CPL 2023 Season Attendance

[BearcatSA]

50 minutes ago, Aird25 said:

It’s true. I came back from up island and we almost missed kickoff because the highway was so packed. Everyone seemed to have bikes, boats or surfboards. Bad weather scares people away, but really nice weather always draws people towards other activities as well 

I was at the Caps game on Saturday night and I can bet that a lot of people opted to hit other hot weather activities during the the day and bailed on the game.  The overflowing garbage issues in GVRD parks at the end of this weekend is a pretty good indicator of where many people's interests were focused.

[ted]

On 4/17/2023 at 12:45 PM, Aird25 said:

If Pacific have chosen to cap attendance this season at 5k, how sure are we that 5k is the minimum teams need to turn a profit? That doesn't make a lot of sense to me

Sorry for the delay in responding.

Pacific have ABSOLUTELY NOT, "chosen to cap attendance this season at 5k". They have no say in the expansion of the municipally-owned and operated stadium. They MIGHT be able to squeeze a couple more portable stands on the North side but that area is already getting pretty heavy use thanks to the return of the beer garden. I think you'd get less people interested in sitting on aluminum bleachers.

[Watchmen]

58 minutes ago, ted said:

Pacific have ABSOLUTELY NOT, "chosen to cap attendance this season at 5k". They have no say in the expansion of the municipally-owned and operated stadium. They MIGHT be able to squeeze a couple more portable stands on the North side but that area is already getting pretty heavy use thanks to the return of the beer garden. I think you'd get less people interested in sitting on aluminum bleachers.

I've seen it elsewhere in this thread as well, but here's an article saying Pacific announced a "sold out match" of 4825.  That certainly sounds like they've capped attendance at (or below) 5k this season.

https://islandsocialtrends.ca/sleepy-start-for-cpl-season-opener-in-langford/

[CDNFootballer]

So starlight's capacity is listed at 6000, which was after expansion was finished. The only stands missing that I can tell are the ones that used to run the full length of the supporters side previously, correct? That didn't look like 1200 some odd seats that were removed.

[Ozzie_the_parrot]

One of the sets of bleachers appears to have been moved from the supporters section to close to where the hydro pole used to be:

so not sure there has been a decrease in capacity that way. Back in 2019 I was skeptical about the stated 6000 capacity. Might try to find those old posts to remind myself of what my rationale on that was again.

[Bison44]

HAHAHA, what a joke, everyone knows exactly what your rationale was.  

[Aird25]

13 hours ago, CDNFootballer said:

The only stands missing that I can tell are the ones that used to run the full length of the supporters side previously, correct?

I don't think so. I think there are actually more stands on the supporters side than last season, as there are now bleachers filling the gap where the beer garden was. There are also more stands on the Langford Pkwy side, as well as quite a bit more standing room in the new (original) beer garden location and under the tents. There's also more seating on the West side than there was before, as they've added the VIP or bar seating next to the grandstand 

Edited May 2, 2023 by Aird25

[ted]

21 hours ago, Watchmen said:

That certainly sounds like they've capped attendance at (or below) 5k this season.

 

You missed the point I was making. PFC did not make that decision. The capacity is indeed capped BY THE MUNICIPALITY which owns the stadium. 🙄

[Watchmen]

2 minutes ago, ted said:

You missed the point I was making. PFC did not make that decision. The capacity is indeed capped BY THE MUNICIPALITY which owns the stadium. 🙄

Ah, ok.  But why would they cap it lower?  I can understand them not expanding further, but why not use the capacity currently available?

[DoyleG]

1 hour ago, Watchmen said:

Ah, ok.  But why would they cap it lower?  I can understand them not expanding further, but why not use the capacity currently available?

Do you come here just to be a p***k?

[Watchmen]

5 minutes ago, DoyleG said:

Do you come here just to be a p***k?

Seemed like a simple enough question. If there's more than 4825 seats available, why is the municipality limiting capacity?

[Bison44]

Some sort of municipal codes? Fire etc??  Red tape??

