Nets/arena CEO Yormark says new Nets drive ticket sales & interest; recycles rhetoric about "hip, cool building" and admits initial "manufactured" hype

Watch the spin-meister at work.

NetsDaily, in a 7/24/19 post headlined Brett Yormark: ‘We want to capture and leverage the moment’, summarized an article from the paywalled publication The Athletic, headlined ‘When 1,000 calls are starting to come in, you get pretty excited’: KD, Kyrie can make the Nets the hottest ticket in town.

The gist is that new stars Kyrie Irving and Kevin Durant, the latter rehabbing from an injury during most if not all the next season, have driven enormous fan interest--1,000 calls on the day the players could sign, 100,000 new Instagram followers, and already more ticket revenue than last year.

Also expected are increases in all-event suite revenue for the arena, operated by Mikhail Prokhorov's BSE Global. Prokhorov owns 51% of the Nets; Joe Tsai, the minority owner, is expected to buy the rest.

Asked if the Nets could replace the New York Knicks as the city's team, Yormark said, “I don’t really get into that conversation... You’ll never hear us — maybe unless it’s behind closed doors — talk about our aspirations to be New York’s team."

Except he just did.

Recycling "hip, cool" as arena lure

From the NetsDaily summary:

“No different than what I’m sure LeBron (James) meant to Staples Center when he went there, we’re sensing the same enthusiasm for the building from the artist community,” Yormark told The Athletic. “These artists that are now announcing their tours, they want to play Kyrie and KD’s building. They want to play the hip, cool building in Brooklyn where the stars are playing. So it has an effect on your programming and content.”

Wait a sec. That's hardly new rhetoric. I wrote about a September 2014 interview with Yormark, two years after the arena opened:

So, how does the Barclays Center compete with other arenas?
"I would love to take credit for it, but I can't," Yormark responded. "I think it is Brooklyn. People love this hip, cool factor of Brooklyn. Up-and-coming artists want to play there."

And then there was a September 2018 podcast:

Yormark was asked how the arena approaches musical acts that are considering a New York venue.
He noted that there was an untapped market, given that Madison Square Garden was already busy.
"MSG remains MSG, they're a legendary venue," he said. "Barclays has been very additive to the marketplace... The market's big enough for both."
"When you think about Brooklyn, there's a hip, cool factor" that Yormark said appeals to "that young artist." 

Admitting some hype

From NetsDaily:

Another is whether with or without Durant, the Nets can sustain a fan base that not only filled the arena the last seven home dates, but showed more of a psychic commitment to the home team than in the past.
“When we first got to Brooklyn, in some respects it was manufactured,” Yormark said. “There was a lot of hype in moving the team to Brooklyn.”

Oh, really? Now he tells us. Like we never noticed.