Lions popularity and coverage is heating up all across city

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Shoreline
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I was in Vancouver over the weekend. Watched the Lions game on TSN near downtown Vancouver. I was a first time visitor since early 2000. New stadium looks cool. Wish you should have built a new outdoor stadium but oh well. I heard clearly as I live in the U.S that attendance was a bit crappy and media cov'g has turned on the team for whatever reason.

Now unless it was even better before I was so surprised how popular and how much the Lions are involved in the city and province. I was at a Canucks game and ppl were talking about the Lions and their playoff chances.

I got free newspaper and even today you go online to read the Province or the Sun which I take are your 2 big newspapers. The Lions are dominating talk. Turn on the CBC and CTV local news and its Lions leading off the sports just like the 2 big NFL and NHL teams in my city would be. Turn on the radio you have TSN radio which must be new and its all Canucks and Lions talk.

Is this due to Wally being back and a great exciting QB?

There must be a reason why attendance isn't like sold out but I was pleasantly surprised of how great Vancouver is as a sports city. I'm not a Canucks fan but I have been watching the CFL for quite some time as a former canadian and the Lions since the mid '90s have always been my fave CFL team.

Good luck in the playoffs
TheLionKing
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Declining attendance has been the hallmark of Dennis Skulsky's tenure since Bobby Ackles passed away. Poor marketing and ticket prices.
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mountaincat
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i knew it was only a matter of time before skulsky paid a visit to the board! or maybe one of his minions. that headline is written like a pro and of course he "got free newspaper today". lol. not trying to troll what is probably a genuine and friendly post... but gotta point out the humorousness of the super-positive tone about "a bit crappy" "like not sold out" attendance going way against the grain of reality of atrocious plummeting attendance.

kinda reminds me a bit of "baghdad bob"s press conferences during the invasion of iraq in 2003... claimed there were no american tanks in iraq while they could be heard in the background shelling a few hundred metres away.

shoreline: i guess if you haven't been here since the mid-90s things look kinda alright. heading out of that era the team barely stayed afloat as a going concern, only to bounce back and hit attendance numbers twice what they are now circa 2008 on the merits of some exceptional onfield talent and fair-to-middling competence in the business dept. they even packed the whole dome (or just about) a few times for playoff games and grey cups. a few years on, and the stagnant circle of fanboys and oldboys running the show have squandered a once-in-a-generation chance to make it more than an afterthought around town and are literally nickel and diming this beast into the ground just like the bad old days.

on a short trip up here in the heat after a controversial game and before hockey gets in full swing i could see why it might seem like "popularity is heating up" but the whiff of overpriced futility outside the lines on the field is becoming ever harder to ignore in the bigger scheme of things.

p.s. tsn radio isn't new and has been around for about 15 years, and it usually takes some doing to find any lions talk on there at all. it used to be called team radio and for a while there were 2 sports radio stations in the city with different owners who were competing with each other to out-cover the lions, which was part of the hype machine (along with other temporary factors like a bitter season-long nhl lockout) that led to the boom in popularity a few years back. the other station (fka mojo radio) now exists solely to report on local traffic conditions, and itself was recently shut down by a fire in burns bog... which pretty much symbolizes the stultification of the local media landscape these days.
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dtrain
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Attendance woes seem to be league wide this season, particularly bad in the major cities.
Unfortunate as Leos are giving us such an entertaining product.
Locally I agree that Skulksy and company have to look very hard at what they're doing, then change it, drastically.
Lower end zones seats for next to nothing $ for kids at least. Just get bums in seats.
League wide the CFL needs an off season summit with all major partners and players involved to seriously address this issue.
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The_Pauser
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When the CFL has such a great deal with TSN, to the point where Skulsky says they are basically profitable without any gate revenue, it really makes no sense to not lower ticket prices and pack the stadium. Have low ticket prices for children so parents can afford to bring their kids and expose them to the game. Have 2-for-1 7-11 tickets in the end-zone again. There's no reason why we should not be selling out the lower bowl of that stadium, and pushing to open the upper bowl.
Roar you Lions roar!
Blitz
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The_Pauser wrote:When the CFL has such a great deal with TSN, to the point where Skulsky says they are basically profitable without any gate revenue, it really makes no sense to not lower ticket prices and pack the stadium. Have low ticket prices for children so parents can afford to bring their kids and expose them to the game. Have 2-for-1 7-11 tickets in the end-zone again. There's no reason why we should not be selling out the lower bowl of that stadium, and pushing to open the upper bowl.
It certainly does make sense to lower ticket prices and get more bums in the seats and get them 'hooked'.

