As part of a season ticket holder event at Kraken Community Iceplex, CEO Tod Leiweke held a wide-ranging media availability. Answers have been edited for clarity and length.
‘Work’s Not Done’
Leiweke: We took a lot of stuff on. The arena, I believe, is the most beautiful in the world. Coachella Valley is the best set up in the American Hockey League. But we still have work to do here. We still have fans to be built. And we still have a team that hasn’t quite hit its high note, but we’re super optimistic.
When you look at our center position, Matty Beniers and Shane Wright, the 21, 22-year-old guys. We added Chandler Stevenson. We have ten picks in the first two rounds in the next three years. We’ve got cap space. And we have players who want to be here. No big summer vacations for anyone because we have a long list to do. Retaining, drafting, recruiting, building. And we’re going to talk more about that in the next couple of weeks.
Moving To Streaming & Free Over-The-Air TV
Leiweke: Trying to take our broadcasts and make them accessible. We put games on over the air. We stream them on Amazon Prime, not behind the paywall. We produced the games. So when we would show games at home this season, we told the whole story. People saw it and said, that’s amazing. And they can become fans through broadcast.
Lowering Prices On 80% Of Season Tickets
Leiweke: True fandom, lifelong fandom, happens when people come to games. And there was a perception that people couldn’t get into the building, that the tickets were too expensive. And some of that was fair. So today we announced that 10% of the tickets are going to be family priced. But if you’re going to do that for new fans, what about the people who were with you before we had a team name?
Today we announced that 80% of our tickets for season ticket members will actually go down.
We also are rolling out a 25% discount on all concessions for season ticket holders. Every game, every concession stand. And it’s the right thing to do. We’ve settled the business down. There’s much more predictability. This was not for the faint of heart. We spent $2 billion launching this enterprise.
But this is the kind of ownership we have. We say the right time to thank people is when you’re on your toes and when your building’s full, and that’s what we did today.
Responding To Fan Input
Leiweke: The research indicated that people do love this team, and there’s an intense love affair that’s been created with our fans, how they feel about our brand, the game experience, our community activism. So we’re doing a lot right, but we’ve got work to do because we’re not going to settle until we achieve our potential, and I think our potential is to be one of the best teams in sports.
Ownership Balancing Patience vs. Action
Leiweke: We have done things that no one thought we could do. We won places where others dared not to go, and we pulled it off. And those same fires burn for what we want to do on the ice. They burn for us, relative to how fans and developing fandom, and how you treat people who have been with you from day one.
Part of being decisive is being deliberate and patient, and we’ve done that with the team. We’ve drafted now, I think, 37 picks since we started. We have an excellent group of prospects, and some of them are no longer prospects. Some of these are guys that are going to come and play for us as soon as next year. So I’m bullish about all this.
But there’s no shortcuts. When you make mistakes and take shortcuts, you can set yourself up for a challenge. We are going to be making some announcements coming up that are going to show that we’re deeply committed to winning.
Kraken Will Wear New 3rd Jersey Next Season
Leiweke: It was a couple of years that we’ve been talking about the third jersey. Some said let’s do it this year but we wanted to do something that was a little bit unusual and cool. We’ve done that, and we can’t wait to launch it. (Asking reporters) Do you want to see it? I can’t show you. It’ll be ready for the next season.
I have it in my office, but I’m going to move it after these comments.
Difficult Trade Deadline Decisions Made Room For Prospects
Leiweke: It was hard at the trade deadline. People loved (Brandon) Tanev and his look and his energy. Yanni Gourde was a guy I knew in Tampa. So it’s hard.
These kids are coming, and it’s going to be an undeniable force as these players hit. Watching Jani (Nyman), who now goes back down to Coachella Valley, I think his game is built for the NHL, and I think he’s going to be a great player this league.
Continued Faith In GM Ron Francis
Leiweke: Ron is a guy who is two doors down, and when I first met Ron, I met a Hall of Famer, somebody who played in the league for 23 years, somebody deeply committed to winning, and I think we had a good relationship.
I think Ron has set us up (for success). There’s part we haven’t talked much about. I don’t know that we could have written a tougher script of inviting free agents and others to come to a city that was unknown, foreign, in the midst of a global pandemic.
The first year, kids couldn’t come to games. It was hard to do everything, much less build a team from scratch. But when we look back and look what he’s done in Coachella Valley, the prospects that we have now in our system, our current roster, and this summer, we have cap space, we have picks, our future’s bright. (And he will be leading the charge?) Yes, he will.
Many thanks to Allyson Ballard, who assisted with the preparation of this story.