Monthly Archives: January 2009

A Big Tent

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We want to make the Washington Capitals a world class organization and we want to welcome all fans – old, present and new - to the joys of Caps hockey.

I am asking as a personal favor to our long-standing fans for you to put out the welcome mat to our new fans and friends. It is important for us to extend our reach and build out our audience for the great game of hockey and now is the time to do it.

You all have the keys to the bandwagon. Drive folks around on it. Help us to build a huge community around the NHL and the Washington Capitals. Welcome everyone – old and new - to the team. I promise to always cherish our long-standing relationships and we will never forget what got us to this point in our development.

Thanks so much. A bandwagon is a good thing. Roll it out – all are welcome here. Go Caps!

Elvis!!!

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Thanks for letting everyone know it is my birthday, you too Facebook. Yes, me and Elvis, the King, share the same day.

I appreciate everyone’s thoughts and best wishes. The thing about birthdays is that well, everyone has one, but the outpouring of well wishes is overwhelming so thank you one and all.

Thanks Dan, and BTW, Local Sports Talk Radio is Clueless

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Here is another nice piece on our team. Our play of late has made us the talk of the town. Read the article here.

I had to laugh out loud last night. I was listening to ESPN 980, our local sports talk station.

The talk and banter went something like this:

“I am watching our local NBC affiliate. They are showing the weather in Cleveland because it is snowing there. Who cares about the weather in Cleveland? What is the weather here?” followed by lots of studio laughter and lots of making fun of weather men.

Then there was a discussion on ESPN and college and NBA basketball coverage; Dick Vitale covering NBA action; and lots of snarky discussion on ESPN even though the station has been re-branded ESPN 980. I don’t get it, do you? Why do the sports reporters dislike ESPN when the station is an ESPN branded station now? Talk about biting the hand that feeds you. :-) I guess that shows editorial independence, huh?

Then the big topic of the day was “What do you all think of the Boston College coach getting fired? Call us and let us talk about it.”

So I ask you: Why is it bad to talk about the weather in Cleveland but good to talk about the coach at Boston College when the Wizards are playing at 7:00 PM and the Caps are the talk of the town?

Phew, these guys are clueless. Thanks Dan for the ink and pixels. Go Caps!

Happy Birthday to Me

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I will consider this nice column by Tom Boswell as a birthday card to me. It is a perfect note of recognition to our fan base. Thank you.

We have come a long way since Tom encouraged our season ticket holders to come to my home and burn their tickets and throw them on my front lawn, huh? :-)

I will never forget that column. Tearing our team down and announcing a rebuild plan is a very difficult process for a sports team owner. One of the main reasons ownership doesn’t take risks in the sports field to improve is the fear of media humiliation, which we received in column after column. I wanted to be transparent and honest to our fans in regards to our plan. I am glad we did it and I am glad we are so well positioned right now.

I am happy to say that we believed in our plan and I didn’t care what the media wrote. I am focused on our deliverable: a generationally great team; a Stanley Cup champion; and great ROI for your time and money in our team.

Thanks Caps fans for rocking the red and thanks Tom for “getting it” and being so supportive now. 

Let No Good Deed Go Unpunished!

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This is crazy. Here we sit in Northern VA, so close to the planned activities yet so far away.

So I guess if you voted and want to be part of the festivities and live in VA, you should go stay in a hotel in DC so you don’t have to travel to and fro. But wait a minute; all hotels are sold out so you are out of luck.

Imagine if the tables were turned and we in Northern VA closed the bridges for people in the District to enter our neighborhoods. What would be happening in the courts and in the media? :-)  This is just an unspeakable act of inconvenience for folks in Virginia. 

Owner’s Corner at the Halfway Mark..

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Here is my Owner’s Corner related to the Washington Capitals as we have hit the halfway mark of our season.

Last night’s game felt like a playoff game. We had a great crowd, another sellout, and we beat our budget again. Thank you so very much. It was a sea of red out there and you were all loud and proud.

I thought the game was physical, high-paced and tense. Even though it was a win in a shootout, I thought we rose to the occasion and played a great style of hockey for our fans. We get the two points. We inch closer to the #1 spot in the East as Boston lost.

We have high aspirations. We are getting healthier and we all couldn’t be any prouder of our team and our fan base at the halfway mark.

Herewith is my Owner’s Corner…

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE – January 7, 2009

Owner’s Corner Midseason Review

ARLINGTON, Va. – Happy New Year. We’ve reached the midpoint of the NHL regular season, and I’m very satisfied and excited about the strides our organization has made on and off the ice. It’s a fun time to be an owner, player, coach or a fan.  I remember writing previous midseason Owner’s Corners and asking for your patience as young, unknown players developed and as we were assembling our team. Thank you for supporting us through difficult times.

Let me acknowledge that we still have significant strides to make if we hope to meet our ultimate goals of long-term success and our first Stanley Cup. But as we have said all along, it is a journey, and this part of the journey is enjoyable. So while we strive to continually improve, let us also take the time to appreciate the process.

With last night’s victory we have 57 points (best in team history through 41 games), tops in our division and second in the Eastern Conference. And the community has responded, embracing our team and its players. I always thought that if we could put an exciting, successful product on the ice, the D.C. area would respond.

My metrics – your emails primary among them – demonstrate that hockey in D.C. is as strong as it ever has been, and it is continuing to grow at a rapid pace. Our fans, most importantly our plan holders, are extremely satisfied with what we have delivered. We certainly have “rocked the red” as attendance is up more than 30% when compared with last year. We already have recorded 10 sellouts – two more than all of last season – and many more are on the horizon. Capitals fans around the world are consuming our product through a variety of traditional as well as nontraditional means.

