True North enlists business leaders to help sell Winnipeg Jets season tickets

True North Sports and Entertainment has recruited Manitoba businesspeople to sell season tickets for the Winnipeg Jets.

True North invited business leaders to Canada Life Centre on Tuesday as part of an effort to expand its season-ticket base, spokesperson Krista Sinaisky said.

At the meeting, True North chief revenue officer Norva Riddell invited businesspeople from Winnipeg and elsewhere in Manitoba "to promote season ticket memberships to their respective business and personal networks," Sinaisky said in a statement.

This was the launch of what True North calls the Winnipeg Jets Team Builders Program, which is part of a broader strategy to fill more seats, Sinaisky said. 

True North executive chair Mark Chipman and co-owner David Thomson attended the launch, she said. Thomson was in Winnipeg to attend a signing ceremony involving True North Real Estate Development and the Southern Chiefs' Organization, which are working on major downtown Winnipeg redevelopment projects.

True North is trying to reverse an attendance trend that began five years ago.

Prior to the pandemic, Winnipeg sold out almost every game at Canada Life Centre. Average Jets attendance during the 2018-2019 season, the last full season before the pandemic, was 15,276. That was only a few seats shy of Canada Life Centre's 15,321-seat capacity for hockey.

Attendance dropped to 14,045 in 2022-23, the first full season unaffected by pandemic restrictions on large public gatherings. Late that season, True North launched a season ticket drive, announcing it had anticipated another drop in sales.

So far this season, average attendance for the Jets at Canada Life Centre is 12,120, according to Hockeydb.com. That's the second-lowest in the league, above only the