Grey Cup Tickets

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Lions4ever
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David wrote:How many fans saw the Stampeders off?? Not many I'll bet.



DH :cool:
I'd like to see the Stampeders off, if you know what I mean.
TheLionKing
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sj-roc wrote:
TheLionKing wrote:
sj-roc wrote:I would think those tickets would have been blocked off and reserved right from the outset for later assignment to specific volunteers — i.e., never released for sale by TM in the first place.
This was not done at the previous Grey Cups in Vancouver. (I worked at 4 previous Grey Cups). Volunteers do not get in to see the game for free. There is a viewing party for volunteers wanting to see the game along with their fellow volunteers for those interested. The original plan for this year's viewing party was to be at the Roundhouse.
Wow, I figured freebies would be a normal thing for GC volunteers every year. I guess they changed it up this year with the shortfall in ticket sales. So how many hours, spread out over how long a time, were required to get comped?
I had to work 3 shifts from 9:30-3:00 PM, and 2:30-9:00 PM. We had several volunteers who came to pick up their accreditation and uniforms and didn't show up for their scheduled shifts. We know where they live. :wink: :wink:
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B.C.FAN
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According to the Vancouver Sun, ticket sales have surpassed 51,000, with 2,150 remaining to be sold as of Friday.
Grey Cup 2014 in Vancouver has been a hard sell.

Just three years removed from the last Grey Cup in the city and with the B.C. Lions not involved, ticket reselling sites are full of discounted tickets to the Canadian football classic that kicks off Sunday afternoon at BC Place Stadium.

But if the game isn’t a sellout, it should be close.

That was the word Friday from Grey Cup Festival general manager Jamie Pitblado, as there were still about 2,150 tickets left to sell, meaning more than 51,000 tickets have been sold so far.

“My guess is that by game time, we will be very, very close to being full,” Pitblado said.
It’s a buyer’s market for Grey Cup tickets
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sj-roc
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TheLionKing wrote:I had to work 3 shifts from 9:30-3:00 PM, and 2:30-9:00 PM. We had several volunteers who came to pick up their accreditation and uniforms and didn't show up for their scheduled shifts. We know where they live. :wink: :wink:
Not completely sure I have it right but that sounds like 4 shifts for a total of 23hrs?

No-shows... I suppose they didn't even call ahead that they couldn't make it. As a one-off parallel of sorts, I've done fed/prov polling station work on election days; they usually recruit plenty of standby reserves who IIRC report to the main riding office on polling day for at least the first few voting hours for possible dispatch to a polling station in need. I was initially a reserve for the last prov election but promptly bumped up to regular status after someone bowed out several days in advance. Not sure if GC has any such contingency measures.
Sports can be a peculiar thing. When partaking in fiction, like a book or movie, we adopt a "Willing Suspension of Disbelief" for enjoyment's sake. There's a similar force at work in sports: "Willing Suspension of Rationality". If you doubt this, listen to any conversation between rival team fans. You even see it among fans of the same team. Fans argue over who's the better QB or goalie, and selectively cite stats that support their views while ignoring those that don't.
TheLionKing
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sj-roc wrote:
TheLionKing wrote:I had to work 3 shifts from 9:30-3:00 PM, and 2:30-9:00 PM. We had several volunteers who came to pick up their accreditation and uniforms and didn't show up for their scheduled shifts. We know where they live. :wink: :wink:
Not completely sure I have it right but that sounds like 4 shifts for a total of 23hrs?

