The "entire city" of Calgary is just over a million people as well but Calgary for a market for the CFL is never questioned.

Biggest enigma for a lot of Canadians outside of province is the under estimation of the support for the Roughriders & it's history.
Inside province as a whole & expats outside province has been very cohesive in support for the Riders in its 110 year history, even when Saskatchewan was the third most populous province in Canada.

Over half of Saskatchewan lives in two largest cities & with downtown Saskatoon to downtown Regina 259 highway kms apart and since most people drive 125km/hour on highway #11, its 2 hour drive for Saskatonians to Rider games, easy day trip. But its true, most of Mosaic spectators are from Regina CMA and Moose Jaw CA combined population ~305,000.

You said it yourself, and it's very true: "the Bombers have been bad for what feels like forever." They have not won a Grey Cup for 27 years! So why would you expect more than 25,000 fans to suddenly show up after a few wins to start the season? We are barely 1 month into the 2019 season. It takes time for a team and its fans to build excitement -- this is especially true for pro football because the teams play just 1 game per week. The stadium will fill up if the team continues winning.

Please no more nit-picking about the attendance (in Winnipeg). It's pedantic and pointless.

Because the Bombers have a history of averaging 27-28K a season despite being awful.

Here's their yearly average since moving to IGF:
2013: 30,637
2014: 28,314
2015: 26,746
2016: 25,936
2017: 27,681
2018: 26,880
2019: 24,762 (after two games)
2013-2018 running average: 27,699

And because they built a 33K capacity stadium. Why build one that big if you only plan on selling 70% of the seats?

For their third home game last season the Bombers had a crowd of 27,116. To match their home attendance through three games from last year they'll need a crowd tonight of ~29,618. Typically in these threads we're reminded that teams draw poorly because they're losers - would the inverse not apply?

22% of home games are already completed, soon to be 33%. How long does it take for excitement to build for a 4-0/5-0 team? Less being pedantic and more being genuinely curious, because a best case scenario for any team would be to sell out their stadium. Or does it only come down to playing against the Riders?

It's an attendance thread... :hmmm:

For me, the main curiosity is the capacity of IGF when the team historically rarely averages above 30K.

Also for me, I wasn't the one who originally brought up Winnipeg's crowds for this season, but they're seemingly falling in line with a league trend of declining crowds and gates, even with a very strong, winning team. Likewise, Calgary's won and been competitive for a few years now and their crowds continue to decline. In their case the excuse typically used is that they have a poor stadium.

Have a great weekend. :)

It's a fair question.

I think it's a convergence of a few factors.

One, and in my view the biggest, is the return of the NHL to Winnipeg. It's asking a lot of a small city like Winnipeg to support the NHL... that sops up a lot of discretionary spending. The stadium was planned, and construction began before the Jets returned. I suspect that if the NHL had returned in, say, 2006, the stadium would have been planned with a smaller permanent capacity.

Second is the stadium location. It's not that bad, but it isn't great. Rightly or wrongly, a lot of people perceive it as an inconvenient place to get to. I think the situation has improved significantly since 2013, but the perception remains. One thing that hasn't changed is the fact that there is nothing within easy walking distance of the stadium like there was at the old Polo Park location. After a night game, you get 200m away from the stadium in any direction and you're basically standing on a dark campus with nothing around to go to.

Third is the protracted stretch of bad Bomber football we've had to endure for the better part of the last decade. People don't necessarily come back right away when the team starts winning again... a lot of people got fed up and will take a long time to warm up to the team now that they're hot. It's unfortunate that 2013 was such a disaster of a season on the field as it meant that the attendance uptick teams often get with a new venue lasted only one year for the Bombers.

Fourth is the same factors affecting attendance in many North American sports... it basically amounts to higher ticket prices across the board which competes with everyone's big screen hi def TV at home. (You mentioned declining gates... are they really declining? Because ticket prices are always getting higher and they seem to do well selling their premium seats.)

There is still a lot of support for the Bombers in Winnipeg. Personally, I think if the Bombers can string together a few successful seasons including a Grey Cup win or two, it will do a lot to get people back into the habit of going to games. Or then again, maybe it won't... I remember in the early 90s when the Bombers were still a dominant team they played to crowds similar to what we see today and I remember the sportswriters wondering what it would take to fill the stands. Either way, I don't think it's remotely approaching a crisis. When it comes to levels of fan support, the Bombers are pretty solid... the challenge for them is to get to a point where there's more than just one sellout crowd a year.

