Heat fans put critics in their place: ‘They are not what everything thinks they are’
They have been ripped for arriving late, razzed for leaving early and ridiculed for staying in their swanky suites well into the third quarter.
But say this for Miami Heat fans: No fan base has purchased tickets, as reliably and consistently, during the past decade-and-a-half than what the organization affectionately calls Heat Nation.
On Thursday night against Toronto, the Heat is expected to sell out a home game for the 611th consecutive time, which will make it the longest home sellout streak this century among Eastern Conference teams, surpassing a Chicago Bulls streak that ended in 2000. It’s also the fourth-longest NBA streak, for any team, in NBA history.
“I’ve always been a big fan of the Heat fan and this is why,” said Michael McCullough, the team’s executive vice president and chief marketing officer. “They show up. They show out… People have a lot to say about the Heat fan. They are not what everybody thinks they are.”
And what about any perception that they’re a late arriving, front-running fan base?
This sellout streak, McCullough said, “says STFU to all of that.”
(Or, in cleaner terms, shut the heck up.)
“The Heat fans are speaking, they have spoken and the streak speaks for itself,” McCullough said.
The streak began on April 23, 2010, on a night Dwyane Wade scored 24 and Michael Beasley added 15 in a playoff loss to the Celtics, who went up 3-0 in the first-round series, fueled by 32 points from Paul Pierce.
It continued the next four years of the Big 3 Era, the halcyon years of Heat basketball, when LeBron James, Chris Bosh and Wade dazzled fans and made the Kaseya Center a place to be seen and a magnet for celebrities.
But what’s most impressive about the streak is what happened after James left for Cleveland in July 2014 and after Wade departed for Chicago in July 2016.
Fans kept snapping up all 19,600 Heat tickets, year after year, a stretch that has now spanned more than a decade since James returned to the Cavaliers. For 350 of those 610 games, the Heat has had “over capacity,” with fans purchasing Standing Room Only tickets in the upper 400 level.
It’s important to note that the NBA measures attendance by tickets sold. If all the tickets are sold but there are thousands of empty seats, it still counts as a sellout.
The lifeblood of the Heat’s streak is season-ticket holders. Though Miami never has disclosed numbers, the Heat generally has cut off season ticket sales somewhere north of 12,000 seat. And there’s a waiting list to buy season tickets should the Heat make any more available.
“We’ve capped our season tickets on purpose because we want to make sure we grow our group business... our individual game business... our partial plan business,” McCullough said. “We could sell more season tickets if we wanted to, but we’ve got it capped at a particular level on purpose because that helps fuel the other lines of the business.”
The fact the Heat has managed to sell more than 6,000 individual game tickets every game since 2010 might be the most impressive aspect of the streak. But McCullough notes “the most important factor in attendance in any sport is your season ticket base. Obviously, we’ve had a great base. We’ve kept that base. Our fans have been incredibly loyal; they’ve stuck with us. That’s the key to our entire business.”
Only three teams have had a longer sellout streak than the Heat, with playoff games included:
1). A Dallas Mavericks streak that began in 2001, six weeks after the 20,000 seat AmericanAirlines Center opened, and is still ongoing at 972 games.
2). A Portland Trail Blazers streak which featured 814 sellouts in a row from April 1977 to November 1995 in cozy, 12,600-seat Veteran’s Memorial Coliseum, which was then replaced by the roomier Rose Garden; and
3). A Boston Celtics streak of 662 games that began in historic, 14,890-seat Boston Garden in 1980 — spanned the Larry Bird era and the classic Magic Johnson/Bird/Pat Riley NBA Finals — and ended in 1995, when the Celtics moved to TD Garden.
Heat center Kevin Love, who has played for two franchises that lost James, said “a lot of Heat fans are lifers, not unlike Cavs fans. There is so much rich history here. A team that is well-respected. The fan base is incredibly passionate.”
McCullough said the sellout streak has become a source of great pride for ownership and management.
“A full building is the basis for everything,” he said. “If you get a full building, it fuels your beverage, it fuels your retail, it fuels the energy in the crowd. The full building is the most important thing we’ve got going here. The fact we have this long sellout streak -610 games — we have a home-court advantage that few people can boast about. Heat nation has always been strong. This is perfect proof.
So ignore the shots on ESPN and the jabs on social media about the empty seats at tip-off, when some fans are still stuck on South Florida’s jammed roadways.
“Heat Nation has always been strong,” McCullough said. “This [sellout streak] is perfect proof.”
This story was originally published December 11, 2024 at 11:14 AM.
