Mammoth sales

Team draws crowds in Denver as lacrosse league looks for stability

By James Paton, Rocky Mountain News (Contact)

Published March 21, 2008 at 12:05 a.m.

Text size

Photo by Linda McConnell / Special to the Rocky

Stuffed mammoths are lined up for sale in the retail shop at the Pepsi Center in Denver.

More More Business

Map my news

The team with the highest average attendance at the Pepsi Center is not the Nuggets or the Avalanche.

It's the Colorado Mammoth, the lacrosse club usually found near the bottom of the list of Stan Kroenke's vast sports holdings.

Filling the arena is a lot easier when you have only eight home games a year and your priciest tickets cost less than $40. Still, the Mammoth draw about 17,400 a night, on average, keeping Kroenke happy at a time when hockey ticket sales are down and basketball is flat. It's also helping the National Lacrosse League as it tries to stabilize and raise its profile in a crowded field.

"These are the best lacrosse players, and Kroenke Sports treats it as such," said Jim Jennings, commissioner of the National Lacrosse League. "They look at it as a major sport."

The brisk ticket sales are surprising given Colorado's distance from the Northeast, where lacrosse is traditionally more popular.

The Mammoth has led the league in attendance for the past three seasons and has regularly lured 16,000 to 17,000 people a game. The club that's second this year, the Buffalo Bandits, isn't even close to the Mammoth, with an average crowd of 14,205.

The last home game - a Saturday, March 8, matchup against the San Jose Stealth - sold out, attracting more than 18,000 people. Arena employees were forced to turn people away.

"If you had told us six years ago that the Mammoth would still be in this position attendance-wise, we would have laughed," said Brian Kitts, senior director of marketing and public relations for Kroenke Sports.

Jennings said Colorado - the league's first team west of the Mississippi - has been a key market in attempting to broaden the sport's appeal.

"It's the gateway to the West, and it's important we are successful there," Jennings said last week while driving to the NLL All-Star Game in Edmonton, Alberta.

Professional lacrosse has been on shaky ground. The league announced in October that the season would be canceled after it failed to hammer out a new collective bargaining agreement with the players' union. But the two sides headed back to the table and nine days later revealed they had worked out a seven-year pact.

A wiped-out season could have killed the league, Jennings said.

"I think it would have been devastating. People would have moved on. They would have forgotten about us."

With labor peace, Jennings said he hopes the league can strike a national television deal and expand, maybe to Seattle, Dallas, Oklahoma City, Orlando, Fla., or Halifax, Nova Scotia.

"The interruption of our league put us way back with those (TV) negotiations," he said, but the long-term agreement should revive the discussions.

In the Denver area, a market saturated with professional football, baseball, basketball, hockey and soccer, as well as arena football, college and minor-league teams, it's difficult to find time to care about lacrosse.

Steve Govett, the president of the Mammoth and the man who oversaw the franchise for three tough years in Washington before it moved to Denver in 2003, said the league must focus on improving the existing teams before contemplating new ones.

"We need to shore up the markets we're already in," he said. "If we're going to turn this league into a viable, vibrant product we need stable teams to play. We can make all the money we want, but we don't have a bright future if there aren't other strong teams."

Six teams, or half the league, bring in fewer than 10,000 a night. San Jose, Chicago and New York are struggling with weak sales.

The league has sought to make its dancers, music, marketing and logos "edgy" in a bid to connect with the 12- to 19-year-old demographic, Jennings said. But he acknowledged some teams have gone overboard at times, alienating families. An Edmonton promotion with the racy magazine FHM did not go over well, he said.

The Mammoth have resorted to those tactics, too, making a range of eye-catching moves, including seating some fans in hot tubs beside women in bikinis.

The lacrosse crowds in Denver, even if they only come eight times a season, are welcome because crowds for the Avalanche are shrinking. Both the Nuggets and Avs have fallen to 18th out of 30 in attendance in their leagues.

Fans disillusioned with lofty ticket prices and player salaries in other sports may find pro lacrosse appealing. The Mammoth is a group of guys that includes a police officer, a firefighter, a salesman and a couple of teachers.

Most have day jobs and play lacrosse at night, earning $15,000 a year, on average, at lacrosse.

"Our players live in the world fans live in," Govett said. "They get it. Maybe players in some other sports have lost sight of what it means to be a fan."

The Mammoth has been a good investment for Stan Kroenke, who paid $1 million for the club in 2002. His empire includes the Nuggets, Avalanche and Pepsi Center. Lacrosse franchises sell for $5 million today, Jennings said.

The Mammoth is one of the fortunate teams that has positive cash flow, Govett said. Kroenke "appreciates the fact we put a winning team on the field and that we take care of ourselves financially," he said.

patonj@RockyMountainNews.com or 303-954-2544

By the numbers

Average Team attendance

* Mammoth 17,426 (first six games)

* Nuggets 17,099 (35 games)

* Avalanche 16,728 (37 games)

Subscribe to the Rocky Mountain News