senators season ticket holder, Giordano Ladisa, to see why he did not renew his season tickets. Make sure to check out that interview in the video above.
As the scatter plot above shows, I think there is a reason for optimism for NHL teams. Most of the markets that hold NHL teams have vaccination rates of above 60%, and they will eventually likely hit that target goal of 70%. It's also important to note that a good chunk of teams in the NHL are averaging 16,000 people or more at their games, which is a solid foundation to build off of.
So with that said, I think this quote by Brandon Maki truly captures the reason around why attendance in the NHL has taken a dip, but not necessarily because of vaccine rates.
“There’ll be people of the age of you and I that may be more comfortable with taking the risk of attending a game, meanwhile, there may be parents who want to avoid bringing their children who can’t get vaccinated or people who are immune-compromised, that may not want to take that risk by attending a game. I think there’s a greater level of comfort due to Ottawa’s vaccination numbers, but at the same time it’s such an individualistic thing. Everyone has to determine their own level of risk.”