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CPL 2022 Season Attendance


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20 hours ago, Stanley said:

Just quoting the complaint I have seen online from Vancouver fans as to why they think that attendance for both Lions and Whitecaps are so low.  I wouldn't know, its' been a long time since my southsider days and I haven't lived in Vancouver for years.

Demographics. Vancouver is really changing at the moment. The amount of Latin Americans is really on the rise and that will be a bonus for the Caps and its starting to really show at Caps games but they're all very new and just getting a foundation. You get the vibe that they're there just kinda checking it out at the moment. All things considered attendance at the Caps and Lions hasn't been all bad. Vancouver is just going thru growing pains at the moment and from a Caps perspective they just need to win because fans are sick of nothingness . An as you probably know West Cost sport fans are different, they'll show up big when you're winning but when things aren't going well they move on and go back to whatever else they do for fun

Edited by SpursFlu
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5 hours ago, Kingston said:

Their ownership group doesn't spend enough to keep up with the top teams.  They are spending more now, but they still pretty much have to get everything right the first time because they have no financial room for a do-over.

TFC is admittedly an outlier in the other direction, but Vancouver has no room to do the equivalent of buying out Altidore or dropping Soteldo or Salcedo when they don't work out.

They'll never be at the top, which always looks bad when two of their top rivals (TFC and Seattle) generally are. But they're closer to spending in the middle than people want to admit. You're right, there's not a lot of room for error but that's the case for a lot of teams in a parity league.  And I think people really don't always appreciate what an absolute mess the FO was under Lenarduzzi/Anderson/Lewis. It's take Schuster a few years (during a pandemic) but I do think the club is in a better spot. Now to upgrade the coach...

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5 hours ago, Watchmen said:

They'll never be at the top, which always looks bad when two of their top rivals (TFC and Seattle) generally are. But they're closer to spending in the middle than people want to admit. You're right, there's not a lot of room for error but that's the case for a lot of teams in a parity league.  And I think people really don't always appreciate what an absolute mess the FO was under Lenarduzzi/Anderson/Lewis. It's take Schuster a few years (during a pandemic) but I do think the club is in a better spot. Now to upgrade the coach...

The MLS writers for the Athletic classify the Caps owners under the unambitious MLS owners bucket.

Kerfoot or Mallet are also co-heads of MLS Product Committee. The writers regularly have said that changes to squad and compensation rules are being held back by the unambitious owners on this Committee. They're largely content with the league's pace of change. They also not ready to fall behind since they're not interested in spending more until the revenue supports it.

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2 hours ago, red card said:

The MLS writers for the Athletic classify the Caps owners under the unambitious MLS owners bucket.

Kerfoot or Mallet are also co-heads of MLS Product Committee. The writers regularly have said that changes to squad and compensation rules are being held back by the unambitious owners on this Committee. They're largely content with the league's pace of change. They also not ready to fall behind since they're not interested in spending more until the revenue supports it.

Yup, I read that. Think it also said that while the competition committee "holds back" the league, there's also not really any movement to change the committee members either because the league itself is content with the pace of change.  I don't deny that they're unambiguous, just that it's not at the levels when MDS took over and that the previous FO was busy making a mess of everything regardless. I wouldn't have trusted them with more funds either after watching how they squandered the Davies transfer money.

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On 8/31/2022 at 12:01 AM, Ozzie_the_parrot said:

 

Team attendance is affected by where they are in the standings, typically....

Attendance avg:

  1. Halifax
  2. Ottawa
  3. Forge
  4. Calgary
  5. Pacific
  6. Valour
  7. York
  8. Edmonton

Standings:

  1. Ottawa
  2. Calgary
  3. Forge 
  4. Pacific
  5. Valour
  6. Halifax
  7. York
  8. Edmonton

Here is each team's mean rank in terms of attendance and standings...

Attendance/Standings combined rank:

  1. Ottawa - under performing (1.5)
  2. Forge - on par (3)
  3. Cavalry - under performing (3)
  4. Halifax - over performing (3.5)
  5. Pacific - on par (4.5)
  6. Valour - on par (5.5)
  7. York - on par (7)
  8. Edmonton - on par (8)

This is imperfect, obviously. The top half of the table members have been unchanged, but their rank has been constantly interchanging, so I don't put much value in Ottawa and Calgary "underperforming". The Cavs could drop to 4th next week and that would be on par with their attendance.

