2019 Canadian Premier League Attendance

[narduch]

Well the troll lead me to look further into USL attendance history.  

So at least I got to learn that TFC II holds the dubious record of the lowest attendance ever with 50!

Im not sure what analysis of the USL can teach us. Except maybe for what not to do. 

Edited May 27, 2019 by narduch

[Ams1984]

Already comparable to USL Pro in terms of attendance... I know that there are still more than a few unconvinced negative Nellies out there, but I’m very encouraged by how this league is going so far. 

https://soccerstadiumdigest.com/2019-usl-championship-attendance/

[CDNFootballer]

3 hours ago, Ozzie_the_parrot said:

 If people had been more realistic in their expectations and hadn't been egged on in getting carried away with some very bullish rhetoric from the league commissioner and certain podcasters there would be a lot less angst at the moment. Perhaps worth noting that the numbers are significantly better than those for USL League One.

I'm not seeing/hearing the angst your referring to other than a few, CPL all considering is so far doing fine attendance wise overall.

As you point out, they're doing much better than USL League 1(D3) who's averaging only 1947 per game.

CPL is also outdrawing USL Championship (Pro), who's average is 4319 per game vs CPL's 5442 per game.

USL Championship also has attendances that can be classed "quite generously announced". For example, this was announced as 4597 in a 6K stadium this week.

 

Edited May 27, 2019 by CDNFootballer

[Bison44]

Geez, its the usual baloney.  He compares CPL to USL-1 because he wants to push the narrative of small venues/cities and tiny salaries are the way to go.  When in fact CPL numbers are closer to USL-CHAMP even though some of those teams have been around for years and CPL started in april.   Valour and Halifax averaging 6000+ would be in the top 10 USL attendances.  Then he cites "reddit user angst" when he wants to push an opinion.  I could find 1 reddit guy who believes that monkies fly out of his ass too.  

The attendance so far has been on average, more on par with USL-CHAMP.  Level of play has been more on par with USL-CHAMP.  They have plenty of college kids and some former MLS guys, so does the CPL.  The difference is this is OUR LEAGUE!  Its in OUR HOMETOWNS!!  Not just south of armpit USA.  Are we going to have to listen to this crap after every game, every weekend??  If so maybe lock the thread until the spring season is over.  

[Ansem]

1 hour ago, Bison44 said:

Geez, its the usual baloney.  He compares CPL to USL-1 because he wants to push the narrative of small venues/cities and tiny salaries are the way to go.  When in fact CPL numbers are closer to USL-CHAMP even though some of those teams have been around for years and CPL started in april.   Valour and Halifax averaging 6000+ would be in the top 10 USL attendances.  Then he cites "reddit user angst" when he wants to push an opinion.  I could find 1 reddit guy who believes that monkies fly out of his ass too.  

The attendance so far has been on average, more on par with USL-CHAMP.  Level of play has been more on par with USL-CHAMP.  They have plenty of college kids and some former MLS guys, so does the CPL.  The difference is this is OUR LEAGUE!  Its in OUR HOMETOWNS!!  Not just south of armpit USA.  Are we going to have to listen to this crap after every game, every weekend??  If so maybe lock the thread until the spring season is over.  

@Ozzie_the_parrot aka @BringBackTheBlizzard

So I'm dealing with people like of this/them (split personality?) on the French side through Twitter, Facebook and with journalists who are hardcore Impact fans...

It's ok to like MLS teams and the league but I take issue when there's a need to ridicule, minimize and crush the fact that we have our own league and wanting to upgrade our national program in order to "protect" or "elevate" their clubs. The rest who aren't part of the MLS party should pick one or shut up about CPL. 

It's really like this in their minds.

1. CPL should know it's place

2.Outside of the big 3 cities, who the hell cares about the rest of Canadians who ironically composed over 2/3 of this country? They should have a USL team or cheer that MLS team far far away that has nothing to do with their identity just and get on your knees and fn produce already....and shut up.

3.All that matters is their team/city proving it belongs "with the big boys" and can excel neck to neck with US cities or beat them. 

