HOW MANY TICKETS COULD THE RIDERS SELL?

You can’t see anything from the end zones, sure you might get some people in there but they are awful seats.

Here's a crazy idea.

Why not build a new smaller stadium that holds 25,000?

It has worked in Montreal. They were drawing 6,000 fans a game at the Big O. Now they sell out 21,000 seats at Molson Stadium and is the hottest ticket in town.

It has also worked in Toronto at BMO Field where the FC play. It is a great 20,000 seat stadium that is sold out all the time and everyone is clammering to get in.

The problem with SSK right now is that they are popular and are the Grey Cup champs. Everyone wants in. If you build a 35K seat stadium you are fulfilling the request of all of your fans. You need supply and demand. If you have a 35K seat stadium and all demand is met, how are you going to make Roughrider games a special event. If everyone wanting a ticket can get in, the hoopla wears away after a while.

With a smaller stadium, the demand is high because everyone wants to see the new stadium and you have made it the hottest ticket in town. Having the hottest ticket in town means price increases on a year basis.

In a previous post some one said that SSK avg 24K only a few years ago. This is important. You have 24K people, win or lose, thick or thin, attend rider games. These are the true die hard fans that you want to cater too. You want to build a stadium that you can fill no matter what.

Right now, SSK sells out 31K seats. Let's say they tank over the next few years. The ticket isn't so hot and you have won a Grey Cup in recent memory. Your attendance drops to 28K, then 27K and then your team turns into the Ticats for a couple years, your sell outs are in the past, you don't have the hottest ticket and you aren't expanding your base.

If you build a smaller stadium like I said, you'll have kids growing up with all this excitement and they'll be thrilled when their dad somehow scores tickets to the game and you are just so excited to go because you have only seen your heroes on tv.

The Maple Leafs work the same way. Their tickets are super expensive and are almost all corporate but when you get a ticket to go, it's such a great experience. (I hate the Leafs and love the Sabres!)

The future of the CFL is kids. I'm a person in their mid 20s and lived through the blackout effect, and not showing CFL games until Labour Day and I think that people of my generation didn't get involved with the CFL.

What you have to do is create excitement for your game. How do you create excitement? Less tickets available because when you score a ticket, it makes it even better knowing that you are only 1 of 25,000 to see the game.

If SSK builds a 35k or 40k stadium it won't be sold out all the time and I think some of your luster as the "greatest CFL fans" will wear off.

I put it this way, would you rather see a concert in an arena of 20,000 people or in a small venue of 2,000 people. I love arena rock but a nice small venue is great. It's more of an experience.

I have seen Alice Cooper 8 times. 6 times in a small intimate venue and 2 times in an arena and amphitheatre. I love the small venues because you feel closer and the small venues sell out.

In conclusion, a larger venue costs more money to build and maintain and also more difficult to sell out when a team is losing.

A smaller venue can actually make you more money and can get more people interested in your product.

a better idea why not the Ti cats just fold nobody goes anyways?? what the als have done is not a great thing a stadium of 20,000 give me a break Riders need a 35,000 to 40,000 stadium, this also brings other things here besides football, you want as much fan support as you can get and the idea of going as small as 25,000 makes no sense, if you go smaller then why would the grey cup ever be played in that city would not bring much money to the city, Riders future is very bright and will continue to be strong for years to come and the fan support keeps growing bringing more money to the CFL and more young fans to the league!

The problem with larger stadiums is that each seat added, gets worse and worse. When you go from 30,000 to 35,000, where are those 5000 seats? Are they between the 35 yard lines, 15 rows up? No, those seats get added 60 rows up, in the second deck, or in the endzones. Instead of selling them for $60 or $80, you end up selling those seats for $20. Each seat you add is lower in quality and price, and higher in cost.

There is a line somewhere where the seat is so far away, that you get a better view of the game from the local bar, on the big screen. That CFL line, seems to be around 32,000. There are some games that can draw enough importance to the experience of being there, that it can push the line up to the 50,000 range.

I don't know if a new stadium is the answer. Expansion to Mosaic to accommodate the growth of the game seems a lot more likely than a completely new facility.

"If you build it, they will come" didn't work for Toronto, or BC. It only worked somewhat for Edmonton.

I’m sure your precious ruff riders have not always had sell outs, right!

What the Als did is a great thing. You go from almost folding to creating a buzz in a city that has the Canadians, a great downtown, a casino, etc etc.

When the ruffies start losing again, your 35K stadium will seem empty. The so called best fans in the league would have sold out that place for the past 15 years if you were that great. Regina is just like every other city in the world. They only support winners.

If you build a 25K stadium you can always add temp seats for a Grey Cup. The cats held the 96 Grey Cup and IWS only holds 30K but with temp seats they were at 40k.

I hate posts like this and it’s the reason why people stop posting on here. You can’t give an opinion on anything without getting criticized. People think too much in the now. I have a long range goal in site and I think with the CFL you have to make it supply and demand. If there is too much supply, there is no demand for your product.

A 25K stadium will allow you to charge more for tickets, and stir up more interest for your team. You want to have the hottest ticket in town THAT YOU CAN’T GET! I think you can get ruffie tix to regular season games.

yeah makes sense lets build smaller stadium and TURN our fans away, could you imagine if the Riders announced we are taking seats away or building a smaller stadium when things grow you grow with them, and to say when they start losing then they will be like other teams and stay away, thats why the Riders are different then other teams well they were in that situation years ago people still came? it costs money to add seating why not already have it there when you can fill it, no stadium in pro league should have anything less then 30,000, sorry i don't understand your logic on a 25,000 seat stadiums in professional football and i think others here would think the same, but your entitled to your opinion

Here’s the logic in a picture… its all about maximizing profit, supply and demand

Why 25,000? Well 25,000 is probably an arbitrary number but by coincidence, 25,254 is the average attendance in Regina over the last 10 years. So 25,000 is a pretty good place to start.

