Opening new arenas "makes sports franchises giddy," but
Alan Snel of the Fort Lauderdale SUN-SENTINEL wrote that
moving season-ticket holders into the new arenas "gives them
headaches." In FL, the Heat and NHL Panthers face this
"transition challenge" over the next 20 months. Last week,
the Panthers sent seat assignments to 13,000 ticket holders,
which were based on surveys returned by fans "who indicated
what seats and price ranges they preferred." The Heat will
invite fans to the arena to pick their seats "based on
priority numbers they received when they opened their
original accounts." At the NBA's recent marketing meeting
in Charlotte, Heat Exec VP/Marketing & Sales Michael
McCullough "heard tales from the other teams about how fans
picked seats from seating diagrams only to find the seats
didn't exist when the arenas opened because of tweaks in
construction plans." The Panthers have hired VA-based
Distributed System Architects, which will be paid out of the
team's $50,000 relocation budget. The Heat is negotiating
with CO-based ticket/relocation consultant Matthew Bortz,
and has assigned the team's Customer Relations Manager Rod
Segal "to focus on the fan move" (SUN-SENTINEL, 4/27).
