Good post. Hockey is losing fans in a lot of areas even in Canada because the cost of even house league hockey is prohibiting to a lot of families. Equipment is ridiculous and the sign up cost are too high. Your probably looking at 1000 bucks by the time you sign a kid up for house league and buy the equipment and soccer probably cost fifty bucks plus a pair of soccer boots.
This really is the main issue IMO. Well that and if there are truly road bans. The fact that Canadians didn't go down is odd. Dollar has been about the same past few years now, so that shouldn't be a major factor.
When you add saturation of the market along with charging NHL prices for a junior product it is not something that you are going to get families shelling out money for multiple years in a row. You don't have to like or understand these reasons but it doesn't make them untrue. They need to be much smarter about where they put this tournament in the future and as I said earlier them putting this in Buffalo and not another USA city was a pure and simple money grab from day 1.
Hockey is obviously the most popular sport....that doesn't mean there isn't a tipping point when it comes to price gauging that happens with this tournament now. The popularity of this tournament came from the support Canada got in the CHL towns. The Halifax's,Saskatoon's and London's of Canada. I think they have gotten way to far away from where the tournament came from and have full on gone to a profit driven agenda when it is in North America....and when something starts to feel less genuine people are going to notice. In 05 and 11 when Canadians came down and took over the arena's in North Dakota and Buffalo it wasn't planned and it wasn't the reason the tournaments were put in those places....it was natural. This year they specifically put the tournament in Buffalo to mooch off of Canadians and it is easy to see through.
Over 11 million watched the gold medal game last year, so that’s about 1 in 4 Canadians tuning in, I’d say it outdraws any Canadian religious event, so ....
Last time I checked Buffalo is in the U S A. At least an hours drive and border delays. Plus as was mentioned Canadian dollar is about 20% less than the U S dollar. So add that to the already ridiculous ticket price.
Last time I checked Buffalo is in the U S A. At least an hours drive and border delays. Plus as was mentioned Canadian dollar is about 20% less than the U S dollar. So add that to the already ridiculous ticket price.
So yeah ticket price plus 20% plus a tank of gas round trip. Plus international border, equals too expensive. That being said I believe the Canada Finland game outdrew the U S game. If you think it was Americans attending the Canadian game, 90% of the crowd was wearing Canadian hockey sweaters the other 10% were probably Canadians as well. They just didn’t have sweaters, cheap mothers
It wasn’t sold out but it was respectable, games Canada played in the crowds were great, the rest of the games were avg for jr hockey in Canada
Yesterday was a holiday for most people, todays attendance truly will be laughable.
People in this area of Canada have gotten tired of being price gauged. If they want to try and rip people off the should probably know better then to try and do it to the same group of people like 3 times in 4 years lol
