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Boe Knows Hockey
A veteran hockey guy banks on a new building, a new AHL team - and a new attitude in Bridgeport
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Business New Haven
7/9/2001
By: Michael C. Bingham
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Roy L.M. Boe has been down this road before. Actually, he's been down quite a few roads before.
Boe is president of the American Hockey League's Bridgeport Sound Tigers, which will begin play this October in the shiny new, 8,500-seat (10,000 for basketball) Arena at Harbor Yard, hard by the successful Ballpark at Harbor Yard, home to the Bridgeport Bluefish.
Yale alumnus Boe is also president of the AHL's Worcester (Mass.) IceCats, which is something of a problem: League rules forbid a single entity from owning more than one team, so Boe is in the process of selling his stake in that Bay State entity.
(IceCats? Sound Tigers? What sort of bestiary did these creatures emerge from? Actually, "Sound Tigers" was an attempt to meld Bridgeport's waterfront location with the legacy of P.T. Barnum, whose namesake circus is one of very few places to find tigers in North America these days.)
But Boe's professional-sports pedigree goes a bit deeper. He was president and CEO of a 1970s New York Islanders NHL franchise that, led by such shooting stars as Mike Bossey and Denis Potvin, won four Stanley Cups. He was also a principal of the New Jersey (then, New York, then again New Jersey) Nets of the ABA, then the NBA.
So it's fitting, perhaps, that the Sound Tigers' NHL affiliate is the Islanders. The new AHL team will compete in the East division of the AHL's Eastern Conference, going toe-to-toe with natural rivals the Hartford Wolfpack (an affiliate of the team every Islanders fan loves to hate, the New York Rangers) and the Providence Bruins (ditto).
Bridgeport officials have a lot riding on the success of the new arena. They say the four-year-old baseball venue is proof positive that families from gold-plated Fairfield County suburbs will boldly go where few had gone in the recent past- into big, bad Bridgeport - to see a second shiny new sports venue, have a beer or two and escape with life and limb intact.
Plans to build an indoor arena began soon after construction of the Ballpark commenced in 1997 (the Bluefish began play the following year).
Originally, Boe says, the city's ambition was to attract an East Coast Hockey League franchise - a lower level of professional hockey than the AHL. In 1999, when it became evident that the region's existing AHL club, New Haven's Beast, was probably going to fold after just two seasons, Boe, who lives next door in Fairfield, became involved.
The Beast's travails deterred Boe not one bit. "I thought that Fairfield County was wide-open for hockey," he says. New Haven struggled, Boe says, "Because I think that building [Veterans Memorial Coliseum] was too large, and the parking was terrible. This building [the Arena] I think is the right size for hockey." Plus, it's brand-new.
So in the summer of 1999, "I came into the city and made a proposal to bring the American Hockey League in if they [city officials] wanted it." To say they wanted it is an understatement.
The city contracted with the Spartanburg, S.C.-based Volume Services of America (VSA), a giant food-services contractor whose more than 120 venues include San Francisco's new Pacific Bell Park. VSA (which is owned by GE Capital) signed a 20-year lease with the city to manage the new building, and last summer put $8 million into the project. The Sound Tigers' lease is actually with VSA, not the city of Bridgeport, and the team will pay about 12 percent of gross revenues to VSA as rent.
Here's how it works: The team sells its own tickets and merchandise and keeps all the revenue from both. VSA sells the luxury "executive" suites as well as premium "club" seats, of which the team gets a portion of the revenue. On-ice advertising goes to the team; advertising elsewhere in the building is VSA's gravy. The club also gets a small percentage of concessions income. VSA keeps all parking revenues.
The financial relationship between the Sound Tigers and the parent Islanders is a bit different from that of most AHL clubs, which are owned outright by their parent NHL teams. The Islanders supply Bridgeport with players and pay all players', coaches' and trainers' salaries, as well as insurance and equipment. Boe pays the parent club an annual franchise fee of $900,000. The Islanders make all decisions regarding on-ice personnel. "We're really a marketing organization," Boe says.
In all, the Sound Tigers will begin their inaugural season with an annual budget of almost $4 million. For the enterprise to make financial sense, Boe says, he figures he needs to average about 6,000 fannies in the seats for each of 40 home games at the Arena. "Which basically means we need to sell out weekend games, which I think we'll do," says Boe. "Our crowds will be smaller during the week."
Of course, one of the things that has made the baseball park a success is the hermetically sealed nature of the experience - right off the I-95 North off-ramp into a secure, well-lit parking area just steps from the turnstile. Cheek-by-jowl with the baseball venue, the Arena will offer an equivalent experience.
Here's the big question: Is the Ballpark's success a one-off fluke, or is it transferable to other sports in another new building? (The Arena will also host Division I Fairfield University men's home basketball games.)
"I think we'll be successful," says Boe. He's certainly been around long enough to know what he's talking about.
Bridgeport believes in Boe. But does Boe believe in Bridgeport?
Regarding the Park City's longer-term fortunes, Boe believes waterfront development is key.
"Waterfront property everywhere but Bridgeport is very valuable," Boe observes. "Bridgeport hasn't used [its] great waterfront [as an attraction]. But with 120 events in here [the Arena], we'll have about a million people walking into this building from October to May."
(As BNH went to press, Bridgeport Mayor Joseph P. Ganim was scheduled to announce the city's preferred developer for the waterfront Steel Point site.)
Back in their modest temporary offices in the old People's Bank building on Main Street (the team's Arena offices won't be ready until the end of the summer), the Sound Tigers team is taking shape on and off the ice.
Shoe-horned into the space is a staff of 14 busily working phones and faxes mainly to market to corporations and sell season ticket packages, which range in price from $895 to $595. Individual game tickets (not yet available, as the AHL schedule is still in the works) are a pretty aggressive $16.50 to $24. Boe estimates his team has sold about 1,450 season-ticket packages to date.
Also, on June 27 Islanders General Manager Mike Milbury was in town to introduce new Bridgeport Director of Hockey Operations Gordie Clark, who will continue to function as the Isles' assistant GM.
Of course, the team's actual player roster won't be determined until the parent club makes its final cuts at the conclusion of training camp in September. But Boe emphasizes that what Sound Tiger fans will see on the ice are 21-year-olds with their best hockey ahead of them. The Islanders "expect a minimum of 75 percent of these players to play in the NHL," Boe says. He contrasts that to the "35-year-olds" who toil at the next-door Ballpark in the twilight of their careers.
"This will be a premium hockey experience - and a premium fan experience," Boe says.
AHL hockey in Bridgeport. The fun begins on Wednesday, October 10. Be there. Aloha.
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