2024 CanPL attendance

[Mihairokov]

1 hour ago, Aird25 said:

You described it as an extremely difficult place to get to, yet kids that can't cook dinner for themselves do it constantly for a hour long lecture.

It's not difficult to get to, it just takes time to get to and the amount of time it takes to get there isn't worth it for a soccer game. I venture the commute time is worth it for students paying for programs at York U. 

1 hour ago, Aird25 said:

I don't live in the GTA, but I find it difficult to believe that location explains the poor attendance in itself, so I (cynically maybe) tried to provide another perspective.

It's part of a big picture as it is with any other team and location. BurndenAce touches on it, but marketing the team to a specific area has also been mostly a failure in the past five years. It was originally supposed to be for the York Region and they've now shifted to Toronto at large (using CN tower in branding, etc.). There's no community directly around the stadium to draw from so they're stuck. The University doesn't sit during the summer so there's no community there to draw from.

Anecdotally, as a Toronto resident, TFC represents me more than York United does, even if I am far more interested in the latter as an ardent supporter of CPL.

1 hour ago, Aird25 said:

Location within a city is important, but it doesn't expalin the poor attendance for York

I think it does when combined with a lot of the other issues surrounding the team. Location, stadium, branding...they all work together to form a good business plan for these teams. Combine that with competition within the market and you get what we've gotten so far with York. 

Every team is a separate case unto itself and comparing things like local population or stadium only go so far in explaining the entire picture. Yes, Halifax outdraws every other team in this league despite being in a "smaller" market, but they're not directly competing against other professional sports teams through the summer, as one variable.

 

57 minutes ago, BurndenAce said:

It's possible that a team in a particular area (East Toronto, Scarborough or West Toronto spring to mind) could pull an audience as a local team, but trying to pull both the City of Toronto and York region was never going to work, as it's the same audience TFC had already been pulling for a decade.

Indeed. I'm fairly confident a centrally-located team in Toronto could draw pretty well if they were plugged into the community and marketed themselves as a "cheaper" option compared to TFC, and i'm fairly confident they'd be more successful than York will likely every be at York U. We'll never know because there seems to be no appetite for doing this, but in my experience even L1O games at Varsity with zero marketing and zero cache had random people from the street stopping by and sitting down to watch simply because it was happening. There's appetite for it, it just needs to be accessible and marketed to the right people. 

Edited October 8 by Mihairokov

[MtlMario]

2 hours ago, BurndenAce said:

 if they want professional soccer, they can go watch TFC. 

Just wondering what you call the CPL, amateur or semi-pro?

[BurndenAce]

2 hours ago, MtlMario said:

Just wondering what you call the CPL, amateur or semi-pro?

Professional, don't worry, I'm not knocking the standard of the league. But to the average person, that might not be immediately obvious (especially given the lack of television coverage.)

[kacbru]

9 hours ago, Aird25 said:

It's amazing anyone makes it to class (at the country's third biggest university).

News flash - no one is attending class anymore.  

[Cheeta]

I'm sorry but I have to admit that I find myself sort of tuning out all the attached points that follow a "location doesn't matter" statement.

Yes, I understand there is nuance in the argument.  The little relationships create the bigger picture stuff blah blah blah.  But for CPL?

It's me.  It's not you.

[Aird25]

2 hours ago, kacbru said:

News flash - no one is attending class anymore.  

Thanks for the insolence. Given the timelines i presume the location for the school was decided long before remote classes were ever considered though.

1 hour ago, Cheeta said:

I'm sorry but I have to admit that I find myself sort of tuning out all the attached points that follow a "location doesn't matter" statement.

Yes, I understand there is nuance in the argument.  The little relationships create the bigger picture stuff blah blah blah.  But for CPL?

It's me.  It's not you.

I can't find any reference close to saying location doesn't matter. I'm not sure what you're even referring to

[shermanator]

Throwback to (one poster's) overreaction to Cavalry's attendance at their first home game. Thankfully Cavalry have shown themselves to be one of the success stories on and off the pitch almost 6 years later.

[ahmedou]

I'm curious to know the best attendance in CanPL. With a ranking. Per teams.

[MtlMario]

1 hour ago, ahmedou said:

I'm curious to know the best attendance in CanPL. With a ranking. Per teams.

There's only one person who can answer that.🙃

[Kingston]

2 hours ago, ahmedou said:

I'm curious to know the best attendance in CanPL. With a ranking. Per teams.

The wikipedia page for the 2024 CPL season is a good spot to find this:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_Canadian_Premier_League_season#Attendance

[Ansem]

22 hours ago, BurndenAce said:

I'll throw a few cents into the fountain here - I doubt that the location plays a significant factor in the lack of attendance itself (as I think we'll see when the women's league starts up.) I think it's more to do with the team not being marketed towards any particular audience (City of Toronto proper vs York Region) and being caught in the middle of both. 

