How much do you think Rogers Centre would need in renovation to bring it up to standard? $100M? $250M? May as well build-to-suit once you start getting around those numbers. Rogers Centre is not a good venue for most anything these days.

I think they would considering where sports attendances, in particular the NFL's, are going these days. The NFL isn't exactly building 100K stadiums every other year...the new Vegas stadium is 65K and the new LA stadium will be 70K. Miami lopped 9K seats out of HardRock when it was renovated in 2015. Although nothing is official yet it seems likely that the Redskins will downgrade from the 80K at FedExField with their new stadium. Three teams drew around ~50K in 2019 (not including LA). Minnesota and Atlanta are filling their new ~70K stadiums but both NY teams are off the mark in the 82K MetLife. If you're building a new stadium in the 2020s you'd be better off maximizing suites and private areas for higher-spenders at the expense of adding 20K additional seats into the building.

At the end of the day Toronto likely won't be getting an NFL team so this conversation is moot regardless.

Spanos gambled on getting closer to LA, but he's losing the bet as most LA fans have backed the Rams. He also lost many San Diego fans as well. I think he shoulda rebranded them the California Chargers instead of LA. I wouldn't be surprised if he moves them once again though.

It was nice to see San Diego council hold their ground. For that matter, Oakland as well. Refreshing to see some places not cater to demands. Too bad they lost their football teams because of it. I wonder how citizens feel.

The bigger the city the less sports teams matter because there are simply so many other things to do and they are way less central to the city's profile and identity.

To most other places, losing a NFL team would be a devastating blow. But when it happened to them in the 90s, LA collectively shrugged its shoulders and kept doing its thing.

Plus LA still had two major CFB teams. One of which went on to win two NCs so that helps.

That's one of the nice things if you're a sports fan and you live in a medium sized US city and you don't have a team in each of the major sports. You usually have a serious college team or other pro city nearby that helps to fill the void. Examples:

- Pitt basketball
- Univ. of STL basketball and Mizzou fball & bball
- KC has KU, KSU and Wichita St. bball
- SD all of LA teams
- San Antonio has UT football or Astros baseball
- SEA has UW basketball
- Salt Lake has Univ. of Utah fball
- NOLA lacks baseball but nearby LSU in Baton Rouge leads the nation in baseball attendance.
- ORL has either Tampa NFL or UCF football, which as of the last 3 years has been great. And Rays baseball and Lightning hockey. Conversely, Tampa has Orlando Magic for their basketball fix or USF basketball at home.
- BAL has DC.
- Columbus has Cleveland and Cincy and vice versa
- A big exception is Charlotte, which is quite a ways from any major baseball.

In Canada, TO has the Bills, SWO has DET and UM & MSU, VAN has SEA, OTT has Syracuse football and basketball for a manageable day trip or fairly cheap overnight in the Syracuse area.

Does any football fan in Ottawa seriously consider Syracuse University when they have the RedBlacks.... not to mention 2 college football teams of their own. There were 25,000 at this year's Panda Game, for instance.

I realize I'm in the minority but as a Torntonian an excursion to Hamilton for football has always held more appeal than one to Buffalo. I've only made 4 Hamilton football (3 times for the Ti-Cats, once for MAC) trips but zero to Buffalo.

I only talk to two people from Ottawa so I’m not the best source for it but one of the guys has gone down to watch cuse bball a few times. That’s a bigger deal than fball but for the occasional big game at the carrier dome like Clemson or FSU I imagine there’s quite a few Ottawa people. I overheard one guy says he’s from Canada when I was lining up to get in.

College fball is a way different experience than redblacks or panda game. Different rules, dimensions, atmosphere and inside vs outside. I imagine a football fan in general would want to do all three. You might be the exception unless you’re just a fan of the Canadian game.

My experiences in Hamilton and buffalo were about equal for me. So was cuse. They all brought something different to the table for me.

^ For Winnipeg, the only US college team that people might be familiar with is UND's formidable hockey team. Beyond that no one really pays attention to ND State's football team, or the increasingly competitive Minnesota football team.

NCAA sports just aren't part of the culture here... Minnesota's pro teams attract a decent amount of attention, the Vikings in particular. But the college teams in MN and ND barely register.

It's the worst kept secret in hockey that the NHL prioritizes American expansion. Their record on "growing the game" is spotty at best, with more failures than successes.

The NHL isn't the dominant hockey league because of how it's structured, it's the dominant hockey league because its market is huge (even if there aren't that may fans in the US) and rich. No other league has that. There's no evidence that a different structure would make it any less dominant.

I've never heard of anyone heading down to Syracuse from Ottawa for NCAA.

And the Panda Game is less 25K gridiron fans and more 25K rowdy university students looking to drink and yell. You go to any other USports gridiron game in Ottawa and there's much less of a crowd. Hell, Ottawa has two of the best USports basketball teams in Canada and nobody goes to those games, either.

I think I know five people who are Bills STHs in Toronto and none of them ever consider going to Hamilton for CFL.

What are the failures aside from Atlanta? All of the other expansion teams in the "sunbelt" are still operating today, many of them quite successfully.

The NHL's growing the game initiative has absolutely been a success. If you told someone in 2000 that NHL fans from Nashville and Dallas would fill the Cotton Bowl nobody would have believed you. If you told someone in 2000 that the best player on the Leafs would be half-Mexican and from Arizona nobody would have believed you. Yet here we are.

