‘It’s a hot ticket’: Getting a seat at an Idaho Steelheads hockey game is just not easy
At the risk of sounding like one of those people who says, “I remember when that was just a field,” I remember when you could go to the Idaho Steelheads website on a Wednesday or Thursday and easily find tickets to a Saturday night hockey game.
Not anymore.
Last month, I tried to find just two seats next to each other for me and my son, and not only could I not find any for that upcoming weekend, but I couldn’t find two seats together for the following weekend, either. Tickets for this week’s final home games of the regular season are hard to come by. As of Tuesday, only about 50 remained for Friday night’s game, and I counted only 28 tickets left for Saturday’s regular-season home finale, with most being solo seats.
So far this season, the Steelies have averaged 4,992 tickets sold per game in a venue that has an advertised capacity for 5,002 fans. That average is the highest since the team’s inaugural season in 1997-98, according to the Steelheads.
“Idaho is leading the way in terms of capacity sold and sellouts,” Ryan Crelin, ECHL commissioner, said in a phone interview. “It’s a hot ticket in town. It’s the place to be.”
The Steelheads join the growing list of Boise institutions maxing out capacity: Bogus Basin, Idaho Shakespeare Festival, state campgrounds, restaurants.
“It’s a good problem to have,” Eric Trapp, president of Idaho Sports Properties, which owns the Steelheads, said in a phone interview. “Sure, there’s times we wish we had about a thousand or two-thousand more seats ... but I’d much rather have the problem of having capacity crowds.”
The arena, built as part of the Grove Hotel on Front Street in downtown Boise, has been near capacity for hockey since the beginning. That first season of the Idaho Steelheads, when it was part of the WCHL in 1997-98, attendance averaged 4,971.
Attendance waned after the first few seasons and dipped below 4,000 during the Great Recession, but has come roaring back the last few years, according to numbers provided by the Steelheads. Average attendance hit 4,803 during the 2019-20 season.
After opting out of the 2020-21 season because of the COVID-19 pandemic, Idaho saw attendance pick up right where it left off, probably due in part to so many people wanting to get back out and go to live events — especially hockey games.
“Kudos to that management group and staff,” Crelin said of the Steelheads. “And it probably begs the question: What if the arena was bigger, how many more people would be coming out?”
Even though capacity is just about maxed out, there are no plans for expansion or a new arena, Trapp said. There is no room to expand the current location, which was built right up to property lines on two sides and can’t grow elsewhere, Trapp said.
Building new would be expensive, and there’s not much appetite for some sort of public funding, as we could see from the experience of the Boise Hawks a couple of years ago. Boise voters approved two measures that would make it nearly impossible for the city to spend any public money on even planning a new facility.
The Idaho Central Arena is also in an ideal location, right downtown, surrounded by bars, restaurants and hotels. Because it’s relatively small, there’s not a bad seat in the house, and when the arena is packed with people, it has a tremendous energy.
Because the arena is owned outright, Trapp said the Steelheads don’t have to pay any lease or share revenue with a city or county, like other arenas have to. They also control their own concessions.
“We love our building,” Trapp said. “I think the fans love the building, and I think it’s a positive force actually in the end.”
Trapp pointed out that attendance at Wednesday night games has risen, as fans are finding, like me, that those Friday and Saturday games are sold out.
Trapp said even teams with larger buildings are not drawing much more than 5,000 fans on a given night anyway.
“There’s other buildings that have 16,000 seats and when they have their average attendance, whatever it is, it just feels empty,” Trapp said, “so it’s not always better to have a bigger arena.”
The average attendance across the ECHL for the 2021-22 season is 3,765 fans per game, according to Joe Babik, communications director for the ECHL.
ECHL venues that are smaller than Boise include Glens Falls, New York, at 4,794; and Trois-Rivieres, Quebec, at 4,390. Some ECHL venues, though, are double or even triple the size of Idaho Central Arena. DCU Center in Worcester, Massachusetts, has a capacity of 12,239. The Jacksonville Icemen play in a 13,141-capacity arena, and Orlando, Florida, and Tulsa, Oklahoma, have arenas that can hold more than 17,000 fans.
My old stomping grounds was Utica, New York, where as a kid I used to watch the Mohawk Valley Stars (more like the movie “Slap Shot”) and then the Utica Devils play at the old Utica Memorial Auditorium — or “The Aud,” as we knew it. It is now home to the Utica Comets of the American Hockey League, a tier above the ECHL and a tier below the NHL. Although The Aud has been fixed up (thank God) and is now named the Adirondack Bank Center, the capacity is still only about 3,800.
In 2019, Boise was in the running to get an AHL expansion team as the affiliate of the Seattle Kraken expansion team of the NHL. But Boise was passed over in favor of Palm Springs, California.
That team, the Coachella Valley Firebirds, is expected to play in the new, privately funded, $300 million, 11,500-seat, 300,000-square-foot multipurpose Acrisure Arena. It’s on 43 acres near Palm Springs, and they broke ground last June. It’s expected to open this year in time for the inaugural season of the Firebirds.
The arena is expected to host around 40 home hockey games, more than 40 concerts and 150 other events, from professional and college sports to family shows, according to the Palm Springs Desert Sun.
Although Boise’s population is booming, we’re still relatively small. The combined population of Ada and Canyon counties is about 740,000. The Coachella Valley, meanwhile, is within Riverside County, which has a population of 2.5 million and is the 13th-largest metro area, in terms of population, in the United States, according to the Desert Sun.
The Palm Springs arena also had a distinct advantage as a more viable multipurpose venue, close to Los Angeles and with music mogul Irving Azoff as a partner in the project promising big-name concerts, including the Eagles as an opening show.
It’s worth noting that the original idea was to put the arena in downtown Palm Springs, but it has since moved out to a 43-acre lot alongside Interstate 10, about 15 miles outside downtown Palm Springs.
So while I love the idea of a bigger arena for the Steelheads — and a better chance of scoring tickets at the last minute — you just can’t beat Idaho Central Arena’s downtown location and atmosphere.
Just like with other institutions in Boise, attending Steelheads games will mean planning further ahead or buying season tickets in advance.
Until someone swoops in and builds a $300 million new arena in downtown Boise, I’m fine with that.
“A big part, I think, over 25 years in this community is we’ve had great support,” Trapp said. “I think we’ve built up some brand equity. Boise is a great city and a great community, and we’ve been very happy with the support.”
This story was originally published April 7, 2022 at 9:06 AM.
