I'm not against PMS, but is it also time the alouettes thought about going into a football specific stade? PMS has served them well, but going forward it would certainly be nice for them to be a primary Tennant somewhere, not share university grounds, no inside track that shrinks the end zone and displeases the eye, and certainly no footy lines. And completely up to date amenities and player facilities.
Perhaps built on the site of the big O(should it ever be demolished).
Just a thought
In a perfect world, yes but will never happen under current economic and political climate. Unless Saputo buys the Als that is!
Je crois que les Alouettes ont plus avantage à rénover le stade Percival-Molson que de chercher à avoir un nouveau stade.
Les 25 486 sièges ne se vendent toujours pas au complet, aussi il est inutile de regarder vers le Stade Olympique. Le Stade Percival Molson a une situation unique, porte une atmosphère unique et que les Alouettes y jouent est une bonne affaire à la fois pour McGill et pour les Alouettes.
Lorsque tous les sièges seront vendus partie après partie, et que la demande excédentaire sera là, les Alouettes pourront considérer d'autres options, mais pour l'instant, il n'y a pas mieux.
C'est plutôt une recette de laquelle les Argonauts devraient s'inspirer.
I agree it is a unique experience to go down and watch a game there, but do you think that the demand for tickets is not as high as it could be because they do have bench seating instead of individual seats? I can tell you as a TV viewer that it isn’t a very nice place to look at(im not trying to be rude) and selling a product is 90% aesthetics. You can feel the excitement of the crowd watching the game, they sound like 29000 when 22000 show up. If you were to make a 28000 seat state of the art facility I don’t think they would have trouble selling out seats because it would bring that much more to the individual fan experience.
We in toronto are looking for a cozier stadium, I think 30000 would do Toronto well.
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Montreal probably should’ve done that with last renovations, but too late now I think. I too dislike the soccer lines, but atmosphere there looks great! The way I look at it, Winnipeg Stadium and BC Place have set the new bar via CFL stadiums. The new Ottawa and Hamilton Stadiums will definitely be improvements over their replacements, and I can see Saskachewan building a fantastic stadium… Imo, Calgary is looking a little dumpy now, which is weird because years back it was one of the nicest! Btw, I too speak francais (my late-mother was french-Canadian - God Bless her soul) and English dad, but I did all my schooling in English, so have no problem reading french, I’m just not great at writing it! A la prochaine… Ciau!
C’est un peu mon cas. Je lis l’anglais et j’ai même appris à le parler dans ces dernières années. Mais pour l’écrire, c’est beaucoup plus pénible, ce qui fait que j’écris en français.
Pour moi, ce qui compte, c’est qu’on puisse discuter de football canadien. C’est ce que nous avons en commun.
Il y a eu un sondage plus tôt cette saison sur le Stade Percival-Molson. Pour ma part, je crois que si les Alouettes ne jouaient pas au centre-ville, il y aurait beaucoup de supporteurs qui ne se déplaceraient pas, peu importe que les Alouettes se déplacent vers l’est ou vers l’ouest. Je ne cois pas que le fait qu’il y ait des sièges plutôt que des bancs changerait la situation. Les Alouettes attirent tout ce qu’il y a comme supporteurs pour le football canadien à Montréal, à quelques exceptions près venant des banlieues environnantes, qui sont découragées d’avoir à traverser les ponts et se démener au travers de tous les travaux qui ont cours dans les rues de Montréal.
La formule actuelle convient. Il ne reste qu’à rénover les toilettes, où simplement y entrer vous coupe toute envie, sauf celle de vomir.
You can't put seats at Molson stadium. The rows are not deep enough. That would have required a brand new stadium and capacity would be reduced by as much as 30 percent. For me sitting on bench seating for 3 hours is not a problem at all. It also encourages people to get up more, talk/get along with people your sitting next to. and IMO that is one of the reason the stadium is so dynamic. What the Als need is a proper training/office facilities.
Gentlemen, I believe that the question of building/renovating football stadia in Canada is intrinsically linked to the popularity of the sport. For years now, we have been waiting for the return of Ottawa to the CFL. For many years, Montreal didn't even have a team. There weren't any great clamourings to build/renovate stadia as memory serves.
