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Despite sluggish economy, hockey attendance inched upward at Saddledome in 2024-25
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Photo credit: Sergei Belski-Imagn Images
Ryan Pike
May 3, 2025, 12:00 EDTUpdated: May 2, 2025, 23:26 EDT
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The Scotiabank Saddledome was a busy, busy building in 2024-25.
Anecdotally, it sure does feel like the building is hosting more concerts – and bigger names – as the closure of the ‘Dome and the opening of Scotia Place loom in a couple of years. But even if you just focus on hockey alone, this was the third season with the Saddledome hosting three big-league teams: the NHL’s Flames, the AHL’s Wranglers and the WHL’s Hitmen, and they hosted a combined 111 regular season home dates.
With all three teams pretty competitive in their respective leagues, reported attendance for hockey across the three teams was 1.027 million in 2024-25. That’s a 0.8% increase over 2023-24.
So what’s contributing to the ever-so-slight uptick in attendance?
  • The Flames have committed to a new direction and then were actually pretty fun to watch this season, which likely helped fan interest in both the NHL and AHL clubs. Similarly, the Hitmen were a really competitive team this season.
  • When we discussed attendance a year ago, we discussed how disruptive and frustrating all the construction in Stampede Park had been. Well, aside from Scotia Place, most of the construction is complete and it’s much less of a chore to navigate the area around Stampede Park.
  • The economy still isn’t fantastic in the Calgary region, though inflation is down a little bit from the same time a year ago (but still above the national average). Fans likely don’t have as much disposable entertainment income as they used to, though, and the tug-of-war between ticket prices and fans’ wallets is the big obstacle hockey fans are grappling with these days.
Let’s dive into the team-by-team details!

The Flames

The Saddledome hosted 41 Flames games in the regular season. The average reported attendance was 17,655 in 2024-25, up 154 from 2023-24.
The Flames had three reported sell-outs (19,289): the home-opener with Philadelphia in October, the one-and-only visit from Edmonton in November, and the annual New Year’s Eve game, which was against Vancouver this year. They had two more games that were over 19,000, so we’ll call ’em sell-outs: Montreal’s visit in March (19,243) and the home finale against Vegas in April (19,055).
Let’s call a spade a spade: going to an NHL game is not an inexpensive endeavour, so Flames games don’t tend to get very much walk-up sales because it’s an expense that needs to be planned for. (The Athletic recently released their fan affordability index, and the Flames were the second-most affordable NHL team in Canada, but they’re not a cheap night out.) Consequently, going to a Flames game is often a big night out for those that do it, so that probably explains how opponent-driven attendance figures tend to be – fans likely plan ahead and make it a big event for their friend group or family rather than decide short-notice to go. The same opponents tend to have sell-outs against the Flames – mostly the Canadian teams – and those crowds usually feature a ton of fans in the road team’s jerseys.
In this context, though, the small spikes we saw in attendance in March and April – and the big spike against Vegas, a team that usually doesn’t do big numbers here – are probably encouraging for the Flames, since they suggest that the promising on-ice results drove some ticket demand late in the year.
It’s worth pointing out, though, that the Flames only hosted one Battle of Alberta in 2024-25. We’re expecting them to host two in 2025-26, so that on its own could contribute to attendance growth next season.

The Wranglers

The Saddledome hosted 36 Wranglers games in the regular season. Their average reported attendance was 4,099…. down two per game from last season.
It’s just the third season for the Wranglers, and they seem to be figuring out a niche within the Calgary sports community. Their top attendance game was the Winter Wranglerfest on Dec. 22, their last game before Christmas, which drew 7,564. Y’know how the Hitmen do a Teddy Bear Toss at the beginning of December where fans toss stuffed animals on the ice when the Hitmen score their first goal of the game? (It’s awesome.) At Winter Wranglerfest, the idea is that the Wranglers players throw presents to the fans when they score their first goal. Teams are able to experiment a bit in the AHL, and we’re excited to see what other types of theme games they can try out.
Since the Wranglers trend towards a more family crowd, so the weekend games tend to do better. 23 of 36 home games were on weekends. They averaged 4,656 on weekends (4,979 Saturday and Sunday), and 3,043 on weeknights, though that’s skewed by a holiday Monday game.

The Hitmen

The Saddledome hosted 34 Hitmen games in the regular season. Their average reported attendance was 4,577, up 48 per game from last season.
The Hitmen had three games draw over 10,000 fans: their Teddy Bear Toss against Moose Jaw in December (16,869), their Nickelodeon theme game against Lethbridge in February (10,122), and their Be Brave anti-bullying game against Swift Current in February (17,550).
As with the Wranglers, the Hitmen draw a family crowd, and weekend games are their bread and butter. 22 of 34 games were on weekends. Their weekend average was 5,138 (5,899 on Saturdays and Sundays), while their weekday average was 3,548 (2.275 when you take out the Be Brave game).
If the Hitmen remain competitive, we’re curious if their attendance figures continue inching upward.
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