Final 2013 CFL attendance

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David
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League average was 27,005. Here's how the teams rank. Note - BC finished behind Calgary, but they enjoyed the extra Rider game; we only had one.

Saskatchewan 37,503
Edmonton 32,096
Winnipeg 30,637
Calgary 29,263
British Columbia 28,311
Montreal 23,005
Toronto 21,926
Hamilton 13,298

No question the last two meaningless.....errr....."games that didn't affect the standings" really dropped our average and was a big reason why we finished behind last year's 30,356 average. But Dennis Skulsky and his team really have their work cut out for them this off-season. Sure, they can hang their hat (and marketing efforts) on hosting the country's biggest week long party in 2014, but there's substantial evidence that we are in attendance decline. The party line will be that losing the star quarterback at a critical juncture of the season hurt the team - on the field and off it. However, there were some weak gates earlier in the season when Lulay was quarterbacking and we weren't in freefall ("Exhibit A" would be Saturday, July 20 against Edmonton = 26,623, followed by Monday, August 5 against Winnipeg = 26,855).

I think most who go to a few Lions games a year would say that they are, by and large, entertained. There's Terry Fox Plaza "street party" before the game with a live band, and things like the "Kiss Cam" in the 2nd half which seem to go over very well. Bottom line though, the offense has to be more entertaining, the in-stadium atmosphere has to improve (nothing screams "no one cares" more than section-upon-section of empty seats - tarp them up!), Skulsky HAS to work harder for more Saturday night games, and while the club partially addressed pricing issues with the lower priced sections in the upper deck, they still need a price correction in the end zone (and corners) as well as a tiered-pricing structure in the 2nd level.

Bottom line, the club did not see anything close to the lift they were expecting from the retractable roof and renovation. Skulsky was talking last year about getting crowds in the 40,000 range which, at this point, seems like a pipe dream. The realistic goal should be providing a better alternative than watching at home on high def TV, and building average attendance to a 33,000-35,000 range.



DH :cool:
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SammyGreene
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Agree with all your points David. Bottom line is the Lions have put themselves in a position with their ticket prices where the product has to be good and entertaining. Unlike say a "Nat Bailey" experience where the result is almost secondary. At least the family and patio sections are a start.
They did have a crappy schedule this year with no Friday night home games in the summer and no Saturday evening games in the fall (when the hell was the last time that happened?).
But can honestly say the Calgary first visit here was far and away the most entertaining game of the season. I'm throwing out the last two, especially against a disinterested Calgary team. The rest were hardly memorable.
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Rammer
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SammyGreene wrote:Agree with all your points David. Bottom line is the Lions have put themselves in a position with their ticket prices where the product has to be good and entertaining. Unlike say a "Nat Bailey" experience where the result is almost secondary. At least the family and patio sections are a start.
They did have a crappy schedule this year with no Friday night home games in the summer and no Saturday evening games in the fall (when the hell was the last time that happened?).
But can honestly say the Calgary first visit here was far and away the most entertaining game of the season. I'm throwing out the last two, especially against a disinterested Calgary team. The rest were hardly memorable.
The Lions need the onfield product to be good and entertaining...due to ticket prices. That is the problem with the Lions ticket pricing, that is unattainable season after season, next season is the mulligan as they host the GC and the tickets will move despite the product presented to the fans. However once that window is closed, the flat line ST holdings will be noticeable.
Entertainment value = an all time low
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sj-roc
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David wrote:League average was 27,005 (—4.2%). Here's how the teams rank. Note BC - finished behind Calgary, but they enjoyed the extra Rider game; we only had one.

