The Energy at the Consol

The Energy at the Consol

[paypal_donation_button]The Energy at the Consol

For its first five seasons of existence The Consol Energy Center, home arena for the Pittsburgh Penguins, theoretically never knew an empty seat at a hockey game. The Penguins started a sell-out streak in January of 2008, two and a half seasons before they moved into the Consol in August of 2010. The streak hit 377 games in April of 2015 at the end of the team’s fifth season in the arena. The Penguins went 123-53-12 in this span, with a home winning percentage of .686, so it’s no wonder they’re able to sell tickets—what was strange was how rarely during this streak the crowd at the Consol sounded like it was 18,000 strong. With a team in perpetual playoff contention, Penguins fans have a lot to cheer about. So why don’t they?

While old-school Penguins fans might still be nostalgic for the old Mellon Arena, even they acknowledge the Consol was an upgrade. It’s got a bigger capacity and much better facilities for both the players and the fans. In a strange way, though, the high performance level of the team added to its shiny new arena are part of the problem. Ticket prices across the league rose steadily from 2010 to 2015, and the price of a Penguins game followed that trend. In the 2010-11 NHL season, the average Penguins ticket cost $60.04; the NHL average was $54.24. By 2014-15, a Penguins ticket cost $73.59, and the league average had risen to $62.18. It’s hard to blame a team for raising ticket prices when fans continue to show up despite the price hikes, but the fact is the Penguins are a hot ticket in Pittsburgh, and the change in who can afford to has drastically shifted the culture in the arena.

Pittsburgh is not a large city. The city itself consists of just over 300,000 people, and though the surrounding metro area brings that number up to a respectable 2.3 million, of cities with an NHL franchise Pittsburgh is 24th in city population and 20th in metro area population. In the first 30 years of the team’s history Pittsburgh was a largely a blue collar market. This is still arguably the case, to some extent, but the city has changed its focus from the steel industry to education and business. The Consol has more luxury seats than the old Mellon Arena did, and the array of corporations now housed in downtown Pittsburgh are more than happy to buy them up. Even those tickets not bought directly by corporations, though, are more affordable in general for a white-collar than a blue collar-worker.

This is not saying that rich people can’t be loud and raucous hockey fans. The thing is, looking at Pittsburgh’s population, older fans who have lived in the city since the ‘80s are more likely to hold blue-collar jobs (though there are, of course, exceptions). Similarly, the newer transplants to the city are more likely to have taken white collar jobs, and while they may be Penguins fans, their fervor hasn’t had quite so long to develop as those who were raised watching Mario Lemieux. Because of the way the city has evolved, the fans with the most access to tickets are not necessarily the fans who will shout that the refs are a jagoff after every penalty.

While Pittsburgh fans are widely known to be raucous sports fans, there’s also the matter of in-city competition to keep in mind. From October through December, the Pittsburgh Steelers are also playing games in the city of Pittsburgh—and though the Steelers play fewer games, Heinz Field also holds a lot more fans. Given the relatively small size of the market, there are proportionally fewer die-hard sports fans to go around than in larger markets like Boston, Chicago, and New York.

The Pittsburgh Penguins have a large and passionate fan base. If you want proof, all you have to do is watch a game in one of the city’s plethora of sports bars—because, more often than not, that’s where you’ll find the team’s most loyal followers. Of course they’d love to be cheering in the Consol but for too many, they simply can’t afford it. While the increase in ticket prices provided the team with more revenue in the first five years in their new arena, it’s also kept a large portion of its fan base out in the cold, and the Consol’s bizarrely quiet atmosphere is the most obvious side-effect.