No-shows... I suppose they didn't even call ahead that they couldn't make it. As a one-off parallel of sorts, I've done fed/prov polling station work on election days; they usually recruit plenty of standby reserves who IIRC report to the main riding office on polling day for at least the first few voting hours for possible dispatch to a polling station in need. I was initially a reserve for the last prov election but promptly bumped up to regular status after someone bowed out several days in advance. Not sure if GC has any such contingency measures.
Sorry for the confusion. I worked 3 shifts for a total of 19 hours. Fortunately, there were a bunch of Alternatives in reserve to fill the positions of no shows. Those people who volunteered for festival events were frozen tonight due to cold wind.
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David
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sj-roc wrote:
Ravi wrote:That means that they have sold over 50k so far then. I have had some harsh words about Vancouver's ability to host this year's Grey Cup but given the prices and that they have had such a short gap from when they last hosted (3 years), selling over 50k tickets - even if they don't sell another one before Sunday - isn't too shabby at all. The stadium will look full which is the main thing.
Another thing is that this Grey Cup was first awarded in just March of last year. On the other hand, the 2011 game was awarded in Feb 2009, so not only was there a quick turnaround of only three years from the last game, there was over a year less lead time to pull it off. I'm not saying this was a major factor in why ticket sales are down, but there's a lot of stuff that goes on behind the scenes in organising a GC festival and this year's committee was working on a much tighter deadline than in 2011.

My understanding is that this year's GC was first supposed, in 2008, to be played in Ottawa — with the understanding that they would be back in the league for a few years by this time. But by June 2012 it was clear the new Ott team wouldn't take the field until 2014, so the league at this point revoked Ott's hosting rights and re-opened the game to all other teams. Nobody else stepped up until the Lions were officially announced as hosts in March of last year. So under such circumstances, I would find it a bit disingenuous to dump on this city when

• we've taken on a GC that no one else wanted,
• with a year less lead time to pull it off,
• just three years removed from our last one,
• with the home team no-showing for the first time in four years, and
• with steep ticket prices on top of all this.

Even with ALL of this, we've STILL outsold the capacity of the clear majority of other GC venues. You mentioned Scott Ackles and his non-involvement with this GC. I think he might have simply recognised he'd be risking a blemish on his resume knowing he'd be unlikely to outdo 2005 & 2011 and accordingly went in a different direction.

Great points all sj-roc. I really think most CFL markets would have had a hard time selling all their seats this year. As we've seen with 75% of playoff games failing to sell out, the home entertainment experience is going to be a real challenge for the league and it's 40,000+ seat Grey Cups going forward.

Now combine that with a really low entertainment quotient this year and all the doom and gloom news with scoring down, penalties up, attendance and TV numbers down PLUS the home team really never being a Grey Cup contender at any point this season (at least not a serious threat) and I will not apologize to anyone if we don't sell out.....especially at those prices!


DH :cool:
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Sir Purrcival
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I know there has been a big deal about this sell out thing but really, if this was Calgary, Regina, Winnipeg, Hamilton, Ottawa, Edmonton; in short almost any city in Canada, 50,0000 would be a very respectable turn out if their stadium was capable of hosting that many in the first instance. Sure some of these places don't have the population but since fans tend to come from abroad for this game and since at least one of the cities involved this year isn't exactly populated with a lot of high rollers (Hamilton), I don't really see the shortfall as that much of a big deal. Especially the way the Lions kind of burned the enthusiasm out of us this year with their dismal play. Even as a long time fan, I have found it hard to be really excited about the whole thing so what chance does the game have with the "fair weather" fans. Even at the historic 100th GC in Toronto with the host city team in the big game, the final attendance was just a shade over 53000. Edmonton did well in 2010 but it had been 8 years prior that they had last hosted. By contrast we have hosted 3 times in the last 7 and 4 in the last 15. The total amount of times that Edmonton has hosted.

Let's face it too, it isn't a cheap place to visit. My sig. other is at a conference downtown this weekend (brilliant planning eh). She is staying over and ended up at the Pan Pacific on one of those mystery book a room deals.

