Violetta jump ship to the Wings
 

http://www.tennessean.com/apps/pbcs..../71121041/1028
Hopefully he will help Detriot with their attendance the same way he helped us.:sarcasm:

So, Detroit's attendance is down because of the pricing and their economy and the non corporate fan being priced out. I'm sure the jack and jill fan concept will go over very well there.

Well, I certainly hope they know what they're getting.

Violetta was failure from the start. He's done absolutely nothing but point fingers at everyone else but himself.

Frankly it was his job to sell corporate tickets and he couldn't get it done here.

Luckily for him, he should have a much easier time in Detroit then here.

Good riddance.

I wonder who else will leave now that Leipold is out?

I believe that if he stayed, they would have fired him quickly. This is a great opportunity to put in a new corporate-friendly face-- I hope they don't mess the new hire up.

As for Detroit, to quote Mr. T, "I pity the fools".

See ya Mr. Jack & Jill Fan

This report is premature.

http://redwingscorner.blogspot.com/2...executive.html

Ahh, Tennessean reporting at its finest.

I hope the story is true! Please let it be true!

They've been reporting this for 2 days on 106.

They said Violetta told them that he was taking the job in Detroit and either his last day here is Dec. 5 or his first day there is Dec.5.

Either Violetta got full of himself or Detroit is not yet reporting this (I hope it's just the RW's not reporting it).

However, I hope he goes to Detroit. I hope that their season ticket holders are ready to just get a new bill for tickets with no warning about prices up by $4 or more per game. And that when they look at the new seating chart, they see that the color coded area for their seats is only visible when holding the chart at a certain angle and in the right light.

And I thought about a month ago that someone wrote on here that Violetta was gone when the new group takes over.

I don't care where he goes as long as he doesn't stay here.

Addition by subtraction

Amen, that he is going to Detroit is just icing on the cake.

All my interactions with Violetta have been pleasant, but he was the wrong guy for the job.
He may know the sports business well from his experience, but he didn't know what works in THIS market and he was not part of the good ol' boy network.
With a couple bonehead public statements and policies, he became the scapegoat to our attendance woes, fairly or not fairly.

He never got it that Corporate Nashville can't be strong armed, but has to be back-slapped, coddled, and respected to get them on board...not called out publically.

He never got it that hockey-loving Nashvillians hated being called "Jack and Jill fan"...and felt that it was derogatory and condescending......but, he still thinks it is a affectionate, warm term.

Basically he had to go....probably, Our Team Nashville found that out when calling on the business community, and he could see the handwriting on the wall that he would be replaced when the sale was completed. He did the wise thing to resign and announce a new job with someone else before the ax fell.

Now Freeman, Boots, and company desparately needs to get a high profile local marketing guy with business and social ties to the Nashville community that can back-slap and coddle his way to these people and get them on board to make the Predators to be a focus of the business community instead of the mere afterthought at best, or a pariah at worst, that it has been under the Violetta reign.

Don't let the door...on second thought Steve, please, let the door hit you on the way out.

Calling Pred303, calling Pred303...want a second job???

I feel like they should consider hiring two people for the job. A local veteran of the good ol' boy network that can do exactly as stated above and a second hockey veteran that knows the sport that can be a liaison to the hardcore fans and instill progressive thought into marketing and ticket sales (sort of a Violetta that never speaks in public).

I think it's interesting that the two posters that get to go on trips with the team (handtrick and pred303) have both posted that they think Violetta is a good guy when they’ve met him. Almost all of the posts I’ve seen of people from the outside that have never met him and only experience him on 104.5 or the Tennessean pretty much despise Violetta. I think that’s an interesting dynamic and it tells me that the franchise could probably use a Violetta-type behind the scenes, but should not have a Violetta-type dealing with the media and local businesses.

Granted, it’s not cheap to hire two executives to do the job that many teams hire one to do. But I don’t want them to hire only Violetta-lite or only Belle Meade Old Nashville Money Backslapper X. Maybe they are not exclusive and there’s a hockey marketing savvy, Nashville-savvy guy/gal out there, but I fear it will always be one extreme or the other. In the spot we’re in now, I’d rather have what handtrick described and solidify the corporate support in the short term. That’s the immediate key to survival.

However, the best way, imo, to solidify the market in the long run is marketing the sport to families, getting kids playing hockey, thus increasing the hockey IQ of the market as they grow, and getting more future managers to choose the Preds when they budget their corporate entertainment without having to coddle because they didn’t grow up with hockey. Can “the backslapper” do that? It’s important to take care of the present, but not by completely ignoring the future. That will be an interesting challenge for Freeman as this market hopefully begins to stabilize.

We could have sold more tickets without Violetta than with him.....

Oh wait.......the Predator fanbase did :handclap::handclap:

good post vopats....I don't know the Nashville business community well enough to know if there is one of those combo guys that you are talking about around....I would doubt it....and the expense of two is not ideal as well.

I wonder if some previous player that has settled in the community [like a Jim McKenzie] or a previous one [like Greg Johnson] could be enticed to have a liason type of position [wouldn't even have to be full-time, if they had another main job that they are doing] that wouldn't break the bank......

don't know, just kinda thinking out loud....