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Toronto 2015 Pan American Games

Plat said:
Sorry if I'm turning this thread into a "NFL in Toronto" thread, I apologize as I proceed to ask some more questions about it lol

You guys don't think that this Bills in Toronto series might be the first steps to permanently moving a team here or was it just really about expanding the Bills fanbase? also, does the Ted Rogers passing really diminish the momentum of bringing a team here?
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The Bills in Toronto series (from a Bills perspective) was about actually making money. They sold games to Rogers to market in Toronto. It was guaranteed revenue which (from what I have heard) was equivalent to them of 3 - 4 sold out games in Orchard Park....so it took some financial pressure off. Expanding the fan base has little value given that attendance at their home games is not bad already and their ticket prices in Buffalo are so low. They were lured by the guaranteed nature of the game purchases and the amount offered.

From a Rogers perspective, I am sure it was a test. Not just of how they could sell the games and at what price but, also, of Rogers Centre's sutiability as an NFL facility. Much is made of its size and how it is too small (by NFL rules) to be an NFL stadium. If that "rule" was so hard and fast then, surely, it would apply wether it was for 12.5% of a team's regular season games or 100%.....no? What these games have shown the NFL is that Rogers Centre has the ability to be a top tier revenue generating stadium. I am positive that stadium minimum size in the NFL (what is it 60k) is just a proxy for revenue generation and if a smaller stadium could be shown to generate above average revenue per game (as Rogers Centre can) then some rule(s) can be "bent".

Ask yourself this.....would the league prefer a team be in a stadium with 73k seats and an average ticket price of $59.19 (Bills average for upcoming season which is $15 below league average) or in a 55k stadium with as average price of $100 per ticket (I think the average for a toronto team would be over $100 but we will go with that) ?

A full stadium in Buffalo generates ticket sales of about $4.325 million per game.......a $100 average ticket price in a 55k Skydome generates $5.5 million.
 
Border, rail link top Pan Am concerns


March 12, 2010

By ANTONELLA ARTUSO and JONATHAN JENKINS

Read More: http://www.torontosun.com/news/torontoandgta/2010/03/12/13213326.html

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The thickening Canada-U.S. border and the glacial pace of a Pearson Airport rail link are two potential dark spots in the bright future of the 2015 Pan Am Games, Toronto Mayor David Miller says. Miller and fellow Golden Horseshoe Mayors Fred Eisenberger, of Hamilton, and Brian McMullan, of St. Catharines, said Friday that they’re confident that their municipalities can deliver on the improvements needed to host the prestigious sporting event. Senior levels of governments need to come through with important transit initiatives and smoother border crossings to ease movement of people or risk embarrassing the region with stories of gridlock and delays, they said.

Senior levels of governments need to come through with important transit initiatives and smoother border crossings to ease movement of people or risk embarrassing the region with stories of gridlock and delays, they said. Fort Erie Councillor Sandy Annunziata said the increasing difficulty crossing the international border presents an enormous challenge for his community, one he hopes can be resolved before the games.

Miller said the U.S. appears to believe incorrectly that its border measures add to its national security. “A number of American elected officials keep saying terrorists come down from Canada and it’s ludicrous,†he said. Many visitors to the games will come through the Niagara border, posing a serious bottleneck concern for organizers, McMullan said.

Municipal officials need to keep pushing that issue in Washington and Ottawa, he said. In Toronto, the Pearson airport rail line stands out as a missing link in the transportation system that will handle the games.

While Miller said he expects work to begin on the major light rail transit (LRT) lines that will be needed to move athletes and visitors across the city, the 1.4 km spur needed to link the airport to GO Transit has been bogged down in eight years of federal and provincial politicking.

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Sinking feeling....

I'm starting to get this uneasy feeling that no one really has a plan about getting the West Donlands ready in time for the games. If these guys can't do the Pan Am games properly with the whole world watching, forget the Olympics.
 
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It's only March 2010... Plenty of time to get things on track (5+years actually). In fact, Rio only had 4years and 10 months to plan their Pan Am Games. So let's not get worked up about these things quite yet, ok?
 
There's a lot of preparation work going on down there, but as soon as that's done those in charge can start plunking down buildings. I don't mean to make it sound so simple but with a blank slate it's a lot easier to do.
 
jswag said:
There's a lot of preparation work going on down there, but as soon as that's done those in charge can start plunking down buildings. I don't mean to make it sound so simple but with a blank slate it's a lot easier to do.
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I agree with you completely. I think Rochon is a professional hatchetwoman. She's rarely even-handed and often scaremongering, IMO. Her piece on the Athletes' Village completely ignored the fact that even if they selected someone tomorrow, they couldn't start building anything until the roads and infrastructure for Mill and River Street were finished a year from now -- plenty of time to slap up some drawings, no? I don't mind the idea of having more than one developer on board and some of her other suggestions, but the idea that being less than a month late in picking the CEO (which should be a pretty important decision to make) is going to translate into a bungled Games seems over the top to me.

