Winnipeg Blue Bombers

[Goldie]

Welp, looks like the Saturday morning troll parade is out in colourful fashion, and rrskylar has recruited additional trolls for this specific thread.

Yay

Fantastic rebutall. You sure disproved my facts & taught me a lesson with clever, well-thought-out rebutalls of why Manitobans should support the Blue Bombers. I commend you sir! *golf clap*

I`m gonna go out & buy a Bomber jersey & season tickets now because of your amazing counter-points.

[Goldie]

*eyeroll*

[pspeid]

Originally Posted by Pinus

Welp, looks like the Saturday morning troll parade is out in colourful fashion, and rrskylar has recruited additional trolls for this specific thread.

Yay

That's why I just scroll on past whenever I happen to see that troll has written a post. I don't have to keep on stepping in dog poop to know the experience will be smelly and unpleasant.

[rrskylar]

Originally Posted by Pinus

Welp, looks like the Saturday morning troll parade is out in colourful fashion, and rrskylar has recruited additional trolls for this specific thread.

Yay

If you don’t think the Blue Bombers losing 5K fans per game isn’t a concern so be it, and since you obviously don’t follow the Blue Bombers the team is now 4-0 which makes the loss of fans even more puzzling!

[optimusREIM]

Originally Posted by Goldie

- Who cares about the -$200 million the Bombers owe the taxpayers of Manitoba? (and will never pay pack)
- Who cares about the already-falling-apart IG Field?
- Who cares about the 30 year Grey Cup drought? (in a 9-team league?)
- Who cares about the 10,000 empty seats at IG Field last night? (on a Friday night w/ perfect weather)
- Who cares about the obscene concession prices at IG Field?
- Who cares about the old/obsolete/broken-down "community ownership"?
- Who cares about creepy GM Wade Miller?
- Who cares about all the drunk drivers who drive home after games at IG Field?
- Who cares about all the failures/screw-ups/bankruptcies/corruption of the last 30 years?

The Bombers have REGULAR SEASON WINS! WOOO-HOOO!!!!

Time to lay off the booze bud.

[esquire]

Literally every point he made was incorrect, except for the regular season wins part. 1 for 10... must be a Rider fan

[Ando]

Originally Posted by rrskylar

If you don’t think the Blue Bombers losing 5K fans per game isn’t a concern so be it, and since you obviously don’t follow the Blue Bombers the team is now 4-0 which makes the loss of fans even more puzzling!

They aren’t losing 5k a game, these are the numbers they have been getting for a number of years, and they can be comfortable at these levels. Of course, higher attendance would be better. The thing about you is you only hear what you want to hear. It’s not always in sync with reality. As for Goldie, he or she had a really bad experience with the Bombers at some point and just can’t let it go. Anyhoo, the team is doing great! Go Bombers!

[dennis]

All cfl teams seem to be attracting less fans out to games, compared to the mid 2000’s. This is also happening in the NFL. Heck, the Goldeyes aren’t even attracting the 7000 or even 9000(?) that they used to when shaw park or can west field first opened. Perhaps the 70 to 80 inch high definition televisions are to blame. Who knows?

[CoryB]

Consider three of nine teams are out right dumpster fires this season, one time is effectively bankrupt and a general manager was just fired with rumors circulating that they is was due to financial mismanagement. Yeah, it is easy to see what people are tuning out. Heck the Bombers "won" on Friday but considering the state of their opponent it was not an interesting game to watch.

[EndoftheBeginning]

Thought I'd interject some attendance facts - gathered from Wiki season pages for the
Bombers going back to 2010.

[ywgwalk]

Hah, I've built basically this exact same spreadsheet in the past (well, likely last year for this exact thread).

Just one thing to point out is that you can't compare a year's average until after banjo bowl/saskatchewan games are done.

[EndoftheBeginning]

Of course, the 2019 figure is just a two game sample size and the number will come up a bit for sure based on the Rider's visit. However, looking across the table, 2019 first two games are a bit lower than previous seasons.

[ediger]

The Bombers would be well advised to consider lowering ticket prices in the corners. It's something like $75 to sit in the corner of the endzone and those seats very rarely sell. Overall though, I think by the end of the year they'll be averaging 26,000-27,000 which is generally where they've been for a while now. There were a few seasons towards the end of Winnipeg Stadium that are a bit deceptive. The Milt TD record season drew crazy crowds as did the fake-out last season at the old stadium.

[buzzg]

Ya, I don't really think there's anything to worry about attendance-wise.

