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Cost to install Grass at Dome ... $500,000


Jarrek

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quote:Originally posted by Jarrek

Question ... Is it feasable for the CSA to do this for a game versus the USA or Mexico?

As long as its not for WCQ (although I wouldn't be too worried about the Yanks. Actually I think we'd get a great pro-Canadian crowd if we were to hold our home hex match versus the USA at SkyDome, should we get that far.

Just have to make sure we'd restrict sales to Sam's Army.

As for other teams, I can totally see a one-off against any of England, Italy, Portugal, Greece, Brazil or (to a lesser extent) Germany and Scotland selling out the Dome in no time.

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quote:Originally posted by Jarrek

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/ArticleNews/TPStory/LAC/20040730/GRASS30/National/Idx

Question ... Is it feasable for the CSA to do this for a game versus the USA or Mexico?

By assuming no other revenues other gate receipts. Here is how much extra it would cost per ticket if you were to pass on all the $500,000 of laying the turf on to the paying customer.

attendance</u>....extra cost per ticket</u>

50,000...............................$10.00

30,000...............................$16.67

15,000...............................$33.33

8,000................................$62.00

Conclusion:

Its doable IMO if you are certain that you get a crowd in excess of 30,000. That would mean that it would have to be an important match ( i.e.: on where canada is still in contention for a WC berth)against a recognized opponent. The above costs could be anywere from 25-40% lower if you factor in other revenues from board advertizing, merchandize sales, etc. I don't think the CSA would get any revenues from parking and concessions, but then again I don't know. Another thing is that the CSA would have to promote the event properly[:0].

Also, you could pass on the above costs proportionately base on ticket prices. So I would guess that a 20% extra charge on the tickets might suffice to cover these costs. They would have to charge something like $80-$90 for the lower bowl central tickets and soething like $38-$43 for the cheaper tickets in the upper bowl or behind the nets. We paid $32/ticket at Varsity in 2000. These are very rough estimates

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On further thought, this might be an even better option for a venue like the Big Owe which has a capacity of 65-72K. You wouldn't have to charge as high a price ( ie>: resuting in higher demand)to the customer because of the bigger capacity. Furthermore, because of lower demand for events in the facility, the cost of securing the facility would be much lower. But then again, indications are that the CSA doesn't want to consider options like Skydome and Big Owe. [B)][B)]

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Skydome certainly looked excellent with that nice grass pitch, very professional looking. How much though would the appearance fees be for a like of England? I heard that Brazil fees are 1 million. These fees may make the 500,000 for the grass field too expensive to make a profit. Its amazing what a production Championship World put on, maybe the Csa should work with them to put on friendlies in Toronto.

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quote: On further thought, this might be an even better option for a venue like the Big Owe which has a capacity of 65-72K. You wouldn't have to charge as high a price ( ie>: resuting in higher demand)to the customer because of the bigger capacity. Furthermore, because of lower demand for events in the facility, the cost of securing the facility would be much lower

from a capacity or venue cost perspective the Big o is better; but Montreal doesn't have the population base and the same level of interest to assume that it would fill up the extra seats. no wonder the venue cost is lower and ChampionsWorld tried TDot as its first Canadian city

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I think Olympic Stadium would make more sense that the Skydome for a situation like this for one reason: After this season Olympic Stadium probably won't have a regular tenant, so they wouldn't have to keep putting the grass in and taking it out which would significantly lower associated costs. Take the roof off the Stadium and put in drainage under the grass and the CSA has a large natural grass Stadium.

But is there anyone who knows what else Olympic Stadium gets used for other than Expos games and for when the Als host the Eastern Championship game?

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quote:Originally posted by sstackho

$500K is a hell of a lot of money to throw away, when you have a nice stadium like Commonwealth sitting there begging for the big games. Should have great attendance there against the US, at least.

There are many facilities in canada "sitting there and begging for the big games". What the Champions world series has proven is that there are creative ways around the stadium problem that we have with facilities in canada. Whereas we have often thought of all CFL stadia as not doable. They have also shown that with proper marketing you can sell "one off" soccer events in Canada. Aside from Celtic, I don't think that the other three clubs have such huge following in Toronto. I don't see all that many Liverpool, porto or Roma fans around the city. Certainly not enough to get 30-50K out. Its another story when we are talking about Man U, Milan, Juve and Benfica. I'll bet that fewer than 10% of the people who showed up for the Porto-L'pool match are actualy supporters on these clubs. a larger group may have been supporters of the respective national teams.

