Stadiums & Arenas of Canada, Part 3

[thurmas]

Originally Posted by Coldrsx

Part of it is... and this year it was 'buy an adult, get a kid in for free'... great promo.

Oh I know but even if the endzone is completely changed to a pilsner party deck type of deal you would still have close to 50,000 seats. The promo was really good for boosting esky attendance and I hope it is done league wide or at least in BC and Toronto where they need to get kids into the stands.

[elly63]

Originally Posted by thurmas

The promo was really good for boosting esky attendance and I hope it is done league wide or at least in BC and Toronto where they need to get kids into the stands.

Saw this at another site

In other news, it seemed like there were way more than 12 000 fans at the game yesterday. Assuming I'm right, then paid attendance was supplemented with a number of freebies. If so, I'm glad they did that. For a meaningless late October game the atmosphere was pretty good. I saw junior football teams out in groups. I also saw the most diverse audience I remember seeing at an Argos game. This is key to building for the future. The Raptors have built a strong base amongst well-heeled first and second generation Canadians. The Argos best opportunity to rebuild the fan base is to continue reaching out to new Canadians looking for economical family entertainment.

Even though gear was 40% off it was still great to see young fans wearing what looked like their first piece of Argo gear. They start wearing that to school and the mall and visibility increases.

The fan appreciation seemed to work really well too. My son got a free cap and scarf and he's been wearing the scarf around the house since last night. He's a baseball player and likes going to Jays games, but when we arrived at BMO yesterday he said seeing the Argos is still his favourite thing. By the end of the game when he received a signed player's glove I felt like I was looking at an Argos fan for life.

[UrbanClimate]

Originally Posted by VANRIDERFAN

Mosaic last night at the Heritage Classic

Here's another shot of the Regina Stadium during the Heritage Classic:


https://www.sportsnet.ca/hockey/nhl/...itage-classic/

[Djeffery]

Originally Posted by elly63

I saw junior football teams out in groups.

London Minor Football sent 8 busloads of players down to the game Saturday. These are grades 2-8 ages.

[WhipperSnapper]

Originally Posted by The Fisher Account

Actually they return every 4 years.

There's a website and everything:

https://www.olympic.org/winter-games

FYI, No one wants to host the winter games anymore. For how much longer do you think they will be hosted every 4 years? LOL

[esquire]

Originally Posted by WhipperSnapper

FYI, No one wants to host the winter games anymore. For how much longer do you think they will be hosted every 4 years? LOL

I would fully expect that they'll continue to happen every 4 years according to tradition, but that it will simply become a more modestly scaled event where the focus is on using existing infrastructure vs. building new everything all the time. The Sochi 2014 Olympics may be the high water mark for crazy over the top (and frankly, irresponsible) spending on a Winter Olympics.

[WhipperSnapper]

The Winter Olympics have struggled throughout most its history. It has had a couple do or die moments. Shifting it to its own year was one of those moments. More events has increased its popularity but, also increased costs. You can save on infrastructure using existing facilities but, you are still going to have billions in addition costs no matter what.

[MalcolmTucker]

Yeah, the problems in Calgary were never infrastructure, but centred entirely on security costs, and potential security cost overruns.

[esquire]

^ But if no one's bidding then suddenly the Olympics becomes a price taker. If there is one bidder and they say hey look IOC, we have the facilities and a workable plan, but the total all in budget is $500 million tops, then the IOC is going to take it. Maybe suddenly having a police escort for every athlete or whatever is not that important anymore.

I mean, look at the Pan Am Games... Winnipeg 1999 cost $140 million, Toronto 2015 cost like $2.5 billion. Toronto probably could have put on a Pan Am Games at a price closer to what Winnipeg paid, but for whatever reasons they opted to spend nearly 20 times what Winnipeg did.

[Acajack]

At that point the Winter Olympics start looking better for places like Quebec City.

[WhipperSnapper]

Originally Posted by esquire

^ But if no one's bidding then suddenly the Olympics becomes a price taker. If there is one bidder and they say hey look IOC, we have the facilities and a workable plan, but the total all in budget is $500 million tops, then the IOC is going to take it. Maybe suddenly having a police escort for every athlete or whatever is not that important anymore.

I mean, look at the Pan Am Games... Winnipeg 1999 cost $140 million, Toronto 2015 cost like $2.5 billion. Toronto probably could have put on a Pan Am Games at a price closer to what Winnipeg paid, but for whatever reasons they opted to spend nearly 20 times what Winnipeg did.

The Golden Horseshoe games could have been budgeted cheaper. For example, They didn't have to combine the games with spearheading the West Donlands at a cost of $750 million to a billion dollars. You are off your rocker if you think 1999 Winnipeg is remotely comparable to 2015 Toronto.

Most of the country was in a deep recession when the Winnipeg games were budgeted. I bought my first condo in downtown Toronto for $120,000 in 1996. It sold in 2017 for $864,000.