Room - $400.00 per night (regular cost)
Parking for part of 2 days - $80.00
Food - for 2 days - est. $200.00

That adds up really quick and if you had to throw in tickets and drinking, well you get where I am coming from.
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B.C.FAN
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From the standpoint of maximizing revenue, which seems to be David Braley's ticketing philosophy, it could be argued that organizers got it right this year. The 2011 Grey Cup sold out in July, which suggests tickets were undervalued. Organizers raised prices this year by $35 to $50 a seat and appear on track to draw close to a sellout crowd. Even if attendance falls 2,000 short of the 54,000 who were at the 2011 game, this year's ticket prices will likely generate about $2 million more revenue for Braley than the 2011 Cup.
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sj-roc
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David wrote:Great points all sj-roc. I really think most CFL markets would have had a hard time selling all their seats this year. As we've seen with 75% of playoff games failing to sell out, the home entertainment experience is going to be a real challenge for the league and it's 40,000+ seat Grey Cups going forward.

Now combine that with a really low entertainment quotient this year and all the doom and gloom news with scoring down, penalties up, attendance and TV numbers down PLUS the home team really never being a Grey Cup contender at any point this season (at least not a serious threat) and I will not apologize to anyone if we don't sell out.....especially at those prices!


DH :cool:
Exactly! Is this the greatest Grey Cup game/festival of all time? No. Does it have its shortcomings? Yes. Can it all be laid at the feet of an indifferent host city? Not by a long shot.

Starting in 1976 with the first 50k attendance in GC history for the Ssk/Ott tilt in newly-expanded Exhibition Stadium in Tor, this attendance benchmark became the standard going forward for a long time to come. There have been a scattered few GCs in the last 20 years mostly in the smaller markets where even the capacity, let alone the attendance, fell short of this and frankly for me it was a little bit of a let down to see, but IIRC it seemed to go mostly unnoticed in media coverage. We're past 50k and people are still hand-wringing over a few thousand empty seats, if that.

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Sports can be a peculiar thing. When partaking in fiction, like a book or movie, we adopt a "Willing Suspension of Disbelief" for enjoyment's sake. There's a similar force at work in sports: "Willing Suspension of Rationality". If you doubt this, listen to any conversation between rival team fans. You even see it among fans of the same team. Fans argue over who's the better QB or goalie, and selectively cite stats that support their views while ignoring those that don't.
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sj-roc
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Sir Purrcival wrote:Let's face it too, it isn't a cheap place to visit. My sig. other is at a conference downtown this weekend (brilliant planning eh). She is staying over and ended up at the Pan Pacific on one of those mystery book a room deals.

Room - $400.00 per night (regular cost)
Parking for part of 2 days - $80.00
Food - for 2 days - est. $200.00

That adds up really quick and if you had to throw in tickets and drinking, well you get where I am coming from.
Anecdotally, I've heard some local hotels have charged higher rates this week to take advantage of GC travellers. Next week, rates will revert to what they were two weeks before.
Sports can be a peculiar thing. When partaking in fiction, like a book or movie, we adopt a "Willing Suspension of Disbelief" for enjoyment's sake. There's a similar force at work in sports: "Willing Suspension of Rationality". If you doubt this, listen to any conversation between rival team fans. You even see it among fans of the same team. Fans argue over who's the better QB or goalie, and selectively cite stats that support their views while ignoring those that don't.
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sj-roc
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B.C.FAN wrote:From the standpoint of maximizing revenue, which seems to be David Braley's ticketing philosophy, it could be argued that organizers got it right this year. The 2011 Grey Cup sold out in July, which suggests tickets were undervalued. Organizers raised prices this year by $35 to $50 a seat and appear on track to draw close to a sellout crowd. Even if attendance falls 2,000 short of the 54,000 who were at the 2011 game, this year's ticket prices will likely generate about $2 million more revenue for Braley than the 2011 Cup.
That's a reasonable point to make.

But on the other hand the CFL has for some time positioned itself, at least implicitly, as an Everyman type of league — setting itself apart from the others what with the great accessibility it offers to fans of its players, its coaches and executives, its championship trophy, and lately even its commissioner, who is arguably the most popular individual in his peer group on this continent. The above line of financially-focussed thinking will come off as a little too generously borrowed from the NFL lexicon for the liking of some CFL purists who buy into the Everyman message.

And even if this game does end up being fairly billed a sellout, the fact that (compared to recent precedent) it took so long to do so, at the 11th hour, is enough to create some negative PR.

