Mighty Ducats and Mini Plans

Waves of disgruntlement ebb and flow around the Pond. It’s October, the Ducks are mighty bad and the fans are letting them hear about it.

In the season’s first 12 games--including 11 without Paul Kariya, sidelined by an abdominal injury--the Ducks win one, lose nine and tie two.

Kariya returns in November and the Ducks begin to win. December looks even better as they escape last place in the Pacific Division and appear destined for greater things come January.

But one thing is missing: fans.

Crowds, once almost certain to be sellouts of 17,174, haven’t measured up to the first three seasons of the franchise. Season ticket sales are off by almost 400. However, the Ducks still have more than 14,000 season-ticket holders, including partial plan equivalents.

No-shows, a nagging problem since the inaugural season of 1993-94, have ranged between a high of 14% of tickets sold to a low of 3%.

The team’s 40-game streak of sellouts ended Oct. 27 and only three of 13 games have been sold out since.

That’s not pleasing to Duck President Tony Tavares.

“It has to do with team performance,” Tavares said of the drop-off at the box office. “It [the Ducks’ poor start] has translated into a problem: empty seats.”

Instead of wringing their hands, the Ducks have hustled to sell tickets by marketing the team in new ways.

There are new ticket plans, new ads on the Big A scoreboard in the Anaheim Stadium parking lot, new ads in newspapers and on TV and radio. Tickets also have been made available for purchase by guests at Disneyland-area hotels.

“We’re still fighting the perception that all our games are sold out,” team spokesman Bill Robertson said. “There are some awareness issues. But we’ve been proactive. We’ve been much more aggressive in our approach.

“But by no means are we panicking.”

Or as Tavares put it: “When you’ve got a product to sell, you get out there and sell it. When it sells itself, you do less.”

In other words, since the Ducks’ flopped to start the season, the fans have given their notice: The honeymoon is over.

Now, it’s up to the Ducks to win them back.

Tavares doesn’t believe the ticket prices at the Pond are too high, although he acknowledged that, in general, tickets to sporting events around North America have soared out of control.

“There is a lot of competition for the sports dollar,” Tavares said. “At this point, ticket prices have an effect.”

A few more victories would probably help boost sales too.

“There were such high expectations from the fans, then you tank,” Tavares said. “It’s in the cheap seats, which I put into the category of the casual fans, where the empty seats are. The casual fans, the ones who aren’t mini-plan or season-ticket holders, are not going to go when you’re not doing well.”

But the Ducks have rebounded since Kariya’s return and trades that brought winger Brian Bellows from Tampa Bay and defenseman Dmitri Mironov from Pittsburgh.

They are 9-6-3 in the 18 games since Nov. 1 and 6-2-2 in their last 10 games.

What gives? Where is everybody?

Tavares believes there are fans who still believe the Ducks are a poor team and that has been a difficult attitude to change.

“I guess our problem was we just weren’t competitive at the beginning of the season,” he said. “It was not just wins and losses. We were not a factor in those games from the time the puck dropped.”