Ok, I can see people's logic here that it is best for the Argos to stay at the Rogers Centre and that Toronto and Montreal are different cities, what works in one city may not work in the other.
But let's just see over the next few years if the Argos have a couple losing seasons in a row and see the season ticket base drop from about 10,000 now I think it is to far below that. As long as the Blue Jays are there, the Argos, I don't think, can dream of any more season's tickets than 10,000 regardless of who the owners are. The Montreal situation is better, more reliable, 17,000 seasons tickets and a waiting list, money in the back before the season starts. Yes, that stadium should eventually seat in the 25,000-28,000 range, but as far as I'm concerned, the Als are doing it right there in Montreal. Yes, they don't have baseball to compete for any more in the summer for peoples money.
But I guarantee you, if the Argos played at a 20,000-28,000 seat stadium, I belive, even with the Jays in town, they would have 17,000 season tickets, it would be just so much fun going to a football game at an intimate stadium. I am a season ticket holder for the TiCats and have been to games at the Rogers Centre with 25,000 and I can tell you this - no comparison at all when IWS has 25,000, just so much better atmosphere than the RC at the same amount of people. I will never go to a game at the RC again regardless of how big the game my Ticats are playing there, I can't stand watching football there. The only thing I will say is football there is far better than baseball there.
I agree with some of your points Earl, especially the one about 25,000 at IWS being a much better atmosphere than RogersCentre with the same attendance (smaller stadium, more crowd density, better noise, etc...) but I think a lot of your argument above is more based in Economics than fan support.
Montreal has a 20,000+ seat stadium and 17,000 season ticket holders. Simple reason for that is scarcity. It is very difficult to get gameday tickets in Montreal due to supply<demand. Therefore, season tickets sales are higher because anyone planning to go to at least a few games will go that route to ensure they can get the tickets they want, and have the added bonus of being able to unload any tickets they don't want. Would that happen in Toronto if they had a 20,000 seat stadium? It probably would.
What will be interesting to see in Montreal will be what happens if they add another 5000-8000 seats to the stadium as intended. With an increase in supply, you might see an initial increase in season ticket sales, but that will likely cool for any number of reasons such as 1) better availability of game day tickets and 2) decline in the team's performance (if that continues)
The basic fact of the current Argos situation is this: they have excess capacity which serves to keep prices lower (good for fans) but also artificially lowers the season ticket base (since gameday tickets are freely available). During the last stadium debate the Argo owners defended their decision to stay in the Dome by saying that given the choice between excess and limited capacity, they chose excess because that created the greatest opportunity to grow the business. If you look at the rise in attendance over the past 3 seasons, you can see that they're doing a pretty good job of growing their business to the point where they are now in the top half of the league in attendance.
To reduce capacity to create an artificial sense of high demand would not be in the best interest of the team and their current strategy. Wow...that was a long answer...
I see your point Horus and I agree. I guess I am just looking for an excuse to be able to go to Toronto from time to time and watch a Cats-Argos game in a real fun friendly environment and I can't find that in the RC. Now I have to admit, I have only gone with my wife and we usually sit away from Argo fans and do our own thing, and I do understand the Argo fans do have a tailgait party and it is fun with people mingling there, so maybe I should do this sometime. I just really don't like the RC all that much to watch a game at unless it has 40,000 people in it, and then the sighlines aren't that great anyway.
I would imagine that Bamboos discription of the counting system would be the same at any stadium, the “attendance” = the number of tickets sent out. The only other alternative would be to have staff count all the ticket stubs by hand! Why would they waste resources doing that?
Actually The Staff Do Count All The Tickets By Hand. However The Jays Use The Number Of Seats Sold Number As Attendance, I Couldn't Tell You If Or How Many Other Teams Also Do This. It's Not Really A Waste Of Resources And Here's Why. I'd Say At The Begining Of Any Argos Game There's Around 50 Ticket Takers At The Front Gates On The Main Floor Collecting Tickets And They're There From The Time Gates Open An Hour Before Kickoff Till About 30 Minutes After. At 1 Hour Elipsed Game Time There Will Be No More Then Two. All The Others Then Either Have Different Tasks To Do (i.e. Breaks For Usherers) Or They Go Down And Count Tickets Untill The End Of The Game.
For The Jays They Switched To A Electronic Scaners For The 2004 Season Where They Use A Scanner To Scan A Bar Code On The Tickets So It Doesn't Take Too Long To Tally All The Numbers, However The Argos Still Use The 'Count Stubs By Hand' Technique.
When I said that a soccer stadium would be too small, I also meant that the feild would also be too small of CFL Football, if it is build for just soccer.
I believe that Toronto and Montreal, with over a million, should have a stadium of at least 30,000, Edmonton has an NHL team, is just under a million people, has a stadium of more than 30,000.
Winnipeg is a city of 700,000 and at the moment, doesn't have an NHL team, and has a stadium of 29,503 and will hopfully build a new 30,000 dome stadium in the future.
With Montreal's capacity being so low I believe it decreases the supply/demand ratio (as Earl had stated) allowing Montreal to increase ticket prices. Sold-out games also generate buzz in the city allowing them to sell out the Big O when they go there. Basically people want what they can't have sometimes and in this case it's Alloutte tickets.
And although TOronto's doing great right now, I believe if they had a
smaller stadium (28000-32000) they might do better since the atmosphere would be better and games would be harder to get into allowing the Argo's to increase ticket prices.
I still think it would be a bad idea to have less than 40,000 seats available in a stadium in Toronto....if for no other reason than it would give the Paul Godfrey's of the city another excuse to claim the CFL isn't "Big League" and they want world class football. I just don't like giving that nonsense any more ammunition than the pro-NFLer's already think they have.