IBL has 8 teams, 3 stadiums 1500 or under, a few in the 2000-3000 range and London at 5200. Attendance is typically a lot less of course, other than the special events, like Canada Day in London where it's full because of the fireworks next door. Both the IBL and WCBL have a few former minor league affiliated ballparks in use.

I can't see leagues like this playing each other though. Neither league plays on a regular daily basis like minor league baseball does, and they don't generate a ton of cash. It would be very difficult to see them travelling to other parts of the country to play each other. IBL teams are concentrated in southern Ontario (they did have a team in Ottawa for a short time) and it takes at most a couple hours to travel. They go, play, and come home. Can't see them making enough money to take extended road trips. Not to mention, if you start playing more than a couple times a week the players will need to be paid.

Eskimos post $2.8M profit for the 2018 season
3Down Staff May 7, 2019

The Edmonton Eskimos posted a profit of $2.8 million from the 2018 season.

That’s up significantly from 2017 when the Eskimos made $431,638 and even the 2016 total of $1.4 million.

The Esks held their annual general meeting on Tuesday and made the full financial details known.

Edmonton hosted the Grey Cup in 2018 which generated an economic impact of over $81 million for the city and the Eskimos benefitted from having the CFL title game.

"Toronto’s Game 5 victory over the Philadelphia 76ers soared to 1,333,000 overnight, estimated viewers on Sportsnet — a new high for B-Ball coverage this playoff season."

https://brioux.tv/2019/05/numbers-in...-ratings-roll/

"TORONTO (May 13, 2019) Basketball broadcast history was made last night as 5.8 million Canadians watched some or all of the Toronto Raptors vs. Philadelphia 76ers nail-biting Game 7 on Sportsnet. A record-breaking average of 2.2 million viewers tuned in, making it the most-watched NBA game ever in Canada."

http://media.sportsnet.ca/2019/05/sp...ver-in-canada/

2.2M average is right around where I thought it would be. The 1.3M average for the series is also a good number.

I bet you could add maybe 50,000 more with online streamers. I don't know a single person my age who's watching the game at home on cable. The vast majority of university students are also streaming through various legally questionable platforms.

Official streaming numbers (IE, via legal means) are usually up to 10% of the total viewers on TV but usually between 4%-8% if Canadian figures are similar to American, so Raptors game 7 would have had maybe 100K official streams or thereabouts as an average.

Illegal streams are probably a similar figure if not higher. Everyone my age knows how to find a stream of basically any sporting event imaginable. :hmmm:

Reddit has subs dedicated to streaming literally anything. You can watch a 24/7 stream of HBO in HD nowadays.

The quality people upload in compared to even 5 years ago is insane. Sports were the primary reason for many people to hold onto cable packages for the longest time. Now it's pretty much moot.

What makes the numbers even more impressive is that Game of Thrones cut into the last roughly 30 minutes of the game for many viewers.

It's pretty extraordinary how far things have come in the last five years or so. Yesterday I was able to watch a League Two (UK fourth division) playoff match between Forest Green and Tranmere on DAZN, a match I would have never had the opportunity to either stream or find online five years ago. Tomorrow OneSoccer will be streaming all three matches of the Canadian Championship from Vaughan, Blainville, and Victoria, three matches which wouldn't have even had video a couple of years ago. And those are just the legal streaming operators... :P

The ironic thing is that the ability to watch pretty much any sporting event on TV or online (legally or illegally) is available at a time in my life when I don't watch much sports any more. Would've loved to have these options when I was 25 and younger.

I still find the process a bit of a pain.

I didn't bother with a Sportsnet subscription because there is little on that channel that interests me aside from the odd Jets game. But for those Jets games, I would occasionally find streams via Reddit. But half the time there was something wonky, or feeding it to my Chromecast was an issue, the feed would just die, or some other problem would present itself. When it actually worked it was great, but so much of the time it wouldn't.

Maybe there is some secret trove of reliable quality streams out there, but in my experience it's isn't that great a method.

Never a problem for me, but I used an HDMI cable over a Chromecast, which can cause lag regardless of how good your stream is.

