Plymouth rink

Kevlar68

Well-Known Member
#3
Swansea have an indoor events arena being built with 3,500 capacity, add a rink to it, nice close trip, then they can be as rubbish as the football and rugby teams. :p
 

moggy#9

Well-Known Member
Thread starter #5
It's
No. Lived and worked in Plymouth for several years. An ideal location for your Summer vacation..... but nothing else.
A decent sized city, with a massive catchment area, and little competition in terms of top sport. That to me seems an ideal me market for hockey. Add teams in Bristol and Southampton (both places with hockey histories) and you'd have done decent rivalries. Unfortunately whenever we hear about a new rink being built, it always seems to be under specified.
 

Diablo3

Well-Known Member
#6
It's

A decent sized city, with a massive catchment area, and little competition in terms of top sport. That to me seems an ideal me market for hockey. Add teams in Bristol and Southampton (both places with hockey histories) and you'd have done decent rivalries. Unfortunately whenever we hear about a new rink being built, it always seems to be under specified.
It does seem a bit short sighted of these developers. The sport is growing and we need the arenas to support it.
 

moggy#9

Well-Known Member
Thread starter #7
It does seem a bit short sighted of these developers. The sport is growing and we need the arenas to support it.
I think that it's a perception Vs risk situation. Public skating is known to generate revenue (I think that's why we get so many winter wonderland rinks around the country now), but hockey isn't perceived as a surefire thing, particularly in new markets. Personally I think that the EIHL needs to do some outreach to councils in locations it sees as having potential to make sure the right sorry of rinks get built.
 

Imp

Active Member
#8
Plymouth’s catchment area is huge, but population density is very low. Everything west of Bristol adds up to less than twice the Greater Manchester area.

Plymouth itself is significantly smaller than Cardiff and has no track record with the sport (let alone “of success”).

It’ll do ... as a start.
 

moggy#9

Well-Known Member
Thread starter #9
Plymouth’s catchment area is huge, but population density is very low. Everything west of Bristol adds up to less than twice the Greater Manchester area.

Plymouth itself is significantly smaller than Cardiff and has no track record with the sport (let alone “of success”).

It’ll do ... as a start.
Well the population of Plymouth is 2/3 of Cardiff. We had no history of the sport prior to 1986. My personal view is that big markets are problematic due to competition from other sports and entertainments. I think that if we want more stable teams, the midsized locations are the way to go.

For the record I'd certainly want teams back in Southampton, Brighton, Durham, Bristol and somewhere along the M4 corridor.
 

Imp

Active Member
#10
I think that if we want more stable teams, the midsized locations are the way to go.
It’s really more about the size of arena people seem to expect.

Devils (maybe) wish that they had an extra 1000 seats right now, but 3-4 years ago 3,000 looked riskily ambitious.

Manchester, Guildford, Coventry, Dundee, rarely seem ‘packed’ ... and that’s for EIHL, which is probably 5-10 years+ in Plymouth’s thinking.

I assume they’ll have a team. I know players from Plymouth travel to play in 3-on-3 leagues, so that'll likely turn into an NIHL2 (or similar) league team.

The immediate benefit is on the youth side and that doesn’t need more than a few spectator spaces.
 

moggy#9

Well-Known Member
Thread starter #11
It’s really more about the size of arena people seem to expect.

Devils (maybe) wish that they had an extra 1000 seats right now, but 3-4 years ago 3,000 looked riskily ambitious.

Manchester, Guildford, Coventry, Dundee, rarely seem ‘packed’ ... and that’s for EIHL, which is probably 5-10 years+ in Plymouth’s thinking.

I assume they’ll have a team. I know players from Plymouth travel to play in 3-on-3 leagues, so that'll likely turn into an NIHL2 (or similar) league team.

The immediate benefit is on the youth side and that doesn’t need more than a few spectator spaces.
I can't argue with any of that. I think in Cardiff we could certainly fill at least a couple of thousands extra seats if they were available, based on the experience of Nottingham moving up to their arena.

Yes, it would be lovely to have more teams in lovely big arenas, but they need infrastructure to support it. 3-4k seems the sweet spot for new teams to me.
 
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