Playoff game location

[Claude Martel]

We were 33000 spectators at the olympic stadium for the semi-finals playoff game. If less-dominant Alouettes do not attract more people in the years to come, I would rather have the playoff games played at the Percival Molson stadium.

If the Alouettes sell their tickets for about 30% more (in my case, the silver tickets would go from 60$ to 80$) then they would generate as much profit and I would pay that premium without hesitation to be way better seated in a real football stadium.

Does anyone agree with me on this?

[ro1313]

Yes and no

I do agree with you but

Its nice to have 1 game where itsguarenteed to be warm and dry

[West Coast Als Fan]

Who knows? If the game had been played outdoors maybe the weather would have had a positive impact on the final score. But one thing was made clear today: the honeymoon is over. It lasted a lot longer than I thought it would but, unsurprisingly, the fickle Montreal sports fan has become complacent with regard to the Als. If I were in charge I wouldn't bother reserving the Big O for any more playoff games next year because they won't come close to filling it. I'd rather see the game played in a sold-out Molson Stadium than a half-empty Olympic Stadium. All those empty seats today gave me bad flashbacks to the early 80's Als-Concordes days.

Truth be told, I'm not even so sure you'll see many sell-outs at Molson Stadium next season. They'll come close to filling it for every game (so long as the team remains competitive, of course) but tickets won't be that hard to get next year. At the end of the day, Montreal is a hockey town with a passing interest in a few other sports. If you want to put a team there it had better win consistently or it will die. And as the Als have shown, even when you win you can become a prisoner of your own success because fans begin to take winning for granted after a while. Then when you finally lose, as they did today, the fans turn their backs on you.

I think the team has around 20,000 hard-core fans and about another 20,000 bandwagon jumper-types who come and go depending on how much the team wins and how trendy it is to go to and be seen at games. That's about it. The rest of the city shows up only for one-off events like the East Final (if the Als are dominating) and the Grey Cup. The Expos had the same issues as did the old Als franchise back in the day.

Look at the attendance records. Of the biggest crowds to ever attend a Grey Cup game, Nearly all of the ones held at the Big O lead the pack (I think the 85 Lions-Ti-Cats game was probably the only one that didn't sell out) And certainly during the glory years when the Als first moved into the Big O they drew tremendously well. But the Als have also had some of the poorest-attended games in league history as well. Most here will remember how attendance steadily plummeted between 1980 and 1985. By the time the Als folded they were drawing 2000 people for their games. That's even worse than the last years of the Expos. And before they moved to the Big O they drew pitifully at the Autostade even though they had a good team and one of the most dynamic players in CFL history in Johnny Rodgers. Sure, the Autostade was lousy but if the Habs played there the joint would have been sold out for every game.

And for those of you who have been to Grey Cup games in other cities I needn't tell you that Als fans are easily the least-represented team during Grey Cup week even when they are playing in the big game. And if 33,000 for a playoff game is all they can muster after coming off back-to-back championships what are they going to do once the team goes into rebuilding mode and has a couple of sub-par seasons?

[ro1313]

I dont think the team will have problems next year whether its a bad year or not.

Seems to me that the fans would have been more turned off with all the Grey Cup loses more than a bad season or 2.

As for attendance... Semi Finals never draw a final will. Evnen at that, the 2008 final drew 38K and the 2006 final drew 35K

[West Coast Als Fan]

Well fans were frustrated by all the Grey Cup game losses but you have to be in the game to have a chance to win it and the Als were consistently good throughout the past decade at getting in a position to win. And part and parcel with that was a tremendous run of success at Molson Stadium. When you almost never lose a home game it makes selling tickets a lot easier. They won less this season and had fewer sell-outs. I think that next season you'll see a more "wait and see" approach by some fans. If the Als have a slow start you'll start seeing empty seats.

[ro1313]

They won less this season and had fewer sell-outs.

But did they every have a "TRUE" sell out?

I still dont like how Lalonde counts sales.

Everyother team in the league, and prob everyother sports league conciders single seats a sellout and not counting no-shows is silly IMO
The ticket was sold

[sectionu2]

Nothing new for ESF games, last time we had one we had the same crowd, they need the 2 weeks to get the 40-50k mark, minor football could not be involved with the short time between when they knew if we were in the final or semi. I am happy with the 33k well behaed fan, they finally learned, quiet on offense and realy loud on D, heck we caused 2 time count violation, one that gave us more than likely the overtime, great football crowd yesterday.