There's more potential growth in American expansion than Canadian expansion. Any expansion to Canadian markets currently is carving up currently existing team markets. Quebec City does not provide growth for the NHL moving forward like a Houston or Seattle does.

December 31, 2019:
Canada & Czechs - 1.42M
Leafs & Wild - 1.02M
Raps & Cavs - 510K

January 6, 2020:
TSN - Leafs & Oilers - 799K
SNWest - Leafs & Oilers - 312K

January 8, 2020:
SN - Leafs & Jets - 1.232M
SN1 - Raps & Hornets - 453K

Numbers courtesy Bill Brioux on Twitter.

Raptors has the best chance out of any canadian team from major league sport to win championship and nobody is watching them

A few weeks back, Pollstar released their top 200 arenas worldwide (tickets sold for non-sporting events). Canadian cities below:

10. Scotiabank Arena, Toronto - 827,480
30. Bell Centre, Montreal - 592,588
45. Rogers Arena, Vancouver - 447,906
64. Rogers Place, Edmonton - 333,404
74. Bell MTS Place, Winnipeg - 280,960
92. Centre Videotron, Quebec City - 241,559
98. Budweiser Gardens, London - 223, 208
99. Canadian Tire Centre, Ottawa - 222,768
118. SaskTel Centre, Saskatoon - 158, 852
131. Scotiabank Saddledome, Calgary - 127,482
141. FirstOntario Centre, Hamilton - 110, 224
144. Place Bell, Laval - 104,725
158. Abbotsford Centre, Abbotsford - 91,169
180. Avenir Centre, Moncton - 66,527
199. P.N.E. Pacific Coliseum, Vancouver - 55,598
200. Scotiabank Centre, Halifax - 54, 873

https://www.pollstar.com/Chart/2019/...Arenas_797.pdf

Sounds a lot like, less soccer fans rather, rowdy fans that go to soccer games to drink, dance, jump, sing and yell. I can see why soccer games, specifically MLS in Canada, get crowds like they do, because the whole atmosphere is entertaining, not necessarily the game itself. I think tv ratings would back that argument up as well.

Scotiabank Arena is operating pretty much at max capacity. There's been talks that the concert schedule is having a detrimental affect on the ice quality as well.

The city could probably support an independent dedicated concert venue somewhere further North near Markham. That would also be the best avenue for a possible second NHL team to actually enter the market if you believe the talks that inevitably come up every few years.

Well, we sure watched them during the playoffs last year. Game 6 of the finals stands as the most watched sporting event in Canada for 2019, ahead of the Superbowl and Stanley Cup final. My household watched! But yeah, it would seem mostly band wagon jumpers/

https://www.raptorshq.com/2019/6/15/...evision-record


I have a question regarding the Super Bowl ratings - when I look at Numeris data - its seems to me that 4.35 million watched on CTV AND 1.18 million watched on TSN. Plus of course the ones who watched on US networks which were not picked up. I often see 4.35 million quoted for a number - should it not be 5.53 million?

One late 40ish guy I talked to in the supporter's section where the Red Patch Boys sit told me he's not even a soccer fan but has single seat season tix because he loves jumping around being rowdy with the other guys. I'm sure he's developed some liking to the game since, but he's mostly in it for the good times. At the game and before at the pub and the march down to the stadium while signing all the chants.

Not being from the area, I don’t think you realize 1) how bad traffic can be (definitely not an hour from metro SD to Inglewood) and 2) what a slap in the face moving the Chargers from SD to LA is to people. It may seem like one giant urban area to outsiders (and in many ways it’s true) but to many people it’s city vs city and moving to LA was and is unforgivable. Best analogy would be moving a the Eagles from Philly to NYC. People would go crazy. Fortunately (or unfortunately) for Spanos and the Chargers, people in SoCal just don’t care as much about their teams (not to say SD didn’t well support the Chargers for 50 years).

But then you open the link to see the arenas above it, and somehow Madison Square Garden managed to have more than double what Scotiabank has and it also hosts an NHL and NBA team. Even Staples Center was only 100,000 behind Scotiabank and it hosts NHL and 2 NBA teams.

Both MSG and Staples have mammoth operational capacity that Scotiabank Arena lacks. Staples was built from the start with the goal of becoming the top arena, and has a mammoth sub-level and event level. Scotiabank Arena due to its site and the hodgepodge plan to pivot last minute to hockey and basketball hinder it's abilities. For example, Staples can easily run, and has run, 4-5 events PER DAY. They can easily run all types of events with quick turnaround as they have the systems to do so. Scotiabank Arena squeezes the absolute max it can out of that facility.

The teams that lose the most money are, for the most part, American sunbelt teams. Florida, Arizona, Carolina, etc.

I'm not sure why you're resisting what I'm saying so much. This information is common knowledge and easy to find online. Why so down on your own country having more than a measly 7 teams?

It's been a success by absolute numbers, but every league has grown just as much and in many cases more in the same timespan. All the NHL has done kept pace with the trends that have affected the entire professional sports industry. It hasn't gained any ground on leagues like the NBA and NFL, if anything it's lost ground. So the growing the game initiative has been a flop relative to other leagues.