Canadians smart enough to avoid ripoff that is the NFL ‘practice’ season |
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Hey commish, good luck with that expansion team in London idea. A few years ago, Toronto was considered as a possible option to steal away the struggling Buffalo Bills. Now it looks like Canadians have grown tired of the NFL or better yet, they know that the league’s pre-season games are nothing more than glorified friendlies. Pro Football Talk reports that last night’s Indianapolis Colts-Buffalo Bills game drew flies in Toronto. The reported crowd was over 39,000. How could that be with the 53,000 seat Rogers Centre appearing to be more than half-empty? The Toronto papers confirmed that in reality the attendance was closer to 20,000. This headline appeared in the Toronto Star: “Report: Only 20,000 at Colts-Bills game in Toronto” On the Star website, it was also buried in the middle of the sports page. PFT’s Mike Florio writes:
Thursday’s game, the fourth of an eight-game Toronto series, represented the first time fewer than 40,000 showed up for the game, based on official numbers. The 2008 debut, a preseason contest between the Bills and the Steelers, produced an official attendance of 48,434. A regular-season game that year against the Dolphins churned out an official attendance figure of 52,134. Last year’s Thursday night game against the Jets on NFL Network produced an official number of 51,567.
This year, the Bills host the Bears in Toronto on November 7. It remains to be seen whether and to what extent any of the 53,000 seats will be filled with something other than air.
Maybe this will also serve as a sign to Roger Goodell that his half-baked international expansion plans are a waste of time. Why not put the effort towards fixing struggling markets like Jacksonville, Buffalo and Oakland, or simply get the ball rolling on placing teams in Los Angeles and Las Vegas? |