With the Capitals and the Wizards both in the playoffs this year, the Verizon Center arena is going to see several extra games played there. How does the arena make space around other events in its schedule for those games?
The playoffs can last for several weeks, and an arena doesn’t know whether its tenant will make the playoffs until potentially very close to the end of the season. Presumably it doesn’t want to let the facility sit completely unbooked during that period, but how does it schedule other events (concerts, wrestling, ice shows) during a time when the sports tenant may suddenly need the facility for several nights?
Does it leave several open nights and hope that the sports schedulers can work around them? Does it bump other events, potentially having to awkwardly email 10,000 preschoolers and break their hearts that “Paw Patrol Live” won’t be showing on Saturday?
Bonus question: When an NBA team and an NHL team that share an arena both make the playoffs, I assume the leagues cooperate in setting schedules?
In 1988 there was a blackout in the old Boston Garden during a Bruins playoff game. They couldn’t reschedule the game for the next few days due to the Celtics and a college graduation so they decided to replay that game if necessary at the end of the series and went to Edmonton to play the next regularly scheduled game. So the pros can’t necessarily preempt everything else.
It seems that Chance the Rapper has a concert date that conflicts with a possible Warriors playoff game. The article states that events like concerts schedule contingency dates during playoff time. I’m guessing that the NHL and NBA check with each other about possible playoff conflicts in dual use arenas.
They just do whatever they have to, really. Toronto, Boston and LA are in the same boat, I think, and probably a few other cities I’m not thinking of right now.
You could also hold two events in one day, if one goes at 1 PM. That’s chancy, but they can change the arena’s arrangement pretty quickly if absolutely necessary. The changeover from hockey rink to basketball court and vice-versa can be done in less than two hours in LA. A few years ago the Staples Center, which is home to TWO basketball teams and the LA Kings, held six playoff games in a four day period.
The hockey rink is, at least during hockey season and maybe year round, essentially a permanent feature; the basketball court is built on top using interlocking parts.
Having run into this when scheduling political conventions, this is what happened in the Mpls-St. Paul area:
the team had first dibs on the facility. Any other event had to agree to a contract that allowed them to be bumped if the team ended up in post-season games.
the price was lowered because of this. (So they claimed – I didn’t see that it was any cheaper, but then it wasn’t like they had a published price list to check.)
they did offer compensation if our event was bumped. But not cash – just credits good only at their facility if we re-booked at another time.
We ended up going elsewhere because of these restrictions (and their high prices). I think it’s common to see events at these times that are not very time-dependent, and are in high audience demand – like monster truck rallies, concerts, etc. Most of the ticket holders will still come even if the event is rescheduled to a later date. And the few tickets refunded can still be sold to new customers.
I was just discussing this with some family members the other day. In Cleveland, at least, not only is the hockey rink permanent, so is the ice. The basketball floor is built on top of the ice.
Speaking of Cleveland, I distinctly remember last year there was a scenario during the NBA playoffs that if the Cavs didn’t win the series on the road, a Justin Bieber concert would be re-scheduled when the Cavs came home.
They won the series in Detroit and literally everyone in Cleveland was happy
Any pro hockey arena used for other purposes will just lay flooring over the ice. It takes four days to lay down a new ice surface, so there’s no way they could remove & replace it each time the basketball team or some other event uses the arena.
In 2009, WWE Monday Night Raw was scheduled to run in Denver, but the Nuggets made it far enough in the playoffs that they ended up with a playoff game scheduled for the same day.
So despite the fact that there had been over 10,000 tickets sold for the wrestling event, the arena cancelled them on 5 days notice (WWE ended up running their live show in the Staples center in LA that night, which apparently was available)
