Power Play - How the Portland Pirates Can Better the Fan Experience

The local AHL team, the Portland Pirates, are involved in spirited negotiations with their home, the Cumberland County Civic Center, concerning a new lease agreement. It basically comes down to money, as the Pirates lead man, Brian Petrovek, presumedly wants a greater share of the concessions revenue. The Portland Press Herald keeps using a figure of $350,000 for total concession sales for a typical home season. That number is total crap. Based on average attendance being, say, 4,500 for 40 home dates, and considering we'd be shocked if the average fan spent less than $10 to $25 per on a visit for food and beer, that works out to be between $1,800,000 and over $4,000,000 per year. THAT IS WHAT THEY'RE FIGHTING OVER, FOLKS!! We here at The 'Pent have no insider status, but we know that money is the deciding factor in these negotiations, as in all. Will the Civic Center give up some bucks to keep the Pirates in town? We don't know, either.

===================

Aside from the negotiations there are several common sense things Brian P. could implement soon, tonight even, to allow for a better fan experience. Stuff that successful entertainment operations would try in order to allow fans to have a good time for not a lot of money, which is kinda the goal.

===================

Here's five easy ideas that we threw around at the last 'Pent staff meeting:


1) Play better music -- Whoever programs the music does a lousy job. We could come up with thousands of better songs to play before, during, and after the game. (And remember DJs; a sense of humor goes a long way.) In fact, here's some recommendations, just for a start:

Long Live Rock - The Who - The Ultimate Collection
Where Have All the Good Times Gone - Van Halen - Diver Down
You Should Be Dancing - The Bee Gees - Saturday Night Fever
Johnny B. Goode - Chuck Berry - Single
What I'd Say - Ray Charles - The Best of Ray Charles: The Atlantic Years
Flip, Flop & Fly - The Blues Brothers - Briefcase Full of Blues
The Bird (Live) - Morris Day - It's About Time
Wreck This Heart - Bob Seger - Face the Promise
Loser - Beck - Loser
People Have the Power - Patti Smith - Dream of Life
Today Was a Fairytale - Taylor Swift - Single
Gloria - Van Morrison - The Best of Van Morrison Volume 3
Jailhouse Rock - Elvis Presley - The Number One Hits
(You Drive Me) Crazy - Britney Spears - Baby One More Time
Do You Believe in Love - Huey Lewis and the News - Greatest Hits
Rocky Mountain High - John Denver - Single
Boom! Boom! - John Lee Hooker - The Best of John Lee Hooker
I Believe (When I Fall In Love It Will..) - Stevie Wonder - High Fidelity soundtrack
Forever - Chris Brown - Single

This list took about five minutes to write and a few seconds to think about. In this day and age of iPods and digital music it boggles our minds that such boring and detestable sounds come from the Civic Center's speaker system. It is unacceptable and easily remedied. Get a high school kid to do it for free. We bet dozens of aspiring DJs around town wound jump at the chance to program tunes for 5,000 people 40 times a year. And if they screw up and play a curse word or something inappropriate, you just apologize and move on. The Pirates aren't curing cancer, and if they're so serious they are afraid to make a mistake they're in bigger trouble than we thought.


2) Reduce the time between periods from 20 minutes to 12 -- Intermissions are interminable. We know, we know: you gotta sell some food. But come on, you're got two Zonis. Use them and let's get on with it. Boredom is the enemy, remember? And 20 minutes is way too long, especially for folks with money and better things to do, the likes of whom we rarely see on game nights.


3) Increase the frequency of timeouts during play to have promotions run both on ice and off -- Remember, Brian: You're largely in the entertainment business. If it ain't fun, your team is out of luck no matter how many good players come through town. Let's have a good time, alright? Learn from the Sea Dogs and Red Claws, as their games are kick ass fun.


4) Get some attractive women to clean the ice, not the dudes who look like, well, the staffers here at Apartment 404 that do it now -- And have them do this at least twice a period. Nothing wrong with sex appeal. Nothing at all. No one wants to see flabby middle aged men skate around twice a game, but the Bruins have some pretty women do this and the crowd loves it. It seems to be the trend in sports and entertainment in general, and a damn fine idea.


5) Give fans a reward for a shutout, if not a win -- As it stands the team has a promotion this season giving all in attendance a free medium fries at Mickey D's if the Pirates score 5 goals. Lame. How many folks are going to make a special trip to McDonald's for a couple of damn french fries? Not us. Gotta come up with something better. Since we get more excited about wins than high scoring games, what about a reward for keeping the other team from putting the biscuit in the basket? That might be fun and it concerns winning, not scoring a lot of goals.

==================

Every member of the Apartment404 staff is a passionate sports fan. All except for the gay guy, and we really don't talk to him much. But as such, we love living in Portland, with all that it offers. And two out of three ain't bad (Sea Dogs and Red Claws). We'd just like to see a better effort out of the hockey team.

That means you, Brian P.