Winnipeg has built a magnificent facility; Regina and Hamilton are doing the same. Regina is building a 35,000+ seat facility which they will fill every game! IMO, they could build a 50,000+ seat facility and fill it also. Such is the state of football in Regina.
That, however, is not the same almost everywhere else in the league! Vancouver, Toronto, Edmonton, and Montreal (the Big Owe) all have 50,000+ facilities and could not fill them for love nor money. Toronto, with a population around 5,000,000 in the GTA, can barely draw 25,000.
The point is that CFL venues can only seem to draw between 23,000 - 30,000 fans, depending on the city (2012 stats). As mentioned above, Ottawa and Montreal were absent from the league for several years. Building a football-specific stadium, therefore, is very risky in some CFL cities.
By way of comparison, the Montreal Impact built a soccer-specific stadium according to Major League Soccer rules and has done rather well in a smallish facility. If this league continues to grow in North America, it is quite conceivable that stadia will grow, given the worldwide interest in soccer. In North America, soccer is a hard sell, so we'll have to see how that goes. BUT! North American football is also a hard sell in this country. We make a big fuss about the Grey Cup, but that's about it. I would love to see large stadia packed to the rafters every game in an expanded CFL. How realistic is that? That's up to football fans in Canada.
Saskatchewan is having a hard time filling their stadium for a playoff game and likely won’t. Some of the sections were closed off as of yesterday. Winnipeg has barely increased their ticket sales after a 250 million football specific stadium and could be looking at less fans next year than they got at Canadinns the last couple years next season.
So, Hfx, you would agree that building football-specific stadia in Canada is risky business. I would like to think that venues in all cities would be packed to the rafters like we see in the NFL - good teams or bad - but I don't think we will ever see that here, alas!
Absolutely agree, It is clear that Winnipeg spent more that they could afford. If building a super duper stadium means our owner has to pay 4 million in rent, that money has to come from somewhere, really people want to see good competitive teams. If you want or need a backrest that bad spend 40 bucks and get yourself an awesome clip on seat. The Math in Winnipeg does not work. I’m happy for them but someone will have to pay for that stadium it will be the football operations or the tax payers or combination.
We are different nations with different priorities and Canada is much, much more multi-cultural than the US South or Midwest and we don’t demand that immigrants integrate the same way. So I doubt you will see the day where 90 000 people gather to see any type of sporting event in Canada. But any given Sunday you probably have that many spread across 7 or 8 different sports. They are building cricket fields in Southern Ontario. Rugby is big here in Atlantic Canada…
Having said all of that I really hope they find a way to renovate the Big O. Because Quebecers will not have another stadia like that for many generations to come if they let it go.
What makes anyway think the NFL has capacity attendance?
I do not watch the games, however when watching the late sports and when I see the odd highlight, with the exception I guess of the Dallas stadium most others are not filled.
Molson Stadium is a great place to watch a football game- be it the Als or McGill U. As a teenager, I used money from a paper root for the cost of $ 2.50 situated in the end zone and, as an adult I still perceive it as a great place to watch a game. All seats offer everyone a good viewpoint and, one is close to game action. After a game, the delights of downtown Montreal are so very close. Too bad we won't have the Big Owe for a 60 000 seat Grey Cup.
For Argo T, here are the NFL attendance figures. I'm not in the habit of making statements without checking the facts first.
The teams are ranked from top to bottom. The first figure represents average home attendance. The second figure represents the average attendance expressed in terms of percentage. Notice that even the struggling teams get over 80% attendance.
Regina being the exception in the CFL, how many other teams can boast attendance figures like these?