There are a lot of reasons why attendance is so low this season, some beyond the Lions control and some are the Lions fault.

The days are gone when the Lions were a fairly hot ticket. Even with the Canucks struggling to win games, attendance has plummeted.

The Vancouver Whitecaps stole some sports fans hearts and wallets. Their ticket prices are lower.

The Lions were very slow to close the upper bowl and should have copied the Whitecaps when they did so. Sitting in a more than half empty stadium turned some fans off, due to the lack of atmosphere and finally away and they didn't come back.

The recent success of the Seattle Seahawks also had an impact, with an NFL game only a couple of hours away. Soccer and basketball are thriving sports at the youth level while football and hockey numbers are going down. That impacts the fan base too.

Our Leos schemes and playing style also hurt our team. A conservative defensive style and an offence that was unimaginative and boring for too long didn't help. An exciting quarterback like Casey Printers really helped attendance in 2004. Travis Lulay helped bring some fans into the stadium in 2011, along with a winning streak.

This season, we've had four game winning drives, a young, exciting quarterback, and some amazing plays from Jennings, Arseneaux, Burnham and Rainey. That should have increased attendance but fans are slow to come back, after a poor home record last year. Buono's conservative approach, continued by Benevedes and Tedford has not helped. There were no Lui Passaglia fake field goals or the type of exciting plays that would bring fans out of their seats for far too long a period of time until this season.

The whole franchise needs a shakeup. Us long time or highly devoted fans on Lionbackers are diehards who love the product and are huge Leos supporters. But the average fan wants better in-game entertainment within the stadium. Most half-time shows are less than inspiring. The Leos marketing department is horrible. The decision to get rid of the gun metal third uniform was dum because the colour was popular. Players and many fans loved it but Wally didn't so it was gone. Wally leaving the retractable roof closed on pleasant sunny autumn days in the past was not smart.

The Lions need to create family sections to increase female fans. It needs to do a better job of enticing young fans. The demographic for attendance is getting older and older - with too many fans my age. :wink:

Based on the excitement of Jennings, Rainey, Arseneaux, Rainey and our explosive plays this season, along with our record, there should be more fans in the stadium this season, especially as the season has gone on.

It can take a much longer time to build a fan base that it takes to lose it. Once you lose it, its not easy to get it back. The fan base really started to drop off in the 2008 season, after Bobby Ackles passed away. Buono's led team started to disappoint fans and that continued until 2011. We didn't get them back, even with that successful season. We were getting 35,000 fans a game in 2007.

But while fans were dropping off since 2007, even in 2010, the year we spent at Empire Field, we still averaged over 24,000 fans per game playing in a stadium that looked like Lego.

This year looks worse, attendance wise, than in 1998, when we had a weak team and poor marketing and the fan base looked like it had dwindled away. But it wasn't broken. Ackles brought it back. But right now it looks broken, even with Jennings and Company.

Even though both our offensive and defensive schemes frustrate the hell out of me, our offensive players are the most e. xciting players to watch since 2004, the Cardiac Kids, the Mathews led Dewalt/Fernandez Grey Cup winning team, and the 2004 Lions. In some ways they are more exciting. Its a shame that more fans are not watching them play live at home.
"When I went to Catholic high school in Philadelphia, we just had one coach for football and basketball. He took all of us who turned out and had us run through a forest. The ones who ran into the trees were on the football team". (George Raveling)
Shoreline
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seems peoples views are diff't which is odd. if you say tsn radio has no lion cov'g lets argue that cause i went online today for a local show and they are talking lions almost for 40 mins straight. then back at it in the next segment.

newspaper cov'g was noted to be poor in other posts. then i go online and the lions are getting 50/50 share with canucks.
footballtom
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Blitz wrote:
The_Pauser wrote:When the CFL has such a great deal with TSN, to the point where Skulsky says they are basically profitable without any gate revenue, it really makes no sense to not lower ticket prices and pack the stadium. Have low ticket prices for children so parents can afford to bring their kids and expose them to the game. Have 2-for-1 7-11 tickets in the end-zone again. There's no reason why we should not be selling out the lower bowl of that stadium, and pushing to open the upper bowl.
It certainly does make sense to lower ticket prices and get more bums in the seats and get them 'hooked'.

