The San Jose Sharks anticipate having the ability to host capacity crowds next season, but it may be a long time before every seat at SAP Center is filled on a regular basis again.
The Sharks’ poor on-ice performance the last two years – combined with other possible factors out of their control – has led to a notable decline in the team’s season ticket sales for the upcoming season.
Sharks Sports & Entertainment president Jonathan Becher said the franchise to date has sold roughly 9,000 season tickets or equivalents for next season, a decrease of about 1,500 from two years ago when the team was coming off an appearance in the Western Conference final.
Becher said season tickets are renewing at about 84 percent, a rate similar to other years when the Sharks did not perform well on the ice. The Sharks missed the playoffs for the second consecutive year this season, marking the first time since the mid-1990s that the team has been out of the postseason in back-to-back years.
Becher said the Sharks’ average rate of season-ticket renewal for the last five years was in the 85 to 88 percent range, “so we are a little bit below our historic average, but it’s not a lot below. I think the best renewal year we’ve had in the last six or seven years might have been 89 or 90 percent.”
The Sharks have seen season ticket sales decline over the last decade.
In 2012, packed houses at the team’s 17,562-seat downtown arena were the norm as the Sharks had approximately 14,000 season ticket holders. By the 2017-18 season, the Sharks had sold roughly 12,000 season tickets or equivalents with a renewal rate of approximately 90 percent.
Unlike past years when the renewal period lasted from mid-January to late March, Becher said the team started its renewal drive in April and will keep that going until the anticipated start of the NHL’s 2021-22 season in October.
Becher added that some former full-season ticket holders this year have opted to purchase half-season plans instead and that a major reason for the team’s erosion in sales has been people moving out of the Bay Area. He added that prices did not go up for roughly 90 percent of season ticket holders, as their purchases from 2020-2021 rolled over into the upcoming season.
Becher said the Sharks have seen a recent uptick in sales as renewals were at 79 or 80 percent in mid-May. That leads him to believe that “it might grow a bit from there as people miss hockey even more and want to see it in person.”
Sharks general manager Doug Wilson said last month that he feels the team can be in a better position to compete for a playoff spot next year. A turnaround is hardly guaranteed, but Sharks fans have shown that they will support a winning team.
After the Sharks made the Stanley Cup Final in 2016, season ticket sales jumped by about 2,500, with new subscribers accounting for 70 percent of that number. From 2016 to 2019, the average announced attendance was well over 17,000 per game.
For the 2019-20 season, their worst in nearly two decades, the Sharks’ average announced attendance at SAP Center was 16,427, down from 17,266 the year before.
This season, the Sharks were unable to host fans until April, when they admitted between 500 and 1,600 spectators for each of their final seven home games.
Next season, when fans buy tickets, they will have to declare that they are either fully vaccinated or have tested negative for COVID-19 within 72 hours of the date of the event.
Becher anticipates some reluctance by Sharks fans to show up to a crowded indoor arena but feels those concerns will be allayed by the midway point of the season.
“I’m estimating it’ll impact maybe 5 percent of the fans until January of next year,” Becher said of the possible reluctance to return. “That’s assuming no return to some kind of COVID issue, no variant shows up, et cetera. But on the current course of speed, I think it works itself completely out of the system by the calendar year.”
The lack of fans at Sharks games and the inability to host other events at SAP Center led to unprecedented financial losses for the organization, which is owned by billionaire Hasso Plattner. Although Becher would not disclose specific figures, he said the loss is “an extraordinarily large number.”
The NHL anticipated losing over $1 billion over the 2020-21 season.
“We’re lucky to have the owner that we have, that despite those losses, still paid all of the employees,” Becher said. “We didn’t do a mass layoff like many sports franchises did. We didn’t furlough people. I will confirm the number’s quite big.”
