Ticket Prices / Lions' Marketing

[carnifex2005]

Not sure why no one has mentioned the biggest reason. The Whitecaps are now competing for the same dollars during the same time frame as the Lions now.

[B.C.FAN]

For the second straight week, I was unable to give away my extra tickets. I sold a pair to a scalper for $15 each but apparently he couldn't sell them because the seats sat empty throughout the game. The first scalper I approached wouldn't buy them. He said he hadn't been able to sell any tickets. Many of the regulars in our section were not at the game. The attendance of 28,500+ was positive for the second straight home game against an Eastern opponent but the schedule has to improve next year if the Lions want to regularly get back over 30,000. There is no demand for Saturday afternoon games.

[Rammer]

For the second straight week, I was unable to give away my extra tickets. I sold a pair to a scalper for $15 each but apparently he couldn't sell them because the seats sat empty throughout the game. The first scalper I approached wouldn't buy them. He said he hadn't been able to sell any tickets. Many of the regulars in our section were not at the game. The attendance of 28,500+ was positive for the second straight home game against an Eastern opponent but the schedule has to improve next year if the Lions want to regularly get back over 30,000. There is no demand for Saturday afternoon games.

28K is including all ticket sales, there wasn't anywhere near that in the stands. Time to throw away the concept of appealing to an Eastern audience and play those games at the 7PM+ mark, and let that be the excuse for TO and Montreal.

[Jim Mullin]

hi Jim, I think once in a whille the lions playing a afternoon game is good but not three in a row.

Especially in September-October.

[dfootball]

Until they lower those ticket prices , the attendance is going to hang around the 30,000 mark,and having one afternoon game is good , but three in a row, spread the games out more during the season, what really gets me is this team is 8-3 and we can only get 28,000 today, I remember back in 2007 the lions played the Argos and they were not that good , that sat night at 7 pm there was 34,000.

And the lions had the same record 8-3.

We are missing something at the front office, we have a stacked team, there is no excuse anymore if that Calgary game does not get above 30,000 then I say fire Skulsky.

[David]

If you view BC Place as "half full," we stand a very respectable 3rd in the league in attendance behind only Edmonton and Saskatchewan (virtually tied with Calgary and Winnipeg but still slightly in front). If you view BC Place as "half empty," there was virtually no spin-off effect from the refurbished dome + we're the defending Grey Cup Champs and current #1 team in the league so, hell yea, we should be doing better.

Not sure who drew up the schedule - or, more importantly, who approved it - but 3 afternoon games in a row was daft. If the strategy was to lure to Island and Interior fans, then spread those games out! I can't imagine the average Island football fan going to all 3, but if they were spread over 3-4 months, well then, maybe. Clearly the novelty wore off after the first one (against Saskatchewan, which I would call an unqualified success).

Today's game was advertised extensively. 4 colour ads in the dailies and TV ads on the Global dinnertime Newshour (not exactly cheap ad rates), but still couldn't crack 30K. Despite (rather inexplicably) not being one of our top draws, the Stamps come here on October 6 - a post Labour Day Saturday night game (finally!) and likely a battle for first place, which should almost certainly be >30K.


DH

[dfootball]

Did you guys see this in the lions home page ( 3 game pack as as low as $28.57) here is the link http://www.bclions.com/

[almo89]

Did you guys see this in the lions home page ( 3 game pack as as low as $28.57) here is the link http://www.bclions.com/

The advertised this at the game as well. Step in the right direction maybe?

[Lions4ever]

The attendance of 28,500+ was positive for the second straight home game against an Eastern opponent

I don't get the "eastern opponent" thing. BC only has 7 opponents, four of which are eastern. That means the majority of the other teams in the league are eastern. Would people prefer we play the same 3 teams over and over?

[sj-roc]

Did you guys see this in the lions home page ( 3 game pack as as low as $28.57) here is the link http://www.bclions.com/

The advertised this at the game as well. Step in the right direction maybe?

These three game packs have actually been available ever since they started selling the full season tickets for 2012, as per this link:

http://www.bclions.com/3game

Seems they're pushing these a little more heavily now, with just the three home games left. Hmm, I could be wrong, but I don't recall Skulsky mentioning anything about these 3-packs when he co-hosted with Sekeres, which might have been a better response instead of the way he disagreed with all the callers about ticket pricing.