Says a guy from.......... Edmonton.

Last year, the Bombers first 2 home games, 3 out of the first 4, and 6 out of the 9 in the season were lower than their season average, a trend that seems to be typical over the few seasons I looked back at. They draw well for the Riders and maybe the Eskimos, which boosts their season average.

As if I don’t have family and friends in..... Saskatchewan, to know they had a long cold winter...

Calgary bud. I’m from Calgary.

The same can be said for Edmonton and Calgary though. As a Stampeders season ticket holder, I took advantage of the weather to go to the mountains the day the Lions were in town. Pretty natural for a lot of Canadians to take advantage of nice summer weather to get out of the city and enjoy the outdoors for the limited amount of time we have, especially this year, and even last year, when winter was long and cold.

One of Calgary’s largest snowfall actually came in September 2018. Early start to winter and late end to winter.... if you gave me the choice to enjoy world class mountain bike trails on a nice summer Saturday or enjoy a Stampeders football game, without question I’ll go biking, knowing there’s only a couple handfuls of time I’ll likely get to take advantage of, all due to weather.

Or the thread to highlight your longtime campaign against the CFL. I just wish you would tell us why you would want to bring down the highest profile Canadian league especially in favour of a low tier American soccer league. I just don't get it. The fact that a mod has such bias and is allowed to act upon it is incredible.

CFL apologists should see what is real versus blurring the lines. Factors of a weak Canadian economy (relative to other OECD nations), escalating cost of basic goods, and the continued relsity that the CFL with IRS against fan base isn't converting it's departing older Dan's for young ones all can lead to depressed gate and TV counts.

The league has a long way to fall to get back to the dark ages of the 90s but CFL fans and the folks at the league office should be attentive to these shifts that currently look to be trend league wide. Is this all to say that CFL appetite has peaked? Folks can say this is a temporary thing it larger indicators long term show that it will be more challenging in the future of anything.

How can the CFL make a leap to transition away from being so reliant on gate revenues? Are there potential ways to shift away from this (I am asking for the sake of discussion).

This is interesting because down south the NFL is grappling with this as well but from a different position as they are seeking avenues to explore growth of thier overall pie. Is this all a general larger culture shift away from gridiron football?

Back to the CFL...There isn't much competition for the CFL right now as the Blue Jays are in the tank and MLS is just a factor in the larger weaker markers anyhow. If the traditional strong markers are showing some weaknesses then it should be looked at much more closely versus dismissing it and continue to wine there everyone is just a "CFL hater".

This is a pretty fair point.


It's certainly not a crisis in a market like Winnipeg but it's indicative of the trend as a whole, and it's looking more and more likely that the only team that's bulletproof from all of this is Saskatchewan.

Judging from most numbers it feels like the peak for the CFL in both physical and broadcast crowd was somewhere between 2013 and 2015. Since then it's been steadily down on both counts.

It's a good question and one i've tried to rattle around in my brain for a while. Other sports typically lean more on corporate partnerships, but those are generally a chicken-and-egg situation with general fan interest. The league's fan demographics aren't great which is probably scaring away a lot of potential investment in the product, so the league's been trying to go younger and getting more people involved (party decks, etc.) with some limited success. Ambrosie's plan is to make the league more international as a way to generate interest both internationally and in Canada amongst visible minority groups.

I think it's clear that the league tried to get Halifax playing before the renegotiation of its TV deal with TSN. Getting Halifax playing prior to 2021/2022 gets the league more games to broadcast and an extra game each week which would inherently raise its broadcast deal. Without the additional team i'm not sure where the deal goes in terms of value moving forward. I don't think there's any pressure on TSN to raise the amount they're currently paying the league for rights.

I'd say yes to this question. Gridiron is having a tough go on both sides of the border in regards to sustaining growth and carving out more of a market for itself both domestically and internationally. Local youth participating rates aren't going in the right direction. All of its major competitors (NBA, MLB, NHL, MLS) have pretty strong international presence in either its players or in general interest of the sport. Gridiron doesn't have this to the same degree and relies heavily on domestic interest to drive revenues. I don't think it's a coincidence that both the CFL and NFL are heading in roughly the same directions re: crowds. NFL just hasn't seen the broadcast decline as yet and has massive corporate backing. I think we've already seen peak NFL in North America.

