Second Toronto NHL Team?

[reidjr]

Originally Posted by MolsonExport

^I drive that stretch perhaps 15 times per year, and the stretch is almost vacant, aside from the teeming megacities of Casselman, Hawkesbury, and Rigaud.

There not going to be mega citys but if people don't want devlopement in the city limits that could mean that these areas will get bigger no question it will never be like southern ontario but it could be alot more devlopement in the comming years.

[Acajack]

Ottawa is not a boring city but obviously there are more things to do and more competition for the entertainment dollar in much larger urban areas like Toronto and Montreal. That said, I am not sure if this is a determining factor in the popularity of non-professional sports like major junior hockey. Plenty of large metros in the U.S. (some of comparable size to Toronto or Montreal) are very much into non-professional NCAA sports like football and/or basketball.

[Mister F]

Originally Posted by The_Architect

They're both the same size or bigger than Ottawa-Gatineau and their metropolitan area doesn't have to go for 50 miles in every direction..

They kind of do actually. The Raleigh metro is only slightly smaller than Ottawa's and Columbus is way bigger. American metros tend to be more spread than Canadian ones. The fact that they're the same size as Ottawa just goes to show that the whole can be less than the sum of its parts.

[someone123]

Originally Posted by Acajack

That is not really my point. My point is that no one in New York is bothered by the fact that the Giants and Jets play in the same league as Green Bay or Jacksonville.

Canada is particularly bad for this sort of thing whereas it seems like the US is more inclusive on a national basis (while ignoring the rest of the planet). There's also more diversity in terms of larger or smaller cities specializing and being important in different areas. Charlotte became an important banking centre for example. I couldn't really see that happening in Canada.

I don't think it's an accident that this subforum has a rigid pecking order of cities.

Maybe I'm wrong, but I consider pro sports a classic capitalist marketing scam that is 99% branding and bizarre social pressure. It is a mechanism for turning tribalist tendencies into millions of dollars for a select few. I guess the consolation is that many people deserve to be scammed.

[freeweed]

Originally Posted by someone123

Maybe I'm wrong, but I consider pro sports a classic capitalist marketing scam that is 99% branding and bizarre social pressure. It is a mechanism for turning tribalist tendencies into millions of dollars for a select few. I guess the consolation is that many people deserve to be scammed.

You're not wrong at all. More than a bit cynical, but not wrong.

Pro sports work exactly like all marketing. Whether it's high end clothes, fancy cars, our houses, televisions, 3D movies, greeting cards, Starbucks coffee, video game consoles, souped-up computers to check your email on, makeup, $7 beers at a bar, the entire Xmas shopping season, diamond engagement rings, 5 figure weddings, or a thousand other things we piss away our money on - it's ALL branding and social pressure. No one would spend 1/10th the money we do on any of this stuff if we actually decided rationally and individually.

We all pick our poison(s).

[Ramako]

Originally Posted by someone123

Maybe I'm wrong, but I consider pro sports a classic capitalist marketing scam that is 99% branding and bizarre social pressure. It is a mechanism for turning tribalist tendencies into millions of dollars for a select few. I guess the consolation is that many people deserve to be scammed.

Following a team doesn't just mean watching people running around on a field for a couple hours evey few days; it means following the history, characters, and storylines that identify that team, and the successes, failures, drama, politics and plot twists that allow you to understand and emotionally invest in their struggle. Sport, professional or otherwise, can be as valid a form of entertainment as film, television, threatre or literature. That's why empires and nations, capitalistic, communist and otherwise, have rallied behind the successes and failures of their athletes since the dawn of time. Sport represents the epitome of the human struggle. Even the greatest thinkers in history, the ancient Greeks and Romans, understood the inherent value in appreciating athletics and sport.

So just because you're unable to appreciate pro sports doesn't mean that those who do are foolish.

[ue]

I think a 2nd Toronto team would be great, but Quebec City and Hamilton need their own teams first. Lets get all the large and semi-large Canadian cities with an NHL team before we go about giving one of them a 2nd team.

[dennis1]

Originally Posted by Acajack

That is not really my point. My point is that no one in New York is bothered by the fact that the Giants and Jets play in the same league as Green Bay or Jacksonville.

The disparity between the 1 st and 10th largest metros is much larger in Canada.

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by dennis1

The disparity between the 1 st and 10th largest metros is much larger in Canada.

Except that the NFL is not limited to the 10 largest metros (Buffalo and Jacksonville are in the 40s), and neither is the CFL (Regina is 18th).

New York is something like 20 times the size of Buffalo and Jacksonville, and Toronto is like 25 times the size of Regina.

New York is also about 75 times the size of Green Bay.

[matt602]

Originally Posted by ue

I think a 2nd Toronto team would be great, but Quebec City and Hamilton need their own teams first. Lets get all the large and semi-large Canadian cities with an NHL team before we go about giving one of them a 2nd team.

This. We've been pushing to get our team back since we lost it in the 1920's. Every time we come close and it ends in an upset.

[dennis1]

Originally Posted by Acajack

Except that the NFL is not limited to the 10 largest metros (Buffalo and Jacksonville are in the 40s), and neither is the CFL (Regina is 18th).

New York is something like 20 times the size of Buffalo and Jacksonville, and Toronto is like 25 times the size of Regina.

New York is also about 75 times the size of Green Bay.

And both Buffalo and Jacksonville are about 1.2 million each.

And yes there are people (like myself) who don't support the NFL's cap at all.

[caltrane74]

http://sports.nationalpost.com/2011/...etting-richer/

The Leafs make a bigger profit than the New York Yankees on less than half the revenue!!

wow!