CPL 2023 Season Attendance

[Kent]

The article that was posted was talking about the highest total attendance in league history (note it's not average attendance, that still goes to year 1, when there was only 7 teams, so fewer games) and you pointed out that York United's attendance didn't improve... despite the article talking about 6 of the 7 teams that played in 2022 and 2023 had their attendance increase. So it's not like there were any falsehoods (that I noticed at least) in the article. Your post just seems to indicate that you think they shouldn't be reporting on an increase in attendance if every team doesn't increase in attendance. Or maybe you wanted the headline to be "Attendance soars for CPL, but stayed mostly the same for some teams, and York United still draws flies".

I saw on facebook a post from MLS that this season had the highest average attendance in league history. I guess we better go and let them know that Houston, Portland, Salt Lake, Seattle, and Toronto all had lower attendance this year than last year.

[Aird25]

1 hour ago, Ozzie_the_parrot said:

Some people are so determined to push a particular narrative on here you have to wonder who they think they are kidding.

This is hilarious 

[gator]

 

[SpursFlu]

Looks like half a section is dedicated to Cavalry supporters 

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.cbc.ca/amp/1.7006963

[Bison44]

Hmmm, so soccer fans in the old days had to put up with goofs constantly complaining and slagging their league??   These guys suppressed soccer, wanting to keep it down at a farm team regional bus league level, not to aspire for too much??   Why..we wouldnt know anything about that these days............

[kacbru]

5 hours ago, Ozzie_the_parrot said:

Have attendances been soaring for York United? Some people are so determined to push a particular narrative on here you have to wonder who they think they are kidding.

Some things went a bit better for CanPL this season in certain markets but on the flip side Prairieland and LSSE lost interest in expansion in Saskatoon and other groups don't exactly seem to be falling over themselves to invest where a Quebec club is concerned, etc

There's a long way to go until CanPL will enjoy the sort of stability the CHL has enjoyed from coast to coast for decades on end with similar crowd levels but there are really no lessons to be learned there?

I've seen parrots talk to themselves in mirrors, but the bolded statement above proves they have no self-awareness.

[SoccMan]

2 hours ago, Bison44 said:

Hmmm, so soccer fans in the old days had to put up with goofs constantly complaining and slagging their league??   These guys suppressed soccer, wanting to keep it down at a farm team regional bus league level, not to aspire for too much??   Why..we wouldnt know anything about that these days............

Nice try my friend not even close and I know what you’re getting at , but nice try that’s all I’ll say . Read my previous post and maybe we would not be here being excited that a national championship final might get to 15000 people in attendance and it would be the norm for most teams in our national domestic league if a national league like the old  CSL was supported and given a chance to survive back in the day .

[Bison44]

Nothing directed at you Soccman, unless you are the constant voice of doom gloom and negative comments about the CPL (which u arent HAHA).  You and I and certain birds are old enough to remember the old league dying, but only one of us seems to be reacting gleefully with every bit of bad news lately and then angry when positive results come about.  CSL only lasted 6 years and this second try is just ending the 5th (less really with covid breaks) and we are still on an upward trajectory, not as fast as we hoped but not as bad as some try to paint it.  Its sad he can recognize the goofs that slammed canadian soccer then, but seems to have no self awareness and thinks his constant undermining of this second chance we have is just him being our level headed friend and trying to give us the hard truths.  

[SpursFlu]

What was the highest attended CSL game if anyone knows? Maybe a couple highlights as far as attendance went or big games

[Ozzie_the_parrot]

6 hours ago, SoccMan said:

...it would be the norm for most teams in our national domestic league if a national league like the old  CSL was supported and given a chance to survive back in the day .

The NSL started at around the same time as the NHL did in the mid-1920s. Soccer has been around in Canada forever basically but it took the post-WWII wave of immigration from Europe to give that league its peak of popularity in the 1970s because for whatever reason influential forces within Canadian society decided that soccer was something to be othered and marginalized.

It's good that people like Bob Young now see an opportunity to make a buck out of soccer and are willing to hype up the final this weekend because the hostility towards our sport started to fade from the youth soccer registration boom of the 90s onwards and TFC did so well on attendance in 2007 finally proving that the various soccer haters in the sports media were wrong when they claimed the sport could never succeed in Canada.