It feels like the general attitude amongst a lot of people is to simply pretend the problem doesn't exist rather than actually addressing it. Things like saying they've been hearing the league's been dying for 30 years, etc. The commissioner is actively addressing this problem on a near daily basis. Just a few days ago he mentioned potentially having a game in Mexico in the hopes of creating more interest for the league in that country, which is obviously an attempt at diversifying the league's broadcast and corporate presence so that teams can rely less on gates and raw crowds. The commissioner, and by default the league as well, are attempting to address the league's revenue generating issues with CFL2.0. Buuuuut nah, i'm just a troll who's making all this up. :hmmm:

This is an interesting point. The Halifax ownership group remains committed to getting the team up and running as quickly as possible, likely in Moncton, probably for the 2021 season. I've always wondered why the rush. I would appreciate having the team in Moncton for a year while they build their stadium in Halifax, but I was always unsure of the motives of the team ownership in this regard, as I imagine only a small number of Halifax fans would actually drive 250 km to Moncton every second weekend to attend Schooners games.

Maybe the renegotiated TV contract is the reason for the rush...........

You have the first part right. You have an agenda and you try and play innocent and deny it, thinking everyone is too stupid to know what you are doing. You go out of your way to post 99% bad news about the CFL and 99% positive news about MLS. Stevie Wonder can see through you so why you deny it is beyond me.

The View All Posts function doesn't lie, your posts are there for all to see no matter how slick you try and hide your agenda. I just wish you'd man up and tell us why you want to kill the CFL, then you wouldn't need to work so hard trying to be insidious.

It's obvious, elly, I don't think there's a need to build a case. Some people just enjoy dumping on things other people like. Jhikka has probably posted hundreds of times about the the CFL but I'm not sure that I remember any of his posts having to do with the game itself, always just bad attendance or ratings news whenever there happens to be any. Yeah, it's weird, but we all have our quirks.

If I want to post about the actual fundamentals of a sport or what goes on on the field i'll go to reddit/a sports forum/twitter where there's hundreds or thousands of posts for a particular game. We're on a skyscraper forum in a thread specifically designed for attendance and marketing discussion, so the discussion is inherently going to be on the business side of things. You're all free to put me on ignore if my posts actually bother you that much.

I don't have a problem with that, I just wish he would man up and say so instead of the pretense that the rest of us are too stupid to figure it out.

What is the end game, for MLS to take over with the CFL gone and those fans will suddenly become MLS fans? Now that is some out-there thinking. And I thought mods were not supposed to show bias but be somewhat impartial arbiters. Hmm okay.

It doesn't bother me, your agenda based lie bothers me and I will point it out every chance I get to tell newcomers what you're up to.

I find it hilarious that you think members of this forum have the ability to make or break a league. You've often accused a few members of doing that. How much power do you think members here have?

News flash: no one pays attention to what we post on a forum, nor do they care what we think. Things will play out the way they're going to play our regardless of what we post here.

Instead of complaining about someone posting facts on the way things are trending, why don't invest in the league you're trying so hard to defend? Do you go to any games at all?

Anyway, Winnipeg had their largest (granted, by a very small margin) crowd of the season last night.

Unfortunately any attempts to ignore people with mod/admin status are met with:

"Sorry X is a moderator/admin and you are not allowed to ignore him or her."

Watching this Whitecaps vs Quakes MLS game that is on right after the Lions/Riders game, and B.C. Place looks over half empty.

17k in attendance for the Whitecaps.. not good!

No way there was 17k in attendance at that soccer game. Definitely reported tickets distributed and not actual attendance. BC Place was empty

I removed elly's and Berklon's back-and-forth posts since you two can't seem to keep a thread on topic.

Huh. Didn't know that.

Every sports team reports tickets distributed.

BC Place reports tickets distributed typically 3K higher than the actual physical attendance, so if it said 17K it's likely the number of people there was more like 14K. This goes for both Whitecaps and Lions at BC Place.

The Whitecaps are one of the weaker MLS teams i've seen in a while and the team is being bogged down by sexual assault allegations against management that they refuse to answer to. The whole thing is a mess this season.

n

Even 14K looked to be extremely generous.

Will the Whitecaps fold or even move?

Just so you know, The 2018 civic census released Friday puts Calgary's population at 1,267,344, an increase of 1.7 per cent, according to data covering a one-year period from April 2017 to April 2018.

