With the Alltel Center’s honeymoon long over, its leaders have gleaned some hard lessons.

Among them: If a show isn’t a good fit, don’t host it. And if you have to pass on a concert to prevent it from eating into the ticket sales of another act, pass it up. Oh, and U2 isn’t coming, like ever.

Those lessons help explain why certain acts come and why there can be only so many concerts at the Alltel Center.

So the center’s executive director Burt Lyman and marketing manager Eric Jones sat down with a reporter to answer the questions (and complaints) they’ve been asked oh-so-many times.

‘A relationship business’

A simple example: Why aren’t there more concerts?

One answer to that question took shape over the first decade or so of the civic center’s life, when many shows did well and some shows didn’t. But, excepting concession proceeds, the civic centerdidn’t lose money when people didn’t fill the seats.

Lyman said the lesson was that the bad shows turned out to hurt more in the long run.

That’s because some promoters — investors who pay for the band and the venue and aim to earn a profit on ticket sales — soured on the Alltel Center.

“It’s a relationship business,” Jones said.

And if a promoter loses money, they might not come back. They also might spread the word to other promoters.

Jones said the Alltel Center has since wooed back some of those promoters.

Randy Levy, a Minneapolis promoter who has a good history here, agrees.

“If it doesn’t work, he (the promoter) then tells somebody else who tells somebody else and pretty soon you get on the ‘do not call’ list,” he said.

He also appreciates the Alltel Center’s honesty about which acts will and won’t perform well here.