Canada West is, for this season anyway, without a doubt the only conference in the CIS that consistently announces attendance figures that are tracked. AUS historically has been reasonable with this statistic however this season reporting has unfortunately been virtually non-existant (only 2 games all season reported attendance figures). QUBL is even less consistent - this season only Bishop's has announced home attendance (high of 810 vs. Laval this past weekend) - even though we know that Laval has had at least one near-sellout of over 1,500 ? fans vs. Concordia. However at least these conferences have the mechanism to track and report on attendance. OUA has never to my knowledge ever tracked or announced attendance figures consistently and the only way one can get a high level view of how the teams which report (few and far between) are doing with attendance is to click on each individual game on the web site, an arduous task. Within the OUA, attendance is historically been strong (1,000+ level) at Carleton, McMaster, Windsor, Waterloo, Brock, Guelph and Lakehead among others. Unfortunately, to my knowledge, one cannot access a central data site that compiles and tracks OUA attendance.
Thanks to our still-anonymous Canada West correspondent who has kept my in-box full of very topical and well understood issues that I still have yet to develop into proper stories (they're coming), we get a good look at Canada West attendance and one may be surprised which program leads the entire conference (and very likely entire CIS) in attendance (top programs in BOLD).
Alberta 6 home dates: 2814 total = 469 per game (high of 921 vs. UBC; did not report 1 game)
Brandon 6 home dates: 1571 total = 262 per game
Calgary 6 home dates: 3579 total = 596 per game (high of 1,304 vs. Lethbridge Home Opener)
Fraser Valley 8 home dates: 1558 total = 195 per game
#1 Lethbridge 8 home dates: 7227 total = 903 per game
- 2 crowds of 1,028 vs. Sask & Brandon PLUS 5 other crowds of 800+
Manitoba 9 home dates: 4975 total = 553 per game (one crowd reported at 3,000 vs TRU misreported ??)
Regina 8 home dates: 4775 total = 597 per game (highs of 862 vs. Calgary; 823 vs. Thompson Rivers)
Saskatchewan 6 home dates: 3026 total = 504 per game (high of 912 vs. Victoria)
Thompson Rivers 8 home dates: 2420 total = 302 per game
#5 Trinity Western 8 home dates: 5022 total = 628 per game (High of 1,743 vs. UBC ** largest attendance at CW game this season)
#4 UBC 10 home dates: 6304 total = 630 per game (High of 1,186 vs. Sask; also 913 vs. Calgary)
#3 Victoria 8 home dates: 6200 total = 775 per game (High of 1,100 vs. Regina; 1,000 vs. Calgary)
#2 Winnipeg 7 home dates: 6084 total = 869 per game (3 crowds of greater than 1,000 including 1,498 vs. Manitoba; 1,357 vs. Trinity Western and 1,479 vs. Calgary; ** also did not report one game (goes down as zero attendance).
Note that according to the Canada West site, Lethbridge leads in attendance however had Winnipeg reported their first game of the season accurately, it would be likely that Winnipeg would have the top attendance (not reporting attendance goes down as zero attendance).
Tracking attendance accurately not only brings more validity to the CIS but for those programs who incent their staffs to grow attendance, it provides objectives to top and provides potential commercial partners with one more data point on how to value a commercial relationship.
2 comments:
I attend all the Calgary games and wouldn't rely on the data at all. Sometimes, the folks at the score table (who officially log the stats) just guess. Headcount is supposedly kept by a guy at the ticket entrance, but it never gets reported down to the data logging folks (I've asked). The attendance varies from a low before 6 PM at the start of the Woman's Game to a high with about 30 min left in the men's game; frequently the data reported is guessed at the half time mark of each game. I have actually counted heads in the seats some nights and had a wildly different number. I also know how many the gym seats, and can do mental math. So I wouldn't rely on it at all.
This post was very timely. Great crowds out for at least two games this week. The Capers/SFX games was absolutely packed and the Western/Lancers game had a very big crowd.
Post a Comment