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2019 Canadian Premier League Attendance


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2 hours ago, grasshopper1917 said:

Just as a side note as far as I can see Im not 100% sure that the local media is treating it as a major sports story. On the morning news they do announce the score of the games and who scored the goals - usually a 5-10 second segment. Also it would appear the local paper also reports on the games (I cant read it I don't subscribe).

I mean locally there is coverage of the club and the games however id say its kinda underwhelming. I would place the coverage as much less then 'The Mooseheads' (local Jr. Hockey team) and more then the 'Hurricanes' local pro basketball team in NBL.

I'm not sure about other local news sources, but it's been bare bones in the Herald lately. I'd say the Hurricanes get more coverage through them than the Wanderers. I feel as though the majority of media coverage for the club comes from the local morning shows. I'm probably not the most informed on local news though, so I could be completely wrong and talking out of my ass.

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Someone mentioned a concern about 'walk up attendance' earlier. While most of the clubs had sections of very reasonable season tickets the fees on single game tickets may be killing some single ticket sales. In my mind the ideal situation would be to have at least some cheap seats where a person could walk up to 'the window' with a 20$ bill and get into the game. 

Just as an example in Halifax if you wanted the cheapest seat for a single ticket (general admission behind goal) it would cost you: Ticket $21.75 + $3.50 (service fee) + $2.50 (facility charge) + $3.00 (processing fee) = Total for one cheap seat  $30.75

To me that seems a bit high for the casual fan to 'check out a game' or 'pop in on a weeknight to check out some action'. That being said i'm not sure what can be done.  

Am I off base with thinking a 20 dollar bill should be able to get you admission to the cheap seats in this league?

 

 

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1 hour ago, grasshopper1917 said:

Someone mentioned a concern about 'walk up attendance' earlier. While most of the clubs had sections of very reasonable season tickets the fees on single game tickets may be killing some single ticket sales. In my mind the ideal situation would be to have at least some cheap seats where a person could walk up to 'the window' with a 20$ bill and get into the game. 

Just as an example in Halifax if you wanted the cheapest seat for a single ticket (general admission behind goal) it would cost you: Ticket $21.75 + $3.50 (service fee) + $2.50 (facility charge) + $3.00 (processing fee) = Total for one cheap seat  $30.75

To me that seems a bit high for the casual fan to 'check out a game' or 'pop in on a weeknight to check out some action'. That being said i'm not sure what can be done.  

Am I off base with thinking a 20 dollar bill should be able to get you admission to the cheap seats in this league?

 

 

Sounds reasonable to me.

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9 hours ago, grasshopper1917 said:

Someone mentioned a concern about 'walk up attendance' earlier. While most of the clubs had sections of very reasonable season tickets the fees on single game tickets may be killing some single ticket sales. In my mind the ideal situation would be to have at least some cheap seats where a person could walk up to 'the window' with a 20$ bill and get into the game. 

Just as an example in Halifax if you wanted the cheapest seat for a single ticket (general admission behind goal) it would cost you: Ticket $21.75 + $3.50 (service fee) + $2.50 (facility charge) + $3.00 (processing fee) = Total for one cheap seat  $30.75

To me that seems a bit high for the casual fan to 'check out a game' or 'pop in on a weeknight to check out some action'. That being said i'm not sure what can be done.  

Am I off base with thinking a 20 dollar bill should be able to get you admission to the cheap seats in this league?

 

 

Moreover, walkup fans willing to bring a buddy (or their kid) and buy a couple of drinks on a decent day, and sit in a visible area on camera, may be worth more to the club than the price of admission anyways.

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8 hours ago, grasshopper1917 said:

Am I off base with thinking a 20 dollar bill should be able to get you admission to the cheap seats in this league?

I think that it could be a touch low. 

I go to 5th tier in Spain for 5-10 euros, went to a 4th to 3rd promotion playoff game last Saturday for 15 euros--if we are top flight Canada we should be thinking that 25 dollars is reasonable. 

Kids should get a discount, and even students, and retired folks, IMO.