Better to run a no-script extension on chrome which cuts out a lot of the noise on questionable streaming sites.

Heh, heh, got to agree with that.

I use Kodi with a dedicated laptop connected to the TV via HDMI and a wireless keyboard on the couch. That's about as uncomplicated and reliable setup as you can get. I went from about 100 Kodi addons to about 20 now that I have learned something about Kodi. What's also amazing is the amount of free, legal (cleared) content you can access. If I VPNed I'd have even more, but I am stuck on the principle of no payments (aside from the Internet connection). After all if we pay for a VPN we might as well pay for the cable.

Locast in the US is very interesting, it's slightly different from Aereo (non profit) USTVNow and CBC Gem work very well for me and I watch a lot of NFB stuff and Youtube through Kodi (access my subscriptions)

Adding to this:

https://brioux.tv/2019/05/numbers-in...-2-2m-bonanza/

Hockey gets the benefit of being split between Sportsnet & CBC...Raptors get Sportsnet & Sportsnet One+ when they're broadcast on more than one channel.

Raptors v Bucks

Game 2 (TSN): 925K
Game 3 (SN/SN1): 1.67M

https://brioux.tv/2019/05/numbers-in...ay-square-off/

Surprisingly low for a Friday night game 2. I think people were/are jaded on the Raps chances of making it through.

Ticats’ Grey Cup plan is outside-the-box thinking at its best
Josh Smith 3downnation May 25, 2019

https://i.imgur.com/db18j23.jpg

Getting a Grey Cup isn’t exactly the easy part these days, but putting on a good event is definitely the hard part.

While many things still need to be figured out, and the team has almost two years to do that figuring, the Hamilton Tiger-Cats unveiled some of their game-day plans for the 2021 Grey Cup this week. And it’s definitely something we have not seen before.

The biggest and most ambitious reveal is what they are calling the Grey Cup Social. Basically, it looks like a massive, standing-room-only setting in the south end zone of Tim Hortons Field. It will feature pregame concerts, the “CFL Food Experience” and it will be where the halftime show and Grey Cup trophy presentation will take place.

It’s a unique experience, to be sure, but one that fits in with what the Ticats have been doing since moving into Tim Hortons Field. The Ticats have made common areas a big part of their marketing to get people to come to games. There is the Stipley, which is a massive bar area in the same south end zone where the Grey Cup Social will take place, and the Coors Banquet Bar. The concept seems to take those ideas, sprinkle in a little of the Raptors’ Jurassic Park, and what you get is the Grey Cup Social.

The Ticats will also be doing traditional things, like adding additional seating in the north end zone and adding some premium sideline seats on the east side. All in all, these additions will get the capacity up to around 33,000.

The Ticats are going with fresh, innovative ideas to boost attendance for the league’s biggest game. Tim Hortons Field seats a capacity of 23,500, so something needed to be done to increase capacity for the Grey Cup.

The CFL Food Experience is something that I think will be a big hit (CFL fans like food… or so I have been told). As I have talked about before when discussing Hamilton’s Grey Cup ambitions, the food scene in Hamilton is Masoli-level elite. Adding that into the overall Grey Cup presentation is a genius idea. Adding the twist of having local chefs prepare foods that represent each CFL city is going to make this a must-attend aspect of game day.

While I am sure many would have liked the team to take the traditional stance of adding bleachers to the end zone, I applaud the Ticats for thinking outside the box, something they have done a lot of over the last half-decade.

Whether any of these creative ideas will work is yet to be seen, but the Ticats are trying something new — new for fans across the league, not new for the team — and that is to be commended.

Update on the Alouettes situation from Dave Naylor:

https://www.tsn.ca/cfl-wants-guzzo-a...ttes~1.1311006

This section partially resolves past discussions we've had on this forum:

Given what we know of operating costs and revenues from other CFL teams it's hard to imagine how the Als lost that much money in that short of time. I don't think their operating costs are high enough to warrant such steep losses.

There's also the possibility of the Als playing one game a season in Quebec City if Guzzo ends up owning the team.