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Atletico Ottawa Season Thread 2021


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4 hours ago, Ozzie_the_parrot said:

Not consistently. Used to watch some of their games on youtube and some of the colder weather games in particular were very sparse on attendance. A bit like Pacific FC maybe. Good crowds sometimes when they could do effective marketing.

Don't mind him. The Fury pulled 4,000-6,000 a game pretty consistently in both NASL and USL C. For some matches they were more in the 3,000 range if the weather/scheduling was bad, and for others they were more in the 7,000-9,000 range if it was a good day, a charity event or a bigger-name opponent. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ottawa_Fury_FC#Record

I know a lot of Fury and footie fans in the city who were pretty non-plussed about playing second-rate American cities in USL C, but very excited at the possibility of playing against Halifax, Calgary or Victoria. I'm sure the attendance will be a bit on the low side this summer just due to COVID, but I'm confident Atletico will do just fine. 

For what it's worth, the Fury pulled in over 14,000 for their first-ever match at TD Place through a two-for-one deal they shared with the Red Blacks (buy a ticket for either home-opener, get the other free). It seemed to get a lot of people interested in the team and got some great publicity in local media. I don't know that they'll hit those numbers this time around with COVID, but we'll see how it all goes. 

Edited by m-g-williams
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In reality, the camera angle the Fury used a lot of the time in their youtube broadcasts made the active lower bowl sections on the side where the fans were supposed to be clearly visible during games so it was easy to gauge what was happening on actual attendance. It's easy enough to find the full game clips in question and judge for yourself. They are still available with no paywall through the USL Championship account.

Edited by Ozzie_the_parrot
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29 minutes ago, Ozzie_the_parrot said:

In reality, the camera angle the Fury used a lot of the time in their youtube broadcasts made the active lower bowl sections on the side where the fans were supposed to be clearly visible during games so it was easy to gauge what was happening on actual attendance. It's easy enough to find the full game clips in question and judge for yourself. They are still available with no paywall through the USL Championship account.

It's even easier to judge for yourself when you've actually been to the majority of the team's games throughout their existence . . . like I and many others have.

Give it up. 

Edited by m-g-williams
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Meanwhile in reality when I see that the stands are full as in Halifax I say that's great and wax lyrical on here about what a success story the Wanderers are on attendance. It's a fan messageboard and we are not an extension of the league's PR effort, so excuse me if I sometimes notice that there are acres of empty seats where large numbers of people would need to be sitting for announced numbers to be credible and don't feel a need to pretend the emperor is actually wearing clothes. I was part of North York Rockets crowds in the dozens actual back in the day that were being announced in the Toronto Star as four figures so fibbing about crowds for PR reasons is definitely nothing new.

Edited by Ozzie_the_parrot
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3 minutes ago, Ozzie_the_parrot said:

Meanwhile in reality when I see that the stands are full as in Halifax I say that's great and wax lyrical on here about what a success story the Wanderers are on attendance. It's a fan messageboard and we are not an extension of the league's PR effort, so excuse me if I sometimes notice that there are acres of empty seats where large numbers of people would need to be sitting for announced numbers to be credible and don't feel a need to pretend the emperor is actually wearing clothes. I was part of North York Rockets crowds in the dozens actual back in the day that were being announced in the Toronto Star as four figures so fibbing about crowds for PR reasons is definitely nothing new.

You *just* acknowledged that when you're in the stands, you have a much better sense as to what the actual attendance of an event is and if there's a discrepancy. As someone who was *consistently* in the stands for Fury matches over the years, I can tell you that the announced attendance there never seemed off from what was really happening in the stands. If you had sketchy experiences with the Rockets, then fair enough. But that doesn't mean every team out there does the same thing. 

It's a 24,000 seat stadium, so for someone not local who's seeing empty seats/got a weird camera angle, it can give the appearance of seeming somewhat empty. But for anyone who's been in the lower bowl on the south side for a match, you can very easily tell that the crowds aren't being inflated. 

I get that you're passionate about footie, and good on you for it. But when you refuse to give up/reconsider your views even when they fly in the face of evidence, reality and the experiences of so many others here, it gets a bit old. 

