<p><p>Before Tuesday’s regular-season finale and fan appreciation night, Kraken owner Samantha Holloway sat down with The Seattle Times to speak about running the franchise, the performance on the ice and the lingering talks about the NBA potentially returning to Seattle.</p></p><p><p>Below is a Q&A addressing some of those topics. Questions and answers have been lightly edited for clarity and length.</p></p><p><p><strong>Q: Do you still view the organization as being in the startup phase?</strong></p></p><p><p><strong>Holloway:</strong> It’s in the growth phase now for sure.</p></p><p><p><strong>Q: From your perspective and experience, what does the growth phase look like for other startups vs. what the growth phase is for the Kraken?</strong></p></p><p><p><strong>Holloway:</strong> I think they’re very similar. It’s about doubling down on what’s working right and being brave enough to stop doing what’s not working, and knowing that you’re going to make mistakes along the way, and you’re still able to move quickly and take risks. I find that’s very true here as well. What’s working? What worked in our sales strategy? What packets worked, what didn’t work? Who’s really the fan? How are things changing now? Some of it has to do with what happens on the ice, but a lot of it doesn’t. We’ve kind of built this thing we believe really authentically from the ground up, doing what’s right for the community and that’s gone a long way with people. There are all these different kind of spokes of what we’re doing here that we feel like are really important that we have to continue doing. We’re learning along the way which pieces are working for the business and which pieces aren’t working for the business, and then you have to double down on those. And it’s like in tech, when you figure out what’s working you pour gas on it.</p></p><p><p><strong>Q: At what point does the on-ice success or lack of success start to matter more than it has to this point?</strong></p></p><p><p><strong>Holloway:</strong> I’ll be honest, I think it matters now. Everybody wants to win, the guys on the ice want to win. Everybody in Seattle saw a taste of the playoffs in season two and people are really excited. And I believe the fans deserve a competitive team on the ice. It’s hard to execute in a short period of time and we’re continuing to work on it. I think that we have a unique fan base and that we have done such a good job with everything else that it’s helped with that experience. So it doesn’t not matter now, but it doesn’t matter as much as it could. But we’re continuing to work on that and our commitment to that is fierce and that we’re working to get that to a better place soon. It always matters, but it will continue to matter more soon.</p></p><p><p><strong>Q: What do you believe you have done well as a franchise and what needs to be worked on?</strong></p></p><p><p><strong>Holloway:</strong> I think that we’ve built roots in the community really well, and we’ve given back in terms of all of the programs that we’re affiliated with around the state, really. The Kraken Community Iceplex has been a huge win, both as obviously for us where our practice facility is, but more broadly for the community. There’s a million people that come through here a year. It’s only not open a few hours a day. We’re out of ice. People want more of it. If anything, this is the biggest success. I think what we’ve done in Coachella Valley is a humongous success. A lot of people don’t know about that up here, but many do, maybe more than in other franchises. But that’s one of the most successful American Hockey League franchises. That’s been a huge win. I think the culture here is stellar and a lot of that is again led by Tod Leiweke and how folks built it from the ground up, and having people here who really care about the community and understand how business works, so that we can give back to the community in that way.</p></p><p><p>I think, from a hockey perspective, the young kids are; I mean, the way that we built from the ground up is building for the future. Of course, we want to win sooner, but this needs to be a long-term, successful franchise with a competitive team on the ice.</p></p><p><p>The brand is huge and the launch of the brand, the way that went in terms of getting it out into the market. All those things I think we’ve done really well.</p></p><p><p>I think coming out of COVID, it was hard with the hockey team in terms of integrating it with the rest of the organization, so that’s still something that we’re working on. Integrating it with the rest of the organization, as well as with the fan base. And then as we wait for these young kids to get ready for the NHL, with all the constraints that we have, we need to figure out some of those other pieces. It doesn’t always mean it works, right? You take risks and it can work or not work. We should have been better this year, based on the team we had. A lot of people would say that openly, right? But it doesn’t always work that way. Then you have to figure out what didn’t work and move on. So I think we just have to keep continuing to take those risks and no knee jerk reactions, but move quickly.</p></p><p><p><strong>Q: It’s been a couple years now since you’ve taken over day-to-day operations of ownership. What are some of the things that stand out compared to other businesses you’ve run?</strong></p></p><p><p><strong>Holloway:</strong> There’s a lot of overlap in that it’s a business and you’re selling a product, and you have to do marketing, and there’s people here, and they all have their own lives, and you got to balance all those things. It’s very different in that there’s certainly different lines of business. If you look at even just broadcast, we brought that in house. That’s an entirely stand-alone business that we’re running here. The product is people. You know them and you don’t really know what’s going to happen. All of a sudden, Jordan [Eberle] is out for three months. It hurt and you didn’t expect that. So there’s a lot of more ups and downs and things that you can’t control. It has a different cadence to tech. You know, there’s kind of intense periods where you’re go, go, go, and then there’s different periods where you’re planning and figuring out for the next season. And this organization has been set up so well, where I essentially came and really did get in the weeds for a year, because it was important to understand the business of sports, which is different than the business of technology. And now that I’ve done that, I can level back up and be here to support Tod and [team president] Victor [de Bonis] and [senior vice president] Rob [Johnson] and everyone else at the executive level here, and not get in the weeds as much because we have so many different things going on.</p></p><p><p><strong>Q: The organization has stated its interest in trying to bring the NBA back to Seattle. The NBA has not decided to move forward on expansion as of yet. What can you say on where things stand at this time?</strong></p></p><p><p><strong>Holloway:</strong> I think that the commissioner [Adam Silver] spoke to Seattle and I thought that was great of him, because I think the fans in Seattle are really excited and hoping for something to happen. But we’re patient and we’ll wait for their lead, and hopefully one day they will be ready to expand and we will be privileged to have a discussion about it. But in the interim we’ll do our work behind the scenes and run a hockey team.</p></p>
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