The bottom half of the table is where I cast my eye. There is a 100% positive correlation between attendance and standings (no shock) for Edmonton, York and Valour.

Halifax is the true exception, as they are overperforming big time. 6th in the standings but first in attendance? They are remarkable and everyone else isn't, basically. Edmonton suck on the field so nobody wants to go, same for York and Valour, but just to lesser extents.

So regardless of playing surface, atmosphere, stadium location, and metro area, if you suck on the field people won't watch, if you are good on the field they will, and if you're Halifax you are golden. 

Edited by Obinna
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I mostly agree although you over-simplify things a little. Crowds in Winnipeg, York and Edmonton have all suffered from poor performances on the pitch. But Edmonton and York are true outliers at just over 1000 while Valour are within 200 of the league mean attendance. You could say Ottawa is pulling away from the pack a bit, and full credit to all they're doing to make that happen, but Valour's average is much closer to Ottawa than the two bottom teams.

You could even say that a team like Forge is the real underperformer in the stands: they've known nothing but success for 4 years but average less than 20% more than Valour in 2022, a team that has only been relevant competitively for a few months in 4 seasons. Of course I think that's silly.

Really the big question we should be asking is what teams should be doing to emulate Halifax's turnstile success, although I think some of those factors aren't to be found elsewhere (maybe Victoria).

The best news is that everyone is up from 2021. May that continue.

Edited by jonovision
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The active sections hold about 7000 so the seats need to be about 40% full for that to be the actual crowd. Don't think it looked particularly close to that overall even allowing for season ticket holder no shows. Crowds do appear to be significantly higher in the highlights than they were earlier in the season but that doesn't necessarily reflect in the announced number if a tickets distributed is being used. The main difference could be that more people are making use of tickets being handed out by sponsors etc.

Edited by Ozzie_the_parrot
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I've been to almost every home game this year (I think I missed one), and yesterday's attendance looked about average from in the stadium. I think one thing that might be working to make it look fuller is people moving more towards the middle. I know the last 3 seasons I always sat in my seats at the very end, but at this point I figure who cares especially when it helps get out of the sun.

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1 hour ago, Wippersuna said:

I've been to almost every home game this year (I think I missed one), and yesterday's attendance looked about average from in the stadium. I think one thing that might be working to make it look fuller is people moving more towards the middle. I know the last 3 seasons I always sat in my seats at the very end, but at this point I figure who cares especially when it helps get out of the sun.

We were talking about how consistant the crowds have been.  Can't be more than a couple hundred difference between matches, or at least it doesn't feels like it.  And certainly some turnover because quite a few regulars in my area were not there yesterday.  Numbers have to improve, absolutely, but yeah, pretty stable.  

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  • 2 weeks later...
3 hours ago, Ozzie_the_parrot said:

The 4992 number for the Forge is very dubious based on what was visible in the highlights last weekend. The far side from the cameras would need to be substantially more than half full for that to be credible and clearly wasn't.

I was at the match and that is about what we speculated for the number, the stands seemed a bit more full than usual and concessions were busy, sorry if that doesn't fit your narrative!

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Nothing to do with supposed narratives based on the usual absurd distortions of what I am supposed to be motivated by. Have you ever seen me question the attendance numbers in Halifax and do you understand that I am happy to see that stadium nearly full because I want pro soccer to succeed?

The two areas of the stadium that are opened for the Forge have about 7000 seats max (not all of which are actually available because a quite a bit of it is tarped off ).  A crowd number of about 5000 implies those seating areas should be about 70% full. These are the highlights:

 

Edited by Ozzie_the_parrot
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50 minutes ago, gator said:

I was at the match and that is about what we speculated for the number, the stands seemed a bit more full than usual and concessions were busy, sorry if that doesn't fit your narrative!

No sense in arguing with him.  A half a second shot of part of the crowd from "sometime" during the match is more accurate than what you saw at the actual game, or what was announced...you should know this Gator, its been 3 years of the same old shit.  

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I tuned in and it distinctly stood out to me that THF was more full than normal. There are fans out of shot on the camera side of the stadium too right? so impossible to tell from one forward facing shot. The stands on camera seemed fuller than normally from what I remembered 🤷‍♂️

Edit: last time I watched Valour it seemed they were up slightly too.

Edited by toontownman
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