Saskatchewan 37,503 (+15.9%)
Edmonton 32,096 (—6.5%)
Winnipeg 30,637 (+9.5%)
Calgary 29,263 (+2.1%)
British Columbia 28,311 (—6.7%)
Montreal 23,005 (+2.4%)
Toronto 21,926 (—7.4%)
Hamilton 13,298 (—48.3%)
I've added %age changes from 2012 as I noted on Saturday. The whole league was off 4.2% from last year; perhaps there was some hangover effect from the 100th Grey Cup season.
No question the last two meaningless.....errr....."games that didn't affect the standings" really dropped our average and was a big reason why we finished behind last year's 30,356 average. But Dennis Skulsky and his team really have their work cut out for them this off-season. Sure, they can hang their hat (and marketing efforts) on hosting the country's biggest week long party in 2014, but there's substantial evidence that we are in attendance decline. The party line will be that losing the star quarterback at a critical juncture of the season hurt the team - on the field and off it. However, there were some weak gates earlier in the season when Lulay was quarterbacking and we weren't in freefall ("Exhibit A" would be Saturday, July 20 against Edmonton = 26,623, followed by Monday, August 5 against Winnipeg = 26,855).
The last two "meaningless" games certainly didn't help but even if you exclude these the average from the first seven still falls nearly 4.5% short of the 2012 average at 29,003. It also didn't help that Ssk only had one visit in 2013 vs 2012. With Wpg back in our division next year there's no guarantee we'll get two visits next season as we otherwise would and in the long run they will pay fewer visits.

I've believed for some time that crowd expectations here are too strongly shaped by the sheer size of our venue. If we'd had a Wpg or Cgy sized venue all this time there wouldn't be half the handwringing that goes on. I suspect even if we averaged 47k for the next five years people would fixate on the 6-7k empty seats. The truth is our all-time average from day 1 in 1954 is 27,688, so in this regard those 26k summer crowds this year aren't really all that "weak" when viewed against the historical record. It seems we only get inflated crowds when there's a purrfect storm of all the gate-driving factors all pulling in the right direction, and these gains are always short-lived. We will prob see a bump next year from hosting GC again but I expect this won't sustain itself into 2015.

Image
I think most who go to a few Lions games a year would say that they are, by and large, entertained. There's Terry Fox Plaza "street party" before the game with a live band, and things like the "Kiss Cam" in the 2nd half which seem to go over very well. Bottom line though, the offense has to be more entertaining, the in-stadium atmosphere has to improve (nothing screams "no one cares" more than section-upon-section of empty seats - tarp them up!), Skulsky HAS to work harder for more Saturday night games, and while the club partially addressed pricing issues with the lower priced sections in the upper deck, they still need a price correction in the end zone (and corners) as well as a tiered-pricing structure in the 2nd level.

Bottom line, the club did not see anything close to the lift they were expecting from the retractable roof and renovation. Skulsky was talking last year about getting crowds in the 40,000 range which, at this point, seems like a pipe dream. The realistic goal should be providing a better alternative than watching at home on high def TV, and building average attendance to a 33,000-35,000 range.



DH :cool:
Maybe there was some expectation based on the boost in the opening years of BCP but in this age of Twitter and other social media, people's attention spans these days are shorter than ever (heck, I bet half the people who opened this post haven't even bothered reading this far). In hindsight there was never much other reason based on the historical record that we could regularly draw 40k even without the inflated ticket-pricing strategy we've all constantly criticised. Looking at the attendance record through 1980, I see nothing that would have said at the time, "Wow, we need a venue TWICE as big to meet the overwhelming demand for tickets." I think sustaining even 33-35k is somewhat optimistic when you consider we've surpassed 30k three years in a row only three times in franchise history. *shrug* It is what it is.

One thing that really struck me odd this year was our high pre-season attendance. At 26,733, it was our highest pre-season attendance since 1990. Granted the correlation isn't very strong, but based on the historical record this would project to a season average of almost 32k. I don't recall hearing anything at the time or since but considering how things unfolded, surely this must have been a highly papered pre-season crowd compared to other years.
Sports can be a peculiar thing. When partaking in fiction, like a book or movie, we adopt a "Willing Suspension of Disbelief" for enjoyment's sake. There's a similar force at work in sports: "Willing Suspension of Rationality". If you doubt this, listen to any conversation between rival team fans. You even see it among fans of the same team. Fans argue over who's the better QB or goalie, and selectively cite stats that support their views while ignoring those that don't.
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Big Time
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Prices, especially in the upper deck and endzones, are way out of line. The Lions have consistently showed that they aren't interested in attracting average fans with cheaper sections. This has been a trademark of this team for the past decade. With every game on TV, it's easy to stay home. The service charges tacked on even to the 2 for 1 tickets are also outrageous. They would be well advised to have a special section reserved for cheaper seats to try and attract casual fans.