RK TEAM AVG PCT
1 Dallas 86,910 108.6
2 Washington 81,529 88.9
3 NY Giants 80,445 97.5
4 Green Bay 78,036 107.0
5 Denver 76,970 101.1
6 NY Jets 76,957 93.3 4
7 Kansas City 75,031 97.8 4
8 Carolina 73,362 99.4 4
9 New Orleans 72,732 99.7 4
10 Houston 71,589 100.8
11 Cleveland 71,451 97.6
12 Baltimore 71,195 100.3
13 Atlanta 70,142 98.4
14 San Francisco4 69,732 99.3
15 Philadelphia 69,144 102.3
16 Tennessee 69,143 100.0
17 New England 68,756 100.0
18 Buffalo 68,306 93.4 4
19 Seattle 68,106 101.7
20 Indianapolis 66,155 105.0
21 Cincinnati 64,013 97.7
22 Minnesota 63,923 99.7
23 Detroit 63,649 98.7
24 Miami 62,995 83.8
25 Chicago 62,282 101.3
26 San Diego 62,025 87.0 5
27 Pittsburgh 61,818 95.1
28 Arizona 60,582 95.6
29 Jacksonville 59,553 88.7
30 Tampa Bay 56,851 86.6
31 St. Louis 55,353 84.7
32 Oakland 51,296 81.4
The only way I could see to get a new football stadium would be on the model where the city for all intents and purposes gives away land on which the a stadium and revenue producing properties can be built. The stadium becomes a lost leader investment for the commercial returns.
Ottawa sort of did that, but managed to get stuck paying for the stadium on the logic that property taxes, that are supposed to fund city operations, will pay it off over 20-ish years.
Ayant assisté à des matchs de la LCF à Vancouver, Toronto, Ottawa, Calgary et Edmonton, je dirai que le Stade McGill demeure mon stade préféré. Du flot serpentin de partisans pour s'y rendre aux couleurs d'automne du Mont-Royal, c'est un stade qui réflète le paysage, les couleurs et l'histoire de Montréal. La plupart des stades professionnels aujourd'hui sont dénués de tout charme, ressemblent à des boîtes à surprises et vomissent le milieu des affaires. Il ne nous reste plus le Forum, ne venez pas nous prendre le Stade McGill!
It’s a shame you never got to visit Ivor Wynne. The steel mills on one end, the setting sun on the other, the houses and churches nearby, all in that terrible bench seating, those great sight lines, and those crazy fans in the end zone seats who would chant Argos suck, even if the Argos weren’t playing and was where no sane individual would chance.
That’s not to say Tim Horton’s Field will be a poor venue, and I’ll admit of all the corporate names that this stadium could have been named, good on Tim Horton’s for stepping up and saying “Hamilton is were we came from, this is our town, and we’ve always stood behind our team, the Ti-Cats.” and the view of the escarpment in the summer and fall certainly won’t hurt.
Man, I really gotta see the other stadiums though. It’s my shame to say, I’ve only ever been to Ivor Wynne, Alumni and the Rogers Centre, and while the Roger’s Centre was cool, when you first walked in and saw the CN tower, towering over the field and got to see the roof close, it quickly lost it’s lustre.
Yes, it is a shame. Thank you for sharing. Based on your description, it would have probably been a favorite of mine. Although, I prefer McGill stadium over all the ones I have seen, I have to admit that all of them are a natural extension of their cities. Both BC Place and the Rogers Centre are very modern, cushy venues where you feel like you are watching a movie at the Cineplex Odeon. McMahon Stadium has a fun atmosphere, looks like a giant barn from the outside, and was the site of our memorable Grey Cup comeback (my only game there to boot). Commonwealth Stadium has great sight lines and has been the home of many memorable CFL games. Lansdowne Stadium was little but beautifully located along the Rideau Canal. The city of Ottawa has torn it down and will build a state of the art stadium. I have yet to experience the famous Mosaic Stadium but it would be next on my list.
Molson stadium is awesome the only problem is the team has limited access. Old Landsdowne had its charms as well. Can't wait to see the new one.
Thought this may be of some interest to Montreal and Quebec football fans. Le ROUGE ET NOIR's new owers are taking a totally different approach to the french speaking community in Ottawa and Gatineau this time around. In other words they won't be ignored this time around! :thup: Smart guys, smart marketing! So you may be losing some Als fans from this area!! 