No. Fans are jumping ship. Need major changes in our staff and players. check out this post from the eagles message board. Travey! at the Disco







Joined: 22 Nov 2007

Posts: 38



Posted: Wed Apr 09, 2008 3:53 am Post subject: An Eagle fan NEVER thought he/she would see THIS.



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April 9, 2008



Dear Eagles Nation,



For a while now I have questioned my loyalty to the Rage. It started in December.



I read on a this website on December 18th that Flippy and Panks were making an appearance at Johnson's corner. Seeing an opportunity to meet two well-known CHL players, I couldn't resist the opportunity. They were gracious as they signed photos for me. I am hoping to have them hung up on my "Wall of Fame" real soon.



It was then that I noticed something quite peculiar.



They were the first two players I met the entire season. I met nobody from the Rage until the following month.



That day planted a seed of doubt within me. I started to compare the Eagles and Rage organizations, and found that there, in the end, was no comparison at all.



The front office.



The marketing.



The activity within the community.



The only two things that seemed alike were the teams. Both sides had an intense rivalry and played great hockey every time I watched. I was happy to see the Rage make a turnaround.



Yet I felt like the Rage were in a black hole with no possibility of getting out.



I saw what Brent Cullaton does for the team and the young fans, yet nobody in Broomfield knows or cares about him because of the press coverage . . . or lack thereof. I saw the empty seats.



I saw sales agents trying in vain to sell season tickets, the effort completely undermined by ticket giveaways.



I saw apathy in the front office.



I went to Fort Collins and Windsor and saw the other side of the spectrum. I saw fans coming out in droves to support their heroes. Admittedly, I bought an Eagles hat and had the players sign it one night when I made a sojourn to Lucky Joe's. I watched two games at the Bud Barn.



It was like watching a movie in high-definition. It was vibrant and in color!



My outrage with the Rage organization reached its breaking point. I finally sounded off on a message board to other Rage fans. This was a response to 5minmajor:



Travey! at the Disco wrote:

5minmajor wrote:

(Name withheld) ...WEAK!!!!! The Eagles front office doesn't call rage fans trying to sell tickets! Bottom line your front office sucks. You have a great team this year with SOME very good fans..but your front office (marketing, promontions etc...) has a lot to be desired. Your front office couldn't sell out an All Star game. WOW, kudos to them!!!!



Does your team have a message board on their home page? Or do you have to use "Bobcats" cause your front office lacks the ability to put one on there?







5minmajor, you're giving our front office and ownership WAAAAAY too much credit by saying that it sucks. Stating that it is a blight and an absolute embarrassment is more fitting. I've been wanting to take our front office to task for a long time now, and now I am going to do it.



Somebody, somewhere is not doing their job if we are giving Rage tickets away with a Del Taco family meal. Somebody, somewhere is not doing their job if you can get a "buy one get one Rage ticket free" coupon if you buy 2 1-liter bottles of Coca-Cola . . . and then some select stores don't have the coupons as advertised. Listen up front office: THIS IS TOP TO BOTTOM INCOMPETENCE!!! Also, how can you not sell out the CHL All-Star game? To be blunt, the promotional endeavors of our doltish, imbecilic front office is piss-poor to say the least.



Our ownership group, Arista, seems more concerned about getting office space, restaurants, bars and crappy apartment complexes set up than getting the word out on the Rage and 14ers. As of this writing the Broom Barn could be operating at a loss FOR THE SECOND CONSECUTIVE YEAR. I'm not a business major, but I do know that two years of operating in the red is not conducive to running a successful business.



Members of the front office: If you are reading this, I would like to take this time to give you some advice. I encourage you to go to the corporate office of the Colorado Eagles and BUY A FREAKIN' CLUE!! The Eagles fans buying tickets (and I thank Eagles Nation for making the trip) is the only thing saving your jobs right now. What the hell did you go to college/university for anyway? If it was for Marketing and Advertising, please feel free to inform me on how you passed the required classes. You are out of touch with those that are loyal to the Rage and out of touch with a community that you should be reaching out to. Seeing these promotions and advertising feels like a Frasier Filipic fist to my forehead and merely shows a lack of effort and a sense of complacency and laziness that has become the epitome of the Rocky Mountain Rage front office.





In that dreadful season I sat through some painful games, but I felt that they were at least trying to make an effort. They called me for feedback and what I thought of the game. The players were very accessible. I felt that a turnaround would come soon. The team did improve.



Unfortunately, this season I saw the operations side actually REGRESS. It seemed like the players became somewhat distant (with the exception of Cully). As you read in that post, Arista is treating the Rage as more of a corporate toy than a legitimate hockey team. I saw mismanagement of epic proportions and an ownership group that is more concerned about creating a yuppie dreamworld that they are about getting the word out about the Rage and involving the team in the community.



I have had enough. I am disgusted with Arista and the Rage front office.



I was thinking about this move for some time now. I do not like the direction that the Rage is heading in. At worst it is heading into, at the least, irrelevance.



I received posts from other fans when I posted my report cards for the Y-Town series, like this one:



hockey_mike wrote:

Travey,



Pretty good assessment of the game.



I have to wonder, since you are a Rage fan, if you are coming out of the closet as an Eagles fan?





As well as this . . .



BoulderJoe wrote:

Great job Travey!



Are you jumping into the Eagles camp?





I wanted to wait until the end of the season, for I didn't want to be seen as a bandwagon jumper. I don't care about wins and losses as I do about a team working with community. I want to be part of an organization that reaches out to its fans.



Yet, people are asking.



This is why I have made this decision . . .



I am now an Eagles fan.



This move was not taken lightly at all. It took much thought and consideration. It also took talking with another Eagle fan about what I felt was a horribly run business. I made this decision based on conviction.



I still like Cully, and I still have tremendous respect for many of the Rage players. I know that some Rage fans are going to call me a turncoat, and I am more than prepared for it.



It won't stop me from saying this, though . . .



GO EAGLES!!





Signed,



Travey! at the Disco



Unbelievable.

Very interesting article. Yea, I think dropping ticket prices might help. Try charging the same price for every ticket in the building, considering the occupancy. I don't think 5 pricing tiers is very attractive to ticket buyers when they are 5 feet from each other, and 10 feet from the door. No wonder the Rage bombed. It is the Broomfield Event Center, not the Pepsi Center. I had no idea the Denver Nuggets opened a baseball franchise, I haven't seen anything on the Altitude web site. I wonder if Stan Kronke knows? Doesn't that get confusing? All this smoke in mirrors seems like excuses to me. I think all interests vested would be better suited closing down shop and not embarking on further embarrasment. Daily Camera...that's in Boulder, right? Put down the pipe before you write a publicly viewed article on sporting event venues, and figure out which sports are which before you publish. Editors are over rated anyway, credible source though!

I, too, think that the ticket pricing has too many tiers. I could see cutting it down to three tiers, and definitely lower the prices. Selling out the house at 80% of the current prices would probably encourage more long-term attendance than a half-filled house at full pop.