The News Drops
The news first came out via the local newspaper - the Athens Banner-Herald. a newspaper that has been repeatedly gutted by previous corporate overlords and currently Gannett:
The Local Media WastelandAkins Ford Arena was denied its certificate of occupancy Friday which has canceled the Rock Lobsters inaugural home opener. Saturday's game is also canceled.Upcoming events in the arena, including a Dec. 14 concert with the B-52s, are also up in the air until the building can be deemed fit to host."This is an enormous disappointment for our organization, our players, and most importantly, our fans," said Rock Lobsters co-owners Barry Cohen and Nancy Peters. "We placed our trust in the promises made regarding the completion of Akins Ford Arena. To see this delay impact our ability to deliver on our vision for hockey in Athens is incredibly disheartening. We were ready to make history tonight, and instead, we are left with unanswered questions and unfulfilled promises."
For local readers, this one announcement has been the only real news reported by this paper in a long time. The arena news the day before was a puff piece about parking and concessions, with no mention of parking prices as rumours about the pricing filtered through social media. Nowhere in the story was it mentioned that the arena had been cleared for occupancy, despite this problem looming. An article published by the ABH three days earlier, "Is Akins Ford Arena ready for first event? Rock Lobsters set for home debut Friday" read as a public relations puff piece, with no evidence of hard questions being asked:
Work continues on Akins Ford Arena leading up to Friday's Rock Lobsters hockey game, the first event at the $151 million addition to the Classic Center.Despite the finishing touches being added, the arena will be ready to go for the game and the multitude of events that the arena will host in the months ahead, said Katie Williams, Classic Center VP of Sales, Marketing and Tourism."The doors will be open, the popcorn will be flowing and it will be a great place to watch music and hockey and gather with friends," Williams said. "We're looking forward to welcoming 5,000 Rock Lobster fans into this new venue."
You would be hard-pressed to find any real journalistic coverage of the Arena and its construction in the ABH, which ballooned from an initial cost estimate of $81M to over $151M, and was originally targeted to be completed by November 2023.
This becomes totally understandable as their limited staffing makes it impossible to cover important things like the local government and spending of local tax dollars. Just take a look at what is "above the fold" in today's online edition of the ABH:
For this type of news, people turn to Flagpole Magazine, a publication geared towards the local music scene that also has a former ABH reporter covering local government issues, albeit with a slant. While Flagpole has covered much more of the funding and political issues surrounding the arena without necessarily asking the tough questions about the sharp increase in costs and the construction delays. But again, you can only do so much with limited resources. Flagpole has only one news editor/editor with contributions from others like Chris Dowd and his Athens Politics Nerd. Self-funded, Dowd does intensive deep dices on the local government, but has only one article focusing specifically on certain extremely liberal county commissioners' opposition to the arena, its funding, and what they were going to pay employees.
The Financial Hole
Marketing wise, the Rock Lobsters were doing everything right despite limited budgets. They got the team out in the community for events and community work, joined the local "Adopt A Highway" cleanup program, and built relationships on social media. They had a float in the annual Christmas parade downtown, Many in the community, and many from surrounding communities were getting excited to see not only the Rock Lobsters, but teams coming to Athens from their home towns.
Marketing wise, the Rock Lobsters were doing everything right despite limited budgets. They got the team out in the community for events and community work, joined the local "Adopt A Highway" cleanup program, and built relationships on social media. They had a float in the annual Christmas parade downtown, Many in the community, and many from surrounding communities were getting excited to see not only the Rock Lobsters, but teams coming to Athens from their home towns.
Athens Rock Lobsters Participating in Annual Athens Parade of Lights (Courtesy Rock Lobsters)
Now the Rock Lobsters are in a financial hole going into this game as the franchise had been incurring salary and travel expenses with no revenue other than what they could derive from merchandise sales. In their news release, the team stated:
"We placed our trust in the promises made regarding the completion of Akins Ford Arena. To see this delay impact our ability to deliver on our vision for hockey in Athens is incredibly disheartening. We were ready to make history tonight, and instead, we are left with unanswered questions and unfulfilled promises."
How much of a financial hole? We know that the team likely that the team will sell out most of their games or come close based on ticket pricing discussed in an earlier article. But is was likely that the cancelled home opener would be close to full, possibly even sold out. Assuming a sell-out and not factoring reduced ticket prices for season-ticket/mini-package ticket holders (i.e., every ticket sold at face value), the revenue for the cancelled/postponed game would be around $142,356 as shown below.
This does not include the next day's game that was cancelled/postponed, and this Thursday's game as well. When a team only has 28 home games, and people who had tickets for the first game being able to use them for this Friday's game or get a refund, the franchise is going to take a financial beating, and it is not clear that they can fully recover from this debacle caused by not only the Classic Center Authority, but the Athens-Clarke County Government and Commission as well.
What's Next?
It is not hard to imagine that fingers will be pointing ad lawsuits will be filed. The Rock Lobsters franchise clearly has a financial injury subject to litigation. The county may have a cause for litigation against the general contractor, depending on how the contract was set up and how many ancillary contracts existed that were necessary for timely completion of the contract that the general contractor had no control over. And then there are those from out of town and outside the United States that bought tickets in good faith, book air/hotel and traveled to Athens for the game.Can the Local Media Problem Be Fixed?
There is no easy fix here, but absent local television news and limited radio news, the Gannett and the Athens Banner-Herald need to step up their game and commit to their journalistic responsibilities. Enough stories from the USA Today Network. Enough fluff pieces that add little to no value to the lives of people in the community. Of course to do this they need to stop bleeding readers, subscribers, and advertisers. But they will not come back without quality content. With good reason.
0 Comments