New Version of the Ontario Reign Already Having an Impact

The local team is now part of the American Hockey League, which is only one step below the NHL. Attendance is up and several restaurants near the team’s home venue say their business is improving, but the team’s full economic impact likely won’t be known for several years.

As of Friday, the Ontario Reign have played 17 home games this season, exactly halfway through the team’s regular season home game schedule at Citizens Business Bank Arena in Ontario.

The team, a Los Angeles Kings affiliate and member of the American Hockey League, is comparable to a Triple A baseball team, meaning its players are capable of playing in the National Hockey League, if they haven’t already.

This is the team’s first year in Ontario. When Kings officials announced nearly one year ago that they were swapping the former Reign squad – which was closer to Single A or a developmental league team in baseball – for the one that is playing there now, they predicted that the higher caliber hockey would increase attendance and be a boon to businesses around the arena, especially restaurants.

So far, at least one restaurant owner likes what he sees.

Business at the Chick-fil-A  at 4350 E. Ontario Mills Parkway is up nearly 20 percent compared to where it was one year ago, owner Ryan Osbrink said.

Some of that increase has to be connected to the hockey games, which Chick-fil-A uses for various promotions and giveaways, according to Osbrink.

“I can’t say all of that is because of the hockey games, but I’d guess that at least four to five percent of it is,” said Osbrink, whose restaurant is no more than a five minute drive from the arena. “That’s a pretty significant amount.”

Osbrink believes his business will grow even more when more people learn about the new and improved Reign, who played in Manchester, New Hampshire before this season and were called the Monarchs. The former Reign, a member of the ECHL (formerly the East Coast Hockey League), are now the Manchester Monarchs.

“People are still learning that there is a better hockey team in town,” Osbrink said. “As they do, I think our business will go up more. We’re already seeing more people from outside the area. Some of that has to be because of the Reign.”

Business at the New York Grill, 950 Ontario Mills Drive, is also up as much as 20 percent on nights of Reign home games, said Tim Kelly, an assistant at the restaurant.

“The team is helping us, which is pretty exciting,” said Kelly, who works at the restaurant two to three nights a week. “It can only get better as more people find out about the Reign.”

The franchise swap was announced last February at a press conference held inside the arena’s main entrance. Members of the business community were on hand, along with team and league officials, all of whom hailed the move as a major coup for Ontario: the city hadn’t landed an NHL team, but it had gotten the next best thing.

Former Kings stars Rob Blake and Luc Robitaille, the Reign’s assistant general manager and president of business operations respectively, were there to remind everyone of the new Reign’s connection to the NHL franchise that had won two Stanley Cup championships in three years.

“People are excited,” said Fred Van Heule, owner the New York Grill in Ontario, at the time. “There’s a feeling that this team will be more of a regional draw. The Kings have a huge following, and [the Reign] will be helped by that. I hope they help every [business] around the arena, not just us.”

For the AHL, a 30-team league that was formed in 1936, the move satisfied a long-time goal of getting a team in the Los Angeles market. It also gave the league five teams in California, while placing the Kings’ top affiliate closer to home and making it easier to work with.

So far, the move has been successful, but it will probably take two or three full seasons before the new version of the Ontario Reign can declare victory, said Darren Abbott, the team’s president.

The Reign, which began their home schedule this season on Oct. 23 with a 5-4 win over the Bakersfield Condors, are averaging about 8,000 fans a night at its home games. That’s about 700 to 800 more fans per game than the former Reign drew last year, Abbott said.

“The Reign have always been successful and they’ve always drawn well, but when people see the caliber of hockey now I think they want to come back and see more,”  Abbott said. “It might take a couple of games for them to see it, but they notice the difference.”

Like a minor league baseball team, minor league hockey players often move to a higher or lower league depending on their performance. That makes marketing the team difficult because you can’t market players: you have to market how much fun it is to attend a game.

With that goal in mind, the Kings have helped the new Reign beef up its marketing, mostly with outdoor and radio advertising and social media. That has allowed the team to attract more fans from outside the greater Los Angeles market, Abbott said.

“We’ve worked hard with the Kings staff, and they’ve been a lot of help, particularly with our outdoor advertising,” Abbott said. “They’ve  made a lot of suggestions, even with our music selections.  We’re using organ music during games, which gives us more of a big league feel.”

The average ticket price is $18.87 per game, with a high of $70 for “on the glass” seats – almost all of those are sold out this season – to a low of $10. In-game sponsorships, in which businesses pay to have their name and/or logo placed in Citizens Business Bank Arena during the season, range from from $75,000  to $2,500.

Most importantly, the Reign’s season ticket sales are up from last year, a sign that people are at least willing to sample the new and improved version of local hockey for at least one season.

“We watch season tickets very carefully because they’re the life’s blood of our business,” Abbott said. “They tell you where you’re at.”