Lansdowne 2.0 (Northside Stands/Arena Redevelopment) | U/C

[J.OT13]

Originally Posted by phil235

You're right, we can't know where their break even point is. But there is good reason to be skeptical of their claims, 1) because they were actually only planning on 2.5-3k per game two years ago and 2) they are a professional sports organization trying to get a better deal from a city.

I did think about the U.S.-Canada thing. I took a quick look at tickets, and Ottawa's are more expensive on average, but without knowing numbers at each price level, it is hard to tell how ticket revenues would compare. The Charge would have a lot more of their expenses in Canadian dollars, so it wouldn't be like an NHL team where 60% or more of their costs are in U.S.

As for not limiting their growth, that makes less sense the more you think about it. If they continue to grow past 8000 fans a game, they'll need to leave Lansdowne anyway and we could be building a new arena for a few years before they need to move on. If they shrink to 5000 fans a game, we don't need an 8000-seat arena at all and we've built a white elephant that isn't good for its primary tenants.

Rather than tying to guess the future and building an arena for a point in time that may or may not arrive, better to build an arena that best fits all uses, and they just move to an NHL arena if they grow as hoped.

Circling back, no we shouldn't blow up Lansdowne 2.0 exclusively for the Charge. I can think of many other other reason why voting down 2.0 would have made sense and why the entire process was flawed from the get go, but we're beating a dead horse at this point. It passed and there's no going back without major financial penalties. Charge can stay at Lansdowne if their attendance goes down over the next few years, or move in with the Sens.