Unfortunately they don't seem to support online 3-pack orders; you have to call the Lions' 589-ROAR office, presumably during regular business hours. The link embedded into the splash page takes you to a Ticketmaster page that supports single-game online orders, but has no readily apparent 3-pack info. They should make it easier than this for casual fans to jump on board for the rest of the year.

[sj-roc]

The attendance of 28,500+ was positive for the second straight home game against an Eastern opponent

I don't get the "eastern opponent" thing. BC only has 7 opponents, four of which are eastern. That means the majority of the other teams in the league are eastern. Would people prefer we play the same 3 teams over and over?

Western opponents have always been a better draw and an easier sell to casual fans. And of course, most people regard Wpg as geographically western; only the absence of an Ottawa or Montreal franchise has ever prevented them from being officially such. The majority of opponents may be (officially) eastern right now, but in reality the majority of regular season GAMES (5 vs 4) are played against our own division. With nine home games and seven opponents, two opponents visit here twice each every year, and those are ALWAYS west div teams.

Avg reg season attendance since 2002, in BC Place:

vs eastern opponents: 32 games, 26,920
vs western opponents: 49 games, 29,798 (+10.7% higher)

I haven't include last year's figure of 50,213 vs Edm in the western average; I feel that crowd was driven more by that game's status as the BCPII grand opening than by opponent. I also classed Wpg as a western opponent here, as they are geographically western and were indeed in the west div from 2002-2005 while the Renegades (whose figures are included in the eastern average) were around. The western attendance edge also persisted at Empire in 2009-2010 although was less stark, partly because the more limited inventory of available seats was easier to saturate:

vs eastern opponents: 5 games, 23,745
vs western opponents: 9 games, 24,634 (+3.7% higher)

Again, I've classed Wpg as western here. That edge in both the BCP and Empire numbers basically represents the casual fans who are sensitive to division of opponent. It's worth noting that the last two attendances, against the eastern opponents Mtl & Tor, are more in line with recent figures for Western opponents; this is the glass half-full perspective David described last night.

[dfootball]

Take a look at the ticket sales so far for Calgary, on ticket master, does not look good, my worry is that fans will forget that the Calgary game will be happening on oct 6th, unless the lions promote the hell out of this games starting this week, i know it is three weeks away, but they can not leave this till the last few days, like they have been doing all year or we will not see more than 28,000 at this game either.

[sj-roc]

Not sure who drew up the schedule - or, more importantly, who approved it - but 3 afternoon games in a row was daft. If the strategy was to lure to Island and Interior fans, then spread those games out! I can't imagine the average Island football fan going to all 3, but if they were spread over 3-4 months, well then, maybe. Clearly the novelty wore off after the first one (against Saskatchewan, which I would call an unqualified success).

Hey all,

I respectfully disagree, and would offer the analysis that these three afternoon games have been a huge success. Of the six home games thus far, the two largest attendance figures are from the first two afternoon games, at 34,343 (Saskatchewan) and 29,734 (Monteal) respectively. The home opener, a much-hyped Grey Cup re-match where Geroy was expected to break the all-time record for receiving yards came third at 29,351, and yesterday's 'disappointing' crowd comes forth at 28,526.

Yesterday's game was a huge success in terms of attendance; in fact, this is the most impressive game attendance-wise since the dome re-opened. Here's why:

James,

You make some excellent points here in this post.

I've pointed out here before that when the Lions play back to back home games, the second game typically sees a drop in attendance of 14.5% over the previous game, and a drop of 15% or more when the opponent in game two is an Eastern team with a losing record. That's a huge drop. We saw that trend at play earlier in the year when the Lions played back to back home games against Winnipeg and Hamilton, when the difference between the two games was bang on at 14.5% (25,109/29,351).

Based on that historical trend, I'd say the Lions were expecting a crowd of 25,423 for yesterday's game, or a 14.5% drop from the week before. What they actually got was a drop of 4.1% over the previous week, or to put a positive spin on it, 10.4% more fans than they expected given an analysis of historical attendance data. That's huge.

Yesterday the Lions bucked a 29-year trend. That's impressive. Now they need to follow-up this success next year to figure out if the closing of the 14.5% drop was a result of it being afternoon game, increased promotion, the quality of the opponent, etc. Yesterday something went brilliantly right. Now they have to figure out why.

