"There are some people who might have better technique than me, and some may be fitter than me, but the main thing is tactics. With most players, tactics are missing. You can divide tactics into insight, trust, and daring." - Johan Cruyff
and yet that 9 team league averages a TV rating of 800,000 to our 80,000. I don't get why some TFC fans get so offered about a league that is a great Canadian institution like the CFL. TFC and MLS are very easy target for others to make fun of and not take seriously either. You can be a fan of both MLS and the CFL.
Yet, all we hear is how the Hockey was so good when it was just the original 6 teams. Who gets offered about the playoffs of the CFL. CFL fans have lots of criticisms of the league. Fans of other leagues have criticisms about their leagues All the time. CFL fans are no more easily offered as anyone else. With the possible exception of some TFC fans who think that somehow talking down other leagues, makes our league better. Was not that long ago that only 5 teams in the NHL did not make the playoffs and no one cared.
Last edited by Fort York Redcoat; 10-24-2014 at 07:03 AM.
107,000 watched the Impact game last weekend ranking the broadcast in 17th place. The game outdrew the Premier League games for last weekend.
https://ca.sports.yahoo.com/blogs/eh...174152593.html
Interesting tidbit in the Star today regarding attendance from Neil Davidson (http://www.thestar.com/sports/tfc/20...ter_game.html? ). Bit of a summary of all we have said here really. From the high of the curiosity to an inability to sustain it while in a playoff hunt with big names. Average viewers looks up by about 30,000 fans per game but heavily skewed by the first two.
" … drew a TSN audience of 299,000. The next weekend, the home opener against D.C. United drew a TSN audience of 342,000 — the most watched MLS game ever on English television in Canada.
Fast forward to Oct. 11 and Toronto at New York drew an average audience of 53,000, which rose to 107,000 for the 1-1 tie with Montreal last Saturday that eliminated TFC from playoff contention.
Overall, TFC games on TSN have averaged 136,000 viewers this year — an increase of 33 per cent from last year.
Average audience for games on Sportsnet, which had second pick of the games behind TSN, was 48,000. The Sportsnet broadcast of the Chivas USA game at Toronto, its most recent broadcast, drew an average audience of 28,000, down 51 per cent from the network’s first game of the season (at Columbus) in April."
A good summary for me is that the numbers are basically crap. It indicates that if popularity is the goal, the team should be receiving a message that sustained performance is more important than hype. It also needs to live within its means and select players based on the ability to play and forget about the size of the market. If a $10M incremental investment in two players nets them 30,000 additional views (on a declining trend), no amount of money can generate sustained interest. The market is what the market is. There is nothing left but to build a proper team before they lose all of us.
Really wonder what tonight's ratings are going to be. I'm betting its an all time low
About 53% of MLS teams make the playoffs vs 67% for CFL. Not much a difference to pimp up the MLS.
Plus, the bigger issue is that MLS even has playoffs since it is out of step with the rest of the football world.
But we can't we get along. CFL has similar issues to MLS. CFL teams may be owning soccer teams in the future.
CFL is probably the most realistic and pragmatic sporting organization in all of Canada.
They've dealt with struggling teams, cities and economies and the institutional memory that comes from surviving it serves them well.
CFL and MLS in this country are direct competition. Many NA sports fans have no problem with the concept but obviously places like this that focus on one sport more than another will host the majority of the minority that are "one sport exclusively" fans..
The first NHL was 6 teams because that's who could afford to be in it. It's looked upon fondly because it was the first hockey league here. I don't think many would say it was better than post expansion as a league.
FORMER FULL TIME KOOL-AID DRINKER
One thing CFL and MLS share is that they are not the top league in their sport. On game day, for both leagues, there are better teams playing on another channel on our TVs.
As for NHL expansion, for the first few years all six expansion teams were terrible so it did show that there probably weren't enough skilled players to fill put that many teams. Then, of course, Philadelphia went with the Broad Street Bullies so that likely led to a lot of nostalgia for the pre-expansion NHL.
Yeah, nothing really related to TFC, but even the Top 30 lists for the individual markets certainly do show a distinct difference for what sports get (or don't get) more attention in different parts of Canada.
In June World Cup is number one show of the week for Toronto/Hamilton, but only #16 for Calgary and #24 for Edmonton.
NFL makes top 30 lists for Toronto and Montreal in September, yet CFL doesn't while easily making top 10 in Edmonton and Calgary.
http://tvcentral.ca/2014/07/08/numer...3rd-29th-2014/
http://tvcentral.ca/2014/09/30/numer...5th-21st-2014/
Wow, just wow.
This just proves that CFL isn't popular in Southern Ontario. Now I hope CFL fan-boys on here admit it instead of backing up their outgoing commissioner who lied when came to state of CFL.
But sad part is that NFL is actually popular in this country which is sad given NFL is more slow pace and defensive minded than CFL.
Last edited by TFC07; 11-11-2014 at 02:27 PM.
