2015 All Things Lions Marketing & Promotions

[Belize City Lion]

I agree that the Whitecaps (or MLS in general) is a local/regional draw. Consider MLB in Canada. Even in the early 1990s when the Blue Jays were at their peak of national popularity, what effect did this have on TV ratings for MLB games not involving the Blue Jays (or Expos)? I'm not sure MLS will ever get to the point of capturing the imagination of Whitecap fans where we will see significant numbers tuning in to watch Kansas City play Real Salt Lake. That's one advantage that the CFL has and has brilliantly exploited with their broadcasts on TSN.

[B.C.FAN]

This is why if the Whitecaps are ever to overtake the Lions as #2 team in this market as TM likes to throw out there, it's going to take a generation or so. It helps the Lions to play in a more solidly entrenched league with a lot of history and tradition behind it. For example, every CFL team/market, even Ott who have only played about five of the last 20 seasons, can scare up at least a decent handful of former players they can trot out at any given halftime for fans to get all nostalgic over. MLS doesn't really have any of this yet — but give them 25 years to build it up to that point and then you might see TM's visions come to pass, as Moj said two weeks ago.

People have been saying that about soccer in Vancouver for 36 years since the original Whitecaps of the North American Soccer League briefly captured the city and a 1979 league championshp. That's nearly three generations ago and the current Whitecaps seem to have only fraction of the support of their old namesakes. Soccer is and will always be a niche sport in North America.

[David]

If you haven't had a chance to hear Keith Olbermann's views on soccer and MLS in America, sit down for 5 minutes and watch this hilarious piece on the Late Show with Dave Letterman (the other funny video is called "How To Make Soccer Work In America").

"Soccer is the sport of the future in America, and always will be."

[video][/video]


DH

[jcalhoun]

Hey all,

One of my favourite articles about soccer; a bit of a long read, but I think it's a fascinating one.

Cheers,

James

Why The USA Hates Soccer: A Nation Flummoxed
National Post
June 8, 2002

There is an episode of The Simpsons that begins with Homer taking the family to a soccer match between Mexico and Portugal. The game starts, the crowd goes nuts and the Mexican team starts passing the ball cautiously around at midfield. They keep passing it ... they keep passing it ... and the crowd goes slowly quiet. The scene cuts to a bored Kent Brockman, the Springfield newscaster who is doing the play-by-play: "Halfback passes to the centre. Back to the wing. Back to the centre. Centre holds it. Holds it. [rolls eyes] Holds it ..." Meanwhile, the Mexican announcer can hardly sit still as he calls the same play: "Halfback passes to centre, back to wing, back to centre, centre holds it! Holds it! Holds it!"
Every four years, the global village throws a big street party for the World Cup of Soccer. Everywhere, people throng in pubs and in streets, waving flags and singing songs -- everywhere, that is, except, for the American quarter, where the streets are quiet and the shades drawn. Americans don't understand the world's fascination with soccer. And the rest of the world doesn't understand why Americans don't understand their fascination with soccer.
There have been times when it seemed a breakthrough had been made. In the '70s, ageing soccer stars such as Pele, Beckenbauer and Chinaglia signed with teams in the now-defunct North American Soccer League and there was a brief wave of soccer fever. In 1994, tired of waiting for the United States to come to soccer, soccer came to the United States, which hosted the World Cup in front of sellout crowds. And soccer is undeniably becoming one of the biggest participation sports in the country. Still, it doesn't come close to rivalling the place football or baseball occupies in the American imagination.
Popular opinion has it that soccer is so infectious it quickly takes over sporting life wherever it lands. Only the United States has some weird, unfortunate immunity to its charms. Is there any way of understanding American indifference to the most popular sport in the world?
-- -
Along with parliamentary democracy and the gin and tonic, soccer is one of the British Empire's great gifts to the world. The sport's full name is Association Football, which is why most of the world calls it "football." Soccer is a slang formation from Association, as "rugger" is from Rugby.