Your perspective on this is one I largely share. Indeed, as I commented in my last post above, the numbers for the last two home games, versus eastern opponents, were more western-like in nature, compared to the numbers over the last decade.

We aren't going to see larger crowds this year until the games assume an 'event' aura. It's all well and good to spin the last two games as a match-up of the best in the West/East, but neither game was a 'must-see' with a built in drama. Games that solidify our position in West, such as Calgary in early Oct, or Edmonton in late Oct, will have that tension, and the crowds will come. But even if our three remaining home games wind up pulling in more fans than the three afternoon games, that doesn't mean that the experiment with afternoon kickoffs was a failure.

It will be interesting to see how whatever the stakes are for these two games affect the gate. If we have first place pretty much in the bag by then, will that wring the drama out of them and thereby provide a less enticing slice of entertainment, from the casual fan's POV?

As to the larger issue of sub-30k crowds, I think we're all agreed the primary determining factor is ticket price. Each other factor (the game time, day, the opponent, costs of parking, etc) are relatively minor compared to this one elephantine factor. Hopefully the Lions have clued into this and are working on it for next season.

Indeed. No further comment necessary.

Finally, I'd like to toss something out there for those of you who have been vocal in your dislike of the three afternoon games. Let's say the team continues to roll for the rest of the year and we host the Western Final. Would you hold that game on a Friday evening if you could? A Saturday evening? I suspect your answer is no. So ask yourself, why not? Those reasons, which I'll speculate are linked to maximizing both the in-house and television audience, as well as making it the dominant sporting event (if not event period) of the weekend --a spectacle, a showcase, apply equally well to a regular season game, however smaller the scale. So far, the numbers bear this out. That doesn't mean we have to play all of our games on afternoons, but I expect a healthy mix of afternoons and evenings are here to stay.

Cheers,

James

Your last point is a good one. If holding a game in the afternoon is something that gives it an event aura, then that might psychologically insulate it, in the mind of the casual fan, from all the other competing nightlife options in this city. Perhaps kind of an, "I'm not sure what I'm doing tomorrow night, but I'll def be at the game in the afternoon", factor.

Have you seen the results of the teamradio poll on game start times I mentioned in the marketing thread? It's still active as I type, and running like this:

1pm: 12.76%
4pm: 33.07%
7pm: 54.17%

If you were going to vary the start times of our nine home games each year by the proportions of this poll, you'd have one game at 1pm, two or three at 4pm and the remaining six or five at 7pm. That is pretty much what is going on this year: one/two/six games starting at 1pm/4pm/7pm respectively, although it might be better to spread them out over the season rather than schedule them successively as was done this year, to help prevent erosion of the novelty factor that David referenced.

Admittedly, the sample size of the poll is probably small (in fact, without going into the boring math, I have reason to believe it's only 384 at the moment) and it is non-scientific (self-selecting sample), but I've been watching its numbers evolve closely for much of the time it's been up and it's not like they've been varying a great deal from the above numbers in that time, so that lends some validity to the poll and suggests that there is an appetite in this market for earlier start times — one that has heretofore been largely untapped. It's also worth noting, as I read somewhere recently, but I can't remember if it was on this site or elsewhere: earlier start times are more media-friendly in the sense that they give reporters more time to file their game reports in time for the next morning's paper. Making the media's job of covering your team easier can only be a positive. In fact, there was a time in the past when 8pm local starts were not unusual for sporting events and I can't help but think today's shorter news cycle was what made 7/7:30 far more common nowadays.

[sj-roc]

Take a look at the ticket sales so far for Calgary, on ticket master, does not look good, my worry is that fans will forget that the Calgary game will be happening on oct 6th, unless the lions promote the hell out of this games starting this week, i know it is three weeks away, but they can not leave this till the last few days, like they have been doing all year or we will not see more than 28,000 at this game either.

That game is still nearly three weeks away so I'm not going to take a pessimistic stance just yet. We have two road games in the meantime against hungry divisional opponents that pretty much everybody will be able to watch and solid performances in those, on top of our 8-3 record, should help build the gate. The splash page for the 3-packs you linked last night should also help, although they should improve the sales support for that promotion as I've already mentioned. The fact that the NHL is now locked out for the foreseeable future also doesn't hurt us.