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29 minutes ago, Ozzie_the_parrot said:

I did no such thing. A camera angle pointed at the bleachers at Esther Shiner during a Rockets game would have made the discrepancy between announced and actual just as obvious.

You're saying that you, as a fan in the stands, were able to better judge the actual attendance at a match rather than someone relying on official stats or camera angles - which I agree with. Someone who's there to experience it is always going to know what's really going on. And in line with that point, I'm telling you that, as a fan in the stands for most Fury matches over the years, there *wasn't* a discrepancy between actual and announced attendance. I'd actually play a game of trying to guess the attendance before they announced it at the end of the match, based on checking availability on Ticketmaster before the match started and how busy the lower bowl *actually* was on gameday. I was never off by more than 500 or so, so I'd say the Fury's numbers were pretty well bang on. 

The team was also very transparent about any free/discounted tickets they'd offer for special events (bringing out local soccer teams, supporting the foodbank for a fundraiser, etc.), and you could certainly see that attendance was higher on those days. But in terms of having a healthy, consistent fan base, it didn't really strike me as an issue. 

Edited by m-g-williams
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23 minutes ago, m-g-williams said:

You're saying that you, as a fan in the stands, were able to better judge the actual attendance at a match rather than someone relying on official stats or camera angles - which I agree with...

I literally just did the exact opposite. When TSN used a camera angle from the mural wall side rather than the press box side at Esther Shiner it was easy to see how many people were in the only bleachers that were available.

Edited by Ozzie_the_parrot
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7 minutes ago, Ozzie_the_parrot said:

I literally just did the exact opposite. When TSN used a camera angle from the mural wall side rather than the press box side at Esther Shiner it was easy to see how many people were in the only bleachers that were available.

Not really; you're acknowledging that the right camera angle makes the difference, and the wrong one can be misleading. Even with the right angle though, the size of the stadium can make a crowd seem deceptively larger or small (again, the same crowd in the 6,000 seat Wanderers Grounds vs. 24,000 seat TD Place would look very different). 

Besides, if a camera angle matters more to you than what a fan in the stands is saying, then why bother mentioning your in-person assessment of attendance at Rocket matches and how you could tell that things just didn't add up? 

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36 minutes ago, m-g-williams said:

Not really; you're acknowledging that the right camera angle makes the difference, and the wrong one can be misleading...

What I mentioned was that some seasons during the youtube broadcasts the Fury had their main camera pointing directly at where the crowd was supposed to be in a similar sort of way to what I was describing at Esther Shiner. Those clips are still readily available on the USL Championship account. I am not going to pretend that I consistently saw those sections mostly full when that was not what I saw happening when I was watching the broadcasts.

Edited by Ozzie_the_parrot
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13 minutes ago, Ozzie_the_parrot said:

What I mentioned was that some seasons during the youtube broadcasts the Fury had their main camera pointing directly at where the crowd was supposed to be in a similar sort of way to what I was describing at Esther Shiner. Those clips are still readily available on the USL Championship account. I am not going to pretend that I consistently saw those sections mostly full when that was not what I saw happening when I was watching the broadcasts.

The south stand seats about 10,000 people, with about 3,000 in the upper deck and 7,000 in the lower. With that single lower deck portion having more seating capacity than the entire stadium of any of Halifax, York, Calgary, Edmonton or Victoria, it can look kind of empty while still hosting a decently large crowd. The reality on the ground/in the stands is that they were doing fine. 

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The "4,000-6,000 a game pretty consistently" mentioned above should fill around half of those seats and that should be obvious when a single camera is mounted in the opposite stand. Kind of empty is a lot less than 50% of the active seats filled and was what I was seeing quite a bit particularly in early cold weather games.

The numbers needed to balance the books simply don't work on a league like CanPL or the USL if that's happening a lot. My understanding is that the Fury were keen on USL mainly because they got in early enough to benefit financially from later expansion not because of the attendance they were getting.

Nobody would be more delighted on here than me if the south stand lower bowl is consistently filled over the next few months Halifax style but I'm not going to pretend it's happening if there are acres of empty seats readily visble on Onesoccer although I suspect they may be using the opposite camera angle and virtual stadium approach a lot from now on there and elsewhere.

