CPL 2023 Season Attendance

[CDNFootballer]

"More reasonably announced in actual terms" is an ignorant statement since":

1) eyeballing is inaccurate.

2) Pro leagues don't announce turnstile figures.

[Ozzie_the_parrot]

Wrong on both counts. Eyeballing can be accurate and some leagues, especially over in Europe, traditionally did announce the turnstile number. What is achieved in big picture terms by pretending crowds are significantly higher than they really are? If actual crowds don't increase markedly this league isn't going to make it in its current format. Being in denial is seldom a healthy situation psychologically.

[JamboAl]

Eyeballing is only useful if one has been in the stadium for multiple games and able to compare various attendances based on direct experience.

We all have concerns about attendance in certain markets.  

[shermanator]

Ozzie buy a ticket or shut the fuck up.

[Ozzie_the_parrot]

^^^Little Ryan from a Russell Peters comedy routine a few years back all grown up and using the internet. 

[Ansem]

You heard the man, buy a ticket or

[Ozzie_the_parrot]

Meanwhile back on topic, if Nolando is right that VFC's actual crowd was in the 1500-2000 range yesterday that sort of crowd level would put CanPL's latest entrant on track for around a $1 million annual loss judging from the latest set of Winnipeg Blue Bombers accounts. How long would Dean Shillington and the SixFive group be willing two sustain two clubs bleeding that sort of red ink annually?

But oh yes, suggesting that a bus travel model is something that this league needs to seriously consider is the sort of viewpoint that needs to be shouted down and/or ridiculed rather than being respected as being the perspective of somebody who watched the death spiral of the last iteration of a coast-to-coast domestic pro league and doesn't want to see that happen again.

[Bison44]

Ugh, so after every game giving us projections of the yearly losses of the teams and speculating on when the owners will pack it in is your way of being helpful??  And you dont have a monopoly on seeing problems with the league.  Most of us dont harp on them and throw shade on everything that happens.  And in case you missed it, there are already regional bus leagues running in BC, ON PQ, do you support them like you supposedly support the CPL?  

[Ansem]

3 hours ago, Ozzie_the_parrot said:

Meanwhile back on topic, if Nolando is right that VFC's actual crowd was in the 1500-2000 range yesterday that sort of crowd level would put CanPL's latest entrant on track for around a $1 million annual loss judging from the latest set of Winnipeg Blue Bombers accounts. How long would Dean Shillington and the SixFive group be willing two sustain two clubs bleeding that sort of red ink annually?

But oh yes, suggesting that a bus travel model is something that this league needs to seriously consider is the sort of viewpoint that needs to be shouted down and/or ridiculed rather than being respected as being the perspective of somebody who watched the death spiral of the last iteration of a coast-to-coast domestic pro league and doesn't want to see that happen again.

Seriously, fuck off

[CDNFootballer]

The only one wrong on both counts is ozzie. Again for the little parrot, although quite obvious your in an echo chamber, eyeballing attendances is not accurate, especially the way you do it on brief highlight packages, your not even in the stadium, not accounting for other variables (vip boxes in this weekends game in Forge's case, fans in the concourse area, fans not using their seats for other reasons, etc), and the most important fact that the announced numbers aren't turnstile, its tickets distributed, like MLS, like USL, etc etc etc. The pretending is being done by you little parrot, pretending you have any credibility on eyeballing tickets distributed figures.

 

Edited May 14, 2023 by CDNFootballer

[SpursFlu]

Vancouver fc have definitely sold a lot of merch

[nolando]

2 hours ago, SpursFlu said:

Vancouver fc have definitely sold a lot of merch

Their merch is amazing, I have to say. Hardly a bad item in the shop.

So good, even Rob Friend was there prematch with his family buying some, too.

[narduch]

Thought this was kind of interesting for a comparison. 

This league is seeking $50 million US for expansion fees.

 

 

[Ansem]

1 hour ago, narduch said:

Thought this was kind of interesting for a comparison. 

This league is seeking $50 million US for expansion fees.

 

 

Just saw this reply

[Ansem]

While we are on the subject  - This is 12 years of USL as a comparison just to give some perspective

It's amusing that our resident chicken isn't advocating for that league to downgrade to regional buses while advocating for us to drop our national league for something that isn't doing that much better with a track record of failing in Canada.

I'm confident CPL will do better -  we seem to have the right leadership to get there under Noonan.

 

Also... What's going on with the A-League?

Edited May 15, 2023 by Ansem

[Kingston]

14 minutes ago, Ansem said:

While we are on the subject  - This is 12 years of USL as a comparison just to give some perspective

I hope the CPL gets there, too.

The main differences with USL are a) their top teams are way above ours and b), most importantly, they have markets to burn.

[Cicero]

1 hour ago, narduch said:

Thought this was kind of interesting for a comparison. 

This league is seeking $50 million US for expansion fees.

To me, this is definitely getting into sports valuation bubble territory. With the major sports like NHL etc, they piggyback other investments on it that they at least claim make the current very high valuations worthwhile. You don't get real estate deals with this level of franchise. Not going to say they won't get their money back on these, but it looks pretty frothy to me.

[Ansem]

27 minutes ago, Kingston said:

I hope the CPL gets there, too.

The main differences with USL are a) their top teams are way above ours and b), most importantly, they have markets to burn.

We can't compare ourselves to the US markets which have 10 times our population and many more cities with 1M+ people. Can't approach things or compare the same way with our unique set of challenges.

[Kingston]

3 minutes ago, Ansem said:

We can't compare ourselves to the US markets which have 10 times our population and many more cities with 1M+ people. Can't approach things or compare the same way with our unique set of challenges.

