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Home  Articles 99/00 Season Drillers struggle towards goal
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Drillers struggle towards goal |
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Written by Gerry Prince
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Friday, 24 March 2000 |
Has the Great SOS campaign stalled, or are the phones ringing off the hook in the Edmonton Drillers office?
Good question. If only the answer were as clear.
Yes, the phones were ringing off the hook before and immediately after Drill owner Wojtek Wojcicki's impassioned plea to sell 8,000 season tickets by March 31.
Near as anyone can tell, the initial flurry of media exposure moved 1,000 folks to plunk down a $20 deposit on a season ticket for next year. In the three weeks since, an estimated 300 or so have followed suit.
The 1,300, give or take, are all new subscribers Wojcicki, will have you know.
"The orders are being processed at TicketMaster and at our office," said Wojcicki, noting his totals are based on last week's numbers. "If we've got a matter of 1,300 tickets sold in a couple of weeks, that's great news."
Add that to the Drill's season ticket base of 3,000 and the Drill owner should be a scant 3,700 shy of his goal, right?
BASED ON A PROJECTION
Well, actually not. The sales figures bandied about by Wojcicki yesterday were based on a projection.
Only 1,800 current season ticket-holders have bothered to renew, which means the Drill are counting some of their chickens before they've hatched.
"They're doing it steadily, but they have not all renewed," offered the beleaguered Drill owner. "But they have until the end of next week.
"We haven't had one person turn around and say, 'No, we're not renewing.' We have 1,800 or something like that. That trend leads us to believe all of them are renewing. There are also season ticket-holders who have bought extra tickets, so it's very positive."
Doing the math, that adds up to 3,100, more or less, meaning Wojcicki is about 4,900 shy of the mark needed to insure the team's future in Edmonton.
To hear Wojcicki tell it, they're 10 deep at the ticket counter, an army of operators are standing by to take your calls and the team's staff is working overtime to process a veritable flood of ticket orders.
Given the Drill need to average 700 sales a day, give or take, from now until the close of business next Friday, that's probably a good thing.
If you crunch the numbers using Wojcicki's best guess, the Drill are still 3,500 shy of their goal. That means they'll be wanting to average 500 or more ticket sales per day between now and D-Day.
That still makes the legion of front-end personnel a good thing.
"I think that we're going to make it. I'm hopeful we're going to make the numbers," he said.
"If we make the number we're going ahead for next year."
By throwing down the gauntlet like he did, Wojcicki has painted himself into a corner.
Not only has the SOS campaign failed to generate the kind of support Wojcicki was banking it would, the ball is now in his court.
Wojcicki expects to have a better idea of where the ticket drive stands by Monday. At that point, he says he'll have a much better idea of where the team is headed.
"After the weekend, we'll do the tally," he said. "We'll have a station set up (at Skyreach) Friday and Sunday, so on Monday we'll have a tally.
"If we're close (to 8,000), obviously you're saying let's go for it and forge ahead. If you doubled up on your season-ticket base, that pretty strong."
Clearly, the 8,000 season tickets is no longer chiselled in stone. Presumably 6,000 season ticket-holders and a whole raft of soccer camps this summer might just do the trick.
One way or the other, the harsh reality is people aren't clamouring to save the Drillers. No matter what kind of spin or how brave a face Wojcicki tries to put on it, the SOS is in trouble and so are the Drillers.
Not only has the campaign failed to generate massive ticket sales to this point, it has done little to attract new money, which was another of Wojcicki's objectives.
"There's nothing to speak of," said Wojcicki when the subject of potential partners was broached. "The initial hit of the press conference certainly gave attention out there.
NOT LIKE THE OILERS
"But the SOS has not been put out on the front of every paper as it was, let's say, for the Oilers. In terms of top-of-mind awareness, it hasn't been supported that way. That expectation wasn't there."
Any franchise with an inability to turn a profit or come close to breaking even doesn't have blue-chip investment written all over it.
It's also something most shrewd investors would steer clear of. Still, Wojcicki maintains would-be partners or new owners have to look at the bigger picture.
"It depends on whether the investment is short-term or whether it's the longer term," he said. "If I had oodles and oodles of money, I would stick by it. In the long term, it will prevail and it will be great.
'`My problem is I don't have oodles and oodles of money."
All of which should make Wojcicki's decision next week a no-brainer.
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