The Arizona Coyotes have been the laughing stock of the NHL for years now, but made things worse when they announced that they would be playing out of Arizona State University's 5,000-seat arena for the next three seasons. The Coyotes were kicked out of their Glendale, AZ home at the end of this past season and while they go through the planning and building of their new arena in Tempe, they will be temporarily relocating to ASU's arena.
The Coyotes had a hard enough time filling an 18,000-seat arena most nights, so in downsizing to the 5,000-seat arena you would think it would make sense.. That is until you see the virtual seat map tour they've shared. For a college rink, it's state-of-the-art, but for an NHL team, it's far from it. With just a lower bowl for seating, the upper bowl is mainly suite access and media boxes. The pricing of tickets is a whole other can of worms.
One would think that if you were playing at a college campus you would try to make tickets more affordable to actually sell out a game or two, but the Coyotes don't believe that. Single game tickets range from $89 to $445. Whole season tickets are priced as high as $14,350. For an organization that says they want to "grow the game" in the south, you would think they would want to work with ASU and have certain tickets available for student purchase at a reasonable price.
It'll be an interesting first season at the ASU arena for the Coyotes, and the league can only hope that Tempe approves of the planning and renderings of the proposed new arena so that the Coyotes can get back to being considered an NHL team and play in an NHL arena to avoid any further embarrassment.