[Ozzie_the_parrot]

1 hour ago, Watchmen said:

Seemed like a simple enough question. If there's more than 4825 seats available, why is the municipality limiting capacity?

Back in 2021 when they beat the Whitecaps 4-3 the announced attendance number was 4997 apparently:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2021_Canadian_Championship#Matches

Think that was also said to be a sellout at the time so think if this was explored carefully we would find that nothing much has actually changed on capacity in Langford since the end of the first season. 6000 was the stated league requirement initially AFAIR but by the 2021 season they had eased up on that where York and FC Edemonton were concerned and extra bleacher seating was no longer brought in to acheieve that number where they were concerned for obvious reasons. Quite possible that 6000 was quietly dropped in a Langford context as well. 

[Aird25]

3 hours ago, Ozzie_the_parrot said:

Back in 2021 when they beat the Whitecaps 4-3 the announced attendance number was 4997 apparently:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2021_Canadian_Championship#Matches

Think that was also said to be a sellout at the time so think if this was explored carefully we would find that nothing much has actually changed on capacity in Langford since the end of the first season. 6000 was the stated league requirement initially AFAIR but by the 2021 season they had eased up on that where York and FC Edemonton were concerned and extra bleacher seating was no longer brought in to acheieve that number where they were concerned for obvious reasons. Quite possible that 6000 was quietly dropped in a Langford context as well. 

I seem to recall that there were still COVID restrictions in place for that game/season.

[Ozzie_the_parrot]

What a crowd of 4997 looked like back in 2021:

 

[Aird25]

23 minutes ago, Ozzie_the_parrot said:

What a crowd of 4997 looked like back in 2021:

 

Announced crowd to stay within covid limitations. Everyone speculated that there were more people there that day

[CDNFootballer]

Don't think 6000 was ever an official stadium requirement for CPL.

Pacific FC drew 5154 for a game in 2019.

[Bison44]

^^^ You have to wade through a lot of BS to find anything useful from that source.  But I sure dont remember any official requirement of 6000.  

[CDNFootballer]

York stays above over 3 digits tonight with an announced attendance of 1016.

[Kingston]

The final tally for Vancouver is 6177.  Great crowd.  Keep it up!

[jonovision]

Week 4 attendance:

York: 1016

Winnipeg: 2665

Vancouver: 6177

Ottawa: No number available. Just like last week. What's going on there?

 

[Ozzie_the_parrot]

Definitely a bit strange. Only caught a small part of the game but the crowd in Ottawa looked fairly reasonable compared to Winnipeg which looked no more than 1500 or so actual during the stream, but maybe they don't want to announce something significantly smaller than the home opener? Even if Vancouver were papering the house in a big way, it's a positive that most of the freebie recipients did actually show up unlike what has happened at times with York and the Forge.

[jonovision]

27 minutes ago, Ozzie_the_parrot said:

Definitely a bit strange. Only caught a small part of the game but the crowd in Ottawa looked fairly reasonable compared to Winnipeg which looked no more than 1500 or so actual during the stream, but maybe they don't want to announce something significantly smaller than the home opener? Even if Vancouver were papering the house in a big way, it's a positive that most of the freebie recipients did actually show up unlike what has happened at times with York and the Forge.

All the people in the match thread who were at the Valour game were surprised the announced number was that low. Based on some other proxies compared with matches I attended last year (50/50 pot, number of bikes in the bike valet for what was a crap day for biking), and the visible number of people in the stadium, I would have guessed 3000.

[Cheeta]

^ Yeah, seems low but 100 this way or that isn't moving the needle a bunch.

Patio has opened again for those who hadn't noticed.

[Ozzie_the_parrot]

35 minutes ago, jonovision said:

...I would have guessed 3000.

That would be closing in on the seats being half filled in the active sections. There were maybe two sections where you could make a case for that but others that were almost empty. That includes a section on the far side of half way from the supporters group that is often quite full and seems to be used for group sales but was quite sparse for this game.

 

Edited May 8, 2023 by Ozzie_the_parrot