Preseason game June 19 at Thunderbird Stadium

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Hambone
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Belize City Lion wrote:A major missed opportunity by the Lions. David mentioned brand. That was the opportunity, to enhance the brand. IMO, Kamloops should have been the site for this game. Sure there is little permanent seating but temporary bleachers could have been brought in. Remember the days of Indy Vancouver? In a matter of days seating for 100,000 people was set up on the streets of the city. Certainly the people running the facility in Kamloops could have had seating for 10-15,000 set up in no time.

A pre-season game in Kamloops would have been an EVENT. The Lions had all of training camp to push ticket sales in that community. Even from a strictly logistical point of view it would have allowed the team to remain in Kamloops and not break camp until AFTER the final exhibition game, effectively giving them an extra day of training camp.

This game at Thunderbird is an inconvenience no matter how (badly) the Lions marketing team tries to spin it. Fans in the interior would have been thrilled to get a game in their backyard compared to lower mainland fans who will find the Thunderbird experience substandard.
I do remember the days of Indy in Vancouver. That wasn't exactly instant seating. Set up for the stands started weeks in advance of the races.

It would be a challenge to add 2000 seats in Kamloops and absolutely impossible to add 10000 unless somebody was willing to spend ridiculous money for a 3 hour game. There is very little real estate to work with. The football playing surface is surrounded by a track. Putting anything with weight like bleachers with several tons of humanity on the track in Kamloops type weather could permanently damage the track surface. The TRU playing surface and track is bordered on 3 sides by immovable objects. On the north end is the scoreboard and a permanent fence. On the west side are the permanent stands. On the south end is the TRU Conference Centre. This leaves a wedge shaped piece of concrete on the other side of the field from the permanent stands and it has some challenges. field. There is a light standard for field lighting at the 55 yard line beside the track. There are 2 storage buildings towards the south goal line that effectively make the 15 yard line the boundary there. The pointy end of the wedge reaches into the north endzone. Once you come out to the 15 you have 40' to work with between the track and the permanent fence that separates stadium facility from an embankment that drops down to the road below. That expands to about 100' at midfield between the light tower and the back fence. Realistically there's about 75 yards of "sideline frontage" on the east side to work with for adding temporary seating. You'd need to put in about 50 rows of seats to add 8000 fannies.

As for the training camp extension idea the CFLPA would be all over that like an offensive lineman on a 32 oz rib-eye. Training camp officially starts on the first day veterans are required to attend a meeting or practice other than the day prior to camp when medicals are conducted. For BC this year that was May 31st. Per the CBA training camp ends on the 18th day from and including the day it began. For the Lions training camp officially ended yesterday per the CBA. Teams are now In what the CBA calls "Out of Camp Period". For purposes of practice they are now in regular season mode with all the practice do's and don'ts applying. That means one contact practice per week.
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LU interviewed Jamie Pitblado of the Lions on the decision to play at UBC and the choice not to erect temporary grandstands.
A crowd of in excess of 9,000 is expected with the standees, according to Jamie Pitblado, the Lions’ director of fan engagement. And for all the talk about playing in a supposedly sub-standard venue that belittles the credibility of the league, that number won’t even make it the second-worst-attended pre-season game so far this year.

“I don’t think it made a lot of sense to go and build temporary stands at $100 or so per seat and try and sell that for $40 to $45 (a ticket),” said Pitblado, last year’s Grey Cup festival manager, who is taking over marketing of the Lions from Stefan Kalenchuk. “We had to look at what venues could we have to create an exciting atmosphere because that was a big piece for us. I think we’re going to have a far more intimate experience.”
The business side of the Lions also has plenty on the line after last season’s meltdown and will draw on lessons learned from the last time they spent time in a temporary venue at the other end of town.

“The three most important things to fans are food, beer and washrooms, and if we’ve learned from our experience at Empire Field we need to make sure we have lots of them and easy access to them,” Pitblado said.
Lions prefer to stay in backyard despite small venue for today’s pre-season game

Comparisons with the Molson Indy and Tempire aren't relevant. In both cases, grandstands were purchased by the sponsors or landlords and reused many times, then sold when no longer needed. If Pitblado's numbers are accurate, paying $100 per seat to erect a temporary grandstand that will only be used once for a maximum return on investment of $40 per seat doesn't make business sense.