For the greater Calgary area it is:
Year Population Growth
2019 1,512,539 152,223
2015 1,360,316 169,954
2010 1,190,362 134,571
2005 1,055,791 128,338

Unlikely at this stage. Ownership effectively refuses to put money into the team for them to be competitive and the fans are reacting accordingly. The market is strong and capable of supporting the team if the front office is willing to play ball.

Man, I really caused a shitstorm with my original Bombers post. Still stand by what I said though.

Moving forward, I'm curious to see how the Als' attendance will do. I get the impression that, unlike Toronto, support for the Als is healthy in Montreal but fans are just staying away because of the poor product. They're looking like a decent team for the first time in years and their ownership issues seem like they will be over shortly, so maybe there will be a rebound. Getting 16K on a +40 day in a stadium with no shade is pretty impressive though.

It absolutely has everything to do with poor product I think. Just like the Whitecaps as JHikka explains. Fans in general spend money to get entertained by good product, when there’s crap product on the field, people will spend their cash elsewhere. I think that’s general for every sport.

Did you remove my comment as well? I wasnt involved in a back and forth i just said that both my Whitecaps and BC Lions suck this year and that we only have the Canucks to cheer for if that.

Post 632 in the CFL thread.

Ya but i also posted in this thread because the Whitecaps were mentioned here and im not happy at all how they are doing.

https://www.lapresse.ca/affaires/med...tva-sports.php

Some numbers from this La Presse article:

• TVA loses more than $20M/year, and has done so on back-to-back years now.
• RDS is paying $60M for the rights to Canadiens broadcasts until 2023. TVA is paying $60M for the rights to the NHL until 2026.
• Between 2015 and 2018 RDS lost 611K subscribers (-19.4%). TVA Sports lost 332K subscribers during this same period (-16.7%)
• 45% of households with people aged 30 and under do not subscribe to traditional TV.
• Sportsnet profits increased from $106M to $131M in 2017-2018. TSN's profits decreased from $118M to $80M.
• Both TSN and Sportsnet lost 4% and 4.7% of their subscribers in 2017-2018.

These numbers are a bit heavier than the total CRTC numbers put out each year but are consistent with the decline of traditional TV subscribers on a yearly basis (TV-wide it's usually a 3% drop yearly in subscribers).

According to the CRTC 2018 report on Broadcasting Finances, TSN's subscriber count has gone from 9M in 2014 down to 7.8M in 2018. During the same time frame Sportsnet has moved from 8.3M subscribers to 7.2M.

https://applications.crtc.gc.ca/Open...0Summaries.pdf

Profits are still pretty high, and ad money is increasing, but those subscriber counts are a pretty consistent bleed.

I wonder if (legal) IP TV will contribute to stabilize the bleed in the future. I decided to include a basic IP tv package to my internet subscription with Teksavvy recently as they now offer this option and it is decently priced. You still need to pay 20$ a month to get the sports channel package though. Still a better price than what I used to pay with Rogers, which was outrageously expensive.

I'm actually surprised at that difference in SN and TSN numbers. I just figured most people if they are paying to subscribe to sports would take both. I can't honestly think of why I would choose TSN over SN if I had to choose one.

TSN is now a bit less Toronto than Sportsnet is.
Sportsnet increased its Torontoness after they made all their regional channels Sportsnet Ontario.

Really, I can think of a lot of reasons for TSN over SN...Other than the Jays and NHL rights, I dont think they have much to offer. TSN has all golf majors, tennis majors, IIHF events, the Brier and Scotties, Monday and Sunday Night Football, FIFA event plus they still have some non-Jays MLB and regional hockey coverage. Not to mention I still think their non-live sports programming such as their NHL panel and SportsCentre and some of the ESPN shows (like PTI not so much First Take) make TSN a better product. Of course the fact so many people under 30 aren't getting cable doesn't help anything. I am almost 30 and I still have cable soley for network news coverage and sports. Its the high majority of TV i consume. but most of my friends don't bother with cable anymore because they only need Netflix, and can there are still a lot of options to stream almost any sporting event on Reddit.

