The Jets announced a paid attendance of just 11,226 tonight as they took on the LA Kings. It is the lowest paid attendance the team has ever recorded in franchise history. The building has a maximum capacity of 17,000 people in certain configurations but for standard hockey games the cap is 15,321.
Canada Life Centre is already the league's smallest building in the league's smallest market. The Jets traditionally have been a team that manages to sell out, or nearly sell out, basically every home game regardless of how good the team is. The team relies on that gate revenue to support itself, given the size of the market overall.
If the Jets can't find a way to get their attendance numbers back up, relocation could be a possibility. We already know the league is down on Canadian markets in general and Winnipeg is currently the smallest Canadian market, making it an easy choice if one of Canada's teams were forced to move.
