CFL Attendance

[CFLUSA]

What would you do to bring attendance up in the CFL?

I would suggest this.

1. Get rid of Wednesday and Thursday Night Games. Toronto had 12,000 on a Wednesday night game after 2 weeks away from stadium. Friday night games should be played later in the year.
2. Don't play your last preseason game against your first week opponent. TOR vs HAM.
3. Teams with low attendance from the previous year should not have 2 weeks in a row playing away from their home stadium. This was one of the reasons for the slide in Toronto.
4. ALL teams take Thanksgiving off and this plays into my next line.
5. Move your season back! You have too much sports going on in September and October with NFL, MLB, and College Football. It would be better to compete with them for 1 month than 2 months, moving the Grey Cup to the 3rd week in October. Oh, and then you have hockey starting in mid October.
6. I thought Toronto schedule was screwy but I see where Winnipeg played a home game week 7 but then didn't play a home game until week 12. Another team which had a 5 week gap in home games was BC.
7. Toronto moved up in attendance by 4000 per game to 16,000 which is great, but they are in a 27,000 seat stadium. Lower the prices and fill the empty seats. Lowering the prices, fills the seats putting in 90,000 more paying customers in the house a year. What you would lose on the seats you would make up for in merchandise and concession sales. Toronto's pricing, just like in the Grey Cup, needs improvement.
8. Lastly, it is time to open the doors to the USA again, with one team following CFL rules. There are cities out there who could and would support a CFL team. As the commissioner said, "expand only if it makes business sense."
9. I was thinking, "is the ESPN contract worth it?" Looking at MON, HAM, CAL, EDM, OTT, and SASK it helps but playing Wednesday night games removes the attendance of the game. People then see empty seats and would not want to attend. Maybe they could take a page from the NFL and apply the "Blackout Rule" if so much of a percent isn't sold of your stadium capacity or percentage of 30,000.
10. One funny thing I would do for a promotion in your larger stadiums is EDM and BC is have a "Nose Bleed Night" where all tickets are 5-10 dollars. Upper deck seating only. Any stadium would be able to use this. Look for a historic low week in attendance to do this.

Just some thoughts and not to cause an up roar.

[Will]

Welcome to the site, I have moved this thread to the CFL Room where it may get more views.