I'm getting pumped about this game. Several colleagues who are season ticketholders are giving it a pass but others who don't normally attend games are looking forward to going due to the novelty of the event and location. If all goes well and 9,000 or so people are accommodated without major problems, this could be seen as a marketing coup by the Lions.
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Hambone
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B.C.FAN wrote:Comparisons with the Molson Indy and Tempire aren't relevant. In both cases, grandstands were purchased by the sponsors or landlords and reused many times, then sold when no longer needed. If Pitblado's numbers are accurate, paying $100 per seat to erect a temporary grandstand that will only be used once for a maximum return on investment of $40 per seat doesn't make business sense.
Those numbers may not be far off. I was going to mention that number in a previous post as I'm pretty sure $100/seat was the figure I'd heard it cost Ottawa to install the temps for the 2004 Grey Cup when I was out there. I remember at the time thinking they really weren't much over break even for those endzone seats which I think may have been priced in the $100-$125 range at the time.
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sj-roc
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Hambone wrote:
Belize City Lion wrote:A major missed opportunity by the Lions. David mentioned brand. That was the opportunity, to enhance the brand. IMO, Kamloops should have been the site for this game. Sure there is little permanent seating but temporary bleachers could have been brought in. Remember the days of Indy Vancouver? In a matter of days seating for 100,000 people was set up on the streets of the city. Certainly the people running the facility in Kamloops could have had seating for 10-15,000 set up in no time.

A pre-season game in Kamloops would have been an EVENT. The Lions had all of training camp to push ticket sales in that community. Even from a strictly logistical point of view it would have allowed the team to remain in Kamloops and not break camp until AFTER the final exhibition game, effectively giving them an extra day of training camp.

This game at Thunderbird is an inconvenience no matter how (badly) the Lions marketing team tries to spin it. Fans in the interior would have been thrilled to get a game in their backyard compared to lower mainland fans who will find the Thunderbird experience substandard.
I do remember the days of Indy in Vancouver. That wasn't exactly instant seating. Set up for the stands started weeks in advance of the races.

It would be a challenge to add 2000 seats in Kamloops and absolutely impossible to add 10000 unless somebody was willing to spend ridiculous money for a 3 hour game. There is very little real estate to work with. The football playing surface is surrounded by a track. Putting anything with weight like bleachers with several tons of humanity on the track in Kamloops type weather could permanently damage the track surface. The TRU playing surface and track is bordered on 3 sides by immovable objects. On the north end is the scoreboard and a permanent fence. On the west side are the permanent stands. On the south end is the TRU Conference Centre. This leaves a wedge shaped piece of concrete on the other side of the field from the permanent stands and it has some challenges. field. There is a light standard for field lighting at the 55 yard line beside the track. There are 2 storage buildings towards the south goal line that effectively make the 15 yard line the boundary there. The pointy end of the wedge reaches into the north endzone. Once you come out to the 15 you have 40' to work with between the track and the permanent fence that separates stadium facility from an embankment that drops down to the road below. That expands to about 100' at midfield between the light tower and the back fence. Realistically there's about 75 yards of "sideline frontage" on the east side to work with for adding temporary seating. You'd need to put in about 50 rows of seats to add 8000 fannies.

As for the training camp extension idea the CFLPA would be all over that like an offensive lineman on a 32 oz rib-eye. Training camp officially starts on the first day veterans are required to attend a meeting or practice other than the day prior to camp when medicals are conducted. For BC this year that was May 31st. Per the CBA training camp ends on the 18th day from and including the day it began. For the Lions training camp officially ended yesterday per the CBA. Teams are now In what the CBA calls "Out of Camp Period". For purposes of practice they are now in regular season mode with all the practice do's and don'ts applying. That means one contact practice per week.
Good analysis of the Kamloops logistics. I've never been there before but had a look at the venue on Google Maps/Street View; everything you say is obvious once you consider the layout of the place. On top of that I would think — much like the concerns McMaster University had about traffic on their campus for games at Ron Joyce Stadium when the Ticats were exiled in 2013 — that the immediately surrounding road infrastructure at Hillside might not have been able (and was probably never intended) to handle a sudden influx of 10k people anyway, even if the stadium itself could.

But I still think UBC was not the best location for this game and as I noted in the old thread I just bumped, the Esks handled their situation much better than we did.
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sj-roc wrote:But I still think UBC was not the best location for this game and as I noted in the old thread I just bumped, the Esks handled their situation much better than we did.
Makes a big difference when a municipality has money coming out the ying yang to put together a facility and aggressively pursue bringing games to town. You can be guaranteed it was Fort Mac who initiated the process that brought the two CFL games to the Tar Sands. Everybody's complaining about the Lions dropping the ball. Where were cities like Kelowna, Kamloops, Victoria and some of the others mentioned as options? Why weren't they bending over backwards offering the Lions a temporary 10000+ seat facility for the game? Basically that's what happened for the Eskimos. Somebody made the Esks and the CFL an offer too good to turn down. Seems like the Eskimos are put up on a pedestal becauses somebody gave them a free ride and the Lions are being vilified for not spending $100K or more.