Strangely, the Lions success at home may also work against them. We've been treated to a lot of victories over the years, many of which have been real blowouts. How many close games at home were there this year? The Calgary game was pretty much the only one. Even when the scores were close, most of the time it was because they allowed the opponent to score some meaningless points at the end of the game using their "prevent that doesn't prevent anything" defense.

As a diehard fan, I'm just fine with this however the lack of tension could be working against them.

I don't hold much hope that the Lions will change their price and marketing structure. Their price structure is the Chapdelaine of ticket strategies. You keep hoping and hoping that it will change, but it never does....
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David
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Sorry if you already created a threat on this topic, sjroc. The one anomoly for me this season was the 30,564 at the Hamilton game on August 30. Not sure if this was an end-of-summer treat for a lot of kids, or if there were a substantial number of freebies (handed out with report cards?), but it was a surprisingly great crowd with lots of families in attendance.

What the club has to realize is that in order to generate the noise, the energy, and the intimidation that they so covet for "home field advantage," they need in excess of 35,000 to make this happen. But they're not going to see those types of crowds with a pricing strategy the way it's currently set up! I will say the benefit to higher ticket prices though is a reduction in the number of yahoos who make trouble at games (almost never see that anymore), and idiots who run on the field (same). Not sure if there is a direct correlation (or just better security), but it seems a generally well-behaved crowd nowadays.


DH :cool:
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Big Time
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sj-roc wrote: One thing that really struck me odd this year was our high pre-season attendance. At 26,733, it was our highest pre-season attendance since 1990. Granted the correlation isn't very strong, but based on the historical record this would project to a season average of almost 32k. I don't recall hearing anything at the time or since but considering how things unfolded, surely this must have been a highly papered pre-season crowd compared to other years.
Highly papered is right. They sent an email out to all season ticket holders with a link to get a free ticket to the game. That link could be passed on to anyone. I know I passed it on. Couple that with the usual 2 for 1's and outright giveaways, I'm guessing that was the correlation to the higher than normal attendance.
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sj-roc
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David wrote:Sorry if you already created a threat on this topic, sjroc. The one anomoly for me this season was the 30,564 at the Hamilton game on August 30. Not sure if this was an end-of-summer treat for a lot of kids, or if there were a substantial number of freebies (handed out with report cards?), but it was a surprisingly great crowd with lots of families in attendance.

What the club has to realize is that in order to generate the noise, the energy, and the intimidation that they so covet for "home field advantage," they need in excess of 35,000 to make this happen. But they're not going to see those types of crowds with a pricing strategy the way it's currently set up! I will say the benefit to higher ticket prices though is a reduction in the number of yahoos who make trouble at games (almost never see that anymore), and idiots who run on the field (same). Not sure if there is a direct correlation (or just better security), but it seems a generally well-behaved crowd nowadays.


DH :cool:
No sweat, David (actually I'd just piggybacked it onto the weekly previews and results thread since I didn't feel like starting a new one). The Ham crowd was def a surprise. I have all the numbers but haven't bothered checking through to verify if we've ever had a year where the Ticats accounted for our second-best draw of the year. If anything second-worst or worst outright is usually the way I notice it.