Both sports are descended from a medieval popular entertainment in which opposing mobs would kick, carry and toss some poor sod's skull or a stuffed pig's bladder through village streets, across fields and into rivers. It was a pretty violent affair, with most players in it for the tackling, punching, and "hacking" (vicious shin-kicking). Maiming and even death were common. At the end of the game, they would have a party.
There were regular and entirely ineffectual attempts to outlaw this running street-riot-*beep*-bacchanalian frenzy. But, by the early 18th century, it was an entrenched part of English culture, though still officially regarded as deeply anti-social. As England urbanized in the 19th century, improved law enforcement, social pressure and space limitations forced soccer into smaller areas. The mass appeal faded; the game was kept alive in the public schools. At places such as Winchester, Rugby and Harrow, this proto-soccer's violence and cruelty found a welcome home among the prefects.
With the advent of trains and other mass transit, more inter- scholastic play took place, and a need arose for codification of the rules. In 1863, the Football Association (F.A.) was formed to govern what it called "the simplest game," a sport of dribbling and kicking. With it, the split from the game of carrying played at Rugby was completed. Those rules gave us pretty much the soccer game we have today.
This newly regimented soccer was suited to urban industrial life and it was quickly re-adopted by the working classes. The non- hierarchical and team-oriented nature of the game was attractive to people who had little respect for the pretensions of the upper classes.
Soccer also grew rapidly as an export of the Empire, tagging along with sailors, missionaries and the businessmen ministering to British investments. By the beginning of the 20th century, soccer had become, apart from war, the world's first truly international game. It now had deep roots that ran from Russia to Portugal in Europe, to Argentina, Uruguay and Brazil, and to parts of Africa, where it took hold gradually, despite the absence of major cities and organized school systems. (Imperial authorities in Africa also discouraged mass recreation and the crowds it attracted. Soccer only began to thrive in the atmosphere of social and political freedom that arose as the Empire disintegrated.)
Curiously, the places that have shown the most resistance to soccer are what the English used to call "the white Dominions." Australia has its own preferred version of football, while New Zealand and South Africa favour rugby. Canada isn't exactly bonkers for soccer, though that is fairly easy to explain: a) It is too cold here for too much of the year, and b) we already play the most exciting game on Earth, hockey.
But apart from climate, why does a sport catch fire in one place but not another? Why is a pastime that inspires poets and mass hysteria and bloodletting in one culture met with Brockmanian eye- rolling in another? The answer may be found in another aspect of U.S. history: its stubborn resistance to socialism.
-- -
Many commentators cannot resist drawing an analogy between soccer and language. They claim soccer is the world's lingua franca, uniting people who would otherwise have little in common. Some argue that a sport such as soccer can serve as a vehicle for the expression of national identity and character. As one writer put it, "There are two types of football, prose and poetry. European teams are prose, thorough, premeditated, systematic, collective. Latin American ones are poetry, ductile, spontaneous, individual, erotic."
Whatever form this expression takes, though, this much is clear: Most of the world is happily chatting away in the global village square, with soccer serving as a sort of sporting Esperanto. Meanwhile, the Americans are off talking loudly amongst themselves. What makes it doubly perplexing is that Americans are the sporting linguists of the world. They are native speakers of baseball, basketball and football, and many speak excellent hockey. Yet soccer leaves them tongue-tied, deaf to its rhythms and cadence.
There was a time when the United States seemed primed for soccer. In the late 1800s, there were vibrant urban centres, a fierce democratic spirit and versions of soccer's English precursors had been around for decades. The sport's failure to thrive in the United States seems all the more strange given that the two great American games, baseball and football, had Britishantecedents yet diverged from their parent games in significant ways.

