Bums in the seats; the best solution.

First of all, 2.395 simply is not good enough.

That was the attendance for last Saturday’s 4-3 Raider loss to Regina at the Art Hauser Centre.

While staff and fans were contemplating what went wrong on the ice that night, team staff was bracing for the annual general meeting just two nights later, knowing they would be revealing a substantial financial loss for the 2013-14 season.

The number was a shocker, $210-thousand when you compare expenses with revenue and $262,680 when you add in depreciation of assets.

General Manager Bruno Campese told Tuesday night’s 900 CKBI audience tuning in to a special edition of “face-off”, they knew they were in trouble when an unfavorable schedule was released by the WHL last June. By then the budget had been struck with little room to trim from an already lean document. The opportunity to make a few extra dollars faded last spring when the Raiders were swept by the eventual Memorial Cup champion Edmonton Oil Kings in the first round of the playoffs as basically all you do with only two home playoff dates is pay the expenses of the first round. The team also was left with a large part the bill incurred with the tie breaker game in Red Deer and three extra days in Alberta leading up to the Oil King series.

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The  wonky schedule derived by the league’s first crack at going the computer route instead of the acrimonious annual day long debate of GM’s, was responsible in part for a decrease of about 170  fans per game on average. Add in spin-off spending and that translates to a hit of around $175-thousand.  The team is hoping a schedule with many more weekend dates will help turn that situation around.

And they will need more walk-up ticket sales since season subscriber numbers came close, but fell short of the goal of 1.650.

The team is also hoping a revamped game night experience will help attract young adults, a demographic missing from the Art Hauser Centre on game nights. The organization is working hard toward making 2013-14 an expensive one year blip on the radar, but ultimately it’s up to fans to respond by finding reasons to come to games instead of staying away.

Campese points out expenses will continue to rise meaning at some point, maybe by the end of the decade, even a sold out Art Hauser Centre every night won’t generate enough cash to make ends meet, therefore the need for a new arena whether it’s stand alone or part of a multi-use facility.

However the future is now. With 34 home games remaining, this team needs more fans to meet a 2014-15 budget of around 2.1 million dollars.    

dwilson@panow.com

On Twitter: @RaidersVoice