 

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I think $25 (surcharges included) is fine for a lower-end ticket, but high-end tickets shouldn't be drastically more expensive than this. In terms of quality of view, there isn't a big difference between a midfield seat and a seat by the 18-yard area, at least to the point of warranting a three-fold increase in ticket price. Charge $15-20 more for top midfield seats, and these seats will be far less likely to show up as blue on the Ticketmaster page.

In my opinion tickets should only cost $50+ in this league if fans are truly getting a premium-level seat - i.e. a ticket includes such perks as free or significantly-discounted food or alcohol, in-seat service, etc. I'm thinking along the lines of what VIP season ticket holders get for Toronto Wolfpack games.

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I got my Valour tickets for roughly 20 bucks, and it was low enough I didnt hesitate to get 4 and drag some family along for the outing.  Compared to movie prices etc, 20-25 bucks should be affordable to people who just want to test the waters.  

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3 hours ago, Toronto Ruffrider said:

I think $25 (surcharges included) is fine for a lower-end ticket, but high-end tickets shouldn't be drastically more expensive than this. In terms of quality of view, there isn't a big difference between a midfield seat and a seat by the 18-yard area, at least to the point of warranting a three-fold increase in ticket price. Charge $15-20 more for top midfield seats, and these seats will be far less likely to show up as blue on the Ticketmaster page.

In my opinion tickets should only cost $50+ in this league if fans are truly getting a premium-level seat - i.e. a ticket includes such perks as free or significantly-discounted food or alcohol, in-seat service, etc. I'm thinking along the lines of what VIP season ticket holders get for Toronto Wolfpack games.

I totally agree, the only reason to charge more than say 60-70 in CPL is if you have an MLS club visiting for the Voyageurs Cup and you think you can make some needed income off the visit. 

In any case, I think that teams overcharging with lower attendance are also probably seeing less shirt sales, and let's face it: a shirt is worth 3-4 tickets in a supporter section. But I think they have been deceived by overpricing for major sports and really do not understand where we are and what it means to build a base.

 

Edited by Unnamed Trialist
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9 hours ago, Unnamed Trialist said:

I totally agree, the only reason to charge more than say 60-70 in CPL is if you have an MLS club visiting for the Voyageurs Cup and you think you can make some needed income off the visit. 

In any case, I think that teams overcharging with lower attendance are also probably seeing less shirt sales, and let's face it: a shirt is worth 3-4 tickets in a supporter section. But I think they have been deceived by overpricing for major sports and really do not understand where we are and what it means to build a base.

 

Exactly. In addition to jersey sales, food and drink sales need to be factored in as well. If tickets are cheap enough, fans will more than compensate for this by treating themselves to a beer or two.

Edited by Toronto Ruffrider
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22 minutes ago, Toronto Ruffrider said:

Exactly. In addition to jersey sales, food and drink sales need to be factored in as well. If tickets are cheap enough, fans will more than compensate for this by treating themselves to a beer or two.

^^^ This.....2 kids=2 popcorn, 2 hotdogs, 2 drinks and 2 t-shirts...made my Valour tickets the cheapest part of the day!!  More than one way to part Dad from his money.  Although having my 4year old telling all his timbit soccer buddies about the game in WPG he went to made it all worthwhile.  

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On 5/30/2019 at 5:47 PM, Bison44 said:

Now I know why he is the parrot....low wages, small market, low budget...small market low budget.  Winnipeg is doing well in a bigger city, large football stadium, with turf and a non central location, with lots of competition from other sports.  So there are plenty of "winning formulas" not just the sludge you keep trying to push.  

Just curious, what is the competition from other sports? Blue Bombers haven't started yet, and the Jets finished before the Valour season started. I honestly don't know if Winnipeg has a baseball or Lacrosse or some other team. Do they?

If BBTB's post with the picture of the crowd in Hamilton was a picture of a crowd in Ottawa, and posted by someone other than himself, everybody would have been on board with him. Seriously, I feel like people here are turning me into a sympathizer of him because they are at least as quick to be against him as they say he is quick to be against CPL.

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1 minute ago, Kent said:

Just curious, what is the competition from other sports? Blue Bombers haven't started yet, and the Jets finished before the Valour season started. I honestly don't know if Winnipeg has a baseball or Lacrosse or some other team. Do they?