(The United States, being the first British colony to achieve independence, saw much of its subsequent evolution directed in opposition to the values and traditions of the mother country. It deliberately sought to develop distinctly American forms of sport, which would evoke American national character. Baseball, for example, was put through the equivalent of a sportive witness- protection program. Its origins, in the British sport of rounders, were erased through the Abner Doubleday founding myth.)
The standard explanation among sociologists of sport is the "sports space" theory. An analogue of "niche theory" in biology, the idea is that each society has only a certain amount of room for sports. Once these niches are full, no other sport, no matter how well adapted, can elbow its way onto the scene. So Aussie Rules Football was already established by the time soccer arrived Down Under, while rugby and cricket had grabbed the available niches in South Africa and New Zealand. In Canada, hockey and curling are at the top of the food chain, with variants or clones of the major American sports fighting for the living space that remains.
The trouble is, the notion of sports space is almost impossible to quantify. For instance, why did it take just one sport to keep soccer out of Australia, but two to keep it out of New Zealand? In the end, sports space theory may be a non-explanation, recalling physicians who explained the properties of opium in terms of its "dormitive power" and were mocked for this by Moliere.
What's perhaps more revealing is the way in which baseball and football evoke the two fundamental (if inconsistent) aspects of the American ideal. Baseball is Emerson and Whitman, an embodied nostalgia for a pre-modern pastoralism. Football, with its essential focus on competition for property through hierarchically organized teams, is gridiron capitalism. The quarterback and the pitcher are the strategists, the CEOs of their team, with each pass, hand off or pitch, a tactical delegation of responsibility. Both sports implement a sharp division of labour, emphasizing individual responsibility and individual achievement. The fondness of Americans for public expression of Christian religious commitment finds a welcome home in both sports. Pre- and post- game locker-room prayer is common at all levels and it is no accident that football is played on Sundays.
In contrast, the "democratic" appeal of soccer -- the reason it became the sport of the masses -- lay in its flattened hierarchy, as opposed to the stiff classism of the elites. There are still signs of soccer's anarchic origins in the loose positional play, and in the fact that, apart from the no-hands rule, the game is relatively lawless. Any player can go anywhere on the pitch, propelling the ball with his feet, thighs, chest and head in any direction and to anyone he or she pleases.
If football and baseball are democratic in the American sense, with their focus on individual responsibility and achievement, soccer is democratic in the European sense -- collective and egalitarian. To be sure, soccer offers the occasional incandescent burst of individual heroism, but it always occurs against a dull obbligato of steady collective striving.
Soccer never caught on in the United States for the same reason that socialism never did. By American standards, soccer is a sport for communists.
-- -
In a broader sense, all of this is an illustration of the different role that sport plays in America. In the United States, sports are utopian. They are an idealized form of the deepest aspirations of American life. Anyone can become quarterback, if he's good enough. But -- and this is the key -- everyone can't be the quarterback. Equality of opportunity, but not of result, in other words. It is no coincidence that the prologue to Underworld, Don DeLillo's great evocation of 20th-century America, is about a baseball game. (No less coincidentally, his second novel, End Zone, is an examination of football, capitalism and nuclear war.)
Soccer, on the other hand, reflects life as it is, not as we might like it to be. This isn't an original point -- it's pretty much the received view of the sport. Soccer, like life, is a game of small victories. The clever pass, the tidy dribble, the unlucky shot well wide. Who cares if no one ever scores? As Adam Gopnik put it in a New Yorker essay during the last World Cup, "nil-nil is the score of life."
The most lyrical exploration of this aspect of soccer is in Eduardo Galeano's book Soccer in Sun and Shadow, which traces the history of the game through South American eyes. It is a deeply political book, though Galeano's thesis is nothing so facile as the idea that the huddled masses find in soccer what little hope and consolation they might reasonably expect. Like most of the world, Galeano knows that the game of soccer is the game of life, and with all its sham, drudgery and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful game.
-- -
This isn't to suggest there is no popular form of soccer in the United States (or in Canada, for that matter). During this World Cup, take a walk into any major urban ethnic enclave -- say, College Street, in Toronto, while Italy or Portugal is playing -- and observe the overflowing bars and cafes, hear the periodic cries of joy and anguish.
Then head out to the suburbs some weekend and drive past the acres of green space given over to soccer pitches, full of kids chasing a ball and lined with parents cheering them on. In Canada, more people now play soccer than play hockey. In the United States, too, soccer has 20 million participants, almost half of whom are women. The legacy of the 1994 World Cup has given rise to men's and women's professional leagues. No soccer in North America? Bushwah.
The problem, though, lies in the distinction between the urban fan and the suburban player. There is little affinity between the two, to the point where they are literally focused on different games, for different worlds. In cities, soccer is almost uniformly the domain of ethnic minorities. In fact, it is arguably soccer's appeal to immigrants that has always stunted its popular appeal in the United States. From the beginning, it has been seen as a game for foreigners. Immigrants who wanted to assimilate into their new home adopted baseball as their sport of choice.
Meanwhile, the dominance of soccer in the suburbs is as much a form of competitive consumption as it is a recreational activity. Along with the sport-utility vehicle and the private school, the suburban soccer team is a way of expressing class distinction. Suburban soccer is not really "recreational," since it is dominated by competitive teams that spend a great deal of time travelling to games and tournaments. A recent study found that the average cost per player on these teams is between US$4,000 and US$6,000 per season, far beyond the means of most working-class families.
And look at the way soccer is used as a semiotic anchor in advertising for everything from fruit juice to minivans. The celebrated soccer mom -- harried, but good-humoured and well- coiffed, as the team spills from the minivan into the local McDonald's -- is the trophy wife of the suburban bourgeoisie. There are two soccers in America, then, and they are separated by a social divide that is unlikely to be bridged any time soon.
There are those who claim that soccer is on the verge of a breakthrough, that the current professional league, Major League Soccer, will be the one to finally make the big score. Perhaps. But MLS is just the latest in a string of professional leagues since the Second World War, each of which seemed to be "just on the verge" of reaching the mass audience. All of them eventually failed and MLS will as well.
We'll give Eduardo Galeano the last word. Noting the relative lack of U.S. media enthusiasm for the 1994 World Cup, he wrote that the entirely appropriate attitude of the media seemed to be: "Here, soccer is the sport of the future, and it always will be."
Soccer quickly takes over sporting life wherever it lands. Only the United States has some unfortunate immunity to its charms.

