{"id":101335,"date":"2025-06-03T18:44:12","date_gmt":"2025-06-03T18:44:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/101335\/"},"modified":"2025-06-03T18:44:12","modified_gmt":"2025-06-03T18:44:12","slug":"florida-panthers-stanley-cup-run-fuels-demand-for-tickets","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/101335\/","title":{"rendered":"Florida Panthers Stanley Cup Run Fuels Demand for Tickets"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tIn the run-up to this NHL<\/a> season, the defending champion Florida Panthers<\/a> raised season ticket renewal prices by 36.5%. It was a \u201ctesting the market\u201d move by the franchise, according to chief revenue officer Shawn Thornton, who said fans responded with a renewal rate of more than 91%.<\/p>\n

\n\tIt\u2019s one of a handful of ways the team has capitalized on its string of recent on-ice success. And it came at a pivotal time\u2014it coincided with the Panthers moving from their RSN deal to an over-the-top broadcast agreement that likely included significantly less upfront cash.<\/p>\n

\n\tWith the Panthers now making their third straight Stanley Cup appearance\u2014Game 1 vs. the Oilers is Wednesday in Edmonton\u2014Thornton joined the Sporticast<\/a> podcast to break down the various way this three-year run has boosted the team\u2019s business. While that may seem obvious, successful playoffs don\u2019t always turn on a significant revenue spigot. There\u2019s extra gameday revenue from home postseason games, of course, but if season tickets are sold out and media deals are set, as is the case in Florida, it can be harder to secure a major windfall in other ways.<\/p>\n

\n\tSpeaking of the 36.5% season-ticket price increase, Thornton said it was \u201creally high\u201d compared to what\u2019s typically seen from NHL teams, but added that there were prior years when the team didn\u2019t increase prices as much as it should have. \u201cDoes [the 91% renewal rate] happen without this winning?\u201d he said, \u201cI\u2019m not sure.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWe started a big renewal plan in July, basically going into where we\u2019re going to be, and how we\u2019re going to get there, and explaining where we were, how the team\u2019s success correlates, and how the revenue correlates to the salary cap and the amount of players we\u2019re signing,\u201d he said. \u201cWe walked everybody through it and our fan base was like, \u2018You know what, this makes sense. We\u2019re happy to pay for this product.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe team\u2019s Amerant Bank Arena hosts about 19,250 for hockey, and this season about 13,500 of that was from season tickets, Thornton said, up from 13,000 the year before.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWe are working on a renovation of the arena,\u201d he said. \u201cSo that might affect what the seat count looks like going forward. We\u2019re working through that right now. And then percentage wise, we\u2019re where we want to be.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\t\t<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t<\/a><\/p>\n

\n\tIn addition to the changes to ticket pricing, Thornton detailed a number of other Panthers business metrics. Here are some snippets:<\/p>\n

\n\tSeason tickets: Panthers tickets have been sold out in each of the past three years, Thornton said, and there\u2019s now a wait list.<\/p>\n

Playoff tickets: Even though this is the team\u2019s third straight Stanley Cup Final, Thornton said demand for playoff tickets from partners and friends is high.<\/p>\n

Media: The Panthers announced last August<\/a> that their local rights were moving from the then-bankrupt Diamond Sports family to an over-the-air deal with Scripps, a set-up that mirrored similar shifts for a handful of others in the NBA and NHL. While he declined to provide details about the rights fees\u2014both Diamond and the Panthers called the separation mutual\u2014Thornton said the switch to broadcast has exposed the team\u2019s games to a lot more people. He said on a given night, some game viewership is up \u201c2 to 3x and sometimes more\u201d from comparable games in seasons past.<\/p>\n

\n\tRate Card: Success on the ice has helped fuel that increase in people watching Panthers games. And that means the team can command more from partners, Thornton said.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cObviously there\u2019s more eyeballs,\u201d he said, \u201cso every year we look at our rate card and we readjust it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tCold Calls: Thornton joked that in the past five years running the Panthers\u2019 commercial operations, he\u2019s only had a few inbound sales calls. He said that on outbound calls, some prospective partners would assume he was calling from the Carolina Panthers of the NFL.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThey\u2019re like, \u2018We don\u2019t do business in Carolina,\u2019\u201d he said. \u201cWe\u2019ve done a great job of being at the national level and the international level for the last five, six years. So it\u2019s not as cold of a call anymore.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tTeam Name: Asked if having Florida in the team\u2019s name, as opposed to a single city, was an intentional aim to embrace the whole state, Thornton said the team has \u201cflirted with a bunch of ideas.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWe\u2019ve talked about being the South Florida Panthers or the Fort Lauderdale Panthers and there\u2019s different opinions on it,\u201d he said. \u201cThe state of Florida has been great with hockey the last 10 or 12 years between us and Tampa. It\u2019s been amazing to watch the growth of the game and the success of the team. So I think we\u2019re happy with the brand recognition now.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In the run-up to this NHL season, the defending champion Florida Panthers raised season ticket renewal prices by…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":101336,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2075],"tags":[235,260,2567,10463,8215,7,6,4475,236,26252],"class_list":{"0":"post-101335","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-carolina-panthers","8":"tag-carolina","9":"tag-carolina-panthers","10":"tag-carolinapanthers","11":"tag-edmonton-oilers","12":"tag-florida-panthers","13":"tag-football","14":"tag-nfl","15":"tag-nhl","16":"tag-panthers","17":"tag-sporticast"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/114620915260572741","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101335","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=101335"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101335\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/101336"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=101335"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=101335"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=101335"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}