Read today the Argos are onlhy 4,000 short of a sellout for their home opener in two weeks.
Which just goes to prove that their will be no correlation between Argos attendance and the Buffalo Bills playing in Toronto.
They’re mutually exclusive events.
Wonder how the media will explain this one?
And as an side, with the Blue Jays going into the tank, can Rogers fire his NFL front man who also runs his baseball team, a Mr. Paul Godfrey.
Adn I hear tickets for the NFL aren’t going so well.
Mr. Rogers could be taking a huge financial bath this season with the Jays, and if this NFL thing backfires. Anybody going to shed a tear for him?
Ohh wait…thats right…the Argos have closed off nearly half of the building by not selling any tickets in the 500 level this year. Now a sell-out is considered 31,074.
So…they have sold around 27,000 tickets. Ho hum.
They should sell out every game this year with this set up.
Not too long ago, 27,000 for the home opener or any Argos game was a reason to celebrate. How times have changed. And IMO 31,000 seats is the perfect size for a CFL venue, granted this isn't exactly the best way to get a 31,000 seat venue.
I agree that it's true not long ago 27,000 fans for a home opener or for any home game would have been great. But times have changed for both the city of Toronto and the CFL as a whole. Both have experienced growth over the past number of years in terms of fan support.
I don't know if the Argos have said anywhere that if the entire lower portion of Rogers Center is sold out for any game that they will then open up the 500 level to accomodate further demand for seating but I would hope they are not that stupid. Afterall the seats are right there to be used, not like it's a big deal.
With the lack of any winner in the city of Toronto in terms of the Leafs, Raptors or the Blue Jays (they can't hit to save their lives and don't have a hope anymore this year) that leaves the Argos. This season I think the Argos will have one of the strongest teams in the CFL and the potential to really pull in some large numbers in terms of fan support. Hopefully the team will capitalize on this.
Even though I haven't bought my tickets for the Argo home opener I will be there. Might be a good day for Argo's scalpers, errrrr, I mean
'ticket brokers'.
i like the argos current set up, but i think it would look good if they opened the lower seats of the 500 section ( rows 1-10 between the 40 yard lines ), then cover the rest.
Opening the 500 level would be stupid unless you could get atleast 5000 people on a single side.... Closing off some endzone seats would be a good idea to acomplish this.
Then once those 5000 500 seats are sold then you could start selling the closed endzone seats one by one.
When i read the title of this post my jaw dropped. They sold out Rogers Centre? Wow! This sounds more realistic now. But it is still a great crowd. A sellout in hamilton is less than 28000 so, it's still great. Although it still won't have the sold out atmosphere.
Interesting outlook on a winner, however making the playoffs doesn't necessarily make you one. The raptors should be moved to some town that will get half the attendance even tho they're playing 3 or 4 times as good as they were in Toronto, like the Grizzlies. IN fact why don' they just move every NBA team to a different town and just switch it up, The LA raptors, TOronto Lakers, Vancouver Sonics, Seattle Grizzlies, New York Nets.
Smart to not open the 500 level, that way they can fill up the seats, so to speak, with the large posters of yesteryear greats, which I think looks great BTW. And creates more demand.
FYI, I used to work at the Rogers Center (Skydome back then). For a football game, you can sell 38,000 seats without opening up the 500 level. So if they are 4000 away, then they have sold 34,000. That's pretty decent for a CFL game.