Quote:
Originally Posted by elly63
Berklon has made it sound as if this is an ongoing problem over the years rather than a recent issue more to do with an 0 and 7 team.
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This is the first season that it's obvious they're counting tickets despite not scanning them at the gate. Again, this isn't really an issue as
a lot of sports teams do this.
Quote:
Originally Posted by elly63
Highly suspect that they've been fiddling attendance the last few seasons, let's get real.
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Probably not but there's really no way to know for sure, and for most sports teams we'll never know true numbers. Hamilton has had 23 straight games of attendance floating between 23,500 and 24,300 - that's a 3% deviation in all gate figures over two and a half years. I find it unlikely that they've phyically had 23k+ at 23 straight games but I don't doubt the tickets were sold. This season has seen a slight decrease in reported attendance:
Hamilton average attendance, regular season:
2015: 24,231
2016: 24,001
2017: 23,727
There's a combination of things going on here:
- Obviously, the team was 0-7. That's going to make things difficult to get fans out.
- Recent moves by the team, including a prospective coach and quarterback, which may have not sat well with a few.
- Stadiums do have a great new car smell when they first open. It's been three years since THF opened and that's usually when new stadiums start settling in to the norm. Whether or not this is actually having an affect is, again, difficult to tell. I don't really buy into it but I can see how some would.
We can discuss this forever and ever but at the end of the day Hamilton isn't one of the markets the CFL should be losing sleep over right now. Quite the opposite.