I do agree with ediger though, I do think a tweak to the pricing strategy is in order. The lower bowl corners and top half of the end zones are really expensive for the quality of view you get. I think they should lower those two areas to be closer with the front part of the upper deck corners, as it looks really bad on TV having so many empty seats in those areas (which are filmed often).

It'd be better to have some of the stragglers in the nosebleeds come down to the corners. I sit in 213 row 2, the cheapest seats in the building, and the view is incredible. Would never want to sit in the corners or ends, especially considering the price. In lots of venues you get better amenity access being in the lower levels so the extra price for poorer views can be justified. This doesn't really make much sense at IGF.

I also frankly wouldn't mind seeing more seats replaced with standing room or rentable party sections, either expanding the north side ones or mirroring what they've already done on the south side. I realize they already removed some of the loges, but they were pretty poorly designed, with not great views, and took up valuable concourse space. Adding something like this (or just more standing room) within the bowl would be great.

[esquire]

It's kind of funny that the corner seats are so overpriced... I remember when the original stadium design was unveiled, Leonard Asper said that the stadium proponents insisted on a full seating bowl partly because of the image it would convey on TV. Even though endzone seats are less desirable for CFL football than for NFL because of the larger size of the CFL field, they went with the full bowl at least in part because of the big league image having that backdrop conveys.

But then they went and priced the seats such that those lower deck corner seats would practically always be the last ones to sell, leading to a situation where the typical Sportscentre highlights of TD drives would almost always have a backdrop of empty seats unless it was a sellout crowd. I thought that was a goofy approach from day one... seats should be priced such that the lower bowl sells first.

Anyway, this panic over attendance is a little overblown... attendance so far is pretty well in line with what we've seen in past years at IGF, except for the first year when attendance was much higher with the novelty factor going on.

[CoryB]

Keep in mind the quality of the opponent for game 2 (the Argos) is one of those dumpster fire teams. That the Bombers would win was known long before kickoff even happened. Overall it was not an entertaining game to watch and people that even remotely follow the CFL would have quickly learned all that in advance likely hurting walk up sales numbers.

It will be much more interesting to see what the attendance numbers are this Friday v the RedBlacks that started the season as one of the "undefeated" teams before coming up against another "undefeated" team (the Bombers). The RedBlacks are coming in hungry now with a 2-2 record looking to avenge the loss from two weeks back. it should definitely be a lot more of an even game than the Argos last week.

--

In terms of ticket pricing I was observing last week how the top five rows or so of the upper deck are the only gold coloured seats in the whole building. That got me thinking there must have been a plan at some point for those seats, which are also usually empty, to have a lower price point at some point. In reality the upper deck seats should be +$10 below the break and -$10 for the gold rows, or similar adjustments. Challenge is most of the below the break seats are now held by longer term season ticket holders and changing to pricing on them could lead to churn.

[esquire]

^ Those below the break seats are incredible, the ones in the corner where buzzg's season tickets are might be one of the best deals in all of pro football... an absolutely prime view for 23 bucks. I've only sat in the lower part of the upper deck a couple of times but I thought it was fantastic.

I mentioned this in the CFL thread in the Canada subforum but I read that if the Bombers win this week it will be their first 5-0 start since 1960!!!! (When I told me wife that she congratulated me on jinxing the team )

[ywgwalk]

Not the corners but we just moved this year from 208 row 19 to 209 row 1, and the view up front in the upper deck is great.

[CoryB]

^^ The row 1 view is subprime though as the design of the stadium really messed them up. The heavy gauge steel cable they had to add for safety makes for a nice visual obstruction. The railing mounted inside the wall significantly reduce leg room and if you are extra lucky and have an aisle seat the higher railing at the bottom on the stairs can block about a third of the field width in certain spots.

I am "lucky" enough to have exactly one of those seats. Granted it was added onto the other seats I have in row 2 which doesn't have those issues and I was only able to add it because of those issues. There are actually a number of row 1 seats that are more or less permanently held back from sale for these reasons but that isn't something the Bombers want people talking about.

[pspeid]

Watching the Bomber game last night I noticed a skyline shot of downtown Winnipeg, supposedly taken from the stadium. I was certain they were trying to show the buildings at P & M, but 360 Main still had it's old brown cladding, and the construction of 300 Main was nowhere to be seen.

Did I just imagine this or did TSN just insert an old clip? Seriously, it was on for 4-5 seconds. Could i have just been imagining it, or did anyone else notice this?