It has more to do with CPL being completely blacked out from mainstream media, something that won't happen to NSL

 

22 hours ago, BurndenAce said:

Nobody in Toronto outside of those already aware of the CPL would trek up to York U not because the location is inconvenient (though it being outside of a populated area probably doesn't help) but because there's no real pull to the team - if they want professional soccer, they can go watch TFC. It's possible that a team in a particular area (East Toronto, Scarborough or West Toronto spring to mind) could pull an audience as a local team, but trying to pull both the City of Toronto and York region was never going to work, as it's the same audience TFC had already been pulling for a decade.

Most Torontonians have no idea there's a CPL let alone a club competing in that league a York Lions

[MtlMario]

.... the new women's league already have a TV contract.

 

Now we hear the CPL final and player's awards will be on CBC (well until P.P. gets voted in 😊)

[BurndenAce]

12 hours ago, Ansem said:

Most Torontonians have no idea there's a CPL let alone a club competing in that league a York Lions

This. I have to explain to most people I know that the league even exists.

[Aird25]

5 hours ago, BurndenAce said:

This. I have to explain to most people I know that the league even exists.

Such a burden you've taken upon yourself. I don't think my dad ever fully recovered from telling mum about 3 downs vs 4 downs. Describing club vs country during the last World Cup nearly broke him, and I fear the day that someone asks about cup vs league competitions; or La Liga vs Bundesliga vs Serie A; or heaven forbid MLS vs CPL. I really wish there were better tools in place than tv, radio, newspapers, or the internet to support us in this trying time

[BurndenAce]

3 hours ago, Aird25 said:

Such a burden you've taken upon yourself. I don't think my dad ever fully recovered from telling mum about 3 downs vs 4 downs. Describing club vs country during the last World Cup nearly broke him, and I fear the day that someone asks about cup vs league competitions; or La Liga vs Bundesliga vs Serie A; or heaven forbid MLS vs CPL. I really wish there were better tools in place than tv, radio, newspapers, or the internet to support us in this trying time

Not throwing myself a pity party haha, I love talking about the league. I just wish that the media would do a better job promoting it.

[Mihairokov]

15 minutes ago, BurndenAce said:

Not throwing myself a pity party haha, I love talking about the league. I just wish that the media would do a better job promoting it.

Which media? OS can only do so much with podcasts and socials. If Bell/Rogers don't care about promoting Canadian sport there's only so much the league can do.

[shermanator]

25 minutes ago, BurndenAce said:

Not throwing myself a pity party haha, I love talking about the league. I just wish that the media would do a better job promoting it.

In my opinion part of the issue with this league is that people don't consume the content that's out there. So you are left with a few remaining sports media covering it when they are allowed to, and some people who do this as a passion project which can be of....varying quality....

As an example, we had the person who wrote Cavalry articles for the Calgary Herald / Sun email the Foot Soldiers last year stating that local sports coverage is purely driven by analytics; things like page views solely determine what is covered. Combine that with the slow death of local sports media and being unable to share news content on certain social media and we haven't seen as much coverage in the traditional papers this year as a result.

To summarize, if you want CPL coverage, consume it. Give media a reason to cover it. They won't do it on their own.

[MtlMario]

20 minutes ago, Mihairokov said:

Which media? OS can only do so much with podcasts and socials. If Bell/Rogers don't care about promoting Canadian sport there's only so much the league can do.

Meanwhile the new women's league already has a TV deal (which is good for them). Go figure.

[Aird25]

6 minutes ago, BurndenAce said:

Not throwing myself a pity party haha, I love talking about the league. I just wish that the media would do a better job promoting it.

Thanks for not taking that sarcasm to heart. I actually think the media does a pretty good job of promoting the league. Its just not Sportsnet or TSN which most people seem to subscribe to for some reason 

[Mihairokov]

4 minutes ago, MtlMario said:

Meanwhile the new women's league already has a TV deal (which is good for them). Go figure.

Yes, we'll see how much of it is a TV deal and how much of it is a media deal. We'll also have to see how much they're sinking into production costs for themselves in order to get everything shown. I know people like thinking that this sort of thing is the end-all, be-all but CPL is in a pretty good spot wrt all matches being available, coverage of all teams and the league, complete editorial control over content and scheduling...

We'll see how things shake out for the women's league. Things could go well or things could go poorly and there are plenty of variables at play for that.

[BurndenAce]

41 minutes ago, Mihairokov said:

Which media? OS can only do so much with podcasts and socials. If Bell/Rogers don't care about promoting Canadian sport there's only so much the league can do.

14 minutes ago, Aird25 said:

Thanks for not taking that sarcasm to heart. I actually think the media does a pretty good job of promoting the league. Its just not Sportsnet or TSN which most people seem to subscribe to for some reason 

I'm referring to local Toronto media here - The Star hasn't published anything on the league apart from the bare essentials (Season starts, whatever expansion/lawsuit is currently happening) or matches involving TFC. The Sun is even worse - I'm not sure they've published a single article not vaguely linked to the MLS. Within this context, it's no wonder York aren't drawing an audience - if you were to poll 100 Torontonians on the street, I'd wager 3-5 of them would know the CPL exists.

