CPL 2023 Season Attendance

[Watchmen]

4 minutes ago, Ozzie_the_parrot said:

Bear in mind that given the balanced schedule, the away team will often be from the Eastern or Atlantic timezones and it's their hardcore fans that are arguably more likely to be streaming the games.

And that would make sense if this game involved an Eastern team. In the case of the game we're discussing, it's two west coast teams.

[Ozzie_the_parrot]

Once you start scheduling games for that reason, there's an argument for keeping a regular timing. From what I remember, Steven Sandor used to complain a lot on twitter about scheduling decisions being made in a Toronto context where FCE games were concerned.

[CDNFootballer]

Latest attendance posted on reddit :

 

 

Edited August 23, 2023 by CDNFootballer

[shermanator]

5 years ago I never thought I'd see Cavalry averaging almost 4000 per game. Club has done well to market itself and it's catching on.

[SpursFlu]

12 hours ago, shermanator said:

5 years ago I never thought I'd see Cavalry averaging almost 4000 per game. Club has done well to market itself and it's catching on.

Is there any talk of expand their stadium. There must be an opportunity to add 1000 or whatever along the sidelines where the players bench? But only ever watching games on TV I can never really see what's over on that side 

[Kingston]

55 minutes ago, SpursFlu said:

Is there any talk of expand their stadium. There must be an opportunity to add 1000 or whatever along the sidelines where the players bench? But only ever watching games on TV I can never really see what's over on that side 

Their capacity is already listed as 6000 so it's actually pretty good for a team drawing in the 4000s.

[Kingston]

13 hours ago, shermanator said:

5 years ago I never thought I'd see Cavalry averaging almost 4000 per game. Club has done well to market itself and it's catching on.

I'm happy to see them with a positive trajectory in the stands.  It is encouraging.

Deep down, I'm still disappointed that the CPL teams in the larger cities like Calgary weren't able to debut with crowds of at least five or six thousand and grow from there.

[SpursFlu]

44 minutes ago, Kingston said:

Their capacity is already listed as 6000 so it's actually pretty good for a team drawing in the 4000s.

But watching the game I didn't see 1000 empty seats. Must be a lot of standing room capacity in that 6000

[SpursFlu]

45 minutes ago, Kingston said:

I'm happy to see them with a positive trajectory in the stands.  It is encouraging.

Deep down, I'm still disappointed that the CPL teams in the larger cities like Calgary weren't able to debut with crowds of at least five or six thousand and grow from there.

That's a glass half full half full mentality if I've ever heard one. I'm not still disappointed about anything 5 years ago, let alone how many people were at a soccer game. 

Edited August 24, 2023 by SpursFlu

[Ivan]

21 minutes ago, SpursFlu said:

But watching the game I didn't see 1000 empty seats. Must be a lot of standing room capacity in that 6000

That stadium looked packed for that last game.  Impressive to see.

[Ozzie_the_parrot]

1 hour ago, Kingston said:

I'm happy to see them with a positive trajectory in the stands...

The big difference between what was happening back in 2019 and now with the Cavalry is that initially the crowd tended to be packed into the cheaper seats with the centre sections of the main stand very sparse because of exhorbitant ticket prices.

Now the crowd is more evenly spread and if you check ticketmaster before games there is no shortage of blue dots even in the cheaper sections of the main stand that used to sell out first. Not sure what to make of that.

Didn't watch the live stream of this latest game so I am wary of questioning whether this was really the Cavalry's best crowd of the season. In the highlights, the main stand doesn't look that packed when you get the best view of it in the build up to the second Cavalry goal. It is just after half time though.

[Kingston]

46 minutes ago, SpursFlu said:

I'm not still disappointed about anything 5 years ago, let alone how many people were at a soccer game. 

My point was what it implies for the crowds today.  So now they're growing from 3000 toward 5000 instead of growing from 6000 toward 10 000.  This is where we are, however, and they are growing, so that is good.

[SpursFlu]

1 hour ago, Kingston said:

My point was what it implies for the crowds today.  So now they're growing from 3000 toward 5000 instead of growing from 6000 toward 10 000.  This is where we are, however, and they are growing, so that is good.

If you're not growing your dying so it's always nice to allow for growth 

Edited August 24, 2023 by SpursFlu

[jonovision]

1 hour ago, Kingston said:

I'm happy to see them with a positive trajectory in the stands.  It is encouraging.

Deep down, I'm still disappointed that the CPL teams in the larger cities like Calgary weren't able to debut with crowds of at least five or six thousand and grow from there.

Forge and Valour both debuted with averages of 5000+ in year 1 (even if you remove the inaugural home matches for each team from the numbers). I don't think looking to 2019 is particularly useful as the following two years amounted to a hard reset. 

