Panthers see growth in season-ticket sales, TV viewership after Stanley Cup win

MANALAPAN, Fla. -- The Florida Panthers were viewed differently at the NHL Board of Governors meeting this year. Not only are they Stanley Cup champions, they’re a model for business strategy and growth.

“All the teams are coming up to me,” Panthers president Matt Caldwell said Tuesday. “I mean, Florida was, like, a team that was forgotten about, and now we’re considered, like, a destination franchise, as we call it. You don’t just go to South Florida to enjoy the beaches. You can win hockey games, win championships, and also have this exciting fanbase.”

The Panthers missed the Stanley Cup Playoffs 18 times and lost in the opening round six times from 1996-2021. They struggled to fill the stands. But they won a playoff series in 2021-22, went to the Cup Final in 2022-23 and won the Cup last season.

“We were growing,” Caldwell said. “But then actually winning the Cup has completely accelerated that.”

This season, the Panthers have sold out of season tickets for the first time. They capped the number at 15,000 full season-ticket equivalents. Amerant Bank Arena has a capacity of 19,109 for hockey, eighth in the NHL.

“We’ve sold them out in the lower bowl before, but this is the first time between the lower bowl, the upper bowl,” Caldwell said. “We have a big arena. We have over 19,000 seats. So, never imagined that happening.”

Florida is averaging 18,632 fans this season, eighth in the NHL. Caldwell said it will sell out at least 30 of its 41 home games.

The composition of the crowds has changed too. Opposing fans often have invaded games, especially when the Panthers are hosting an Original Six team.

“They still get in,” Caldwell said. “But they’re totally dwarfed by the number of Panther fans now.”

Sponsorship, merchandise, parking, and food and beverage revenue each is at an all-time high.

“All those things, I guess, you would expect from a Stanley Cup champion,” Caldwell said. “But a team with our history, with South Florida not known as a big sports market, with some of the problems the team has had in the past, those are incredible numbers for us.”

Caldwell said what’s more impressive is that the Panthers are reaching the casual fan better than ever before.

There is a lot of competition for eyeballs and dollars in South Florida, thanks to warm-weather activities and other sports teams. After the Panthers went to the Cup Final in 2022-23, their social media numbers and TV ratings stayed essentially flat.

“It’s tough to get the casual fans out,” Caldwell said. “The way to really introduce them to the game is through social media and the traditional media. This was most interesting to me. … We were seeing that the team’s success wasn’t quite reaching the casual fan.”

The Panthers invested in their social media team, hired new marketing executives and changed their TV strategy. Caldwell said 15-20 percent of the market is dropping cable each year, so Florida moved to an over-the-air provider, Scripps Sports, and a direct-to-consumer streaming app, Panthers Plus.

Caldwell said they have risen from last in the NHL to 25th in combined social media followers, and the engagement of their followers is 11th in the League. Their TV viewership is up 170 percent, reaching about 3 million people instead of about 1 million with cable. Their unique streams are up 43 percent.

“The Cup was phenomenal,” Caldwell said. “It really ignited the fan base to come to games, spend more money with us, sponsors and all that. But now the casual fan is coming in, because they have access now. I think the strategy, given that we’re in growth mode, we wanted to move to another provider, because we want to make it as easy as possible to watch games.”

After the main meeting Monday, the NHL had Caldwell talk to other teams in a breakout session about the over-the-air TV strategy.

“We’re now being looked at as kind of a good example of what you can do to grow your fanbase,” Caldwell said.

The Panthers want to keep it going.

They opened a state-of-the-art practice facility about a year ago. They have locked up general manager Bill Zito, coach Paul Maurice, their core players and their arena lease for the long term. At 18-9-2, they lead the Atlantic Division and rank sixth in the NHL.

Florida has hosted the NHL Draft (2001 and 2015) and the NHL All-Star Game (2003 and 2023) twice each, but after this season, it will be one of only two teams that has not participated in an NHL outdoor game. The other is the Utah Hockey Club, which purchased the hockey assets of the Arizona Coyotes and joined the League as a new franchise this season.

“It took us a long time just to get the All-Star Game in 2023,” Caldwell said. “We got that before we even went to a Stanley Cup [Final], and we performed. The League’s got to be comfortable that the host city is going to execute well.

“Now we’ve been to two straight Cup [Finals]. We won one. We’d love to get any of the marquee outdoor games -- Stadium Series, anything -- but I think we have a lot more credibility now. We have a fan base that hopefully gives everyone confidence [that it] will show up and be there, so we’re excited about that.”

There is still a lot of room to grow.

“Ultimately, we have a fan base of about 500,000 or so people,” Caldwell said. “A lot of those people are coming out to games. But we want to grow that to, like, a million people. We just want to grow the pie, so that you just have more people engaged with the brand.”