Colorado Mammoth Message Board

Steve,

First of all thank you for taking the time to answer these questions, they provide one of a kind insight.

When the team moved here in 2003 i had noticed that the attendance in the other cities you guys had played in was not very good. my question is Did the team have any expectations when it came to ticket sales when the team moved here?

Tommy

Great question!

Our expectations were modest about what would happen in Denver. Obviously the challenges in Washington were somewhat insurmountable and moving to Denver was a great releif from a business and personal standpoint. We now had the stability to at least effect the change that we thought could be executed with the right capitlization, corporate structure and ownership.

We thought that 8,000 people at the first game would have been a great success. Our season ticket drive was a modest success and our hopes were high that we could create a great atmosphere.

As game time approached we were seeing an incredible amount of game day sales, things were mounting and we were growing very excited with what was happening.

At about 6:45, 20 minutes before game time, I was approached by our marketing and sales people to see if we could hold the start of the game in order to get all the people into the building that were standing in line outside at the box office.

I will never forget the look on Les Bartley's face, for those that don't know he was the Head Coach for the Toronto Rock, our opening night opponents, he was shocked when I asked to hold the game for a half hour. Luckily it wasn't a televised game so we were able to hold the game to help the great number of fans get into the building and to their seats so as not to miss much of the game.

Les was fantastic in the process and was so overwhelmed that we had to do this. His comment to me was "Steve, we need as many successes in this league as possible right now and I would be honored to wait for more new fans, we need all we can get!" I will always remember his comments and I learned a great deal from him that day!

Langtry scores a great double overtime riser goal over Bob Watson's shoulder to launch our franchise in grand fashion.

From there it has been a wild and exciting ride in a great and wonderful sports town.

SG

That was a killer game!

Steve,
could you give us any insight to the potential of increasing the number of games played each season from say 16 to 18?

yeah, that would be realy cool if we had 18 games a season.
but how soon do you think that will happen,if ever.
football dose not have that many games and they do fine, but they also have alot more teams.
hocky has who knows how many games and that works.
i guess what im asking is do you think it would be a good idea to have more games?and if so,how many,and when?

a 16 game season is perfect for the NLL

Check out my posts regarding scheduling in the NLL. I think that explains why we have 16 games.

Hope that helps.

SG

Correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't it the first game where the young lady singing "O Canada" couldn't remember the words. Without missing a beat, two of the Mammoth players immediately ran to her side and helped. I knew right then that I would be a fan forever if the players cared that much about a fan singing the other teams national anthem.