[sj-roc]

This is why if the Whitecaps are ever to overtake the Lions as #2 team in this market as TM likes to throw out there, it's going to take a generation or so. It helps the Lions to play in a more solidly entrenched league with a lot of history and tradition behind it. For example, every CFL team/market, even Ott who have only played about five of the last 20 seasons, can scare up at least a decent handful of former players they can trot out at any given halftime for fans to get all nostalgic over. MLS doesn't really have any of this yet — but give them 25 years to build it up to that point and then you might see TM's visions come to pass, as Moj said two weeks ago.

People have been saying that about soccer in Vancouver for 36 years since the original Whitecaps of the North American Soccer League briefly captured the city and a 1979 league championshp. That's nearly three generations ago and the current Whitecaps seem to have only fraction of the support of their old namesakes. Soccer is and will always be a niche sport in North America.

My point was there hasn't been a continuous presence of MLS-level soccer for as long as the Lions. BTW, not sure how 36yrs constitutes "nearly three generations". I'd call it barely two.

But anyway, I don't see soccer ever reaching the CFL's level of public consciousness in this country for a long time, if only because the NHL is an even greater source of competition for the attention of fans on the sporting landscape. At the same time, the CFL oughtn't get too complacent about where they stand. They were guilty of that in the 1980s and by the mid-90s pretty much the entire league was in full-on crisis mode.

[TheLionKing]

I watched part of the Whitecap game against Orlando yesterday. Boring ......... guys diving etc. Give me football any day of the week

[B.C.FAN]

BTW, not sure how 36yrs constitutes "nearly three generations". I'd call it barely two.

But anyway, I don't see soccer ever reaching the CFL's level of public consciousness in this country for a long time, if only because the NHL is an even greater source of competition for the attention of fans on the sporting landscape. At the same time, the CFL oughtn't get too complacent about where they stand. They were guilty of that in the 1980s and by the mid-90s pretty much the entire league was in full-on crisis mode.

Yes, it was poorly phrased on my part. I meant that we are into the third generation since the glory years of the original Whitecaps, and soccer's popularity has not taken off.

I agree with your points above.

[David]

Actually, I'd say the Seattle Seahawks pose a far bigger threat and are a greater encroachment on the Lions' fan base than the Whitecaps. While the 'Caps share the same stadium and are competition for the city's discretionary entertainment dollar as well as their imagination, the Seahawks play (virtually the) same sport and have a far bigger reach in this city than the Whitecaps. The 'Caps are (for the time being at least) rather niche, albeit with a very passionate following. The Seahawks on the other hand, are mainstream and growing. Their success this year really brought that home, and I am seeing their logo displayed everywhere in this town.

