Rage Attendance: Not Bad

Minor league hockey is more popular than minor league basketball. That may not come as any surprise to hockey fans, but at least it's confirmed. The Rocky Mountain Rage had more butts in seats (or at least, less empty ones, according to the Daily Camera) than the Colorado 14ers.

Out of the 6,000 seats at the arena, about 2,000 were empty for each of last season's Rocky Mountain Rage hockey games. More than half the seats — about 3,500 — were empty during Colorado 14ers basketball games.

So, if we do some math, we get that the Rage were selling an average of around 4000 seats per game. In fact, according to Pointstreak, the Rage sold an average of 4,027 tickets per game. While that may be half of what the Oklahoma City Blazers sold last year (who play in a full sized arena in a busy downtown area), that's pretty good. In fact, that's a lot better than the Austin Ice Bats (1,900) or the Cincinnati Cyclones of the ECHL (1,844 in the 17,000 seat US Bank Arena). 4,000 a game is enough to live on.

Games against the Colorado Eagles averaged higher than the season average, but not by much.

So, really, those who questioned placing "another" hockey team in Colorado, so close to the Avalanche and the Eagles, in the short term at least, they have been proven wrong.

Technorati Tags: CHL, Hockey, Minors, Rage