So why can't it be done with World cup qualifiers. It was all about promotion in my opinion. Thats the biggest dif between these CWS promoters and the CSA.

After this weekend, how will it sound to the mainstream media, politicians, and casual soccer follower when the CSA says that we don't have proper facilities eastern canada. It will be tougher to explain and people will conclude that they just cannot promote their events properly.

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You can't honestly think the same people that went to these games would come out to support Canada in world cup qualifying games? Most of these people who filled skydome for this event consider the Canadian national team the way they do their local domestic club-not worth worrying about.

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It's not just a question of promotion (though that is certainly a factor), but also the product they are promoting, and that isn't necessarily a slight against Canada but also against our World Cup qualifying opposition - I'm not even sure that Mexico or the US could pull in 50,000 into any stadium in Canada unless it is a really important match (such as "win and we're in" to the World Cup). Other teams like Jamaica, Costa Rica etc., even though they are good teams wouldn't be able to pull that many fans as the likes of clubs or national teams from Italy, England, Portugal or Scotland.

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Guest Jeffery S.
quote:Originally posted by Moosehead

Skydome certainly looked excellent with that nice grass pitch, very professional looking. How much though would the appearance fees be for a like of England? I heard that Brazil fees are 1 million. These fees may make the 500,000 for the grass field too expensive to make a profit. Its amazing what a production Championship World put on, maybe the Csa should work with them to put on friendlies in Toronto.

I agree, just from the photos, that the stadium looked good, and the grass looked excellent. Was it fast being so hard?

Brazil charges a million US, plus some costs as they usually want to train a few days before and that usually should be covered. For the Catalonia friendlies I think they had another 300,000 in costs and kind, hotels, training facility with decent security, etc. With the grass and other stadium costs that might be around 1.85 million in costs. So you'd need to make 2 million US to break even. That is 50,000 spectators at an average of 55 dollars plus Canadian.

Key for this series was having two games to reduce the per game cost of the installation. Only if we were lucky enough to get a Hex double header at home and were to see the States and Mexico would it be feasible at Skydome.

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Another factor to consider is the time of year.500,000 is the price you pay for sod in July.If a WCQ against Mexico or USA is scheduled in March,April or even Oct or November as could happen I don't think you'll get a local supplier of sod.You might have to truck it in from the southern US and that could cost a bunch more.Anyone know where the sod

came from for the Champions World series?

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Another factor to consider is the time of year.500,000 is the price you pay for sod in July.If a WCQ against Mexico or USA is scheduled in March,April or even Oct or November as could happen I don't think you'll get a local supplier of sod.You might have to truck it in from the southern US and that could cost a bunch more.Anyone know where the sod

came from for the Champions World series?

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Interesting point about the playing surface. On TV it looked much better than what we had in Kingston. The ball rolled smoothly along the surface whereas in Kingston it didn't. There were always little bonces up and down everytime a player would make a pass unlike yesterday. I would expect that a surface like Commonwealth which is used for the CFL will be more like it was for the Kingston match. What we would see at varsity was much the same. I wouldn't be surprised if these guys played on a better surface than most of our national teams games have been played on in Canada. Judging from what we saw in the papers on saturday, the players gave it a passing grade. There were no complaints ( no compliments either)that I heard of.

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I actually thought the ball held up better than it does on most grass pitches. I expected it to be hard and the ball would run more (with concrete underneath), but there were a few deep balls by Liverpool into the corners that I thought were going to run out for sure, but help up nicely, which made me think the surface was pretty thick and soft.

I'm not sure how feasible the SkyDome is really unless a qualifier is paired with a ChampionsWorld game next year or something.

cheers,

matthew

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quote:Originally posted by Vancouver Fan

.Anyone know where the sod

came from for the Champions World series?

The company that is reponsible for the project is based in New York.

The grass was grown locally.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/ArticleNews/TPStory/LAC/20040730/GRASS30/TPNational/Toronto

http://www.mytelus.com/sports/article.do?pageID=soccer_rugby/home&articleID=1675677

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