Blackhawks tickets, United Center renovations: Q&A with president Jaime Faulkner

Jaime Faulkner was hired as Blackhawks president of business nearly four years ago.

In her time, the Blackhawks have made several changes, from the TV broadcasting booth to how they sell their season tickets to their youth hockey initiatives.

Leading up to the Blackhawks home opener on Thursday, Faulkner discussed with The Athletic some of those changes, what lies ahead with the teams centennial season, the impact Connor Bedard has had and much more.

(Note: Questions and answers have been lightly edited for clarity and length.) Its been nearly four years since you were hired.

What impact do you think you have made? I think one of the things Im most proud of changing is that weve got an incredible leadership team here in place now, and thats really helped change the culture at the Blackhawks.

You have to have the right people to do the really great things you want to do for fans.

I think were really proud of the work weve done in protecting our season-ticket holders and our most loyal fans, and thats the lens we take on most business decisions that we make.

Is it good for the fans first? If it is, well make it work everywhere else.

I think weve made a lot of good decisions in that area.

Things like lowering season-ticket prices for the first couple years I was here and capping season tickets so that our season-ticket holders can maintain the value of what theyre buying.

Making sure that we have tickets available for new fans who want to come in and watch the Blackhawks.

Advertisement I think weve done all the right things for our most loyal customers, but also try to be as inclusive as possible bringing in all the new fans.

You were in Utah for the opener.

What are you taking in from your position? How new organizations are entertaining fans and what theyre doing within their building? I would say everywhere that we travel with the team, we are spending our time meeting with the leaderships of the other teams, sometimes not just the NHL clubs but the other clubs and teams in that market, really understanding best practices, whats coming, what are the new ideas.

And when we sit down for those games that night, in addition to obviously watching the Blackhawks play, were looking for any idea, things that seem to work with the crowd.

What we can bring back to our events and experience team? So, we always have a learning mentality.

I think the team we have in place wakes up every day and thinks: How do we make this better? How do we make it better for the fans? How do we deliver more for the fans? The most surprising thing in Utah was the number of times the video board showed somebody chugging beer.

It definitely felt like they were encouraging people to do that.

Ive noticed in the United Center that it seems the cameras pan off people who begin chugging their drink.

Is that done purposely? Youre very observant.

Its a conscious decision because we love to show our fans, but we want to show all of our different fans having a great time and what the vibe is at the United Center.

I will say, most of our fans are not chugging beers, and most of the fans in Utah were not chugging beers.

As you know, most of them didnt have beers in their hands.

Being the 30-year anniversary of the United Center, it seems like a building that has aged relatively well.

From your perspective and going around the league to other stadiums, whats your perception of the United Center? I know youve asked about adding cup holders a million times, but do you foresee future renovations? I think we have one of the best, if not the best, operations team in North America.

The reason that building looks so great is the care and attention that Terry Savarise and Joe Myhra, the leadership of the United Center, what their team puts into that building every day, and the investment, quite honestly, by the owners to ensure that its clean, that it has the best staff and that we keep up with it.

Advertisement As we go look at whats happening with other buildings across the country, whether its the renovations or the new builds, the focus is on more access to different types of premium.

Our building, your options are really suites and maybe a membership to a club to your seats.

Most buildings have a lot of different choices you can make to have more premium experiences.

Then as it relates to their concourses, theyre bringing in food that is more street-worthy and theyre working on speed of service.

I know as were thinking of not only the 1901 project , were working on planning for the internal part of the United Center so that we can figure out whats next.

There are plans in place that we are working through right now to continue to improve whats available to our fans coming to a Blackhawks game.

For fans who are coming on Thursday or any point this season, are there any changes they can expect this season? I think one of the changes that will be fun is our broadcast studio is there and they will be live and it will be open to the atrium.

We typically pack the atrium out before games, so having sort of a College GameDay environment there, we think, will add more energy to the atrium, and that will be a lot of fun.

As it relates to when youre in your seats and youre watching the game experience, we do have a couple new elements.

One of the things our events and experiences team has done, as weve looked at other venues across the country, is what types of technology so whether thats sound, lighting, things like crypto, all the different sort of bells and whistles you can have what are we missing? What do we want to have to really elevate either typical moments in a game, the energy of the crowd or just getting people excited before puck drops? They have implemented some new things for this year, both lighting and sound-wise, which I think will be great for our fans.

Advertisement The Milwaukee preseason games have seemed to be hits.

Do you foresee future preseason games there or in other locations? Milwaukee was definitely a hit.

It did exactly what we wanted it to do, which was continue to bring hockey to an already deep fan base in Milwaukee and then continue to grow that fan base, and thats why we do it.

As it relates to taking it to other areas of the market, were definitely open to it.