So one could argue that Braley gets a couple extra million in his pocket at the end of the day, but that it came at the cost of some credibility to the league. A league from which he'll soon be walking away.
Sports can be a peculiar thing. When partaking in fiction, like a book or movie, we adopt a "Willing Suspension of Disbelief" for enjoyment's sake. There's a similar force at work in sports: "Willing Suspension of Rationality". If you doubt this, listen to any conversation between rival team fans. You even see it among fans of the same team. Fans argue over who's the better QB or goalie, and selectively cite stats that support their views while ignoring those that don't.
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Braley just told Dave Naylor and James Duthie on Toronto's TSN 1050 Radio that there are fewer than 2000 tickets remaining with almost half of those being singles.
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Coast Mountain Lion
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One thing to remember about the 2011 game selling out in July. In July 2011 the Lions were in the midst of one of their worst starts ever, and not many other than diehard fans gave any chance of them being in the final.
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sj-roc
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Coast Mountain Lion wrote:One thing to remember about the 2011 game selling out in July. In July 2011 the Lions were in the midst of one of their worst starts ever, and not many other than diehard fans gave any chance of them being in the final.
I don't think our poor start in 2011 was quite the overwhelming turn-off that fans looked past in buying GC tickets to the extent that you might be implying. The 2011 GC was sold out by July 21, about 30 days after tickets were made available to non-STHs. By this time the Lions had only played three of the opening five games in a row that we would lose.

First was a close 30-26 season opening loss on Jun 30 in Montreal where — even though we've played them well at home so often — we have always have a tough time leaving with a win in the same stretch. Next was the home opener on Jul 8 at Empire against Cgy, another narrow loss at 34-32.

Then we lost in Edm 33-17 on Jul 16 to sit 0-3 before our next game on Jul 22 by which time the sellout had already been announced. We've often tended to slow starts to the season in the Buono years and usually turned things around for a somewhat respectable regular season at the very least, so perhaps fans were still in a benefit-of-the-doubt mood through the 0-3 start, especially with two of the losses being close.

It was also an 8-team league back then, and Ssk had also gone 0-3 in their first three games (Cgy & Edm started at 2-1 & 3-0 respectively). So while I don't recall this first-hand for sure I don't think there was a HUGE panic that we could miss the playoffs, even after the third game.

We also had a larger STH base back then, so a much bigger fraction of the tickets would have been sold before the rest of the seats were released to non-STHs. At any rate I would think much of the sales came before the start of the regular season, let alone the mounting of losses, and it's also worth noting we were 2-0 in pre-season by a combined score of 58-6 against Cgy & Ssk. In the period of those three losses I think most ticket sales would have been to fans of other teams for whom our record would not be a factor. I think the novelty of the renovated building/new roof would have also helped push sales back then.

Since then we've have ticket price increases each year with only regressing playoff disappointments to show for it, which has eroded some of the goodwill that was built up in the community under Ackles, and it's taken some of the STH base away with it.

Another factor that seems to be largely forgotten is the CFL/CFLPA labour trouble that was brewing on the eve of the season this year. While no games were cancelled or even postponed it was by far the most tense round of CBA negotiations for the league in several decades and there had rarely before been as strong a threat of work stoppage as we saw this past June. How much did all this affect GC ticket sales? Heck, for that matter how much did it affect the whole league? Let's not forget that 2014 regular season attendance was down over 6% across the board from 2013. Whatever damping effect this might have posed for GC ticket sales this year, it was a complete non-issue in 2011.
Sports can be a peculiar thing. When partaking in fiction, like a book or movie, we adopt a "Willing Suspension of Disbelief" for enjoyment's sake. There's a similar force at work in sports: "Willing Suspension of Rationality". If you doubt this, listen to any conversation between rival team fans. You even see it among fans of the same team. Fans argue over who's the better QB or goalie, and selectively cite stats that support their views while ignoring those that don't.
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Plus the fact that season ticket holders had the opportunity to purchase additional tickets at the same price as STH before it went on sale to the public.
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