Winnipeg has a fairly well-supported independent minor league baseball team, but I wouldn't expect much overlap in those fanbases, as the Goldeyes appeal mostly to seniors and families. To this point there hasn't been much else going on during the Valour season but the Bombers are getting under way. It will be interesting to see if this will have a large effect on attendance in the remainder of the season, but I don't expect it will.

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Ignoring the bizarre post from Lofty two above, here's something to bear in mind about crowds in Hamilton:

On 5/9/2019 at 6:30 PM, Shortdutchcanuck said:

One thing you have to realize with seasons ticket holders in Hamilton is that plenty of Co-Founders announced on Twitter were local businesses, who then pass along tickets to employees or clients who may or may not ultimately show up to the game.  Makes good business sense from a revenue standpoint but doesn't always translate to bums in the seat.

If you go onto Ticketmaster and work out how many seats are currently in use you need well over a majority of seats in the active portion of the stadium to be filled to have over 6000 actual. That clearly wasn't the case last week in the picture I posted, which is in marked contrast to the five non-Golden Horseshoe markets where what you see is happening seems to tally reasonably closely with what's being announced (Edmonton yesterday excepted obviously).

So what to take from that? Firstly, what Pacific, the Cavalry and FCE are drawing and announcing may not be as bad in comparison to Hamilton as the raw announced numbers suggest because those numbers may be being arrived at in a markedly different manner, and secondly the level of relative success of crowds in Halifax and the Valour's home opener has probably been somewhat obscured by how the Forge's average on announced numbers includes the home opener when there was free admission. So far poor weather and/or weeknight scheduling dates have been used to explain what's happening on actual attendance for Hamilton and York 9 even though it doesn't seem to put much of a dent into crowd levels in Halifax. It will be interesting to see what happens on weekends when there is good weather over the next couple of months.

We are out of the aspiration stage now when people could still argue over what they thought was going to happen on the basis of what they wanted to unfold and into the realm of objective reality. It won't be much longer until we will have a much clearer picture of how well each CanPL team is doing on actual attendance and that will no doubt have an influence on shaping decisions on expansion in other markets by both would be investors and the league. 

Edited by Ozzie_the_parrot
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3 hours ago, Ozzie_the_parrot said:

If you go onto Ticketmaster

I don't know why some people seemingly obsess about checking Ticketmaster, like it's a sacrificed chicken whose innards are being examined to foretell the future. Let's add up all the blue dots to see how many tickets are left. Suddenly, there are more tickets available. Who knew? It's like they had created an artificial sense of scarcity. Shocking. 

Some thought in terms of all teams selling out all games, requiring larger stadiums for year two. Others thought failure of the league in year one. The reality was always going to be a difficult slog to get beyond the hard-core Canadian soccer supporter. Getting to the casual supporter, the general sports supporter, etc. Seems to me that any truly negative attendance issues can be traced to management decisions: pricing, marketing, etc. I think all on here thought York 9 would be in tough due to location.

Specific to Forge, I'm happy with the attendance of roughly 5500 to 6000 per game so far (ignoring the anomaly of game one). From people I speak to at the games, or see interacting with others, these fans are leaving very happy with the experience. Remember, Forge (and the other CPL teams) are not just competing for sports dollars, but all entertainment dollars such as going to a movie.

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3 hours ago, Ozzie_the_parrot said:

Ignoring the bizarre post from Lofty two above, here's something to bear in mind about crowds in Hamilton:

If you go onto Ticketmaster and work out how many seats are currently in use you need well over a majority of seats in the active portion of the stadium to be filled to have over 6000 actual. That clearly wasn't the case last week in the picture I posted, which is in marked contrast to the five non-Golden Horseshoe markets where what you see is happening seems to tally reasonably closely with what's being announced (Edmonton yesterday excepted obviously).

So what to take from that? Firstly, what Pacific, the Cavalry and FCE are drawing and announcing may not be as bad in comparison to Hamilton as the raw announced numbers suggest because those numbers may be being arrived at in a markedly different manner, and secondly the level of relative success of crowds in Halifax and the Valour's home opener has probably been somewhat obscured by how the Forge's average on announced numbers includes the home opener when there was free admission. So far poor weather and/or weeknight scheduling dates have been used to explain what's happening on actual attendance for Hamilton and York 9 even though it doesn't seem to put much of a dent into crowd levels in Halifax. It will be interesting to see what happens on weekends when there is good weather over the next couple of months.