Sure, but many of those major events you listed for TSN are also on other channels. I would certainly choose a package of US Networks over a TSN-centric sports package if I was forced to pick. Leafs and Raptors being split between the 2 certainly is a plus reason to have TSN for me though. Curling and CFL, not so much. But I don't even know how the packages are set up anymore. It used to be that they would put TSN with some obscure group of "outdoorsy" channels, and then the same with a second package for Sportsnet. I don't know if they split them up like that anymore.

I guess my point more was that I figured most people who are sports fans would take all the main sports channels, because it's not really that much more to have them.

Bombers unveil massive Walby burger, fit for offensive lineman-sized appetite
3Down Staff 3downnation August 14, 2019

The Bombers have made a burger fit for an offensive lineman and appropriately named it the “Walby burger”.

https://i.imgur.com/xRrizF4.jpg

It will cost $45 to sink your teeth into the massive five-pound burger which contains:

six patties
six chicken tenders
six hot dogs
six bacon strips
secret special sauce
fries
cheese
pickles
lettuce
onions
tomatoes

Chris Walby spent his entire 16-year CFL career with his hometown Blue Bombers. After brief stints on the defensive line and at tight end in 1981, Walby made his permanent home along the offensive line in 1982, starting at guard for two seasons before moving out to right tackle in 1984.

Walby went on to play 13 seasons at right tackle with the Bombers, earning nine CFL all-star nominations and winning three Grey Cups. Walby is a member of the Blue Bomber, Manitoba Sports, and Canadian Football Halls of Fame.

The Winnipeg native checked in at six-foot-seven, 325 pounds during his playing days. You can bet Walby could still put away his self-named burger just like burying an opposing pass rusher.

^Strange coincidence. Walby's nickname was Bluto (from Popeye), also from Popeye was a character named Wimpy which is a big burger franchise in the UK. And while on the subject of food, Popeyes is a chain of fried chicken and fast food restaurants.

Walby played at a max weight of 360 or 370 lbs according to his teammate Troy Westwood. The two of them host the pre/post game Bomber show on the local TSN radio station (TSN doesn't have CFL radio broadcast rights in Winnipeg, so can only do pre-game, half-time and post-game hits). Anyway, stories being told on sports radio here are that Walby can eat a couple of his namesake burger in 20 minutes.

Instant heart attack.

Much like the variety of novelty food offered at the CNE fair in TO every year.

Organizers of NFL pre-season game at IG Field scrambling under pressure to sell tickets
Mike McIntyre Winnipeg Free Press August 13 2019

It's fourth-and-long for organizers of next week's NFL exhibition game at IG Field. And it appears moving the goalposts and throwing up a last-minute Hail Mary isn't bringing them much closer to finding the end zone.

Normally, a sea of blue would be most welcome at the home of the Bombers. But in this case, it's bad news for those who were hoping for a packed house on Aug. 22 when the Oakland Raiders play host to the Green Bay Packers in the first — and I suspect last — four-down football game to come to Winnipeg.

A search of Ticketmaster shows thousands of available tickets, displayed as blue dots, in pretty much every section. It's even more pronounced in the mostly unsold lower bowl, where the most expensive tickets are clearly keeping customers far, far away.

How grim is it? I'd love to be able to tell you, but On Ice Entertainment Ltd., the Toronto-based third-party promoter behind the event, won't give specific sales numbers. They didn't return my messages on Tuesday seeking an update but did tell The Canadian Press last weekend they're currently at about half of stadium capacity, which is officially listed at 33,134.
Organizers were hoping for a packed house when the Oakland Raiders play host to the Green Bay Packers at IG Field on Aug. 22.

Organizers were hoping for a packed house when the Oakland Raiders play host to the Green Bay Packers at IG Field on Aug. 22.

I'd take that with a giant grain of salt, considering the Ticketmaster map appears to show more than 50 per cent of seats still up for grabs. Safe to say their ultimate goal of a sell-out is going to come up painfully short.

What's more, after vowing there would be no price reductions following initially slow sales, they called an audible last week and slashed about 6,000 tickets from the original cost of $164 to $75, plus taxes and fees.

They tried to save some face by touting it as a sponsorship arrangement with Molson Coors by dubbing them "Miller Lite End Zones," but in reality this was the equivalent of breaking the glass in case of an emergency. For what it's worth, those tickets don't appear to be moving very quickly, either.

Even that attempt has been botched badly. How do you imagine the people who'd already paid full price felt when they heard about the fire sale, then initially called Ticketmaster and were told "Sorry, no refunds."

