Quote:
Originally Posted by isaidso
It's fine. I respect your opinion, but this is one area we'll likely not see eye to eye on.
From what I've read regarding Brampton and Mississauga, both organizations found it tough sledding. Brampton couldn't make a go of it despite having 550,000 people to draw from and moved to greener pastures in North Bay of all places. Mississauga has 800,000 so their attendance issues are pitiful, imo. It's under 3,000/game. 3,000!
Perhaps we have totally different ideas about what constitutes good support, but neither of these teams were ever close to being well supported. It says a lot when places like Charlottetown can support CHL and Brampton can not. The GTA should be able to support 20 CHL teams each drawing 5,000+.
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The Brampton franchise was flawed from the beginning. The arena is in a shitty location and has terrible accesibility. Not to mention it's all about demographics. There's a reason Brampton is nicknamed "Bramladesh"... hockey was never going to work there. North Bay had a former Junior team so the fanbase was already there, like moving a team from Atlanta to Winnipeg.
Mississauga has had its days where it was very well attended, it's in a down period.
As for how Charlottetown and the Maritimes can support these teams better... How about because there aren't many other options? The only show in town is the Junior team (or AHL team in St. John's). Toronto has an NHL team, an NBA team, an MLB team, a CFL team, an MLS team, an NLL team, an AHL team, numerous junior teams, etc. Saying Toronto should be able to support 20 Junior teams is ignoring any and all human geography factors other than sheer population. By that logic Montreal should have more than an NHL team, an MLS team and a suburban Junior team. Does that make it a terrible market? How about Vancouver with an NHL team, a CFL team, a failed NBA team and a Junior team? Calgary with an NHL team, a CFL team and one Junior team? I can keep going etc. etc.