The following is a transcript of this podcast, if you want to read along. Minor edits — such as removing repeated words, ums and the like — were made but the words printed are verbatim. Muller: First of all, thank you for doing this. I want to get an idea of how the idea for the suspension came about and the reasons behind it, and then what you hope to accomplish, or what the Heartlanders hope to accomplish during that year. Goetz: Yeah. So as far as how it came about, our owner told me in early January that he was going to ask our ECHL Board of Governors, which is a group of all the presidents and owners for every team across the league, to potentially let us consider this voluntary suspension of operations for next season. And kind of where I believe it came from is when, when he bought the team in July of 2023, I wouldn’t say that it was in a terrible spot. But certainly, when you buy a team three months before the season is going to start there’s not a whole lot of time to say, ‘let’s figure out what we have here, and then let’s build it the right way, which, when you see teams come into the league like New Mexico down in Albuquerque, is going to have a team that starts next fall. They’ve been operating for a year already. READ THE STORY HERE So for a place that has an 18-month runway versus a three-month runway, and part of that runway is clearing out the issues that got left behind from the previous owner, which was lots of unpaid bills, people in the community that didn’t want to work with us because, even though it was a different ownership group, it’s still the same team name. So in their mind, you stiffed us on money. We’re not going to work with you. So there was a lot of, like, repairing and rebuilding. To do that probably took the better part of that first season. And then, at the end of the first season, we did some reorganization. And we saw lots of progress last season in terms of revenue growth, fan growth, corporate partnership growth, our social media following, the marketing that we were doing, and so we saw some good growth. And then halfway through this season, that growth had kind of stalled out. It certainly hadn’t regressed but it hadn’t continued to grow in the exponential fashion that we had anticipated. So what our owner wanted to do is, it’s expensive to own a team … what he wants to do right now is sort of put pause on things, and then let’s reorganize in terms of local and minority investment. He’s the sole owner of the team, which is a rarity. He’s not the only one in our league, but it’s very rare that there’s not a group of people that do that. And in a lot of other markets, when you have local businesses that are also investors, they’ve got a different interest in making sure that they’re marketing us as well, that they’re using tickets as a way to drive business for them. And so our owner is looking to find additional investment that sort of takes some of the lift off of just the front office staff and coaches to market, to sell tickets, to get people excited about it. Muller: You just made the playoffs last year. Goetz: We did. Yeah. Muller: Did that help? Goetz: What’s really interesting is that in our league, and this is based off of data that we had — the University of Iowa, Tippie College of Business has a data analytics program and so we had a capstone course do a project for us — that in our league, winning and losing really doesn’t impact attendance. It’s there. There are people that will argue that — these are the numbers that were based on four years here, as well as attendance numbers and records across the ECHL. And so to kind of put that into a little more perspective, I go to two Cedar Rapids Kernels games a year. I have no idea who they’re playing. I have no idea if they’re better than the team they’re playing. I have no idea if they even won the last time I was there. I’m there to have a good time. And that’s what minor league sports is by and large. So, there are certainly a group of fans that winning and losing matters to them but that’s more about happiness than it is somebody who’s not a fan making a decision to come to a game or not. So certainly, there’s a lot of good feelings and joviality around that. But, we saw a little bit of an increase in season ticket holders but I attribute that to some changes we had made in the season ticket holder packages. Previously we just had one season ticket. And what we did was, we created a lower tier and an upper tier with differing benefits. And we saw most of our growth, which was about 40 season ticket holders, was from a group of people that hadn’t bought season tickets, that bought in at this new no-frills kind of: just give me the ticket kind of package. And so to get back to your answer, the playoffs are helpful in some regard, but it certainly isn’t something that’s a huge jumping off point, if it’s not something that’s already ingrained in the community. Muller: So, it sounds like what you’re talking about here is a loyalty to just the program for whatever reason. Is that, right? Goetz: Well, we certainly have people that are incredible. We’ve got an amazing season ticket holder base, amazing in terms of, like, the support that they give and the showing up. It’s hard for me to do something five times a year and we have people that are doing this 36 times a year. And when we made the playoffs, they came to all three home games. So they’re doing 39 times a year. They’re making a choice to come and support what we’re doing in the players and the coaches, which is really great. It’s building additional, instead of loyalty, I would maybe say affinity for some of the people who maybe are not hockey enthusiasts. But is this something that you can do a couple times a year because you enjoy it? It’s a family night out instead of going to a movie or going bowling or down to a high school sporting event. Is this something that we can capture more affinity from people? And we made some progress in that certainly. I could bore you with numbers all day long, if you wanted to, but the number of people who come to a game and then come back for a second or third game has almost doubled in the last two years. And that’s a really good sign. But there’s not enough new people getting to a game to fall in love with it, and that’s really where I think we’ve not been able to hit the mark. The people who are here love it and they’re enjoying it probably more and more. The people who have experienced it, are enjoying it and coming back more often, but not quite to the level of — you know, there’s a team in our league has a 5,000 season ticket holder base. (Savannah Ghost Pirates) We have a 5,000-seat arena. That would be lovely if we had that scenario. But it’s it’s not where we are right now. And in our attempts to grow towards that, we just haven’t made the progress that was necessary. So, our owner wants to take a pause, regroup and get some get some additional investment, be that financial, be it relationships. There needs to be some more investment from people locally to make sure that we’ve got the resources and the partnerships to move forward in a way that’s going to be more successful for us moving forward. Muller: Other teams have done this and come back. Goetz: That’s my understanding, yeah. Muller: One thing I’ve been wondering about is just how hard it is to compete with the University of Iowa. For example, you came off a three-day weekend visit, and at that time the Iowa Hawkeyes were in the NCAA basketball tournament. Iowa State was, too, for people want to watch on television. But Iowa was in the men’s tournament, there was an expectation the women might have been there as well. Goetz: Yeah. Muller: How easy is it to compete with that? Goetz: I would say not just the University of Iowa. I’m good friends with André Perry, who’s the executive director over at Hancher, and we were having a conversation a couple weeks ago that: one of the things that’s amazing about living in this community is that there’s, like, 19 different things that you could do every day. And that’s fantastic as a person who lives here but as somebody who’s trying to get people to forget about the other 18, that’s an additional challenge that, maybe, other markets don’t see the same way that we see. And I’m certainly not saying there the other markets that have ECHL franchises don’t have competition either but the University of Iowa is certainly one that’s really, really well ingrained, not just locally, but in the state. And so, whether that’s men’s basketball, women’s basketball, wrestling, football — which, the first third of our season happens during football season — high school football on Friday nights in the fall, the NFL on Sundays. there’s just so many different other opportunities, And so, one, trying to cut through the noise to make sure that people know that we’re available, because our our PR and marketing machine is as hard as our staff works at it. We don’t have the resources or the reach right now that a University of Iowa has so we don’t get the news coverage that they do. So, I would hate to say that it’s insurmountable but it is a reality of where we are right now, and we’ve got to find ways to make our make ourselves more visible and more attractive for people to say yes to once they see us. Muller: What happens with the affiliation with Minnesota Wild during the suspension? Goetz: The Minnesota Wild, we alerted them shortly before the announcement came out and, so, I don’t know what their plans are. Certainly they’re going to need an affiliate in the ECHL. So my assumption, which is not based in fact but my assumption, is that they’re going to look for a team to be an affiliate. And my hope is that they do that on a one-year basis b
