SUNRISE — More cars at the practice facility. That’s how Paul Maurice sees last season’s continued impact. Everyone likes a success story, and the effect of last season’s good news for so many South Florida sports means more good news entering this season.
University of Miami basketball coach Jim Larrañaga says a staggering 1,400 more season tickets were sold after last season’s Final Four trip. Athletic director Brian White says Florida Atlantic University’s trip to the Final Four meant the box suites, an added row of courtside seats and the lower bowl in their 3,000-seat arena are all sold out for this season
“We had a total of (24) season tickets left to sell,’’ White said Wednesday afternoon.
The Florida Panthers have their home opener Thursday night after three road games, and the trimmings of last year’s success will go beyond raising the Eastern Conference champion banner. The team says season tickets are sold out in its lower level, corporate sponsorship revenue is up 34 percent and social-media followers increased by four times from this time last year.
Then there’s Maurice’s gauge. His business isn’t the business of hockey. It’s winning. But he’s been around enough building franchises to spot a similar link between winning and the larger community.
“When an NHL team starts to build success, more kids start playing and the youth program takes off,’’ he said. “It’s happened in each market I’ve been. Cars in the parking lot say kids are playing and hockey’s a cool thing.
“I grew up with a tennis court across the street. I never went to it. But right after Wimbledon we’d go and play tennis for two straight weeks. We got to the final last year, and probably a whole bunch of people learned to skate.”
Sure enough, the Panthers say they have the highest youth-hockey participation since USA Hockey.
It’s all a reality check — good reality, not bad — that South Florida isn’t necessarily as bad a sports market as some teams’ feeble attendance suggested the last couple decades. It was just hibernating. It needed teams to win.
The Heat are outliers thanks to three championships in recent years even before making the Eastern Conference finals three of the past four years (and the NBA Finals twice, including last season).
It’s announced 505 straight sellouts. So, it measures success in uncomfortable way this season: Undrafted players it developed like Max Strus and Gabe Vincent went to other teams.
That’s another gauge of success. Nova Southeastern University, which won the Division II basketball title, lost its starting lineup as well as assistant Jordan Fee, who was named coach at Division II Gannon (Pa.) University.
All this follows the idea that one season’s competitive success is felt on the business side the next year. Larrañaga said recruits were more open to Miami after making the Final Eight and Final Four in successive years.
FAU coach Dusty May’s starters all returned to try a second run rather than transferring to larger schools. FAU is ranked No. 10 in the first poll (Miami is 13th) and White points to a fertile base of business growth.
FAU’s final seven home games last season were the seven most-attended in the program’s three-decade history. It had 74 season ticket holders before May and White arrived in 2018. It had 14,000 ticket requests for its Final Four appearance, White said. That was far beyond what FAU could satisfy, but the momentum held.
“We had 550 new donors to the athletic department after the (Final Four) run,’’ he said. “I have people calling and saying they want tickets on the floor and I have to say, ‘You can’t, they’re sold out.’
“They say, ‘I want to be in the lower bowl,’ and I have to say, ‘You can’t, they’re sold out.”
White figured the university got $1.9 billion worth of exposure last basketball season. Its merchandise sales went up 41 percent, year-over-year royalties increased 64 percent and Adidas sales and royalties up 300 percent.
That’s how it works when you win. Look acrosst he landscape. The Marlins’ attendance increased by more than 3,000 fans a game this playoff season from last year. The Panthers’ had about 1,800 more fans last season after making the playoffs in 2021-22.
We’re just so jacked up to play at home in front of our fans,” forward Matthew Tkachuk said about Thursday’s opener.
Just how many fans there are this season will continue last season’s story.