No jokes. I had this journalist from Journal de Montreal, who writes about sports but outside of Montreal Impact doesn't know crap about soccer wrote this when he was told "country before club" in regards to Canada needing a healthy Piette for the Gold Cup

"Ask Ronaldo if he'd choose Portugal over Juve

That same idiot would be so quick to write about how crap the CanMNT is after a bad performance, would certainly not explore why it's the case here in comparison to other nations and ignorantly propose that

"we should support even more our Saputo Billionaire who's bitching about city taxes, wanting the provinces to give him more land while he paid himself a club in Serie A."

How about a Laval and Quebec City club on top of IMFC to give more Pro minutes to Quebec players so we have MORE Crepeau, more Piette, more ZBG...moron???

 4.They feel that in order for Canadian soccer to advance, the whole country should know its place and produce talents for the 3 MLS teams... The whole program should work for the 3 which might give you a few guys capable of being in a competitive starting XI here and there....and they'd still complain that club comes before country. 

Those hypocrites points out RESULTS but are CONVENIENTLY ignoring RESULTS that since 2007:

No HEX

No World Cup

No U20 World Cup

Yay, we made U17 World Cup, but we're not even remotely in the US league....

 

5.Problem is that by devaluating CPL, you miss the chance of having MORE Canadians playing at the highest level possible. You limit corporate and private investments in the scale we've seen in CPL for a league that had yet to kick a ball. No billionaires (in Canada) in their right minds with no hope for an MLS teams would sink that much cash in a USL team like the Fury which is what we were desperately lacking all these years.

 

6. Sorry if I offend people but Inferiority complex and/or Insecurity. This belief that we can't do shit without being integrated in an American league dictating how things should go in Canada like the other major leagues have been doing is a problem.

I'm not a CFL fans but I have MAD RESPECT that they have a higher viewership and attendance than MLS, a $5.3M salary cap, decent TV deal while dealing with traveling from coast to coast with a tenth of the US population while having the NFL next door

AND....

the big 3 cities aren't the ones drawing the most...the "insignificant" rest are (insignificant to some of the snobs out there)

10, 15 or 20 years from now, this could be CPL. CFL is proving that an ALL CANADIAN league CAN do it.

7.We don't need trolls constantly trying to get us to know our place. If Finland, Sweden, Denmark and Norway can have successful D1 leagues with similar or lower average attendances than we do on YEAR ONE, but still be able to develop good players, field teams capable of holding their own in UEFA Champions League and Europa (sorry but you're delusional if you think LAFC survives CL or Europa group stage)...Why the hell can't we do it in freaking CONCACAF???

So freaking tired of the negativity, insecurity and inferiority complex. We are this world 10th economy. Time to F'N act like it.

If us die hard fans, can't dream big and strive to what CFL has done, how the hell will casuals, non fans believe???

End of rant.

***The hangover video is my new ringtone...sue me

Edited May 28, 2019 by Ansem

[Ozzie_the_parrot]

10 hours ago, CDNFootballer said:

...USL Championship also has attendances that can be classed "quite generously announced". For example, this was announced as 4597 in a 6K stadium this week....

Well aware of that. It's the norm in lower budget pro soccer in North America to have teams doing that, which is why expecting 6000-8000 actual attendance as the norm across the league was wildly optimistic and obsessing over the announced average league attendance numbers as if they mean something concrete is misguided given the way numbers get inflated with distributed comps for PR reasons.

Edit: beyond that would have thought the reason for the comparison with USL One should have been obvious to all. They both started this year.

Edited May 28, 2019 by Ozzie_the_parrot

[Ansem]

2 hours ago, Ozzie_the_parrot said:

It's the norm in lower budget pro soccer in North America to have teams doing that, which is why expecting 6000-8000 actual attendance as the norm across the league was wildly optimistic and obsessing over the announced average league attendance numbers as if they mean something concrete is misguided given the way numbers get inflated.