There are issues with picking the week of Sept to look at local ratings. Toronto was in BC on a Friday with a 10pm start, and Hamilton on Sat 7:00pm. Not great date/times for TV to encourage local ratings. I'd like to see more of these types of reports to compare.
The other part is that there is only 1 other sporting even on that list. (NFL & a rematch of the superbowl), when locally it would have still been up against the Jays. By that conclusion the Jay's are not popular either? No.
The lack of sports being shown here doesn't give you a great baseline for each region.
The week of ratings that reported
2. CFL, RedBlacks at Roughriders, Sunday, TSN: 917,000
3. CFL, Eskimos at Tiger-Cats, Saturday, TSN: 751,000
5. CFL, Argos at Lions, Friday, TSN: 663,000
7. CFL, Stampeders at Alouettes, Sunday, TSN: 467,000
I'm not completely sure how everything is broken down, but even we we average this (699,000) subtract what AMA Calgary & Edmonton had for the week. You still have 540,000 (averaged) to distribute. The CFL is rarely, if ever in the Top 30 nationally, what's there to expect it'll be in the top 30 locally?
Why does anyone need proof that they aren't popular right now in Southern Ontario? Attendance is crap.
It doesn't change any of the dynamics within this business deal though.
With NHL being the tradition it is, it's very difficult in ANY market. Edmonton's NASL team once drew 10,000 a season, and it gets 9,000 for lacrosse, but the NASL team -- which was absolutely run into the ground from the start for a variety of reasons -- draws less than 4,000 a game, the baseball team drew less than 10K and wound up in Texas.
The only reason CFL has the strong following it has in the west is that we ONLY have NHL. THere are no other major pro sports, so there are no other distractions. Plus, it's got multi-generational support, decent parking/subway access and is CHEAP. You can get nosebleeds for next to nothing.
I've said it before, I'll say it again; Canadians are accustomed to the quality of multiple pro sports in large U.S. cities and Toronto, and they won't suffer either amateur outfits, minor leaguers or poor management that produces a team looking like it.
But our disposable income and support for soccer on a per-household basis when international clubs are taken into account is pretty large. If solid investors did it right, there's no reason we couldn't run a DIv. 1 in this country; not compete with MLS, really, just be a separate all-Canadian team league. The average 30-man MLS roster has a cap of $2.7 million. The CFL cap is about $5 million and change (last time I checked, might have gone up).
If we could get investors to spend $5 million ACROSS a team roster put season with no limit on foreigners but a requirement for Canadian academies we'd get major turnout, major attention and it would thrive. It would be a quality product, which MLS unfortunately still can't claim, due to the lack of roster depth and insistance on dribbling foreign talent in to improve the U.S. game. I'm not saying that's wrong, just that it's a different objective.
The ideal infrastructure is lacking, but I think we saw from the relatively low cost of Vancouver's initial "temp" stadium -- which many fans still say they preferred for its intimacy -- that it can be done.
It just takes will, foresight and a shitload of connections to a shitload of people with a shitload of money.
I can't see a new Canadian League having more than a $1 million Salary Cap - about the same as the current NASL. I would expect at the start to get only 1/4-1/5 the attendance of a CFL game, so the salary cap should be adjusted accordingly.
And what you said about FC Edmonton purposefully being run into the ground, care to elaborate on what those reasons were? Why would any owner not want a team to do well?
Point 1, Why? You missed my point. If they spend the money it WON'T get crap attendances; if they don't it will. The onus is on the product, not the crowds. Begging people to come just because they like soccer is a waste of time, and small turnouts at North American soccer are directly related to the quality of the experience. As I said, Edmonton got 10,000 a game in the NASL at the old Clarke Stadium regularly; Euro teams that make profits or break even (which believe it or not is most below the top level) regularly support much larger payrolls with smaller crowds than 10,000 and limited TV exposure. But they got that 10,000 in Edmonton because NASL's old budget-breaking rosters gave the sheen of it being top level. Even then, it wasn't good enough football for NHL- or CFL-sized crowds. But it's enough to support a $5 million roster.
Point 2, I didn't say purposefully, I said absolutely. As in they absolutely did everything wrong from day one, were told they were doing it wrong, ignored the advice and have lost millions of dollars as a consequence.
Last edited by jloome; 11-12-2014 at 02:50 PM.
I'd be very interested to know what the Raps draw this coming Thursday night against Chicago.
"There are some people who might have better technique than me, and some may be fitter than me, but the main thing is tactics. With most players, tactics are missing. You can divide tactics into insight, trust, and daring." - Johan Cruyff
"Just." Has any Canadian industry ever shown that kind of foresight and invested a shitload of money? Only if 1) the government actually puts up most of the money and 2) the entire Canadian market is protected for them from foreign competition.
But I do agree with you, if some investors actually put a Canadian league together I also think it could really work. I think MLS is vulnerable to competition - no one outside the supporters of the Canadian teams watch it on TV and no one watches games between two American teams at all. This market is really under served.
And maybe someday the Canadian league could merge with MLS (the way every other US league now is the result of a merger) and there would be enough teams for the promotion/relegation people want for some anachronistic reason.