Sports
The New York Sirens PWHL Franchise Has Attendance Problems
The Newark-based team average attendance was the lowest in the PWHL for the 2024-25 season.
The New York Sirens hockey team exists but just how many people in the New York-New Jersey-Connecticut know that the team plays out of Newark, New Jersey? The Professional Women’s Hockey League gets almost no coverage in the market. Madison Square Garden Network does show Sirens games as well as WWOR, Channel 9, New Jersey so there is some exposure but the city’s two all sports talk radio stations won’t bother with women’s sports and newspaper coverage is sparse. The PWHL has no national TV contract. The league is owned by Major League Baseball’s Los Angeles Dodgers frontman Mark Walter through The Mark Walter Group.
The PWHL has eight teams and Walter keeps the finances of the league private but he cannot be happy with the fact that a Sirens-Boston game in Newark drew just 1,884 people on December 17th. The team averaged 2,764 people per game in 13 home games in 2024-25. The Sirens drew 3,517 people to the home opener on November 29th, the lowest total of any team in the league for a home opener. The December 21st Sunday afternoon game against Toronto drew 3,517. The game was up against the Minnesota Viking-New York Giants game at the Meadowlands. There was also a New Jersey Devils game that evening.
The Sirens’ home schedule doesn’t have many prime times. A New Year’s Eve game starts at 1 in the afternoon. The day after new year’s, January 2nd is another 1 in the afternoon home game. There are no home games between January 20th and February 26th because of the Olympics break. There is another large gap in the home schedule between March 8th and April 1st.
The PWHL is in its third season of play and the Sirens franchise has been a problem since day one. The Sirens played in the league’s first game on January 1st, 2024 against Toronto. The PWHL appears to be doing better than other women’s hockey leagues. It is surviving. Boston, Montréal, Newark, New Jersey, Ottawa, St. Paul, Minnesota, Seattle, Toronto and Vancouver have franchises. The New York team has bounced around the New York City market as Bridgeport, Connecticut was its original home although the team did use the Islanders’ rink in Elmont, New York for a few home games. For year two, the team moved to Newark and uses the New Jersey Devils old practice facility in West Orange, New Jersey. That rink is a hockey hotbed.
The Bridgeport home made some sense from one standpoint. The Greenwich Stingers girls hockey team has been in existence for more than 40 years and there is a fan base in Fairfield County, Connecticut for women’s hockey. The Bridgeport rink is 20 minutes from Greenwich and closer to New Canaan and Fairfield. Julie Chu, A.J. Mleczko, and Sue Merz are from Fairfield County and were members of the United States National Team and US Women’s Olympic teams. A total of nine Connecticut trained players ended up on Olympic teams. Connecticut produces players. No New Jersey born women’s player has made it to the Olympics although Alex Carpenter spent a part of her youth on ice at New Jersey Devils practice sessions while her father Bobby was with the team before heading off to Connecticut. The NHL’s New Jersey Devils sponsor a Jersey Girls Hockey Club program for 5 to 12 year olds. So there is interest in girls youth hockey programs. But it has not translated to the PWHL in Newark. There is no indication that the PWHL will leave the New York market but if attendance continues to be low, the PWHL bosses have to look into the reasons why and whether it is worth keeping a team in Newark.
Meanwhile, the PWHL Takeover Tour has started. This tour could be a prelude to an eventual PWHL expansion as the league will test markets in Calgary, Chicago, Dallas, Halifax, Hamilton, Ontario, Washington, D.C. and Winnipeg along with a return to Denver, Detroit, Edmonton and Québec City. Each city will get two games and will be able to showcase markets and arenas to Walter. During the 2024-2025 Professional Women’s Hockey League’s Takeover Tour, the league drew large crowds in Seattle and in Vancouver and awarded those cities expansion franchises last April. Halifax, Nova Scotia was the first stop of the “tour” on December 17th. Halifax arena was sold-out with a crowd of 10,438 watching Montréal and Toronto. A December 21st matchup between Minnesota and Ottawa in Chicago drew 7,238 people, a respectful crowd in a 16,700 seat arena.
There are plans to expand to 12 teams. PWHL executive vice president of business operations Amy Scheer has confirmed that the league is planning to add teams. “We added Vancouver and Seattle this year, two teams, we’re going to expand at least 2-4 teams next year, we are in growth mode and this league is exploding,” said Scheer. But, there may be a problem in Boston and a problem in Ottawa. The Boston team doesn’t play in Boston. It plays at UMass-Lowell, which is about 30 miles north of downtown Boston. Attendance has been mediocre as the building is away from Boston and Providence, Rhode Island where there is significant population. A proposed Ottawa arena plan would see the local arena seated capacity reduced by roughly 3,000 people, to 5,500 seats and that plan the PWHL does not feel supports Ottawa’s fan base, or the financial viability of the team. The league does not want to move the franchise to the National Hockey League’s Ottawa Senators franchise building in suburban Kanata. Senators ownership is looking to build a venue in downtown Ottawa. The “Takeover Tour” could yield a number of options for the league to leave Ottawa if the arena issue is not resolved or for the Newark attendance problem if the numbers don’t pick up.
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New York Sirens