Our Comcast SportsNet television ratings have steadily increased and are 130% better than a year ago, and yesterday we announced a new television venture, Capitals Red Line Monday, presented by Geico. The show will debut Feb. 9 on CSN and highlight the personalities of our players as well as give fans a behind-the-scenes look at our team. Here’s a quick video promo for Capitals Red Line Monday.

Traffic to WashingtonCaps.com continues to grow as monthly visits (139%), monthly unique visitors (87%) and page views (196%) have increased dramatically when compared with last year. On average, visitors are spending more time on our website than any other site in the NHL. Fans continue to show their support and loyalty by wearing our merchandise, as sales are up nearly 42%. Last year’s plan-holder renewal rate was higher than 92%, and I would have to think we are a far more attractive sports and entertainment option today.

Those are tangible and measurable metrics, but there definitely is an intangible feeling that strikes me when I walk into Kettler Capitals Iceplex and the Verizon Center or talk with fans and business acquaintances. There is an energy and a special feeling that has engulfed this franchise, and it can be felt most on game-nights when red-clad fans show their support and loyalty. I most certainly notice it, and I know our players notice it. It’s a wonderful transformation and a great feeling.

All of this brings me to one conclusion: D.C. is a Caps hockey town.

Much has been written about our success this past year, and there were a number of significant accomplishments on the Capitals’ 2008 calendar – the third-most points in the NHL in the timeframe, improbable last-season surge to a division championship and subsequent playoff appearance, tremendous home record (31-6-3), fantastic fan support, an MVP season from Alex Ovechkin, coach-of-the-year honors for Bruce Boudreau, rookie of the year consideration for Nicklas Backstrom, the emergence of Mike Green and successful affiliations with Hershey (AHL) and South Carolina (ECHL). All of those help to illustrate that we have made significant improvements to our franchise.

To me one of the greatest testaments to a player or an organization is how it deals with adversity. Our players face many of the everyday challenges that our fans face – time to spend with family, illness, injury, death of a loved one – and they continue to persevere. Our team has been beset by injuries this year, yet we have continued to be successful because we have built such a strong foundation. It is rewarding to see how well the players who have been recalled from Hershey perform at the NHL level.

It also is extremely gratifying to have put a difficult and sometimes gut-wrenching plan in place and begin to see the fruits of those tough decisions. I’m very proud of our current team. We have great chemistry, play with passion, bring enthusiasm to the rink each day and have a group of outstanding, compassionate young men. It’s great to win, but it feels even better to win with people whom you admire and respect.

So while I thank our plan holders, sponsors, business partners and fans in general, I also want to acknowledge my appreciation for our players as well as the front office staff. We have done well, and we welcome the challenges ahead of us.

I view this team as a public trust, and as the custodian of that trust I pledge my best efforts to make you proud to be a Washington Capitals fan. As you know, I respect, encourage and rely on your feedback at washingtoncaps@aol.com but ask that you be courteous and respectful.

I look forward to hearing from you and seeing you at Verizon Center and Kettler Capitals Iceplex. All of us anticipate an exciting 2009. Just think, many believe our team historically sees a spike in fan and media interest in January. That should make for a fun ride the second half of the season. Let’s enjoy this special journey.

- Ted

Swearing In

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My family and I attended the swearing in ceremony at the Senate yesterday of Virginia’s newest Senator, Mark Warner. It was wonderful to see so many friends and neighbors at the reception. Mark is such a great executive and great friend. We are all so proud of him.

It is a very moving experience to see the peaceful and smooth passing of power. As we drove to the Senate, you could see the grandstands going up for next week’s event. It feels like truly historic times ahead.

Revisionist History

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As someone who was there trying to do deals and create partnerships with newspaper concerns in the early and mid 90′s, I can state that this article misses the mark by a long mile.

The Internet was looked at as a distraction by most senior management at these concerns. Consumer interactivity was looked at as a curiosity - the steering wheel – it was assumed and would always be in an editors’ hand and not in the hands of the consumer. Advertisers would always stick with eyeballs in an unaccountable manner in newspapers because ”they had always done that.” The digital operations in the companies were always aside the newspaper instead of being a platform that enabled products and a newspaper being seen as one of the products off of the platform.

Newspaper companies loved the print version of their product. I never understood that. They were in the news business; the content business; the local community business; and the local ad and commerce business NOT the paper business. I would encourage them to use their massive cash flows to invest or acquire MAJOR players in the space or create a national consortium in the key vertical areas and classified areas. Newspaper concerns should have invested in or owned and operated Yahoo; eBay; MapQuest; Moviefone; craigslist; NexTag; Advertising.com; Amazon.com; and even Google. In its day, AOL would have created the infrastructure and platform to launch some verticals at massive scale and at low cost for these partners.

And they could have owned and operated next generation networks in classifieds, in travel, in auto and in local and hyper local targeting. They could have created local third party networks. They could have created syndication services and ultimately they could have led in social networking. They could have and should have bought YouTube, Digg, Mevio or Clearspring to get scale; rich media content; distribution; and an infusion of real next generation management.

Instead, they didn’t do much but write about the subject and contract. The folks in senior management at these companies were focused on being right NOT on winning.

Now they have a perfect storm to deal with, a bad economy that is crushing advertisers. Local advertising and classifieds have found better media choices on the Internet, think Advertising.com and Google. Consumers are getting better media and news for free on the Internet and banks are NOT lending to media companies that are overleveraged with the stock market crushing the market caps as well.
Gulp.

It is nice to read revisionist history but I was there and I don’t remember events and developments unfolding in this manner.