As for the TRU location and logistics it's actually set up quite well in terms of road infrastructure. Go straight ahead across McGill and you're heading up towards Aberdeen and easy access to Hwy 1. Turn left onto McGill and you're about 1km from Columbia where you can go downhill to downtown or uphill past Sahali. Turn right onto McGill and another right shortly after and you head down the hill towards the west end of downtown and across the river to the north side. Again like anywhere else parking is in short supply. The main lots reasonably close to the stadium were full for fan fest and the seats were maybe 2/3 full. There's several malls in the area but as one would guess being a hillside location there is a significantly long uphill walk either to or from the stadium if you didn't get there early enough to scoop a spot close.
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sj-roc
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Hambone wrote:
sj-roc wrote:But I still think UBC was not the best location for this game and as I noted in the old thread I just bumped, the Esks handled their situation much better than we did.
Makes a big difference when a municipality has money coming out the ying yang to put together a facility and aggressively pursue bringing games to town. You can be guaranteed it was Fort Mac who initiated the process that brought the two CFL games to the Tar Sands. Everybody's complaining about the Lions dropping the ball. Where were cities like Kelowna, Kamloops, Victoria and some of the others mentioned as options? Why weren't they bending over backwards offering the Lions a temporary 10000+ seat facility for the game? Basically that's what happened for the Eskimos. Somebody made the Esks and the CFL an offer too good to turn down. Seems like the Eskimos are put up on a pedestal becauses somebody gave them a free ride and the Lions are being vilified for not spending $100K or more.
Oh, there's no doubt the Esks had a leg up on the Lions with their preseason venue prep this year. Fort Mac had already been awarded the 2015 Western Canada Summer Games (perhaps even before the Esks were required to vacate CS for the WWC) by the time the Esks announced two years ago that they would play there. That new Fort Mac stadium was likely proceeding with or without the Esks. Without Fort Mac's availability the Esks would almost certainly have had a tougher row to hoe.

It's quite likely as you mention that the Lions had no other secondary markets as equally amenable to hosting their preseason game and would have to play at UBC. That being the case, the Lions would have done themselves a favour by getting the UBC arrangements settled much sooner than they did. IMHO, the delay in announcing the venue is as much a negative as its quality. It wasn't officially announced until May 5, with less than seven weeks lead time, and as such the Lions came off as not dealing from a position of strength but rather one of almost desperation, which might not have been as obvious had it been all sorted out and announced before say, the release of the league schedule in early February. Even at that late stage, Mike Beamish notes here that other venues (including in Kamloops) were reportedly still under consideration to host the game. Were there factors out of the Lions' control that delayed the announcement for so long? Possibly, but the effect on the Lions brand is still negative.
As for the TRU location and logistics it's actually set up quite well in terms of road infrastructure. Go straight ahead across McGill and you're heading up towards Aberdeen and easy access to Hwy 1. Turn left onto McGill and you're about 1km from Columbia where you can go downhill to downtown or uphill past Sahali. Turn right onto McGill and another right shortly after and you head down the hill towards the west end of downtown and across the river to the north side. Again like anywhere else parking is in short supply. The main lots reasonably close to the stadium were full for fan fest and the seats were maybe 2/3 full. There's several malls in the area but as one would guess being a hillside location there is a significantly long uphill walk either to or from the stadium if you didn't get there early enough to scoop a spot close.
Yeah, I was thinking of the amount of traffic on roads immediately near the stadium and would there be room for all those cars to park within a reasonable distance. Of course there are other logistics as well in terms of player and game officials dressing rooms, media/broadcast booths (for radio at least if not TV), public washrooms and concessions, etc. I don't know how well Hillside could handle all that stuff or if there were any other venue in Kamloops that could, but it seems taking all of that into account, UBC was the best option among rather few of them. One wonders whether they could have been able to announce it in a more timely fashion rather than less than seven weeks in advance, given that there was apparently at least a two year time window to get it all ironed out.
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At the stadium and all told, it makes a nice break from BC Place. Atmosphere is relaxed albeit a little disorganized but nothing that shouldn't be expected. The weather is gorgeous, there are about 5-6 food trucks and extra ports potties. Pretty much a mini Empire Field....
Found some good bargains in the team store and Crazy P announced a beer garden will be present at home games this year.
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CardiacKid wrote:At the stadium and all told, it makes a nice break from BC Place. Atmosphere is relaxed albeit a little disorganized but nothing that shouldn't be expected. The weather is gorgeous, there are about 5-6 food trucks and extra ports potties. Pretty much a mini Empire Field....
Found some good bargains in the team store and Crazy P announced a beer garden will be present at home games this year.
I thought the game experience last night was very pleasant. My first time in Thunderbird Stadium and it was nice to see the sunset, the crowd on the grassy knoll and the kids playing catch on the sidelines (took me back to the Woodwards QB Club area at Empire). I'm so used to BC Place, it took me a while to realize that you could walk onto the field and stand just off the sidelines to watch the action. Wandered around the field at half time and watched Fera doing some KO and punts before 3rd quarter start. My goodness, from field level, those punts are HIGH !!!! Even driving out of UBC after the game was easy with the way that the Leo's and UBC separated the cars and walking traffic. With the great weather, it was a nice venue to watch the game. But, realistically, it was a one timer.....
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Kudos to the Lions for a very well organized event. :thup: You can put a check mark next to all of the boxes about which people had misgivings going in.