There are a lot of reasons why attendance is so low this season, some beyond the Lions control and some are the Lions fault.

The days are gone when the Lions were a fairly hot ticket. Even with the Canucks struggling to win games, attendance has plummeted.

The Vancouver Whitecaps stole some sports fans hearts and wallets. Their ticket prices are lower.

The Lions were very slow to close the upper bowl and should have copied the Whitecaps when they did so. Sitting in a more than half empty stadium turned some fans off, due to the lack of atmosphere and finally away and they didn't come back.

The recent success of the Seattle Seahawks also had an impact, with an NFL game only a couple of hours away. Soccer and basketball are thriving sports at the youth level while football and hockey numbers are going down. That impacts the fan base too.

Our Leos schemes and playing style also hurt our team. A conservative defensive style and an offence that was unimaginative and boring for too long didn't help. An exciting quarterback like Casey Printers really helped attendance in 2004. Travis Lulay helped bring some fans into the stadium in 2011, along with a winning streak.

This season, we've had four game winning drives, a young, exciting quarterback, and some amazing plays from Jennings, Arseneaux, Burnham and Rainey. That should have increased attendance but fans are slow to come back, after a poor home record last year. Buono's conservative approach, continued by Benevedes and Tedford has not helped. There were no Lui Passaglia fake field goals or the type of exciting plays that would bring fans out of their seats for far too long a period of time until this season.

The whole franchise needs a shakeup. Us long time or highly devoted fans on Lionbackers are diehards who love the product and are huge Leos supporters. But the average fan wants better in-game entertainment within the stadium. Most half-time shows are less than inspiring. The Leos marketing department is horrible. The decision to get rid of the gun metal third uniform was dum because the colour was popular. Players and many fans loved it but Wally didn't so it was gone. Wally leaving the retractable roof closed on pleasant sunny autumn days in the past was not smart.

The Lions need to create family sections to increase female fans. It needs to do a better job of enticing young fans. The demographic for attendance is getting older and older - with too many fans my age. :wink:

Based on the excitement of Jennings, Rainey, Arseneaux, Rainey and our explosive plays this season, along with our record, there should be more fans in the stadium this season, especially as the season has gone on.

It can take a much longer time to build a fan base that it takes to lose it. Once you lose it, its not easy to get it back. The fan base really started to drop off in the 2008 season, after Bobby Ackles passed away. Buono's led team started to disappoint fans and that continued until 2011. We didn't get them back, even with that successful season. We were getting 35,000 fans a game in 2007.

But while fans were dropping off since 2007, even in 2010, the year we spent at Empire Field, we still averaged over 24,000 fans per game playing in a stadium that looked like Lego.

This year looks worse, attendance wise, than in 1998, when we had a weak team and poor marketing and the fan base looked like it had dwindled away. But it wasn't broken. Ackles brought it back. But right now it looks broken, even with Jennings and Company.

Even though both our offensive and defensive schemes frustrate the hell out of me, our offensive players are the most e. xciting players to watch since 2004, the Cardiac Kids, the Mathews led Dewalt/Fernandez Grey Cup winning team, and the 2004 Lions. In some ways they are more exciting. Its a shame that more fans are not watching them play live at home.


You Nailed it. the Lions and cfl is in a lot of trouble if this continues yes i am a huge seahawk fan i do like NFL more than the cfl. but i respect the CFL for what it is . I will never wish the CFL will die or go away, it is great entertainment has excellent athletes just not my type of football.
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SammyGreene
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Big TV numbers for last Saturday's thriller. Should be more of the same come Friday especially with the Blue Jays ALCS opener at 4:30 creating a nice HDTV doubleheader while about 19,000-20,000 of us battle bad traffic and the expected monsoon to get to BC Place. :bang:
Saturday's thrilling #Lions/#Bombers clash averaged 801,000 viewers. Largest #CFLWired audience & 4th most-watched #CFL game this season.
Huge Talent
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should be a lively crowd tomorrow.. many will get or stay dt early to catch jays, then have a good buzz going by 7!
Blitz
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SammyGreene wrote:Big TV numbers for last Saturday's thriller. Should be more of the same come Friday especially with the Blue Jays ALCS opener at 4:30 creating a nice HDTV doubleheader while about 19,000-20,000 of us battle bad traffic and the expected monsoon to get to BC Place. :bang:
Saturday's thrilling #Lions/#Bombers clash averaged 801,000 viewers. Largest #CFLWired audience & 4th most-watched #CFL game this season.
Television audiences are great and television pulls in a lot of money. However, if in the future, CFL teams are playing in empty stadiums with just television crews the life blood of pro football will be drained and its future very tenuous.

