PWHL New York played at three venues, hours apart, drawing league low crowds this season. Distance, venue changes, and other factors impacted their ability to build a faithful fan base, and they'll all issues the PWHL needs to solve before season two.
PWHL New York played at three venues, hours apart, drawing league low crowds this season. Distance, venue changes, and other factors impacted their ability to build a faithful fan base, and they'll all issues the PWHL needs to solve before season two.
It's an area that spans roughly 1050 km2 or 401 mi2. As the crow flies it's 205 km or 127 miles from arena to arena to arena. This is the reality of the distance between PWHL New York's three home rinks they used this season - Total Mortage Arena in Bridgeport, Connecticut, UBS Arena on Long Island, New York, and the Prudential Center in Newark, New Jersey.
If you chose to drive from UBS Arena in Elmont to Total Mortgage Arena, it's close to two hours. It's well over an hour between UBS Arena and the Prudential Center. And from Prudential to Total Mortgage, it's over an hour and a half. That's the travel time for home games.
In the NHL, the New York Rangers, New Jersey Devils, and New York Islanders all exist within a smaller space. Buffalo and Toronto are a similar drive from one another.
Even in the PWHL, the drive from Montreal to Ottawa is just over two hours.
It's a Bermuda Triangle of sorts for PWHL New York where fans disappear, or perhaps never appear at all.
It doesn't matter what metric you use to look at attendance, PWHL NY/NJ/CT struggled. They brought in the lowest average attendance across their 12 home games averaging 2,496 spectators. Prior to this season, the PWHL might have been thrilled with that number, but seeing the success of other markets, it's a sizeable drop. That figure represents only 17% capacity. The four games the team played in Bridgeport certainly exasperated the situation where they totalled 6,975 fans or an average of 1,743. Not a single game from any other market drew less fans than that average, and 19 regular season games drew more single game attendance than Total Mortgage Arena's 6,975 total. Considering Toronto and Montreal's primary home rinks had capacities below that number, it's safe to say the contract would have been far great with more capacity in other markets.
New York's biggest draw of the season came at the Prudential Center on April 20 when they saw 5,132 fans show up. Their second largest crowd came at UBS Arena March 3 when they dew 4,459. Those were the only two games of the season to break the 3,000 fan mark. For New York. If you erase Toronto who played at Mattamy Athletic Center with a capacity under 3000, only four other games this year fell below the 3,000 threshold, three of those being at the Tsongas Center in Lowell, Massachusetts, and the other on a rescheduled weeknight game for Minnesota at their lone home contest away from the Xcel Energy Center when they played at Mariucci.
To compare, the lowest average attendance in the WNBA in 2023 was 3,006 a mark held by the Atlanta Dream. Second last was the Indiana Fever at just over 4,000, but this year with the Caitlin Clark effect they've skyrocketed to welcome an average of 17,274 through their first two home games. In 2023 the lowest NWSL attendance average was held by the Chicago Red Stars who drew 4,848 per game.
On the flip side, compared to the American Hockey League, PWHL New York's attendance average was nearly on par with a trio of teams who all sat below 3000 fans per game in the San Jose Barracuda, Belleville Senators, and Utica Comets. The fourth lowest team were the Bridgeport Islanders who drew 3,167. That in a season where the AHL set all time attendance records.
It's a situation the PWHL will look to iron out this offseason, finding one, or two locations where a stronger core fan base can be established. In other PWHL cities, season tickets were a significant portion of their totals. Asking fans to drive two hours in each direction for a home game at another rink in another state is more than a reach.
But, the experiment may not be over yet either. There are two professional venues in the area that have yet to see the PWHL visit for a game. The first is Madison Square Garden in Manhattan, and the second is the Barclays Center in Brooklyn.
Both have multiple tenants, making scheduling difficult, but anything is worth a try if it means not returning to Bridgeport. Barclays drew a 7,777 average for the WNBA's New York Liberty last season, and Madison Square Garden is connected by easily accessible public transit to one of the largest population markets in the world. The other option yet to be attempted is Nassau Coliseum in Queens.
There's no easy answer for PWHL New York, and it might take another season of attempts to find a permanent home. Before the season started, there was rumor the team could also see games as far north as Albany.
With an expanded schedule in 2024-2025, the PWHL will have room to test run new venues for New York, while also laying down stronger roots at the Prudential Center and UBS in case either of those facilities become the long term fix.
The market, including for hockey, in New York City is vast, but therein rests one of the most challenging questions for the PWHL to solve; is this a New York team? A tri-state team, a New Jersey team, or none of the above. One thing is for sure, if the league is looking to abandon Connecticut long term, ditching the proposed New York Sound name is a bullet they'll be happy they dodged. Either way, the PWHL and PWHL New York have a problem to solve, and they'll need answers sooner than later to build a schedule and market games, as the league would be unwise to piecemeal the season together with empty holes and short ticket sales windows as they did this season.