Alienating and angering your most loyal customers is not usually a recipe for a successful business venture. John Graham, the president of On Ice, has since been quoted as saying the ticket-selling agency "will handle it."

As the home team, the Raiders assume all of the financial risk in this venture, because the home team gets gate revenues.

But it's not clear exactly what that means.

Winnipegger Mike McPherson bought two of those $164 tickets in section 202 when they first went on sale to the public, only to learn about the sudden discount through news reports last weekend. Naturally, he called Ticketmaster, hoping to either be reimbursed the difference or offered a full refund so he could repurchase new tickets at the cheaper price. He even cited Graham's quote to the person on the other end of the phone.

"I spoke twice to a Ticketmaster manager who said tickets were final sale and the promoter hadn’t authorized any refunds. He told me he was going to write an email to the promoter requesting authorization to refund my tickets and would call me back to confirm," McPherson told me Tuesday.

He's still waiting for a reply.

"I'm assuming I might have to call Ticketmaster again to resolve this. It’s not about the money as much as it’s about the principle of what’s happening here. The tickets were bought as a Father’s Day gift, with my dad being a life-long Packer fan. When I purchased them these tickets were the most affordable option available," said McPherson.

As a Week 3 pre-season NFL game, there's a good chance the teams' regular players, such as Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers, above, will get some significant playing time.

Naturally, McPherson is a bit sour at the whole process, although he's going to the game no matter what and intent on enjoying the experience with his pops.

There was plenty of sticker shock when prices were rolled out in early June with eight ticket options ranging from $75 to $340, not including taxes and fees. Many, including yours truly, predicted this was doomed to fail.

Sure, the cheapest upper-deck ones — available in very limited numbers — sold out quickly. But save for the 40 corporate suites, which are apparently occupied, the rest are still available in large quantities.

The eight pricing options average out to $226.88, which, if you multiply by the 33,000 seats they hoped to sell, would have come to $7.5 million. That figure would actually be much higher, considering there are far more tickets available in the four highest-price ranges than in the four cheapest ones. Throw in parking and concessions and local consumers were being asked to dig very deep.

As a Week 3 pre-season NFL game, there's a good chance the regulars such as Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers will get an extended look, which promoters hoped would be a major selling point. But unless something changes dramatically in the next week, this is shaping up to be a multi-million-dollar gamble gone bad.

Although the Winnipeg Blue Bombers are partners in this enterprise, they are no doubt thrilled they absorbed no direct financial risk. If anyone is going to take a bath here, it's Oakland (the home team gets gate revenues) and On Ice Entertainment.

Some will try to paint this as a failure on the part of Manitobans, but don't be fooled by that. This is a healthy sports town, with more options than ever, and football fans are already being well-served by a talented Bombers club that has yet to lose at IG Field this season and have provided plenty of bang for their much-cheaper entertainment buck. A crowd of 25,354 took in last Thursday's win over Calgary that moved Winnipeg to 6-2, alone on top of the CFL's West Division.

Even Friday's exhibition basketball game between the men's teams from Canada and Nigeria drew a near lower-bowl sellout of 8,000 fans at Bell MTS Place, despite a lack of obvious star power on either squad.

If anything, it's a rejection of an overpriced cash grab in what was already a saturated market, with only so much disposable income to go around. It's worth noting a previous Canadian NFL experiment, in which Toronto hosted eight games between 2008 and 2013, saw prices slashed significantly once fans realized they were being played for suckers.

It's also worth noting you can find NFL exhibition game tickets for as cheap as US$12 available to see the Minnesota Vikings just a seven-hour drive south of here at beautiful U.S. Bank Stadium. In fact, a quick search around the league shows just how inflated these Winnipeg prices truly are.

The obvious question is where do they go from here? A half-empty IG Field (or half-full, if you want to think positively!) is not going to be a good look for anyone, so you wonder if another wave of wholesale price reductions are on the way. Or, perhaps they'll try to quietly paper the place with giveaways.

Whatever the case, an event that was being touted as a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity has been fumbled from the start and might well end up being remembered for all the wrong reasons.

CFL, Physical and Health Education Canada bring football to schools
CFL.ca Staff

TORONTO — The Canadian Football League (CFL) and Physical and Health Education Canada (PHE Canada) have announced a new five-year partnership which will help introduce the game to thousands of schools and millions of students from coast-to-coast-to-coast. The collaboration supports the CFL’s ongoing #TryFootball initiative which aims to encourage youth to discover the game.