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29 minutes ago, Ozzie_the_parrot said:
The "4,000-6,000 a game pretty consistently" mentioned above should fill around half of those seats and that should be obvious when a single camera is mounted in the opposite stand. Kind of empty is a lot less than 50% of the active seats filled and was what I was seeing quite a bit particularly in early cold weather games.

The numbers needed to balance the books simply don't work on a league like CanPL or the USL if that's happening a lot. My understanding is that the Fury were keen on USL mainly because they got in early enough to benefit financially from later expansion not because of the attendance they were getting.

Nobody would be more delighted on here than me if the south stand lower bowl is consistently filled over the next few months Halifax style but I'm not going to pretend it's happening if there are acres of empty seats readily visble on Onesoccer although I suspect they may be using the opposite camera angle and virtual stadium approach a lot from now on there and elsewhere.

So you're calling @m-g-williams a liar? He has unequivocally stated what attendance was based on HIS attendance at these games but you refuse to take his word because it doesn't suit your storyline.  I didn't think you could sink any lower but have proven me wrong again. You...in my own personal opinion...are the biggest cunt this forum has ever seen...bar none. I'll probably be banned again for a while for uttering those words but I'm wondering if the mods will have the balls to do something about you. I highly doubt it.

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2 hours ago, Ozzie_the_parrot said:
The "4,000-6,000 a game pretty consistently" mentioned above should fill around half of those seats and that should be obvious when a single camera is mounted in the opposite stand. Kind of empty is a lot less than 50% of the active seats filled and was what I was seeing quite a bit particularly in early cold weather games.
 

The numbers needed to balance the books simply don't work on a league like CanPL or the USL if that's happening a lot. My understanding is that the Fury were keen on USL mainly because they got in early enough to benefit financially from later expansion not because of the attendance they were getting.

Nobody would be more delighted on here than me if the south stand lower bowl is consistently filled over the next few months Halifax style but I'm not going to pretend it's happening if there are acres of empty seats readily visble on Onesoccer although I suspect they may be using the opposite camera angle and virtual stadium approach a lot from now on there and elsewhere.

At this point, I feel like you're just relying on semantics. "Kind of empty", "somewhat empty", "partially empty" - however you want to phrase. The lower bowl can look between a little over half to three-quarters full and still host a crowd on par with most other teams in the CPL, and well within the 4,000-6,000 range. The official numbers, ticket sales and crowds I've seen over the course of five years all back that up. If you want to rely on your few odd matches that had some bad weather as the defining standard, then go for it. 

I stand to be corrected on the NASL => USL jump, but I've always understood it be more about them reading the tea leaves and switching to the more stable league. I don't think it was so much about expansion fees and lack of ticket sales (though the club admittedly lost money over the years) as it was about finding a long-term, stable home. And as per above, the fan base seems healthy enough that they'll be fine in the long run with the CPL (especially with Atletico as backers). 

I wonder about the virtual adds and such myself, but I suspect they'll be doing away with that (or least the ones projected on the stands; the pitch ads I'm fine with). During the bubble, the fan tickets sold at IG Field were intentionally on the side of the stadium *not* covered in the camera shots to avoid this issue. But looking at ticket sales for Valour now, it looks like they're selling tickets back on the side to be covered by the camera. With local ads being displayed in each stadium, I don't think there's really the need for all the digital overlays in the stadium, but who knows. 

As for your consistent harping on empty seats in stands, I don't really know what I can say to someone who won't reconsider his views in light of evidence and testimonials from people on the ground. Good luck. 

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just saw on onesoccer today about the 'pay what you want' promotion. i love it!

also, someone mentioned that forge did something like that in the past.

2 questions:

1. is it general seating? like, you pay what you want and sit anywhere?

2. how successful was it for forge? in terms of both attendance and $$$.

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The inaugural game between Forge and York had free tickets just to get the stadium as full as possible. Maybe they had pay what you want for that game? Other than that I dont recall Forge doing a pay what you can/want. I did get an email recently asking for ticket donations for front line workers. 

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@Ozzie_the_parrot have you ever been to a game in Ottawa? Just curious because if you had you would know that hundreds and hundreds of fans hang out on the concourse and in the Bank St end during games. I know that doesn’t fit your “I saw a wide angle on a YouTube broadcast” narrative but it’s the actual reality, not all fans with tickets sit in their seats.

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