Agreed on the yahoo factor as well. In fact now that you mention it I can't recall noticing a single security incident this year. The last fan discipline issue I can recall was last year's WF when someone tossed a lit flare onto the field from the endzone above the dressing rooms. I wonder how things compare at Canucks games. A friend of mine knows someone who used to work security for them 10-15 years ago — when fights @BCP weren't as thankfully rare as nowadays, either — who claimed that it wasn't unusual back then (things may differ nowadays) for a couple dozen unruly fans to get kicked out, esp in games against heated rivals whose fans would also attend.
Sports can be a peculiar thing. When partaking in fiction, like a book or movie, we adopt a "Willing Suspension of Disbelief" for enjoyment's sake. There's a similar force at work in sports: "Willing Suspension of Rationality". If you doubt this, listen to any conversation between rival team fans. You even see it among fans of the same team. Fans argue over who's the better QB or goalie, and selectively cite stats that support their views while ignoring those that don't.
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Big Time wrote:
sj-roc wrote: One thing that really struck me odd this year was our high pre-season attendance. At 26,733, it was our highest pre-season attendance since 1990. Granted the correlation isn't very strong, but based on the historical record this would project to a season average of almost 32k. I don't recall hearing anything at the time or since but considering how things unfolded, surely this must have been a highly papered pre-season crowd compared to other years.
Highly papered is right. They sent an email out to all season ticket holders with a link to get a free ticket to the game. That link could be passed on to anyone. I know I passed it on. Couple that with the usual 2 for 1's and outright giveaways, I'm guessing that was the correlation to the higher than normal attendance.
You're right BT, I'd *completely* forgotten about this. I usually put all my emails from the Lions into a separate folder so I just checked and indeed this email was sent out on May 15th, over five weeks before the game was played on June 21st.

So if you believe the correlation that I referenced above and tried to do it backwards, i.e., project a pre-season attendance based on our 28,311 season average, you'd arrive at 21,303. This is more than 5400 below the actual gate (26,733) for the night, which suggests there were about this many freebies distributed, or over 20% of the entire crowd. I recall some talk that our ST count for this year was around 22k so this isn't an entirely unreasonable calculation.
Sports can be a peculiar thing. When partaking in fiction, like a book or movie, we adopt a "Willing Suspension of Disbelief" for enjoyment's sake. There's a similar force at work in sports: "Willing Suspension of Rationality". If you doubt this, listen to any conversation between rival team fans. You even see it among fans of the same team. Fans argue over who's the better QB or goalie, and selectively cite stats that support their views while ignoring those that don't.
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A second visit from the Riders this season, as in most previous years, would have helped a lot. Winnipeg moving back to the West should also help attendance, assuming they play here twice a season. I'm not sure how Ottawa's re-entry will affect scheduling.

Beyond that, I'd like to see all games played on Friday and Saturday nights, but TSN's influence is so strong on the league these days (fairly so), I'm not sure it would go for that.
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sj-roc wrote:
David wrote:Sorry if you already created a threat on this topic, sjroc. The one anomoly for me this season was the 30,564 at the Hamilton game on August 30. Not sure if this was an end-of-summer treat for a lot of kids, or if there were a substantial number of freebies (handed out with report cards?), but it was a surprisingly great crowd with lots of families in attendance.

What the club has to realize is that in order to generate the noise, the energy, and the intimidation that they so covet for "home field advantage," they need in excess of 35,000 to make this happen. But they're not going to see those types of crowds with a pricing strategy the way it's currently set up! I will say the benefit to higher ticket prices though is a reduction in the number of yahoos who make trouble at games (almost never see that anymore), and idiots who run on the field (same). Not sure if there is a direct correlation (or just better security), but it seems a generally well-behaved crowd nowadays.


DH :cool:
No sweat, David (actually I'd just piggybacked it onto the weekly previews and results thread since I didn't feel like starting a new one). The Ham crowd was def a surprise. I have all the numbers but haven't bothered checking through to verify if we've ever had a year where the Ticats accounted for our second-best draw of the year. If anything second-worst or worst outright is usually the way I notice it.

There were the yahoos back then and it was not helped in those days pre-Ackles return as the security forces weren't adequately trained and at times made situations worse than they needed to be.

The Skulsky data on income levels of their fan base seemed wildly out of line when you like at income data reported by gov'ts.

Opening up more seats with cheaper tickets is a leap of faith they aren't prepared to take and I suspect it has a lot to do with costs. With the revenue per seat in the Hockey arena so high (due to fewer seats - scarcity- and a more popular product even in times when it has sucked) anything south of that can be justified.