I agree.  That was sort of my point in responding to your list of USL data the way I did.

[Cicero]

2 hours ago, Ansem said:

We can't compare ourselves to the US markets which have 10 times our population and many more cities with 1M+ people. Can't approach things or compare the same way with our unique set of challenges.

But each individual market doesn't have ten times the population. So if the average size of each CPL market is similar to the average size of the USL markets, then it's a fair average attendance comparison. They aren't though, a quick perusal indicates most of the markets are good sized metro areas, significantly larger than all but Calgary, Ottawa and York, with no soccer competitors except for Miami and the MLS 2 teams who don't care about attendance.

What also isn't fair is the weather. Many of those markets have much more favourable climates for outdoor viewing. Many also have sizeable Hispanic populations who are more likely to be both young and soccer fans. Be interesting to see if that is a factor.

[Aird25]

10 of 18 Liga Portugal clubs have an average attendance less than 5K, only 5 have an average over 10K. Only 4 Russian Premier League teams have an average attendance over 10K and 6 have an average less than 5K. This is the case for many much larger leagues around the world, many of which have much higher expenditures than CPL. We have a TV deal, sponsorship agreement with our federation, rich owners, we're starting to establish a level and sell players. Overall talent in this country is growing rapidly, and we're attracting better foreign talent etc.

Attendance won't grow by focusing on the empty seats. It will grow by building support and excitement. I think we'd all be better served to talk about how good Pacific have looked recently than to debate one spurned poster with a relentless vendetta on a daily basis. It's been years.

Edited May 15, 2023 by Aird25

[Unnamed Trialist]

30 minutes ago, Aird25 said:

10 of 18 Liga Portugal clubs have an average attendance less than 5K, only 5 have an average over 10K. Only 4 Russian Premier League teams have an average attendance over 10K and 6 have an average less than 5K. This is the case for many much larger leagues around the world, many of which have much higher expenditures than CPL. We have a TV deal, sponsorship agreement with our federation, rich owners, we're starting to establish a level and sell players. Overall talent in this country is growing rapidly, and we're attracting better foreign talent etc.

Attendance won't grow by focusing on the empty seats. It will grow by building support and excitement. I think we'd all be better served to talk about how good Pacific have looked recently than to debate one spurned poster with a relentless vendetta on a daily basis. It's been years.

In contemporary football, gate is not the most important factor, or at least it has  become just one amongst many. TV, merchandising, sponsors, the value of the league feeding all that. For the CPL averaging 3000 at 30 dollars avg a ticket, for only the league matches, pays for the entire salary of players and part of staff. 

I was thinking about this today looking at the Andorra game report and attendance, and they are in Spain 2nd division (Pique is the owner): about 2500, forget exactly, it was under 3000. Okay, Andorra has a small population, 80,000. no nearby population base, and you are freezing up there a good part of the season, but the average attendance is just over 2000. They are midtable.

Then Girona in La Liga, now in 7th place, they are averaging just over 11,000. The stadium only holds less than 14,000. The city has 100,000 and the province less than 800k. They could add a few thousand seats if they wanted.

[Unnamed Trialist]

I really wanted to make another observation: CPL marketing needs improvement. 

My impression is that each club carries the lions share of promotion for ticketing, because the CPL has little identity as a league and does not work on it. It is not just how young it is, it is also how little and poorly it spends on bolstering its overall image and prestige. The clubs are like franchises of a brand that has a weak overall brand image (classic bad Canadian graphic design) and makes no to little effort to raise its public profile and prestige. Okay, they are not franchises--but they are not being helped.

Fans don't only go see leagues because their home team is playing, you can't expect the entire buzz to come from a club marketing department. In this sense, the CPL is way behind so many other world leagues who have worked hard on branding themselves, which is odd considering it was born so recently and should understand what has been going on for the last decade or so in world football.

Compare with all leagues nowadays, compare with tournaments or events (F1, cycling, tennis, NCAA), compare with the CFL. In fact, even the CPL logo and colour scheme is cold, weak and lacks character, which contrasts sharply with what is often a high degree of identity for the individual club logos, shirts, crests, colour schemes, branding.

If the CPL was sponsored, had a major corporate name attachment, at least that corporation would be driving CPL branding. And that would likely be a factor in drawing attendance over and above the mood of a fan base in this or that city on any given weekend.

[Cicero]

16 minutes ago, Unnamed Trialist said:

Compare with all leagues nowadays, compare with tournaments or events (F1, cycling, tennis, NCAA), compare with the CFL. In fact, even the CPL logo and colour scheme is cold, weak and lacks character, which contrasts sharply with what is often a high degree of identity for the individual club logos, shirts, crests, colour schemes, branding.

And how 'bout that cold, boring 'shield' for the winner. Not too inspiring. We like hoisting cups here.

[Ansem]

3 hours ago, Cicero said:

What also isn't fair is the weather. Many of those markets have much more favourable climates for outdoor viewing. Many also have sizeable Hispanic populations who are more likely to be both young and soccer fans. Be interesting to see if that is a factor.

I'd say that the CFL Grey cup still do well under sub-zero temperature. CPL needs to make itself become a "big deal - a must see event" which will take time but this is their 2nd "normal" season out of 5. You're totally right about the weather and this is why I'm surprised that Saskatoon and Langley came forward with stadium plans without roofs - that's crazy in this country and the league needs to make it a prerequisite.

We are one of the nations with the highest immigration rates in the world, demographics is on soccer's side, we just need to get our house in order and stop the toxic infighting and competing against one another.