[Kingston]

7 minutes ago, Mihairokov said:

 I know people like thinking that this sort of thing is the end-all, be-all but CPL is in a pretty good spot wrt all matches being available, coverage of all teams and the league, complete editorial control over content and scheduling...

I disagree.

I support the CPL and enjoy going to games when I can but it's just not worth it to me to get yet another paid subscription so that I can watch CPL games.  (My life has little time for watching TV as it is.)  So I represent one class of fans who the CPL misses out on by not being on a major network.

The other class are the people who might watch but don't even know the league exists.  If you're in TSN or CBC or Sportsnet, at least casual soccer fans will accidentally come across you while looking for something else.  No one is going to discover the CPL by accidentally subscribing to Onesoccer.

[ahmedou]

23 hours ago, Ansem said:

Most Torontonians have no idea there's a CPL let alone a club competing in that league a York Lions

Then can you please relocate your CPL Toronto Team at Montreal 😅

Montrealers CPL fans will take care of this! 

Edited October 10 by ahmedou

[Mihairokov]

20 minutes ago, BurndenAce said:

I'm referring to local Toronto media here - The Star hasn't published anything on the league apart from the bare essentials (Season starts, whatever expansion/lawsuit is currently happening) or matches involving TFC. The Sun is even worse - I'm not sure they've published a single article not vaguely linked to the MLS. Within this context, it's no wonder York aren't drawing an audience - if you were to poll 100 Torontonians on the street, I'd wager 3-5 of them would know the CPL exists.

I don't want to be dismissive but if you polled 100 Torontonians on the street how many do you think would say they read the Star or the Sun? These papers were probably relevant 10-20 years ago but these days their readership is exclusively for boomers and older, and those aren't the people CPL is looking to get out to matches anyway. If CPLHQ thought it was valuable to push for articles in those papers i'd say they were wasting their money - a lot of people here have noted that they've been seeing a lot more CPL ads online this season. Speaking personally, I get them everywhere.

And, as everyone likes to point out with OS, both papers are behind paywalls of some kind, and speaking more personally the Sun is a rag.

19 minutes ago, Kingston said:

I support the CPL and enjoy going to games when I can but it's just not worth it to me to get yet another paid subscription so that I can watch CPL games.  (My life has little time for watching TV as it is.)  So I represent one class of fans who the CPL misses out on by not being on a major network.

I guess i'm in the opposite boat where I don't subscribe to SN/TSN but subscribe to OS. As with anything, people have to juggle what they're going to subscribe to or not. For the CPL in particular i'd prefer they prioritize gameday experience and grassroots development over making sure they have additional coverage of games on different carriers. The CPL, like MLS, needs to set itself apart with gameday if it's going to compete with other leagues in other sports. OS at least gives them editorial control over basically everything.

19 minutes ago, Kingston said:

The other class are the people who might watch but don't even know the league exists.  If you're in TSN or CBC or Sportsnet, at least casual soccer fans will accidentally come across you while looking for something else.  No one is going to discover the CPL by accidentally subscribing to Onesoccer.

I think this whole exposure argument is a tricky one to make. Similar to my newspaper statement above, only certain people really watch linear TV anymore, and programs like SportsCentre are mostly just for clickbaiting or talkingheads these days. Yeah, it might be nice if CPL get a ten-second highlight splash, but I guess the thing we'll never know is how much that exposure actually converts into monetization for CPL and its clubs. Growing up I would watch tons of NBA highlights on TSN but aside from knowing the league existed none of my money ever went to the league. Unless we know the financials and background it really tough to say whether or not there's a lot of benefit to it.

I'm old enough to remember when TheScore was the official broadcaster of the Canadian Baseball League - that league didn't even last a full season because crowds were so small - and being on a nationally-televised linear network (back when way more people watched TV!) didn't help them whatsoever.

If the exposure is just landing on TSN or SN's streaming platforms then you're mostly just pushing the product onto crowded streaming services filled with various American offerings. CEBL was on TSN+ in 2023, do we think exposure for that league is any stronger or weaker than CPL?

We'll see how the Youtube matches fair and we'll see how the CBC match fairs, but i'm not convinced scrambling for TSN/SN is the solution to what we're looking for, which is broader appeal amongst a public which may or may not care anyway.

Edited October 10 by Mihairokov

[Aird25]

51 minutes ago, Kingston said:

I disagree.

I support the CPL and enjoy going to games when I can but it's just not worth it to me to get yet another paid subscription so that I can watch CPL games.  (My life has little time for watching TV as it is.)  So I represent one class of fans who the CPL misses out on by not being on a major network.

The other class are the people who might watch but don't even know the league exists.  If you're in TSN or CBC or Sportsnet, at least casual soccer fans will accidentally come across you while looking for something else.  No one is going to discover the CPL by accidentally subscribing to Onesoccer.

It blows me away that people follow Canadian soccer (CPL, MLS, national teams, Voyageurs cup etc) and don't subscribe to OneSoccer. They've given us something that we didn't have previously, decent coverage of this sport in Canada. We are so much better off than we were previously when relying on sketchy, pirated streams of our international matches was the only option.

Edited October 10 by Aird25