It would be even better if the sport was not doing self-destructive things like impoverishing the national team programs through the CSB deal and had all its key stakeholders pushing in the same direction rather than at cross-purposes. It would be even better if CanPL had an economic model that investors from coast to coast were clamouring to be a part of right now rather than having groups like LSSE bail out in Saskatoon and nobody step up to take over FC Edmonton. It would have been even better if they had taken starting a women's league seriously and avoided the hearings in Ottawa.

But hey, let's pretend everything is wonderful right now and that we are part of the league's marketing team even though it isn't and we're not...

Edited October 26, 2023 by Ozzie_the_parrot

[Ozzie_the_parrot]

10 hours ago, Kent said:

...I saw on facebook a post from MLS that this season had the highest average attendance in league history. I guess we better go and let them know that Houston, Portland, Salt Lake, Seattle, and Toronto all had lower attendance this year than last year.

The obsessive MLS vs CanPL mentality rears its head again. What is happening with MLS on attendance this season has diddlysquat to do with whether CanPL has achieved an attendance level that provides overall sustainability as a league with the economic model it currently has in place. To do that there need to be a minimum of eight clubs doing a lot better than York United are right now. If everything was rosy for the league the Baldassarra family wouldn't have walked away at the start of this season.

Edited October 26, 2023 by Ozzie_the_parrot

[Ansem]

+19% increase and he still complains. Buy a ticket already 

[Kingston]

8 hours ago, SpursFlu said:

What was the highest attended CSL game if anyone knows? Maybe a couple highlights as far as attendance went or big games

I don't know the exact number but Winnipeg used to break 10 000 once a year or so.   They had some kind of promotion tied to a grocery chain (I don't recall the details).  Those games were definitely huge outliers for them but they are the highest attendance games I can recall.

[narduch]

Somebody had posted on here the average attendances of the original CSL and they were pretty low.

[Kingston]

2 minutes ago, narduch said:

Somebody had posted on here the average attendances of the original CSL and they were pretty low.

Going strictly by memory, Vancouver used to lead the league with something around 5000.  Most of the other teams were generally in the 2000s and 3000s with North York usually bringing up the rear closer to 1500.

[Colonel Green]

5 hours ago, Ozzie_the_parrot said:

It would be even better if CanPL had an economic model that investors from coast to coast were clamouring to be a part of right now rather than having groups like LSSE bail out in Saskatoon and nobody step up to take over FC Edmonton.

Such as…?

5 hours ago, Ozzie_the_parrot said:

But hey, let's pretend everything is wonderful right now and that we are part of the league's marketing team even though it isn't and we're not...

Nobody was pretending everything was wonderful. I think pretty much everyone here views York as a relocation project in the offing, in particular.

But all things considered, the league’s trajectory is positive, especially considering there was a global pandemic right after it launched.

[Kingston]

5 hours ago, Ozzie_the_parrot said:

The NSL started at around the same time as the NHL did in the mid-1920s. Soccer has been around in Canada forever basically but it took the post-WWII wave of immigration from Europe to give that league its peak of popularity in the 1970s because for whatever reason influential forces within Canadian society decided that soccer was something to be othered and marginalized.

There have been occasional high profile sports broadcasters who made no bones about their personal dislike of soccer.  The idea that soccer in Canada has been held back since the 1920s due to a vast conspiracy is nonsense.  Canada was simply a hockey and football country for most of the 20th century.  That was the culture. 

More recently we've made room for baseball to some extent and more recently still for basketball and then soccer.  Even that, however, was geographically limited and football has taken a bit of a hit in the geographic areas where these other sports have risen.  It's just the sports culture of the country, not a century long conspiracy.

[Colonel Green]

5 hours ago, Ozzie_the_parrot said:

The NSL started at around the same time as the NHL did in the mid-1920s. Soccer has been around in Canada forever basically but it took the post-WWII wave of immigration from Europe to give that league its peak of popularity in the 1970s because for whatever reason influential forces within Canadian society decided that soccer was something to be othered and marginalized.

Or it just didn’t catch on?

Obviously there were people who didn’t like soccer and said so, then and now. But that’s not some conspiracy.