For the Lions, unfortunately, it's like when Robin Williams used to make impromptu appearances at the local Urban Well comedy club and, say Brent Butt used to have to follow his act. The Seahawks and their game day experience represent Robin Williams (at least when he was living). They are the big time, American, and at the pinnacle of their craft. Brent Butt is....well.....Brent Butt. A talented homegrown stand-up in his own right, and a former star of Corner Gas. But his performance would pale coming on the heels of Williams'.


DH

[sj-roc]

Did you guys hear the talk yesterday morning on 1040 With the Moj about how this is a much bigger football town than soccer town with the lions tv ratings of course killing the whitecaps ratings and how if you take the southsiders out of the picture that the caps would only be getting around 14-15 k a game . ?

I agree with that to a certain point , but the lions have a lot of work to do with in house experience they have really dropped the ball since ackles died , Skulsky is too much of a fan and not a business man , I hate to say but until he leaves, steps down or gets some help this lions team is going to sink further and further down the radio in Vancouver and bc.

I heard Moj's exchange with Mayenecht and could see his point. The two sports seem so much different and the numbers show. Football probably more than any other sport seems to show very well in TV. Moj's main soap box stand was that while the Whitecap's continue to gather traction at the stadium the Lions' brand is running at a rate 6 times that of the Caps in the TV market. The challenge for the Lions is to figure out how to drag those people back to the stadium from the comfort of their living rooms with their 55" HDTVs. Using the numbers loosely for every person sitting in BCP for a Lions game there are roughly 25 watching the game on TV. For the Whitecaps the ratio is closer to 5 watching at home to every 1 at the stadium.

The Southsider influence is interesting. It seems like for a Whitecaps game it's them providing the game day experience as opposed to the game or the Whitecaps organization. That seems to be a phenomenon tied to the sport of soccer globally. Maybe it's little more than the fans doing something to entertain themselves while they wait for that rare scoring opportunity to pull them out of their seat.

After James posted that old article on "Why the USA hates Soccer", I ended up rooting around elsewhere online and found many similar articles. But then I came across this other one with a slightly different take, published in the Wall Street Journal at the start of last year's World Cup, written by a Brit living in America who finds the apeing by North Americans (Americans in particular but I suppose he'd feel the same way about seeing it in Canada) of European soccer fan culture to be derivative and soulless. He argues that this "hinder(s) the development of your own American soccer identity", which presumably also hinders the sport from becoming as popular as it is in the rest of the world. He'd prefer that soccer fans on this continent be more original in expressing their fandom, or perhaps more in line with how they express their fandom of North America's more mainstream sports.

He doesn't come right out and say it, but I think I see what he's getting at. And that is, that what's holding soccer back in North America is its current fan demographic, which is mostly limited to... well, hipsters, basically.

http://www.wsj.com/articles/why-i-hate- ... 1402012291

The Problem With American Soccer Fans: It All Feels Like An Elaborate Affectation

By Jonathan Clegg
Updated June 6, 2014 1:16 p.m. ET

Growing up as a soccer fan in England, I've witnessed my fair share of horrors. I've seen shocking acts of violence, overheard hundreds of abusive chants and watched Pelé retire to sell erectile dysfunction pills.

Over the years, I've been angered, saddened and ashamed by these things. But through it all, my love for soccer remained undimmed.

But lately, I've discovered there's a new scourge on my beloved game that I simply cannot tolerate: Americans.

Understand that I'm not talking about the vast majority of you, who still regard soccer as a distinctly European product of dubious worth, like espadrilles or universal health care.

I don't begrudge fans here who have only recently awakened to the charms of what the rest of the world has long known as the beautiful game. Welcome to the party!

The problem is your soccer obsessives. By my reckoning, they may be the most derivative, excessive and utterly ridiculous collection of sports fans on the planet.

If you've ever stumbled across this tribe as they spill out of a bar on Saturday mornings after 90 minutes spent watching a game contested by two teams based thousands of miles away, you'll know the sort of fans I'm talking about.

They refer to the sport as "fútbol," hold long conversations about the finer points of the 4-4-2 formation and proudly drape team scarves around their necks even when the temperature outside is touching 90 degrees.

It is this band of soccer junkies who have turned the simple pleasure I used to derive from heading to a bar to watch a game into something more akin to undergoing root canal surgery.

