The Riders look to be so bad again this year, then of course, Rider fans will tune out come Sept and on the final year of the CFL TV deal the ratings will suffer. With a team that has so much money and so much attention from Fans and Media, how can they be so bad 2 years in a row
Yea, I suppose I could see a bit of a dip.
As for how can they be so bad 2 years in a row?
The answer is Taman.
And since they just extended him, expect them to be bad 3 years in a row. So not only will the Riders be bad and dead last come October, they will also have no hope.
I think it's to early to tell about any team, ya they got squashed by BC but it's only the first pre-season game. As long as the riders aren't out of the playoff race early like last year their fans will be watching, im expecting the ratings to go up this year. Chris Cuthbert tweeted the argos/ticats game got 336 000 and the BC/Rider game had over 400 000, pretty good for pre season.
…any person that tunes out by September doesn’t deserve that pronoun you used…
Just to show how much the pre-season matters...
SSK 2009: 0-2 (Western champs; Grey Cup contenders)
SSK 2010: 0-2 (Western champs; Grey Cup contenders)
SSK 2011: 1-1 (8th in league)
i wouldn't say the Riders are Cup contenders, but with so many players to evaluate, you can't judge how good/bad a team is based on their preseason record
First point: it’s pre-season. I’ll wait a bit before jumping to the conclusion you just did.
2nd point: So let me get this straight, because other teams’ fans don’t support the CFL to the degree Riders fans do (that is what you are inferring, not me saying) in the first place, it is the fault of Riders fans if their viewership drops down to, but probably still above, the average for all teams? Okay, then … that’s logical. Where are the other teams’ fans in the first place, my friend???
I think Flutiefan has underestimated the fans of the other 7teams. 
This isn't the final year of the TSN deal... :S
The final year of the deal is 2013, meaning next year will be heavy on negotiations and the final year before a new deal is signed.
100th year of the grey cup I'd expect ratings should be high, the big thing for ratings though is the way they are done is not exactly the best as they get a small sample size out of the prairie provinces, since the sample sizes are so small the ratings can be skewed by bad luck.
And in 2014 there should be a team in Ottawa so the TV numbers will be bigger just because of the extra market let alone the extra 9 games.
if the TiCats and Argos have a competitive year, the Southern Ontario viewership may easily pick up any decrease in the Saskatchewan market.
...although Riders fans are quite a loyal bunch and should have at least decent numbers as usual.
lol.. talk about a delushional name for a thread.. the smallest province in canada who has a football team, oh boy if they suck those 500,000 people might not watch any rider games, thats gonna totally kill the ratings..
saskatchewan, recongize what you are.. the smallest province in the league.. You are what you are.. reality, if the riders dont do well and they dont watch the games, well... so much for the best fans in the cfl moniker that they like to call themselves.
Think you got you some competiiton for best fans in the league from your neighbours to the east.. just sayin oh and if our team sucked, we'd still watch.
Loyal? same team who had telethons to “save the riders”, same team that this thread is dedicated too saying if they suck the ratings will suck because noone will watch? do you see the contradiction between the word loyal and the title of this thread?
Dont forget at the end of last year the Riders where technically Sold Out but only approximatly 20,000 were attending the games :thdn: :thdn: same thing happened with there tv ratings !!
The only reason to watch the Bombers at all this season is to see how many games it will take for Buck to get injured… then there will be no reason watch them… might as well watch paint dry or watch the grass grow outside…
As we know anything can happen, especially in football with injuries. A starting qb goes down for a team, that can spell disaster right there.
It's too early to say definitively that the Riders will be bad.
That said, it sure does look like they won't be a good team this season. However, with Edmonton basically having no starting QB, they could still avoid the basement.
well to be fair, the Sask. Riders telethon occurred just prior to the '97 season in which the entire league was under great financial turmoil due the failed U.S. experiment and abysmal attendance levels across the board.
The average attendance for the entire league in 1996 was an atrocious 22,210 adjacent with a non-sellout Grey Cup.
The Riders were still fourth (out of 9 teams) in attendance that season behind only Edmonton, Calgary and Winnipeg, thus hardly indicative of poor fan support.
Even Flutie’s heroics, splendid play and two Grey Cup championship wins in 96/97 could not generate 20,000 fans for most games, nor guarantee a sellout for the Grey Cup.
If not for telethons and NFL bailout capital provided to each team, the league would have undoubtedly met certain demise…
The mid-late nineties was a dire period in CFL history.
and every CFL region/market will suffer decreased viewership to some extent when a team falters badly.
1996 was not long after a crippling recession that put a lot of people out of work. It also drove some of us out of the country to look for reliable jobs.
I'm not saying that was the sole reason for poor attendance, but it no doubt played a part.
Killer’s comment is a perfect example of an event taken out of context. As a couple have mentioned since, the league as a whole was on the brink. The nfl bailout was like the league’s “telethon”. But quite apart from the problems of the league, one cannot look at the telethon without looking at the Rider’s record from 1978 to the telethon. Their record was atrocious. One could say that the riders’ fans bailed but, from a different perspective, maybe we did better than most or all other teams facing the same record over an extended period of time. The Riders have never folded, never went bankrupt, never got a bailout or financial support from other teams or the league. I see the telethon not as proof of lack of fan support, but as proof of heightened fan support - we wanted the team to survive on our terms, despite the economics of the league in which it played and despite its record.
Two words Killer: relativity and perspective. But since your hate meter is in the stratosphere for the Riders or their fans or both, I suspect you want nothing to do with either of these concepts since they don’t align with the world you want to believe.
Who know's if the Riders will be good or not? One pre-season game don't mean much. Plus the CFL would be better off with Saskatchewan's tv ratings diminishing in favour of an increase in Southern Ontario. I wouldn't expect ratings to be down this year.