* Signage directing people to the event? Check
* Parking? Not an issue. Great traffic flow and fences erected
* Enough food concessions? Yes! They lined up food trucks (nice variety too) just outside the stadium in the "tailgate area" (tables, chairs, band, souvenir stand)
* Lack of bathrooms? Port-a-potties galore
* Video screen? Check
* VIP tent? In the endzone

It was an absolutely glorious evening for football with sunny skies, a packed grandstand, families, kids, a sunset, and towering evergreen trees. All of which helped create an intimate "Nat Bailey Stadium" experience for football, in stark contrast to the almost cold detachment one feels in cavernous BC Place. Sadly, all of this was largely negated by a bad football game, made almost unwatchable by all the flags. Deeply troubling for me as a long-time fan....for everything great that was created for the "fan experience," there was nothing in the "football experience" to sell to new fans.


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The announced crowd of only 6,117 probably helped make it a pleasant experience. (So much for all the talk of pushing for 10,000.)
Watching it on TSN GO, it looked like spectators had plenty of room to move around and get a good view.
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BC 1988 wrote:The announced crowd of only 6,117 probably helped make it a pleasant experience. (So much for all the talk of pushing for 10,000.)
Watching it on TSN GO, it looked like spectators had plenty of room to move around and get a good view.
My only complaint is that the announced crowd fell short of expectations. All the talk from the Lions was of an expected crowd 9,000 to 10,000, which would be a Thunderbird Stadium record. There was even talk of a sellout of near-sellout, with only a small number of tickets remaining for sale. Some people likely stayed away because of concerns over crowd size, congestion and a lack of tickets or parking but, as others said, it was an extremely well-managed event. It was much easier to get off campus after the game than to get out of downtown after a typical game at B.C. Place.
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Football exhibition games are generally dreck as entertainment no matter what league. It's a fine idea to take them off site and even out of the season ticket package.

Given the situation, the organizers of the event did an outstanding job. Great for the hardcores.

I'd like to see the exhibition game travel whenever possible. If there was a commitment to Kelowna, it may provide the catalyst to bulid a replacement for the Apple Bowl, which is woefully inadequate for the region, and the reason that the Okanagan Sun can't make the jump to CIS.
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Dusty wrote:
I thought the game experience last night was very pleasant. My first time in Thunderbird Stadium and it was nice to see the sunset, the crowd on the grassy knoll and the kids playing catch on the sidelines (took me back to the Woodwards QB Club area at Empire). I'm so used to BC Place, it took me a while to realize that you could walk onto the field and stand just off the sidelines to watch the action. Wandered around the field at half time and watched Fera doing some KO and punts before 3rd quarter start. My goodness, from field level, those punts are HIGH !!!! Even driving out of UBC after the game was easy with the way that the Leo's and UBC separated the cars and walking traffic. With the great weather, it was a nice venue to watch the game. But, realistically, it was a one timer.....
Speaking of a grassy knoll...

I agree with Dusty, what a great evening. With the exception of the final score not favouring the hometown men in orange it was a nice end to the week. Even a ride on the notorious 99B line was an adventure.

Now to buckle down and win some games.
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For those of you that couldn't attend Friday's game, here are the highlights and a "bird's eye view" of Thunderbird.

SMH @ 1:36. :wink:


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Well, so much for an enchanted evening in a cozy venue. The Eskimos thought it was so bush, they elected to stay on the field at half-time! Interesting read HERE.


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