It's not that they all have the same stories about study-abroad trips to Europe, or that they get wildly excited about the simplest saves, or even, for inexplicable reasons, that 90% of soccer fans in the U.S. seem to root for Arsenal.

My biggest gripe is that all of this feels like an elaborate affectation.

Instead of watching the game in the time-honored way of American sports fans—by thrusting a giant foam finger in the air, say, or devouring a large plate of Buffalo wings—your soccer fanatics have taken to aping the behavior of our fans from across the pond.

The scarves thing is an obvious example, but it's far from the only one. There's the self-conscious use of terms like "pitch," "match" and "kit," the songs lifted directly from English soccer stadiums, and even the appropriation of terrace couture.

On a recent weekend, I went to a bar to watch the UEFA Champions League final and found myself stationed next to a soccer fan wearing a replica Arsenal jersey, a team scarf around his neck and a pair of Dr. Martens lace-ups. He looked like he he'd been born and raised along the Holloway Road. In fact, he was from Virginia.

The whole thing seemed to be less an expression of genuine fandom and more like an elaborate piece of performance art. Didn't we fight a war so you guys wouldn't have to take cues on how to behave from London?

It should come as no surprise that the situation is particularly heinous in New York City. This is a town where artisanal toast is now a thing. So of course there's a peculiar species of fan here whose passion for soccer seems to be less about 22 men chasing a ball up and down a field and more about its intellectual and cosmopolitan qualities.

Never mind that no other sport is so linked to the working class. For these fans, rooting for an English soccer team is a highbrow pursuit and a mark of sophistication, like going to a Wes Anderson movie or owning a New Yorker subscription.

It's not just English soccer that's been fetishized in this way, of course. Your soccer snobs have pilfered elements of fan culture from Spain, Italy and Latin America. These days, half of your national team has been imported from Germany.

There's the curious obsession with 'tifo'—those enormous banners that are unfurled in stadiums before kickoff. They work at Lazio, Bayern Munich or Boca Juniors. At Real Salt Lake, not so much.

These soccer snobs are so intent on maintaining an aura of authenticity that when they make a slip-up or use an incorrect or ill-advised term, I feel compelled to pounce on them with all the force of a Roy Keane challenge.

There's no such position as outside back! (It is fullback.) The rest of the world doesn't call them PKs! (It is penalties. Just penalties.)

Not to mention the fact that your fans happily refer to Team USA captain Clint Dempsey by the nickname "Deuce." Deuce?! This is international soccer, not "Top Gun."

Ever since a ball was first kicked into a net, it has been an inviolable law of the game that Dempsey should be shortened to Demps. Just like Michael Bradley gets cut to Bradders, John Brooks to Brooksy and Jermaine Jones to Jonesy, or perhaps JJ, at a push. (For the record, Mix Diskerud can still be known as Mix Diskerud.)

The great regret about all this is that mimicking the customs of fans from everywhere else could hinder the development of your own American soccer identity.

One of the joys of soccer is seeing how different cultures view, interpret and celebrate the game in their own distinct ways.

I find it fascinating, for example, that while we see soccer as a broad narrative that unfolds over 90 minutes, your fans tend to think about the sport as a series of discrete events.

Or that I view the coming World Cup and England's inevitable failure with a mixture of trepidation and dread, while your fans seem positively excited about the tournament.

Mind you, with Team USA facing a potentially decisive matchup with Germany, there's a strong chance that your upbeat disposition won't last long. That is one lesson you can take from an Englishman.

[KnowItAll]

In other words, he would like to see soccer fans in America break out in fights at most games

[sj-roc]

In other words, he would like to see soccer fans in America break out in fights at most games

Nah, hooliganism is just another part of the European fan culture he'd probably want them NOT to emulate. SNL even did a sketch about in the 90s: Scottish Soccer Hooligan Weekly.

Video: http://www.myvideo.de/watch/1236067/SNL ... ans_Weekly
Transcript: http://snltranscripts.jt.org/96/96psoccer.phtml (with a few errors, e.g., "Fenian" rendered as "beady-eyed")

As per the WSJ writer's stereotypes, the show in the sketch is supposedly sponsored by Doc Martens and Mike Myers is wearing an Arsenal scarf.