We are out of the aspiration stage now when people could argue over what they thought was going to happen on the basis of what they wanted to unfold and into the realm of objective reality. It won't be much longer until we will have a much clearer picture of how well each CanPL team is doing on actual attendance and that will no doubt have an influence on shaping decisions on expansion in other markets by both would be investors and the league. 

Why do you suggest that your speculation is somehow fact. I have been to every Hamilton game and believe me it definitely seems like the 6000 crowd number is on par you are speculating on a picture that was taken right before half as I sit on that side of the stadium and it is definitely more full then that normally during the game, you assume everyone is in their seats at all times which is unrealistic. I am fairly certain Hamilton gets their attendance stats from scanned tickets which in Hamilton's case is mobile only, to suggest otherwise is false unless you can provide some sort of proof of your speculation. 

Why you comment on a league you obviously wish to fail I have no idea, obviously you are just a troll.

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1 minute ago, RickC said:

I don't know why some people seemingly obsess about checking Ticketmaster, like it's a sacrificed chicken whose innards are being examined to foretell the future. Let's add up all the blue dots to see how many tickets are left. Suddenly, there are more tickets available. Who knew? It's like they had created an artificial sense of scarcity. Shocking...

This had nothing to do with adding blue dots. By multiplying the number of seats by the number of rows in the sections being used you can easily figure out the reduced capacity.

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5 hours ago, Ozzie_the_parrot said:

Ignoring the bizarre post from Lofty two above, here's something to bear in mind about crowds in Hamilton:

If you go onto Ticketmaster and work out how many seats are currently in use you need well over a majority of seats in the active portion of the stadium to be filled to have over 6000 actual. That clearly wasn't the case last week in the picture I posted, which is in marked contrast to the five non-Golden Horseshoe markets where what you see is happening seems to tally reasonably closely with what's being announced (Edmonton yesterday excepted obviously).

So what to take from that? Firstly, what Pacific, the Cavalry and FCE are drawing and announcing may not be as bad in comparison to Hamilton as the raw announced numbers suggest because those numbers may be being arrived at in a markedly different manner, and secondly the level of relative success of crowds in Halifax and the Valour's home opener has probably been somewhat obscured by how the Forge's average on announced numbers includes the home opener when there was free admission. So far poor weather and/or weeknight scheduling dates have been used to explain what's happening on actual attendance for Hamilton and York 9 even though it doesn't seem to put much of a dent into crowd levels in Halifax. It will be interesting to see what happens on weekends when there is good weather over the next couple of months.

We are out of the aspiration stage now when people could still argue over what they thought was going to happen on the basis of what they wanted to unfold and into the realm of objective reality. It won't be much longer until we will have a much clearer picture of how well each CanPL team is doing on actual attendance and that will no doubt have an influence on shaping decisions on expansion in other markets by both would be investors and the league. 

You are as far removed from objective reality as I am from signing with Bayern Munich. Want to know what I wanted to unfold? I was hoping for a Canadian professional league to come to fruition, coast to coast representation if possible, the majority of the players being Canadian (young if possible but also some returnees from Europe that some on here would be familiar with). I hoped for good crowds but at the same time wasn't really worried about it because I realized this wouldn't be an overnight blockbuster success everywhere...it had to develop organically and differently for each market. Well Holy Fuck would you look at that...I got everything I wished for. It's like Christmas in June around here. Want to know something else? I'm willing to bet I'm not the only one that feels that way. Now please feel free to shit on that like you do most things on here. You won't change my mind in the least bit, you won't convince me to return my season tickets and you won't dim the passion I have for this league or Canadian soccer in general. The only thing you will accomplish is reminding me to point out what a douchebag you are at every opportunity.

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Even if some people were taking a generous accounting of attendance (though there is no evidence that is occurring)...

Even if some people approach this league with a sense of optimism (though the optimism seems largely warranted)...

And even if people are trying to look on the bright side of events (after literally decades of being a soccer backwater)...

What is the big friggin deal?  Why the incessant need to try and quench the enthusiasm?  THAT is the part that galls me. 

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