Too bad the Lions couldn't offer fans free travel to all their away games like this English Premier League soccer team:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/football/23376497
Stoke City fans offered free travel for away games
19 July 2013 Last updated at 12:11 GMT
Stoke City are offering supporters free coach travel to all 19 of their Premier League away games this season.
Beginning with the trip to Liverpool on the first day of the season, coaches will take fans from the Britannia Stadium to each away league fixture.
The club are using the increase in TV revenue to fund the initiative.
"We've done it for the odd game, but not the whole season. I'm not aware of anyone that has," chief executive Tony Scholes told BBC Midlands Today.
Stoke previously subsidised ticket prices for those travelling to an FA Cup quarter-final tie at Anfield, waiving their right to 45% of the away ticket sales so they could offer tickets to fans at £20 instead of £35.
"We were looking at this around a year ago, looking at what we could do to keep football as affordable as possible," Scholes continued.
"Our home match tickets haven't gone up for the last five years but everyone knows following their team away from home can be expensive.
"With the new broadcasting deals that came in, that arguably gave us the opportunity to do something and spend a little bit of money back on the supporters."
The new £3bn Premier League TV deal will see top-flight sides receive £55m a year, and even if a club is relegated, they will still receive parachute payments of around £60m.
Road trips in a geographical small country like England are pretty short compared to what the Lions have to go through, all the shorter considering Stoke City is in almost the geographic centre of England. All of their EPL rivals are closer than we are to Calgary so the team probably doesn't even fly for some (many? most? all?) of them, like the fans who get this free coach travel. Probably same-day return, too, so you don't even need a hotel, just buy the game ticket and you're good to go.
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.