I just wondered, with our Leos making the playoffs for the last 20 years consecutively (although we did need some cross over games) we should have more fans coming out to games than we do, based on that record. We haven't not finished out of the playoffs for a season or two, which can really affect a fan base in some cities. While realizing that Winnipeg and Saskatchewan and Hamilton are different cities than Vancouver, their fans have sure supported their teams in some very down times. I realize that they don't have the sports competition that our Leos do but still they should be applauded for doing so.

I often wonder about our playoff losses and what impact they had. We had a very good team from 2003-2007, a decent team in 2008, and a very good team in 2011-2012. In most cases we were the favorite to win the playoff games that we lost. We lost to a much weaker team in the 2004 Grey Cup, lost the WDF in 2005 and 2007, when we were favored.. We lost the WDF in 2012, when we should have won. We also lost some semi-final games that we should have won.

I sometimes think those playoff losses had an impact because there were so many of them.

Examples of playoff games we were expected to win, going in.

2003 Semi-Final loss to Toronto
2004- Grey Cup loss to Toronto
2005- WDF loss to Edmonton
2007 - WDF loss to Saskatchewan
2012 - WDF loss to Calgary
2013 -WDF loss to Saskatchewan (Lulay returns)
2014 -WDF blowout loss to Montreal

I think they led to a lot of disappointment and caused some fans to turn away...not that they should have.
"When I went to Catholic high school in Philadelphia, we just had one coach for football and basketball. He took all of us who turned out and had us run through a forest. The ones who ran into the trees were on the football team". (George Raveling)
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pennw
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Ican't help but think a lot of the decline in attendance has much to with the changing demographic of Vancouver . Much of the new demographic seems to be more inclined to be soccer fans , since that is the game where many have come from . The Lions fan base is getting older and many have moved out of Vancouver , so much more difficult getting to games , not to mention much more costly . High ticket prices certainly don't help either. Last game I went to with my wife cost me close to $250 by the time all was paid for , and we ate on the cheap outside the Stadium . Parking is $25 plus $72 game tickets and the other espenses like gas anf food add . Then factor in how difficult it is getting downtown now form further out and compare the whole expearience to what it is to stay home and watch the game in HD on the big screen TV with PVR . It is not hard to see why many choose the latter otion . And that is reflected by very good TV numbers .
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Alputt
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Shoreline wrote:seems peoples views are diff't which is odd. if you say tsn radio has no lion cov'g lets argue that cause i went online today for a local show and they are talking lions almost for 40 mins straight. then back at it in the next segment.

newspaper cov'g was noted to be poor in other posts. then i go online and the lions are getting 50/50 share with canucks.
My gripe with the newspapers is more related to their general decline, with deep cuts to their newsrooms and less coverage of everything. However this is an industry wide phenomenon and the vastly improved CFL website and Lions social media presence makes up for it if you are looking for a daily dose of the BC Lions!

Your "outsider" observations and enthusiasm are a welcome counterpoint to the general gloom and doom on these boards surrounding Lions support, myself an often guilty party in those discussions.

We are still in the depths of something of an attendance crisis, for various reasons discussed above both to do with the team but also just Vancouver generally. However I hope that like all things this too shall pass, there is an admirable core group of diehard supporters, many of whom can be found on this site!
Last edited by Alputt on Wed Oct 12, 2016 9:28 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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dtrain
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Does the CFL need some sort of official association with the NFL in order to attract some of the youinger demographic?
For example, each CFL team become some sort of farm club for an NFL team?
(realizing the numbers don't match up on number of club teams in each league)
I can't help but think if the Lions had a legitimate connection with the Seahawks, it would boost interest big time.
Just throwing it out there.
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Alputt
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dtrain wrote:Does the CFL need some sort of official association with the NFL in order to attract some of the youinger demographic?
For example, each CFL team become some sort of farm club for an NFL team?
(realizing the numbers don't match up on number of club teams in each league)
I can't help but think if the Lions had a legitimate connection with the Seahawks, it would boost interest big time.
Just throwing it out there.
Maybe... But this fan opposes being the "farm team" of any NFL franchise. True north strong and free!

Also what about the other 20 odd NFL teams or what have you, not enough CFL teams to structure like minor league baseball.
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