Current (and future) CFL stadiums with fewer than 30,000 seats: Ivor Wynne (Cats site says 29,600), Canad Inns, Taylor Field, Molson Stadium, Frank Clair

Are you seriously saying that CFL franchises shouldn’t be in these stadiums?

I agree 100%. IMO the first 25,000 seats in a stadium are the best ones, the cheapest to build and they generate the most revenue for the team.

Now while I think 25,000 would be a perfect start for a franchise in Halifax or Quebec, I also think it is too small for Regina but Taylor Field (or the replacement) should probably stay under 32,000. I think the Riders management has done a great job by adding just enough temporary seats to continue selling out.

Seats can be overpriced for their location relative to much cheaper seats IMHO. In fact, some of the best viewing angles at IWS in hamilton are in the farthest section of the stadium, not end zone but even there, you never have to turn your head to see the play even if the play is far away. But the key is how they price the seats versus perceived "best seats" and these "best seats" are usually way overpriced as I say. A lot has to do with perception of getting the best seats.

Heck, it's a stadium that is in a confined area, not a golf course. I've been in Michigan Stadium with 100,000 people in the end zone and you could see great. Mind you, an American field lends itself much better since it is smaller, you aren't as far away as a CFL field of course.

And other that nhl team u have that doesn’t have a player good enough to be captain so they made their goalie, smoking weed and eating chinese from one of the billion chinese restaurants in Vancouver…what is so much better about BC than sask? other than BC is easier to write down when ur completey baked.

I think we've discussed the differences between the two cities enough. Let's get back to the topic at hand...

TG, you don’t know how right you are. Too much supply = a lot less demand.

To analogize it more, for years we had a hard time getting big name acts to play here, until we proved that we can sell out our venues. The Stones came, added another show and suddenly, we’re getting huge acts stopping in SK.

I agree, keep the supply down to generate demand.

More seats doesn’t always mean worse or cheaper ones. It all depends on the configuration. Also, even if those added seats are a little higher up, if they happen to be club seats, they would fetch the highest price for a ticket in the whole stadium. (including those below them with better sightlines).

The stadiums in Vancouver and especially Toronto were not designed specifically for CFL football. At any rate, at least in the Lions’ case, the team couldn’t possibly make nearly as much money in their smaller former home as they enjoy from their current facility. And as far as the Eskimos goes, they were in the middle of the pack in terms of revenues from their stadium in the old Clarke Stadium days, but since they moved to Commonwealth, they have been at or right at the top of the list of revenues from the stadium for a generation now.

I bet Riders could make world peace happen too, huh?

It helps if you read the thread there deb :wink:

Other than a couple of posts by people trying to stir stuff up and not actually partaking in the conversation, this is actually one of the better more civil threads on here right now.

Read it, don’t care…it’s like kids going back and forth with “my Mom’s better than yours”. I’m tired of hearing about how the Riders are the best thing since sliced bread…been there, done that.

The gist - Riders sell out a measly stadium that holds less than what others do half full. All fans love their team and support them (pretty much evenly) and the Riders are nothing special. It’s just getting SO old.

Yeah, 'cause this was a quality post?! (But I see it stayed while mine disappeared…no bias in here, hey jm?).

Hey green…what NHL team do you get to cheer for? The Saskatchewan “Sorrywedon’thaveones”?

So you didn’t read it then. Most of the discussion minus the usual couple rider fans and swervin is centered around a new stadium. I think it’s a fairly valid topic for any team in the CFL. If the Lions had their own stadium that held around 35k I think they’d be selling it out because of the demand as well. It forces those that are sitting on the fence about going to the game to make up their mind because if they wait too long the option isn’t there anymore.

I’d be curious to see what the Al’s can get away with charging because of the high demand for tickets.

Deb, you really must start leaving me out of those mini temper tantrums you’re having…

At Mosaic, they did the box seats on the east side for the Grey Cup. And ended up keeping it a permanent fixture. That option has already been exercised, and, as a general rule, is still stands. Each extra seat costs more and returns less.

We’ve seen trouble in the big parks ( BC, Edmonton, Toronto, and Montreal ) that there isn’t the demand to fill a big stadium. Montreal moved into a little park. Toronto has been clawing to get out of their park for a long time, with several failed stadium proposals in the past couple years. And the 30k parks are all talking about future upgrades or replacements. Calgary is the only well-sized stadium we have in the league.

And on a side note, Commonwealth gives a lot of cheap seats away via promotions (another topic of great debate by some), because otherwise they’d just be empty. If they can give them away to schools, they can build a younger fanbase. They also get the $$$ from the concessions and souveineirs anyways, so the club ends up making pretty good money by giving away tickets. The same was true of Sask when they had extra capacity for the Grey Cup. In 1995 they averaged 28500 and 2003 they averaged 29352. If you have more capacity, you can lower ticket prices or have ticket promotions and make revenue off the other things.

The Lions had the opportunity to get behind a proposal to build a new, state of the art 30,000 seat stadium and they turned it down saying they needed at least 40,000 permanent seats with the ability to expand to 50,000 for Grey Cup games.

The Eskimos’ CEO Rick LeLacheur has gone on record saying he wished Commonwealth had stayed smaller with a capacity of around 43-45,000.

If Calgary had a facility that had 40,000 permanent seats they would have made more money for premium games like the Labour Day Classic, games against the Roughriders, and off course playoff/Grey Cup games. And for those games when they are not needed, they can easily be tarped off without losing any atmosphere.