Toronto and Montreal attendance - or lack of!

Attendance is more stable
More TV money
Better ratio revenus/player payroll
Higheer ticket prices
Higher merchandising sales…
Better TV coverage
Higher viewership

But some people always try to kick this league in the cojones no matter the facts. Frack them ! Don’t need them.

They were drawing 25 000 consistaintly ,now their not. I think it won’t be a iisue as long as they can keep it above 20 000. 20 000 still doesn’t scream thriving or a expanding fan base.

McGill Stadium (Percival-Molson) seats 25,012 for Canadian football.

Off topic, but that’s what I thought, too. Turns out I was wrong. Since the stadium opened in 1919, it has been called Percival Molson Stadium, after Percival Molson himself, and not the beer company.

It was paid by the Molson family as a tribute to one of their deceased sons. The School has been trying to get ride of the name but they’ve run into some pretty strong public scrutiny over it.

they never hit the 25012 capacity last season unfortunately.

I think if you look at most pro attendance in Canada there has been a 10 percent drop in many even most cases. The economy while not dire is not as hot as it was and I think most teams are feeling it with the exception of teams like the Leafs and Habs who have a cult going.

Can you verify this? Anything I’ve found, including stuff from McGill’s own website, seems to suggest that the bulk of the money came from Percival Molson’s own estate in accordance with his will, with no indication of any stipulation that the stadium be named after him, and doesn’t give any other members of the Molson family as donors. I can’t find anything at all about McGill trying to get rid of the name. I can’t even figure out how Percival is connected to the rest of the Molson family.

In any case, the name doesn’t appear to be a corporate name in the modern sense, where corporations pay for naming rights and the names last only as long as the corporations pay, even if the money did come from the Molson family.

I could see Molson fighting against changing the name, since it amounts to free advertising for them.

Never mind. Figured it out.

You know the reality is we are actually doing well despite all the doom and gloom.

I don’t have the figures for all teams but I know both the Ti-cats and Argos are up on this stage last season.

After 4 games the Hamiltons average has gone from 23,628 in 2011 to 23,993 in 2012. A small but nonetheless welcome jump of somewhere between 1 nd 2%. Argos attendances are up a large and healthy 10% at 22,230 for this season compared to 20,117 at this stage last year.

The figures are not great but are far from depressing. Overall CFL is more than holding its own in the battle to get people to games.

I have a very vague recollection that TSN was asked to always try to call it Percival Molson Stadium to avoid any such connection with Molson brewery.

I can’t recall where (I’ve been saying that a lot recently) but I thought I read that CFL attendance was up around 4% from this time last season.

Montreals game attendance will be up once the fall semester starts as they do draw a portion from the Mcgill students. It is an era of TV and Montreal has one of the best TV ratings for a CFL team ever since RDS began showing all their games in french. I do not have the stats in front of me but i beleive that they did average over 800,000 a game via TV audience combined TSN/RDS.
Toronto does view the Argos as a second tier pro sport thats just the way it is with MLB, NBA, and NHL all in the city. Someone did mention that their attendence is out about 3,000 a game copared to last season avg. and the CFL attendance always goes up in the Fall. Football by in large is a fall sport.
Game attendance for all sports is down with the conforts of large HD tvs surround sound.
An important stat to look at is that since TSN/RDS has taken over the TV ratings in the CFL have doubled and thats just in Canada. there is no rating system for the US broadcast games that I have seen from the NFLN. Maybe NBCSN will give ratings. Plus their is the ESPN3 US Webcast following in which I am one of them and I am pretty sure I am not alone

People outside Toronto and especially Montreal don’t realize how difficult it is to get around. From my place West of the island 71km from downtown it takes sometimes 3 hours that’s if you don’t run into striking students, at best past midnight 50 minutes. With all the road closures and jams. Compare that to Halifax to Moncton 245 km away in 2 hours… So I’m sure there are a lot of casual fans who just prefer to watch it at home rather then spend four hours and a tank of gas fighting to get to a football game. My other option is to drive 20km get on a suburban train for 7.00 per person then jump in the metro for another 3 bucks and then hike up the hill… Still a couple hours but less stress.

No question in my mind that it has had an impact on ticket sales in Montreal.

I joke around on this site a lot, but well said HFXtc

I bet Montreal makes more money per game average with 22,000 then most CFL teams with 27.000. You have to take into account the Al's very high game day ticket price

Not Wpg or SK. no give aways in these two markets. Just looked ,lots of 33 dollar tickets available for the Als game.

And at one point they wouldn’t even print a roster sheet… too expensive !

They were released today. They were flex pack tickets.

You are absolutely right about Montreal. Playing on Mcgill Campus. The stadium was built for Mcgill students to walk to games and events not for a pro football team with a stadium built geared toward Highway, Public trans train etc.
Thet is one of the issues when it comes to talks of a team in Halifax playing in a stadium built on St Mary's campus.
The East is much different then the West. The western teams in the rural prairies where people are used to making longer drives to get places and their are not as many alternative entertainment activites.
Montreal will help the league immensley in the next TV negotiations with the large TV audience. Placing the games on RDS opened up a whole new fan base in Montreal that never existed due to the language barrier. I would think with Gatineau being part of the Ottawa Metro area that having RDS televise Ottawa games also would boost the TV ratings there are also 1.2 million french 1st language speakers in Ontario most likely from the region surounding Ottawa.
This is something that Ottawa did not have during the Renagade era. along with the fantastic Landowne park project which will feture more than just the Stadium, which looks obsolutely awesome in the digital images that I have seen. With all of this plus the expansion friendly draft the Rivalry with Montreal will set in right away, which will of course bring in even more fans.
The stadium although only will have 24,000 permanent seats it is being built with wide open space in the endzones where temp seating could be easily erected for a Montreal game.

Absolutely. I haven’t looked but I’d be curious to see what the attendance vs last season is for the TFC and the Jays.