BTW if you're implying fights are a common thing at BC Place, at Lions games specifically, I'd have to say you're wrong. However common it might have been once upon a time, I'd have to say based on what I see with own two eyes, and I think other fans who attend would probably concur, that it's been pretty rare to see anyone fighting at a Lions game lately.

I wonder how things were at the Canucks/Leafs game a couple Saturdays ago. I thought I heard someone on 1040 mention in the run-up to that one that they always have to beef up security anytime the Leafs come to town what with the fans of opposing teams coming to blows. I used to know a guy who worked security in the early years of GM Place/Rogers Arena, and he told me that one night with the Leafs in town, about 15yrs ago, they kicked out over 50 people. Keep in mind this is a much smaller capacity venue (smaller crowds at any rate) than BC Place.

[SammyGreene]

Actually, I'd say the Seattle Seahawks pose a far bigger threat and are a greater encroachment on the Lions' fan base than the Whitecaps. While the 'Caps share the same stadium and are competition for the city's discretionary entertainment dollar as well as their imagination, the Seahawks play (virtually the) same sport and have a far bigger reach in this city than the Whitecaps. The 'Caps are (for the time being at least) rather niche, albeit with a very passionate following. The Seahawks on the other hand, are mainstream and growing. Their success this year really brought that home, and I am seeing their logo displayed everywhere in this town.

For the Lions, unfortunately, it's like when Robin Williams used to make impromptu appearances at the local Urban Well comedy club and, say Brent Butt used to have to follow his act. The Seahawks and their game day experience represent Robin Williams (at least when he was living). They are the big time, American, and at the pinnacle of their craft. Brent Butt is....well.....Brent Butt. A talented homegrown stand-up in his own right, and a former star of Corner Gas. But his performance would pale coming on the heels of Williams'.


DH

Ed Willes baffled me when he mentioned the Whitecaps as competition for the Canucks in a recent column.

There are other reasons, of course. Both the Whitecaps and the NFL’s Seattle Seahawks have encroached on the Canucks’ territory. The NHL team also faces the same challenges which confront so many industries: Namely, how do you get the millennials to buy your product when so many choices are available?

Perhaps the Whitecaps were mentioned in the same breath as the Seahawks for being relatively new and Lions' not being a good example with their recent erosion in attendance/season tickets. But maybe the Whitecaps could at least open the entire lower bowl and sell that out on a regular basis first to back up this "growing" interest theory?

As far as the Seahawks, someone on twitter made a great point when TSN 1040 started that stupid poll a couple of weeks ago about which team is No. 2 in Vancouver. He suggested how would the Whitecaps be able to compete if watching Barcelona or Manchester United on a regular basis was a 2 hour drive south for soccer fans?

[B.C.FAN]

The Lions and Canucks appear to have three factors in common that have been a drag on attendance:
1. A stale on-field/on-ice product last season.
2. Relatively expensive ticket prices, by league standards.
3. The rising popularity of HD TV.

They've both addressed first point through coaching changes. It remains to be seen whether that will be enough.

[sj-roc]

As far as the Seahawks, someone on twitter made a great point when TSN 1040 started that stupid poll a couple of weeks ago about which team is No. 2 in Vancouver. He suggested how would the Whitecaps be able to compete if watching Barcelona or Manchester United on a regular basis was a 2 hour drive south for soccer fans?

I guess you mean this poll:



Those are always going to be highly non-scientific, especially this one what with the Caps season having just started while the Lions are not really in the public consciousness, being in the dead zone almost halfway between the end of last season and the start of the next. I don't know result they got but I suppose Caps might have edged for this reason.

Run that poll in late October with the Caps having just finished a lacklustre season while the Leos are on a 13-3 run with two home games to wrap the season and first place already in the bag.

[DanoT]

The Lions and Canucks appear to have three factors in common that have been a drag on attendance:
1. A stale on-field/on-ice product last season.
2. Relatively expensive ticket prices, by league standards.
3. The rising popularity of HD TV.

They've both addressed first point through coaching changes. It remains to be seen whether that will be enough.

I'm not a tech person so I don't have much knowledge on the subject but why can't they come up with a method of blacking out local HD TV? Both the CFL and NFL and possibly other leagues would benefit but I guess the TV networks don't have a vested interest in blacking out local broadcasts.