And it’s especially anachronistic to say that in the early 20th century soccer was “othered”. It was a quintessentially English game at a time when Canada itself was highly imitative of England; indeed, much like cricket, it is somewhat surprising that it didn’t become bigger here, but baseball and Canadian football won out.

[Kent]

4 hours ago, Ozzie_the_parrot said:

The obsessive MLS vs CanPL mentality rears its head again. What is happening with MLS on attendance this season has diddlysquat to do with whether CanPL has achieved an attendance level that provides overall sustainability as a league with the economic model it currently has in place. To do that there need to be a minimum of eight clubs doing a lot better than York United are right now. If everything was rosy for the league the Baldassarra family wouldn't have walked away at the start of this season.

I am not anti-MLS. I am not trying to pit MLS vs CPL. I am just saying that my MLS example of commenting on an attendance record for MLS that some teams had worse attendance than the year before is EXACTLY WHAT YOU ARE DOING HERE!

The article about attendance doesn't say that CPL has achieved an attendance level that provides overall sustainability. It's just saying things are getting better overall. Just like the MLS attendance record doesn't say whether it's enough to cover the costs of their teams or if there are any teams struggling.

Everyone knows York United has serious problems and could fold at any time. And everyone knows CPL still only has 8 teams and that one folded last year. That doesn't mean CPL didn't also have some encouraging signs this season.

[Kent]

Regarding CSL, I don't know about highest single game attendance, but here are the yearly averages, alongside the CPL yearly averages.

And no, I am not trying to pit CPL vs CSL or imply that CPL has proven itself sustainable for centuries to come.

[Kent]

17 hours ago, Kent said:

And yet people will tell us...

Attendance: Fake numbers

Revenue growth: Robbing from the national teams

I told you so.

Attendance

16 hours ago, Ozzie_the_parrot said:

Have attendances been soaring for York United? Some people are so determined to push a particular narrative on here you have to wonder who they think they are kidding.

Revenue growth

6 hours ago, Ozzie_the_parrot said:

It would be even better if the sport was not doing self-destructive things like impoverishing the national team programs through the CSB deal and had all its key stakeholders pushing in the same direction rather than at cross-purposes.

"I told you so"

15 hours ago, Ozzie_the_parrot said:

My posts have consistently pointed out ways

 

All too predictable.

[nolando]

2 hours ago, Kingston said:

There have been occasional high profile sports broadcasters who made no bones about their personal dislike of soccer.  The idea that soccer in Canada has been held back since the 1920s due to a vast conspiracy is nonsense.  Canada was simply a hockey and football country for most of the 20th century.  That was the culture. 

More recently we've made room for baseball to some extent and more recently still for basketball and then soccer.  Even that, however, was geographically limited and football has taken a bit of a hit in the geographic areas where these other sports have risen.  It's just the sports culture of the country, not a century long conspiracy.

Quite randomly, I'm reading Gordie Howe's autobiography and in it he talks about playing soccer(and baseball) in the summers in Saskatchewan.

Edited October 26, 2023 by nolando

[Ozzie_the_parrot]

Soccer has always been there in Canada to some extent. Just not the sport that was being pushed as the games to be played by schools and universities, and as stereotypical Canadiana in Tim Hortons and Canadian Tire commercials. Saskatchewan was settled late enough in the day that a lot of the people involved would have been familiar with the sport from overseas. In Southwestern Ontario, Dutch farming families (think Jason Devos) tended to still be big into soccer in rural areas and were still passing it onto the next generations long before the youth soccer registration boom happened.

[jonovision]

9 hours ago, Ozzie_the_parrot said:

Soccer has been around in Canada forever basically but it took the post-WWII wave of immigration from Europe to give that league its peak of popularity in the 1970s because for whatever reason influential forces within Canadian society decided that soccer was something to be othered and marginalized.

9 hours ago, Ozzie_the_parrot said:

because the hostility towards our sport started to fade from the youth soccer registration boom of the 90s onwards

Was there some grand conspiracy or cultural force "suppressing" soccer in Canada, or was it simply not that popular?

[kacbru]

The problem with the CSL in the 1920s was they set it up as a bus league when it would have been more viable to run it as a horse and cart league.