I really feel that the Whitecaps view to limit seating is a bit of the Lions view too and that is not good for the fan.

The CFL issue is to grow the game overall and when you get jokes like Edmonton and Winnipeg now and the unknown in a new franchise in Ottawa as well as Toronto playing well but not drawing fans to seats, you have a marketing issue. Even the Esks now saying they want to hire a less media friendly HC who and not going to hire the "right fit" - yikes. That is not good.

The game is built in the grass roots communities and bringing them in is the issue. CFL is not there yet.

Agreed on the yahoo factor as well. In fact now that you mention it I can't recall noticing a single security incident this year. The last fan discipline issue I can recall was last year's WF when someone tossed a lit flare onto the field from the endzone above the dressing rooms. I wonder how things compare at Canucks games. A friend of mine knows someone who used to work security for them 10-15 years ago — when fights @BCP weren't as thankfully rare as nowadays, either — who claimed that it wasn't unusual back then (things may differ nowadays) for a couple dozen unruly fans to get kicked out, esp in games against heated rivals whose fans would also attend.
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As others have alluded to, the pricing structure is IMO a big factor in drop in attendance and need to be addressed.
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When taking our tour of the new Investors Field the tour guide made it clear that good seats with a lower price were something they wanted built into their park. I think some of the so-called nosebleeders, (Upperback corners of the endzone) are quite a lot cheaper than your first row on the 55 yard line.

I think the idea of catering to different groups (patio zone, party zone, no booze zone) all makes sense.
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sj-roc
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It'll be interesting to see whether the budget-priced sections are retained. I sit on the wrong side of the lower bowl to get the best view of these during games but my impression (possibly wrong) from TM is that these sections did not fill up very much through most of the season (aside from the Riders visit). As such they may be discontinued, although the tailgate deck section had a sponsor in Gemstone so it could return if their agreement with the Lions was slated to run beyond this year (not sure if these terms were ever disclosed like with the three-year cresting agreement with Coast Capital Savings).

At this point both categories remain unavailable in the 2014 season ticket seating chart with the only upper deck seating currently available for 2014 being the first five rows of sections 437 through 445 (plus the halves of 436 & 446 abutting thereto). Capacity for this config is about half the ~54,300 total (for the lower bowl) plus about 1000 seats above, or about 28,150 overall, which happens to be a hair below this year's average of 28,311.
Sports can be a peculiar thing. When partaking in fiction, like a book or movie, we adopt a "Willing Suspension of Disbelief" for enjoyment's sake. There's a similar force at work in sports: "Willing Suspension of Rationality". If you doubt this, listen to any conversation between rival team fans. You even see it among fans of the same team. Fans argue over who's the better QB or goalie, and selectively cite stats that support their views while ignoring those that don't.
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sj-roc wrote:It'll be interesting to see whether the budget-priced sections are retained. I sit on the wrong side of the lower bowl to get the best view of these during games but my impression (possibly wrong) from TM is that these sections did not fill up very much through most of the season (aside from the Riders visit). As such they may be discontinued, although the tailgate deck section had a sponsor in Gemstone so it could return if their agreement with the Lions was slated to run beyond this year (not sure if these terms were ever disclosed like with the three-year cresting agreement with Coast Capital Savings).

At this point both categories remain unavailable in the 2014 season ticket seating chart with the only upper deck seating currently available for 2014 being the first five rows of sections 437 through 445 (plus the halves of 436 & 446 abutting thereto). Capacity for this config is about half the ~54,300 total (for the lower bowl) plus about 1000 seats above, or about 28,150 overall, which happens to be a hair below this year's average of 28,311.
BTW, thanks for the effort on the graph. I said so on the other thread, (I think) I wish they had us figuring out this kind of stuff in school. I hated pie charts, graphs, percentages and fractions etc... If they had tied it into hockey or football, I would have figured out it was worth learning how to do....... Probably only took you a second ( :wink: ) but its appreciated....
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