Hurricanes, with record ticket sales, have success off ice to match expectations on it

The doors opened for the $10 preseason game and the fans came pouring down the aisles, racing for seats they might not ever get to sit in otherwise. It ended up being an unusually raucous and festive crowd for a Wednesday night game in September with only a handful of the Carolina Hurricanes’ stars in uniform.

That night, as the Hurricanes played the Florida Panthers — and Panthers coach Paul Maurice did Hurricanes counterpart Rod Brind’Amour a solid by dressing his son Skyler Brind’Amour for a heartwarming homecoming — ads on the video boards were still advertising season-ticket packages, not an unfamiliar sight in any season during the weeks ahead of the opener.

That afternoon, Hurricanes management had been debating yet again whether it was time to cut off season-ticket sales to preserve more tickets for single-game and walk-up sales, which are generally not discounted and more lucrative — assuming they’re sold, which given the Hurricanes’ popularity at the moment is a safe assumption to make.

That’s right: The Hurricanes have reached the point where they’re selling too many season tickets.

As the regular season begins Wednesday against the Ottawa Senators, with nothing but a Stanley Cup an acceptable conclusion for this fully flowered Cup contender, that discussion remains ongoing. The team has continued to sell season tickets, under the belief that generating committed fans is more important than generating additional revenue — do you really want to turn someone away when you do still have a ticket or two to sell? — but it’s an incredible statement of how far the Hurricanes have come in 2023.

“There was a time when we thought we would cut off season tickets before now, because individual game tickets are more expensive,” Hurricanes owner Tom Dundon said. “If it looks like you’re going to sell them all, if you cut off your season tickets earlier you sell those individual games at a higher price. I think we kind of came to the decision that if somebody wants them, we should sell them.”

Thanks to the sellout crowd at Carter-Finley Stadium for the Stadium Series game against the Washington Capitals, only the Montreal Canadiens sold more tickets than the Hurricanes last season. Even in the 40 games played at PNC, the Hurricanes were fifth in the NHL, up 10 percent from the season before, and advance sales this season are up 15 percent from this time a year ago.

Only six years ago, when they were averaging fewer than 12,000 fans per game, the Hurricanes sometimes couldn’t give tickets away on weeknights. That discounted preseason game, back in the dark ages, was in some years completely free, one way to assure at least a half-full building in September and maybe sway a few new fans into buying tickets.

The team sells itself now, and multiple sources with access to the figures say with more than 20,000 plans sold (a mix of full-season and miniplans), this is the largest season-ticket base in franchise history — bigger than the fall of 2006, bigger than the fall of 2009, bigger than the 2010-11 season when the Hurricanes hosted the NHL All-Star Game. It’s a long way from the days when the Hurricanes could only count on having 7,000 people in the building on any given night, absent a marquee opponent or a quiet papering of free tickets to a corporate partner or two.

There will still be some grumbling, to be sure, over the new $40 parking price, although it’s only $25 pre-paid, which makes it a $15 tax on people who slow down the lines. Until the development of the area around the arena is in full swing, with better access from Wade Avenue, that’s about the only way to speed up the tortuous entrance process into the parking lots. (The tortuous exit process is going to be the same for a while.)

“We do a bunch of work looking at the market,” Dundon said. “We’re still one of the lowest prices in the league. When you adjust it for success, I think we are the lowest. If we’re not we’re right there. The salary cap’s the same for everybody. If you don’t spend to the cap you have a disadvantage. The market is the market and we’re always on the lower end of the market. We try to operate very efficiently.”

But more expensive parking and more expensive tickets are also the price of success. The Hurricanes continue to spend to the salary cap — above it, last season, with all the injury replacements — and without the big sponsors and television deals some other NHL teams have. With interest in the team this high, supply and demand starts to play a role.

Now, $450 million in upgrades coming to PNC Arena and lawyers working through the documents that will finalize the long-term lease and the development of an entertainment district around the arena, the franchise’s long-term future is assured – to the point where Dundon has started looking into an MLB team as well.

The discussion over how to sell the last few tickets is a tangible representation of how much things have changed since Dundon bought the team in January 2017. This wasn’t, to be sure, what was being talked about with regard to ticket sales back then.

“These are much better conversations to have,” Dundon said.

The Hurricanes have never been in better shape financially, which only underlines the importance of what happens competitively this season. For the first time in this franchise’s history, it’s time for the success on the ice to match the success off of it.

Never miss a Luke DeCock column. Sign up at tinyurl.com/lukeslatest to have them delivered directly to your email inbox as soon as they post.

Luke DeCock’s Latest: Never miss a column on the Canes, ACC or other Triangle sports