The NHL does it constently in empty arenas in Florida or Phoenix... but the NHL must be a lower budget league...right? 

oh wait...MLB does it too...they certainly are lower budget league 

MLS is a lower budget league then... 

you really are full of it

[Ozzie_the_parrot]

Non-sequitur after non-sequitur. There is nothing wrong with CanPL being a lower budget league. That's why people (especially on Reddit) need to chill out a bit over crowds being 3000 or so actual rather than 6000-8000. The only crowds in actual as opposed to announced terms so far that have looked in any way alarming for a league that is using L1O and PDL as primary recruitment sources are those for York 9 and I'm sure everybody directly involved in that context understood the difficulties they would face in a GTA context when memberships were slow to gather last summer.

[narduch]

1 hour ago, Ozzie_the_parrot said:

Non-sequitur after non-sequitur. There is nothing wrong with CanPL being a lower budget league. That's why people (especially on Reddit) need to chill out a bit over crowds being 3000 or so actual rather than 6000-8000. The only crowds in actual as opposed to announced terms so far that have looked in any way alarming for a league that is using L1O and PDL as primary recruitment sources are those for York 9 and I'm sure everybody directly involved in that context understood the difficulties they would face in a GTA context when memberships were slow to gather last summer.

You seem to be the only one trying to denigrate the league though

[Greatest Cockney Rip Off]

Stop quoting him please. 

[Macksam]

12 hours ago, Bison44 said:

Then he cites "reddit user angst" when he wants to push an opinion.  I could find 1 reddit guy who believes that monkies fly out of his ass too.  

Who are these Reddit users?

I'm not surprised with his behaviour. Any chance he gets, he will paint this negative picture. He even says announced attendance would include "comped" tickets rather than saying tickets sold. Has there been any rumour or story about free tickets being given away besides season tickets holders in York getting complimentary tickets for the Forge opener and vice versa?

[Ozzie_the_parrot]

2 hours ago, narduch said:

You seem to be the only one trying to denigrate the league though

Only if you are in some sort of parallel universe where CanPL is competing bitterly with MLS and other pro soccer leagues that have significantly higher budgets than it does to be the apex predator rather than helping to give more fans in smaller markets from coast to coast a local team to support and providing younger Canadian players with a pathway to whatever the soccer equivalent of "the show" is for them.

https://www.sportsnet.ca/soccer/cpl-players-face-uphill-climb-crack-canadian-national-team-roster/

...As such, it’s unrealistic to expect a young CPL player to waltz into the national team setup, a fact acknowledged by Herdman in an interview with Sportsnet earlier this year.

“What the CPL will provide is that springboard for young players to move to higher leagues...

MLS is expanded out as far as it is ever likely to in Canada and isn't going to go anywhere, so what is needed now is many more lower budget pro soccer teams to provide pro soccer to fans in cities like Victoria, Surrey, Kelowna, Edmonton, Calgary, Regina, Saskatoon, Winnipeg, Windsor, London, K/W, Niagara, Hamilton, the 905 region, Barrie, probably Ottawa at some point, Laval, Sherbrooke, Quebec, Moncton, St John's and Halifax to the point that pro/rel becomes a genuine possibility.

The vision being articulated on expansion by Paul Beirne and David Clanachan is a good one and the crowds in Halifax are providing a concrete reason to believe that the likes of Saskatoon could do it as well. It would be hugely beneficial for Canadian soccer if both MLS and CanPL go from strength to strength in the years ahead.

Edited May 28, 2019 by Ozzie_the_parrot

[Unnamed Trialist]

24 minutes ago, Greatest Cockney Rip Off said:

Stop quoting him please. 

I have him blocked because you just feed his obsessions. And because he is 95% mistaken with bad intention. The only thing he posts with remote interest is when he copies a news story without commenting on it.

If anyone  wants to block me, I am fine with it too, but I am only about 10-15% BS and you'd be missing a lot of excellent posts 

[dyslexic nam]

But seriously, stop quoting and responding to this gibbering anus.

[RS]

1 hour ago, Macksam said:

He even says announced attendance would include "comped" tickets rather than saying tickets sold.

Not for nothing, but that is the industry standard for reporting attendance in North America. It's always tickets distributed, not tickets sold.