No one is bidding. The IOC pleaded Beijing to host the upcoming games and have been giving out greater and greater concessions to get bidders for subsequent games. It's eating more and more into their bottom line and that's all they care about.

[The Fisher Account]

You continue to say no one is bidding, when in fact, cities are continuing to bid. Whether its 2 cities or 20 cities, democracy or autocracy, cities are bidding.

[thurmas]

Olympics will need to learn they do not need to build brand new facilities for every sport. They were very close to having no cities bid at all for the winter games and that is how the Italian bid won pretty much by a lack of suckers who were willing to go bankrupt for a 16 day globalist and corporatist snob fest.

[MalcolmTucker]

Again the problem isn’t facilities - it is dumping $1 billion bucks into security when there is zero return on it. The IOC payments basically cover off operations. Facilities you can convince people they’d be useful, especially if you have a three way split on them and you get useful things are the end you’d probably mostly do anyways, like convention space and social housing.

[blueandgoldguy]

Originally Posted by WhipperSnapper

The Golden Horseshoe games could have been budgeted cheaper. For example, They didn't have to combine the games with spearheading the West Donlands at a cost of $750 million to a billion dollars. You are off your rocker if you think 1999 Winnipeg is remotely comparable to 2015 Toronto.

Most of the country was in a deep recession when the Winnipeg games were budgeted. I bought my first condo in downtown Toronto for $120,000 in 1996. It sold in 2017 for $864,000.

No one is bidding. The IOC pleaded Beijing to host the upcoming games and have been giving out greater and greater concessions to get bidders for subsequent games. It's eating more and more into their bottom line and that's all they care about.

I'm pretty sure he is not saying the 1999 games are like those in Toronto. Had Toronto chosen to use mostly current facilities like Winnipeg did though, I'm sure the costs could have been quite a bit less than $1 billion. The new swimming pools, new velodrome, new stadium in Hamilton, massively refurbished university venues...I'm probably missing several more massive sports infrastructure expenditures which probably adds up to a total of over $1 billion.

[DavefromSt.Vital]

As someone who attended both the 1999 and 2015 Pan-Ams, the all-time dumbest expense for the 2015 games was the PASO Diamond Lane on the 401 out to Ajax to access the softball/baseball complex.

[esquire]

Originally Posted by MalcolmTucker

Again the problem isn’t facilities - it is dumping $1 billion bucks into security when there is zero return on it.

When the pool of bidders and their budgets keep dropping precipitously as they are, so will the IOC's (or PASO, or whoever else runs international games) "security requirements". The only reason this stuff costs a fortune is because that's what candidate cities up to now have been willing to pay, it isn't written in stone.

[MalcolmTucker]

Originally Posted by esquire

When the pool of bidders and their budgets keep dropping precipitously as they are, so will the IOC's (or PASO, or whoever else runs international games) "security requirements". The only reason this stuff costs a fortune is because that's what candidate cities up to now have been willing to pay, it isn't written in stone.

Pretty sure it isn't the IOC setting the security requirements - our own governments do that.

[WhipperSnapper]

Originally Posted by The Fisher Account

You continue to say no one is bidding, when in fact, cities are continuing to bid. Whether its 2 cities or 20 cities, democracy or autocracy, cities are bidding.

If you want to believe that cities are still seriously bidding on the Winter Games because the IOC is still taking bids and selecting a winning city from their chosen finalists than so be it.

[WhipperSnapper]

Originally Posted by blueandgoldguy

I'm pretty sure he is not saying the 1999 games are like those in Toronto. Had Toronto chosen to use mostly current facilities like Winnipeg did though, I'm sure the costs could have been quite a bit less than $1 billion. The new swimming pools, new velodrome, new stadium in Hamilton, massively refurbished university venues...I'm probably missing several more massive sports infrastructure expenditures which probably adds up to a total of over $1 billion.

I am saying that it is absolutely ridiculous to do any sort of comparison between the 2015 games in Toronto to those in 1999 in Winnipeg in the first place.

It was a bare bones event in Toronto using mostly existing facilities by renovating them up to standards and filling in those that were missing. The stadium in Hamilton was $145 million with the city putting up $40 million; chump change to the aforementioned billion dollar Athlete's Village in the West Donlands. The torn down stadium was inadequate too. The problem with using facilities all over an area of 8 million people and a downtown athlete's village on government land they have been wanting to development for 30 years is security and operations and that is where costs got out of control.

Toronto was/is cash strapped, too damn big and, with too expensive real estate and development to have hosted these games for a fraction of what they ended up costing (excluding the Athlete's Village)

I covered the economy and real estate costs in 1999 last post. Now security. I worked in First Canadian Place in 1999. I could get into just about any space I wanted without being noticed. There were few if any maglocks and minimum cameras. Now, every unit has maglock doors and every inch of common area is covered in multiple camera angles with guards doing rounds every hour. Point is, the security budget for the Winnipeg games is probably laughable by today's standards