We wont be doing that next year because its our centennial season, so our focus will be celebrating that next year.

But as soon as we start planning for the year after that, we may consider whether we want to do another neutral-site game and whether that would be going back to Milwaukee or picking another location.

Would you consider televising IceHogs games on Chicago Sports Network (CHSN)? We know this team is really fun to watch and wed love for CHSN to be in a position where they can one day broadcast Rockfords games as well.

I know you technically dont have anything to do with CHSNs negotiations, though fans have probably been expressing their frustrations with you.

Is there any update you can give or any information that hasnt been released so far that you might be able to provide fans at this point? I get updates when the network gives us updates.

I would say the end game is still the same.

Our goal is to provide as many people the ability to watch this game as possible, but were not at the table negotiating these days.

This is a much bigger thing and its being led by CHSN.

The Blackhawks have started on the road the last four seasons and had lengthy trips.

Is that the NHLs doing, or is it about the United Center accessibility or something else? Weve requested that from the league to open on the road.

I think even (coach) Luke (Richardson) commented on this in his media availability.

The reason is (that) he likes to start on the road, especially the last couple of years where weve had a different roster to start the year off.

It gives the guys time to get to know each other better.

Theyre focused on the road.

I think the net is that we request it on behalf of hockey.

It also quite honestly gives us more time to ready for the home opener, which we like to do really big as well.

It doesnt mean the league will give it to us, but it is the request we put in every year.

With Connor Bedard entering his second season, do you envision a different way of marketing him or expanding his influence? I would say that the requests for Connor have only gone up.

They havent gone down since he started in his year two.

Weve been very careful and thoughtful in the things that we have him involved in.

It is still only his second year in the league.

He needs to focus on doing hockey and hes also doing a lot of his own things, which we love.

So hes going on Instagram live, some of the fun content that hes doing with some of his own partners.

Were trying to be careful and thoughtful with him just like we are with all of our players on what theyre doing.

How have ticket sales, whether season or single game, gone so far for this season? Well, we had a 97 percent renewal rate for season tickets, which is amazing.

And then our single-game sales are very strong this year.

Weve sold more single tickets than we had last year.

Season-ticket holders are committed and the interest is high for single-game buyers to come to games.

Its higher than it was last year.

We just continue to build on the excitement of the future of the team.

Advertisement Have you capped off season tickets for any of the sections? Yeah, 300 (section) is capped.

200 is close.

I think we have a little bit left in 100.

Having just seen Gary Bettman in Utah and with the Winter Classic coming up, do you anticipate having any other marquee NHL games here or overseas in the near future? We havent had any direct conversations with the league about that yet.

But I would imagine we will be asked to participate in more NHL tentpole events in the future.

We are not planning for next year, which is our centennial year.

Again, the big celebration is celebrating at home with our fans the whole season.

Do you anticipate any jersey retirement ceremonies this season? No, none for this season.

With the 10-year anniversary of the 2013 Stanley Cup team, you didnt do anything to commemorate it and there was talk of it happening during the centennial season.

Do you anticipate doing anything this season with the 2014-15 Cup-winning team or is that potentially something that will happen in the centennial season as well? The plan is that were going to celebrate all of our Cup-winning teams in our centennial year.

What are those preparations like for the centennial? Well, you begin preparing early.

So we started planning our centennial over a year ago.

Centennial celebrations will really kick off after the Winter Classic.

Thats when well start to announce things that will begin coming up.

But a lot of planning has gone into it because obviously you have 100 years of incredible history to celebrate.

A lot of work not only goes into planning the celebrations, but weve spent a lot of time over the last couple years re-establishing or strengthening relationships with our alumni, or as many alumni as we can get a hold of.

Weve been putting a lot of different types of effort into getting us ready for the party of the century.

Are there artifacts from the early days of the organization? I imagine the Hockey Hall of Fame has some of that.

Is there a storage facility where you have older items? Whats the process like? We actually have somebody on the staff with the Blackhawks whose job is authentics and archives.

Their job is to wake up every day and go find our pieces of history and make sure we have the best relationships with anybody who wore a Blackhawks sweater.

We are finding the craziest things from fans appearing on random eBay shops to people calling us up now that they know we have this, saying I have XYZ, are you interested in that.

So part of this two-year process has been finding pieces of our history, whether thats stories, getting stories from fans or alumni, whether thats getting an actual physical piece of something, whether that was Chicago Stadium or first check somebody got to the contract that was written on a napkin to just gear, getting some of our former alumnis gear.

(Top photo of Danny Wirtz, Kyle Davidson and Jaime Faulkner: Chase Agnello-Dean / NHLI via Getty Images).

This article has been shared from the original article on theathleticuk, here is the link to the original article:

https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/5847714/2024/10/17/blackhawks-tickets-united-center-renovations/