[Kingston]

46 minutes ago, jonovision said:

Forge and Valour both debuted with averages of 5000+ in year 1 (even if you remove the inaugural home matches for each team from the numbers). I don't think looking to 2019 is particularly useful as the following two years amounted to a hard reset. 

Before launch I had allowed myself to dream that the league would start with team average attendances between 5000 and 10 000 with a league average of perhaps 7000.  Instead, we got just over half of that.  So my dream was dashed, regardless of what happened afterward.  That's all I meant.

[Aird25]

1 hour ago, Ozzie_the_parrot said:

The big difference between what was happening back in 2019 and now with the Cavalry is that initially the crowd tended to be packed into the cheaper seats with the centre sections of the main stand very sparse because of exhorbitant ticket prices.

Now the crowd is more evenly spread and if you check ticketmaster before games there is no shortage of blue dots even in the cheaper sections of the main stand that used to sell out first. Not sure what to make of that.

Didn't watch the live stream of this latest game so I am wary of questioning whether this was really the Cavalry's best crowd of the season. In the highlights, the main stand doesn't look that packed when you get the best view of it in the build up to the second Cavalry goal. It is just after half time though.

You're certainly something special. One of a kind

[shermanator]

Club has told us there are 5288 seats in the stadium. Don't know how they got 5800 for the 2019 final but there is lots of opportunity for standing room all over the stadium.

Ozzie, buy a ticket or shut the fuck up.

[Ozzie_the_parrot]

38 minutes ago, Kingston said:

Before launch I had allowed myself to dream that the league would start with team average attendances between 5000 and 10 000 with a league average of perhaps 7000...

Plenty of people were posting on here back around 2017 and 2018 that what ultimately happened on average across the league was what was likely to unfold. Definitely not just me. The economic model of the league as configured right now with coast to coast air travel needs your initial dream level to become the norm at a minimum to be able to flourish long term and not be viewed as a minor league entertainment product.

The problem they have is that having it happen in only a few markets doesn't cut it. They need a minimum of eight clubs to be stable in that regard to make this fly long term. That was never going to be easy given the limited number of large cities available in Canada, if as was always likely, fans in the three MLS cities steered clear.

Edited August 24, 2023 by Ozzie_the_parrot

[Kent]

CPL website has finally posted a number for the May 31st game that had been missing all this time. Now the only missing game is from this past weekend (from the tweet above it looks like the crowd was 3317). I've updated my week to week numbers. The last week for 2023 should be disregarded for now, since it is based on only 1 game so far.

[Ozzie_the_parrot]

Why does the spoiled brat from Calgary think he has the right to tell me to buy a ticket or shut up? I have been following domestic Canadian pro soccer for closing in on 40 years now. Went to pretty much every London Lasers game that was ever played in 1990 and 1992. Would be attending CanPL games if I lived in easy travel distance of one of the clubs but I don't. Have a Onesoccer subscription instead and watch at least one game most weekends. Bottom line is I'm not going anywhere. Learn some manners, start behaving like an adult rather than Little Ryan from the old Russell Peters routine and stop embarrasing yourself. 

Edited August 24, 2023 by Ozzie_the_parrot

[shermanator]

...

Edited August 24, 2023 by shermanator

[Kent]

On 8/16/2023 at 12:19 PM, SpursFlu said:

So I'm not sure how the pots would work for the first round but I'm confident a CPL team could beat any of the 9 or so Central American teams in the competition and advance to the 2nd round

Unfortunately it's very unlikely a CPL team will be drawn against a Central American team in the first round. 13 of the 22 teams in the first round will come from MLS or Liga MX. Below are the parts of the club rankings that go from the highest ranked non-MLS/Liga MX team to the lowest ranked MLS/Liga MX team.

St Louis may very well clinch a first round spot, so there could be a couple of Central American teams ranked ahead of 1 MLS team (if Saint Louis doesn't pass Saprissa and Olimpia in the process), but that would still leave 12 teams ranked higher than the highest ranked Central American team, which is still more than half of the 22 teams in that round.

[Kent]

8 hours ago, shermanator said:

...

Come on man. I think this is offside.

Edited August 25, 2023 by Kent
Sherm took it back and deleted the comment, so I'm deleting the quote.

[Ozzie_the_parrot]

^^^draw your own concluions as to what wishing somebody dead because they have a different view of how a domestic pro soccer league should best be configured says about this guy's character. 

[Kingston]

19 minutes ago, shermanator said:

40 years eh? Good, means you'll be dead soon. Canadian soccer will be much better for it.

Meanwhile people like me will continue to build this game up and the local game will survive for a long time. 

That is not cool.  Stick to discussing things politely whether or not you agree with someone.