Tickets Being Purchased But People Not Showing Up Impacting Mosaic Place's Budget

For many the pandemic - due to the arrival of vaccines and other precautions taken - might be on its way out but such optimism has yet to show up on the bottom line at Mosaic Place.

In a recent presentation to Council asking for additional funding to cover cash flow problems the general manager at the facility Ryan MacIvor said despite holding events the income they had hoped to be enjoying is not there. People might purchasing event tickets but more than a few are not actually attending and it was impacting Mosaic Place’s budget.

Questions were asked by Councillor Kim Robinson during deliberations surrounding a request for up to an additional $275,000 to the facility to offset cash flow problems. The facility was recently granted up to $150,000 repayable loan to get the food and beverage services up and running.

“From the food and beverage sales I think we are seeing a bit of a higher per cap, per person however we are not perhaps seeing the people coming through the doors as in perhaps previous years,” MacIvor said, adding “people are still supporting the events but they may not be coming to the actual building itself. They may be purchasing a ticket, or season ticket, or curling membership or whatever it is…we have not yet seen an uptick of those tickets that have been purchased to come through the door.”

Less people through the door mean less overall sales in such areas as food and beverage, he said.

“And so when we look at the budget year that has an impact because we are anticipating a budgeted number of people through the door. Tickets are sold and x number of people are coming through the door and therefore we can attribute x dollars per person that comes through.”

The reduced number of people attending had other impacts.

“That would be attributed to the advertising, sponsorship, sales, premium seating, club seats etc that because of some of the relationships between the City and our tenants if they have a struggle in selling some of their assets as well then there is a net impact to the building as well,” MacIvor said.

Asked by Councillor Robinson if the reduced number of attendees could be because the Province required people to provide poof of full vaccination against COVID - 19 to attend events MacIvor said he was no expert but did not see it that way.

In the area of curling MacIvor said teams lost due to the need to be fully vaccinated was being offset with new teams registering.

For the AAA Warriors not requiring proof of vaccination has seen higher attendance than in previous years.

“From a hockey or attendance related to it the AAA Warriors do not require double vaccination due to the recreational guidelines. It is an amateur sport, they charge tickets but they don’t charge GST and therefore they don’t require double vaccination so we have seen perhaps more people are attending those games than traditionally previous years,” he said.

For the Moose Jaw Warriors it is still to early to tell if the proof of vaccination requirements are having an effect on attendance, MacIvor said.

“Related to the WHL side I think the team is still working through their season ticket process…the weather has been really good the last two games so I don’t know if the last two games would be a good test whether the double vaccination requirements are impacting.”

At the Warriors’ home opener MacIvor said there was a line-up for people to get vaccinated at the pop-up clinic.

Council agreed to the request for more cash.