1987 Canada Cup

[Gill The Thrill]

I am watching some of the Finland/Canada preliminary round game that was played in Hamilton on August 30th of 1987 and I see lots of empty seats at that game too. It really did take a fair bit of time for Canadians to get enthused about this tournament. If they still had such a tournament today, I suspect that even the pre-tournament exhibition games would draw better, if not sell out completely, compared to that '87 tournament.

That's because TSN today would be promoting the crap out of it months beforehand, which of course there's nothing wrong in doing.

I remember taking a media course in 1991 taught by an American and we discussed marketing and advertising in Canada and the US. We even discussed how pro sports was marketed and talked about how the CFL and NFL were hyped and how college sports were marketed in both countries. In his exact words, he told me that, "Canada does not know the meaning of the word hype," in comparison to marketing in the USA. I really could not disagree with him at all.