Any team who reports tickets sold is an outlier.

[Gopherbashi]

Look, I'll fully admit that I pull out the "sky is falling" card on attendance from time to time, but the league as a whole is not worrying me for attendance.  In fact, there's been some great success stories that have blown me away (Forge, Valour, and Halifax are all around 5000 for their low water mark, which is amazing).

[Macksam]

1 hour ago, RS said:

Not for nothing, but that is the industry standard for reporting attendance in North America. It's always tickets distributed, not tickets sold.

Any team who reports tickets sold is an outlier.

The questions still stands though. Has there been any tickets distributed that have not been paid for one way or another minus the complimentary tickets given to York and Forge fans for each other's respective home openers? Speaking of which, did Hamilton season ticket holders actually get complimentary tickets for the York game?

[Hybred]

1 hour ago, Macksam said:

The questions still stands though. Has there been any tickets distributed that have not been paid for one way or another minus the complimentary tickets given to York and Forge fans for each other's respective home openers? Speaking of which, did Hamilton season ticket holders actually get complimentary tickets for the York game?

Forge SSH were given the option to ask for comp tickets to the Y9 opener I got 4 tickets this way, all Forge supporters tix were comped same as Y9 SSH at the forge game. But they put all the Forge supporters on the east stand.

Edited May 28, 2019 by Hybred

[deschamp86]

I think we should try a little science experiment. How long will BBTB continue to post here for if no one responds or quotes him?

[Macksam]

13 minutes ago, Hybred said:

Forge SSH were given the option to ask for comp tickets to the Y9 opener I got 4 tickets this way, all Forge supporters tix were comped same as Y9 SSH at the forge game. But they put all the Forge supporters on the east stand.

Alright, I had a feeling that would have been the case. 

Yes, I was there, I saw you'll on the other side.

The game was a lot of fun until the rain came. I'm going to love it when other cities in Southern Ontario come in like KW, Mississauga, London and that rumored Pickering/Ajax/Whitby team to name a few.

Edited May 28, 2019 by Macksam

[Bison44]

Just now, deschamp86 said:

I think we should try a little science experiment. How long will BBTB continue to post here for if no one responds or quotes him?

Or how long before he drives every single person off this board??  I see there is a lot of angst from Reddit users saying he is starting his own board on there and will be spending most of his time there.  But resistance to that kind of low budget semi pro solution (good for everywhere he doesnt live) is why he has so much problems on here.  That and any visions articulated by Bernie have created false narratives and unrealistic expectations.  In conclusion...Saskatoon, Saskatoon.  

[Ozzie_the_parrot]

Check the above for an example of what you can read on Reddit. There's a reason why teams in the GTA like York 9 have tended to struggle to draw a significant home support and this poster describes it very well.

[narduch]

If i wanted to read the opinion of people on Reddit, I would go to Reddit.

[Ams1984]

23 minutes ago, Ozzie_the_parrot said:

Check the above for an example of what you can read on Reddit. There's a reason why teams in the GTA like York 9 have tended to struggle to draw a significant home support and this poster describes it very well.

1) Reddit is a sewer. 

2) York 9 hasn’t “tended” to struggle with attendance, they’ve only played twice at home, once was a mid-week Cup game against an unknown amateur side, and both times were shit weather. 

3) Let’s talk attendance after the first season, then averages will mean something because we’ll have a real sample size. 

[Ozzie_the_parrot]

Setting aside the bizarre comment about Reddit, what I actually wrote was "... teams in the GTA like York 9 have tended to..." so most people should have picked up from the "like" and the past tense that meant primarily CSL and APSL era Blizzard, North York Rockets, CPSL Olympians and USL Lynx. All relatively low budget, all claiming to be professional with varying degrees of veracity and usually not hugely better than top NSL or Ontario Cup teams as appropriate depending on the era. If York 9 break the trend of there being little or no spectator interest in the GTA for teams like that once the future tense is applicable, rest assured that nobody will be happier about it than me and I suspect you won't be waiting until the end of the season to talk about it.