It seems like the Port’s concerns is one of the last major hurdles to approve the SoDo Arena. To be clear, they are not saying it shouldn’t be built there, they just want more time and studies on potential Port impacts. I am not going to get into the fact that they’ve had 5 months to determine the impact or share some data on the impacts….ok well I guess I just got into it but they have their reason. I am fairly certain this is a leverage play to get something they were promised, the lander street bridge . 10 years ago, Safeco averaged 43,000 for Mariners games, with roughly 81 games that is a comparable number of games that an NHL & NBA team would use in the SoDo arena. So if the Port could survive 10 years ago with 43,000/a game and now survives with the Mariners drawing 20,000/game, how could 18,000 (max capacity) break the ports back to costs jobs.
So I thought I would put a graph together to illustrate the insanity of the claim…
Ok so this was an attempt to be a little funny but it is something that has not been addressed. How is it that the port can survive with the mariners but not with the arena even though the average attendance and capacity is much smaller with roughly the same amount of dates? It is also interesting to consider that the NBA and NHL would never have midweek day games which the Mariners probably have 10 times a year.
A couple of call outs on my assumptions:
- For the average attendance of the SoDo Arena I took the average of Sonics attendance from 2000 to 2008.
- When the city did their financial projections of the Hansen deal, they assumed an average of 13,000 which is close to the league lowest.
- Hockey’s max capacity would be lower by about 1000
I didn’t include Seahawks or Sounders since their quantity of MidWeek Games are so much less but for the fun of it….
I would love for someone to explain why the Arena will cost the port jobs. As several people have asked, show us the data.
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