The buzz being generated by Saturday’s sold-out Seattle Torrent-N.Y. Sirens game at MSG “shows how far” the PWHL has come since debuting three years ago, according to Dina Katgara of BLOOMBERG NEWS. Sirens F Elle Hartje said, “Being able to sell out MSG, I just don’t think that’s something anyone could have dreamed of a couple years ago.” The league’s attendance rose 27% to “roughly” 7,200 per game last season. PWHL Advisory Board member Stan Kasten noted that this season has “risen to upwards of 10,000 a contest.” The MSG game is “expected to set a new” U.S. attendance record for women’s hockey, surpassing the previous mark of 17,335 fans in Seattle earlier this season. Interest in the game “has surged,” according to StubHub, with demand on the ticket seller’s platform “more than 30 times higher than a typical Sirens game.” Kasten said that league ownership of all teams has “made it easier to get it off the ground and be versatile with quicker decision making.” He said that there has “been lots of interest in investing” in the league, while not “ruling out clubs being independently owned at some point.” A “big part” of getting there will be how games like the one this weekend go (BLOOMBERG NEWS, 4/2).
ANOTHER ROUND: The CP noted as the PWHL’s 16-game Takeover Tour comes to a close in Alberta, EVP/Business Operations Amy Scheer was “working on the next edition of the Tour” for the league’s fourth season. Scheer said, “We’ll definitely look to bring the Takeover Tour back next year. I would say that we’ll do no less than what we’ve done this year. Still determining what the final number would be, but I don’t think we’ll be less than we did this year.” There are no plans yet to take the Takeover Tour outside North America, as Scheer said she does not “think we’re quite ready to leave North America yet.” Scheer: “It’s certainly on our mood board for an aspirational kind of thing, but maybe a little bit further out than next season” (CP, 4/2).