“We couldn’t be more pleased to work closely with PHE Canada to share our great game with young people throughout the country,” said CFL Commissioner, Randy Ambrosie. “Whether it’s with boys, girls, new Canadians, football fans or those new to the game, the schoolyard is the perfect place to bring kids together to learn, play and have fun.”

In addition to expanding the reach of the game, the partnership will enhance theMove Think Learn: Football in Focus teaching resource to incorporate new skill practice games and instructional methodology, to assist educators in adding football to their schools’ physical education programming. The enhanced resource has been developed in collaboration with Football Canada and the first edition, available this fall, will target Grades 4-6, while subsequent editions will focus on Grades 7-9 (Fall 2020) and Kindergarten to Grade 3 (Fall 2021).

“Sports like football have the incredible ability to teach young people some of life’s most important lessons – leadership, teamwork, responsibility and so much more,” said Melanie Davis, Executive Director and CEO of PHE Canada. “By working together and developing this resource, we will empower educators with the knowledge to teach kids how to run, throw, catch and kick their way towards a more healthy, fun and active lifestyle.”

The availability of football teaching resources will not only help diversify educators’ programming, but also extend a new bridge for young Canadians to connect with their communities.

“Canadian football plays such a big role in the nation’s sporting landscape, but not every teacher has the tools and the background to share the game,” added Ambrosie. “We’re trying to eliminate that barrier and support all educators – to give kids the chance to learn and play football with their friends and throw the ball around with their families.”

Educators are invited to learn more about PHE Canada and Move Think Learn atwww.phecanada.ca. For additional information regarding the CFL’s #TryFootball campaign, please visit TryFootball.ca.

You'd think these smart marketing people would figure out that most folks aren't suckers and that paying inflated prices just to see NFL preseason will not sell!

I guess this "postcard from the summer BBQ circuit" fits here because it's technically about marketing...

Anyway, earlier this summer I was at a BBQ populated by a few people I knew, and some that I didn't.

At one point I noticed a 8-9 year old kid wearing a Hamilton Tiger-Cats cap. I know his mom so I asked them both "hey, you a Ti-Cats fan?" His mom said that the reason for the cap was that the kid likes big cats/felines like tigers, lions, etc. Basically, the kid wouldn't know the difference between no-yards and a fair catch.

Anyway, this random guy (I did not know before) near us overhears the conversation and immediately comes over to start talking to the kid - also not previously known to him I gather. He starts telling the kid that he really should switch to a Detroit Lions cap, that there are also other good cat-related logos like the Carolina Panthers, Jacksonville Jaguars... all of which are way "cooler" than the Ti-Cats cap. I found this odd, especially given that the Detroit Lions logo is absolutely banal and even ugly compared to that of the Ti-Cats. And the Panthers' and Jaguars' aren't necessarily nicer than the Ti-Cats' either.

But this guy was especially keen on getting the kid to switch from a Ti-Cats to a Detroit Lions cap for some reason.

I ended up letting the kid go play with other kids, and stated chatting with the cap crusader. Turns out he wasn't even a Detroit Lions fan, but was a die-hard fan of some other NFL team I can't recall. He also wasn't the VP of Marketing for NFL Canada, in case you we were wondering. Rather a federal public servant of some kind. From Ottawa or environs I gather. We talked football a bit and it was all NFL of course.

He was just an ordinary guy in Canada doing his little part to boost the NFL. No remuneration from Roger Goodell required or expected.

looks like there are about 12,000 seats still available on ticketmaster for the NFL exhibition game in Winnipeg. So that means there will be about 21,000 sold. The Promoter is expecting a crowd similar to a Bomber home game so another 4000 or so blue dots should be gone by Thursday night.

I'd be pretty surprised if there was much of a walkup crowd, but I'm sure the promoter will still earn a tidy profit even with 22 thousand tickets or whatever sold given the very high price points.

That said, wouldn't it have been a better experience for all involved if they had dropped the per ticket prices a bit, filled the joint and come out with the same profit? Or are they so intent on delivering an authentic NFL experience that they wanted to make sure the place was only half full, in true preseason football style?

Hilarious. I don't think I'd be able to handle living in Ontario :haha:

It borders on the pathological with some people. You can't make up a story like that.