Stadium stinks, readers say

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 07/10/2016 (3290 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

So, upon further review, it’s not the team Winnipeg football fans hate — it’s the stadium.

Not since that fateful day last winter when I had the audacity to make a teensy criticism of Winnipeg Jets head coach Paul Maurice — maybe throwing a tantrum and getting tossed out of an NHL game wasn’t his best idea ever? — have I received as much feedback on a column as I did earlier this week on the attendance problems at Investors Group Field.

My proposition was a continuing attendance decline this year despite the Winnipeg Blue Bombers’ resurgence on the field was suggestive of a brand damaged by years of dysfunction and fans so frustrated by the years of losing they aren’t even paying attention now the team is winning.

Some of that is surely true, but the hundreds of comments online, in emails and on Twitter responding to the column suggest the biggest single irritant is the one thing the Winnipeg Football Club cannot do much about.

We hate the location. We hate the drive to games. We hate the drive home from games. We hate the overcrowded concourse. We hate the parking — availability, location and (because it’s Winnipeg) price. We hate the drunks. We really hate the drunks.

A sampling:

“I won’t go to ‘Inaccessible Group Field’”… “Who wants to go (or bring kids) to a four-hour drunk-a-thon?”… “Still cannot understand why on earth they built the stadium at U of M… complete and utter stupidity”… “The noise and the booze, the crazy loud music, all the even louder commercials, it just isn’t my scene at this point in my life”… “Foul-mouthed beer-swigging jackasses”… “I just got tired of the drunks”… “Too narrow to comfortably walk down the concourse”… “Taking those school buses to get there gets old really fast”… “Long lines, exorbitant high refreshment costs and a cattle call mentality of security”… “I almost always leave early”… “My passion for the CFL and the Bombers is at a 40-year low”…

Wow.

First, it is staggering to me the Blue Bombers are playing their fourth season at IGF and we’re still talking about the merits — and, mostly, demerits — of the location.

Second, people drink at sporting events, but the number of complaints on this issue suggest it’s not consumption that is a problem at games: it’s overconsumption.

Third, “Inaccessible Group Field” is hilarious. I wish I’d written that.

So is this representative of the population at large? Or is all this yet another example — and this tradition has deep roots in Winnipeg — of the way a tiny group of people in this city who hate change of any kind always seem to speak with the loudest voices?

(Remember the clowns who wanted to save the downtown Eaton’s because it was a “heritage building” and forced Mark Chipman to go all the way to the Supreme Court just so he could tear it down and build the MTS Centre? You can ask them what on earth they were thinking when you see them at the next Jets game.)

In search of answers, I tracked down the man in charge.

Blue Bombers CEO Wade Miller says while things could always be better at IGF — on the field and off — the research his organization has done suggests after a shaky inaugural season in 2013, fans are overwhelmingly satisfied with their game-day experience.

“A lot has changed from the first season at Investors Group Field when the stadium opened. We actually hear substantially more positive comments than we do negative right now,” Miller said Friday.

According to Miller:

— Email surveys conducted after every home game find 87 per cent the fans rate their game-day experience (on a scale of one to 10) as a seven or better; 35 per cent rate it a perfect 10 and five per cent rate it a four, or worse.

— A telephone survey the team conducts every Thursday found of the last 4,725 calls to season-ticket holders, 74 per cent were positive, 17 per cent were neutral and just three per cent were negative (a further six per cent did not respond).

— A league-wide “mystery shopper” type of study conducted this season by the CFL rated the Bombers No. 1 in the game-day interaction between fans and stadium staff.

Of course, all of that raises the obvious question: if everything is so great at IGF, how come attendance this season is down for the third year in a row — despite turning things around on the field — and is now down 17 per cent overall since the inaugural 2013 season?

Miller says part of the problem this year has been a lousy schedule, but I’d argue the much bigger problem is Miller and the Bombers are surveying and studying the wrong fans.

Of course, the fans who are still buying season tickets and going to games are mostly satisfied… that’s why they’re still buying season tickets and still going to games.

The Bombers’ problem — and the one they should be studying — is the group of fans who abandoned season tickets and stopped going to games, choosing instead to stay at home and watch on TSN. If they care enough to watch, that is.

Miller concedes the process of winning back fans who abandoned the team through the lean years has been slow and the team has work still to do. However, he says help is on the way in one key area: a new rapid-transit stop under construction adjacent to Gates 3 and 4 at IGF, which should be completed by next summer.

In addition to getting people to and from games by bus a lot faster, Miller says the rapid-transit stop will also allow about 200 buses to be removed from Chancellor Matheson Drive on game days, opening up more of the roadway for drivers to get on and off the University of Manitoba campus.

“We hope that will have a dramatic impact on traffic flow,” he said.

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And the drunks? Miller insists the club enforces a zero-tolerance policy for unruly fans and cordons off certain sections as no-alcohol zones so “you are able to experience the stadium the way you want to experience it.”

I’ve got no dog in this fight — my seat is in the press box and I arrive and leave on game days long before and long after the traffic. But one thing seems clear to me: first impressions are lasting ones and a disastrous first season at IGF in 2013 — nightmarish traffic, the discovery of a seemingly endless list of construction flaws, a 3-15 team — turned off a lot of fans the club would love to welcome back.

The biggest problem facing Miller is a continuing decline in attendance this season speaks a lot louder than all those rosy surveys.

Not only are fans not coming back, they’re still leaving.

paul.wiecek@freepress.mb.ca Twitter: @PaulWiecek