Detroit sports fans have never been shy about letting ownership hear it, and Chris Ilitch is the latest figure to get the full treatment at Little Caesars Arena.
The Red Wings opened the 2026-27 season with boos rolling through the building, and the loudest ones were reserved for the Ilitch Sports + Entertainment president. Moments after the puck dropped, fans were already chanting for Ilitch to "sell the team." The message came back again at the start of the second game against the Winnipeg Jets, then the crowd shifted its focus to Dylan Larkin in his return during Tuesday’s third game against the Ottawa Senators.
With the Red Wings 11 seasons removed from their last playoff appearance, those chants could hang around all year if the early problems don’t disappear. And while Ilitch is worth nearly $4 billion and owns two major professional sports teams, he’s hardly the first member of a Detroit sports ownership family to feel the temperature rise in his own building.
That frustration has surfaced before, sometimes in unforgettable fashion.
Bruce Norris got a brutal reminder in 1982, when Red Wings fans booed him during a celebration marking the 50th anniversary of his father James E. Norris’ purchase of the team.
James had bought the club in 1932 and guided it to five Stanley Cups over 20 years before his death in 1952. Bruce took over after a power struggle with his sister Marguerite in 1955, and the franchise drifted into one of its darkest stretches.
Norris had been looking for a buyer since 1979, and the boos at that anniversary event helped punctuate the end of his run. He sold the team soon after to Mike Ilitch, who owned it until his death in 2017.
The Tigers went through their own ownership revolt in 1992. Tom Monaghan’s run had already been defined by a lack of winning after the 1984 World Series, but the breaking point came when he fired longtime radio voice Ernie Harwell without much explanation after the 1991 season.
Fans reacted hard, directing much of their anger at Tigers executive Bo Schembechler and printing bumper stickers that read "Bo Don't Know Ernie." Some even threatened to boycott WJR, then the team’s radio partner.
Whether that pressure pushed Monaghan out is up for debate, but he sold the team to Mike Ilitch before the 1992 season. Ilitch promptly fired Schembechler and brought Harwell back, and Harwell stayed in the Tigers booth until retiring in 2002.
Detroit’s fan anger didn’t stop there. In 2008, Lions supporters broke out the paper bags after the team became the first in NFL history to finish a regular season 0-16.
The paper-bag routine had already been associated with Saints fans and the infamous "Aints," but Lions fans had their own reason to adopt it. Since then, boos and paper bags have returned plenty of times against the Ford family, with "Same Old Lions" becoming the shorthand for a franchise that has never reached the Super Bowl despite playing every season in the Super Bowl era.
And in 2023, Pistons fans gave Tom Gores the same blunt message. Gores had bought the team in 2011, and the frustration had built over years without even a single playoff win.
Then came the 2023-24 season, when the Pistons lost an NBA-record 28 straight games and went two months without a win, from 2-1 to 2-29. Fans didn’t wait long to voice their anger, chanting "sell the team" during a December loss to backups from the Utah Jazz.
Gores stayed put, and the Pistons eventually flipped the script after a regime change. They tripled their win total in 2024-25, reached the playoffs, gave Gores his first playoff wins after an NBA-record 15 straight playoff losses dating to 2008, earned the No. 1 seed in 2025-26 and won their first playoff series in 18 years.
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