As a complete hater of NFL football (the world's most overhyped sport -- mostly boring, yet divided up into 8 second chunks followed by minutes of nothing so you have time to go get more beer!), I'm more worried about the evidence in this thread that the NFLers might try and hijack the Games to get themselves a free stadium!
 
huh? No one thinks the Pan-Am Games will result in a stadium suitable for NFL. As someone who isn't a big fan of football either, I'm indifferent if we get a team or not beyond the impact it might have on us getting an Olympics and the economic impact a team can bring. What we've been discussing, which has been a bit off-topic though related, is how an Olympics and an NFL team might go hand in hand. Even if you don't like the sport, you probably agree that it would certainly be popular here.
 
jn_12 said:
huh? No one thinks the Pan-Am Games will result in a stadium suitable for NFL. As someone who isn't a big fan of football either, I'm indifferent if we get a team or not beyond the impact it might have on us getting an Olympics and the economic impact a team can bring. What we've been discussing, which has been a bit off-topic though related, is how an Olympics and an NFL team might go hand in hand. Even if you don't like the sport, you probably agree that it would certainly be popular here.
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Hmmm... apologies, then. I'd assumed that, since this was the Pan-Am games thread, that it had been hijacked once. It turns out it was hijacked twice, with the NFL discussion a second derivative hijacking. And, no, I don't have to agree that the NFL would be popular here, at least as a stadium-filling sport. Tons and tons of people while away their Sundays watching the NFL, but given the opportunity to fill the Rogers Centre, they didn't come out. (Prices were high, it was the Bills who suck, etc., etc., I know. But the fact remains.)

My biggest fear with the Pan-Ams are exactly what's happening to this thread, actually -- everyone is trying to leverage the Pan-Ams for their own ambitions: Olympics, housing, NFL, sports facilities for UT-Scarborough and Hamilton, a rail link to the airport. I hope the CEO firmly sets his priorities and takes hold of the agenda before this whole thing goes off the rails.
 
Well we've been talking about the Olympics because there hasn't been much to discuss re:the Pan Ams, we just held the games in Vancouver which excited the entire country, and 2020 is Toronto's for the taking. This thread has kinda become the de facto discussion spot for this type of stuff.

I disagree with your assessment of the Bills in Toronto as being a direct indicator of whether a team here would be successful. All of those factors are huge deterrents and can't just be seen as excuses. It'd be the equivalent of saying people don't like amusement parks if Canada's Wonderland was built and admission was $150, causing no one to come. Oh and the rides were broken down too. And by the way, last year's game was a Thursday Night... not a Sunday afternoon. So that's a factor too.

As for the Pan Am's becoming leverage for other things, here's a bit of a newsflash: This is what these types of events do. They're often used as catalysts for bigger issues because you can't host a games without all of those things. You need housing, you need sports facilities (I'm baffled why you would include that in your list), you need a rail link to the airport... you need even more than that! Go take a look at any host of any games over the last 30 years and tell me nothing beyond a stadium was built, and that it was only built for the sole purpose of the games without any thought towards how it would be used in the future. Good luck.
 
But isn't this what getting this type of event is suppose to kickstart?

Building infrastructure, transit and hoping to lure tourists to your city with the world watching. It just seems naive to think that winning something of this scale should only be about the athletes and nothing else. Of course people want to use the Pan Am games to kickstart projects in this city.

Just my take on it.
 
Festival of the Americas

Veering gently on-topic, I would really like to see the Pan Am Organizing Committee reach out to other Toronto events, communities and so on to try and turn the Pan Am summer into a summer of Americas themed events.

Caribana is already one of the largest carnivals in the Americas. TIFF could focus on Latin America or a particular part thereof. Luminato could similarly do something in keeping with the theme. Pride, Toronto Jazz Festival, NXNE ...
 
Well if some people (ie. you) are ignorant about the second largest international sporting event in the world, whose fault is that? Everyone I know that follows sports knew of them before we got them. Perhaps the real story might just be how ignorant you are to global athletics? Ya that's probably more likely...
 
urbandreamer said:
What really matters--I'd never heard of the Pan-Am games until I heard about Toronto's bid. How many others think this is the real story?
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Not me. I have heard of the Pan Ams.....in the western hemisphere they are a pretty big event. For most south/central american nations they are a very big deal (as it is their chance to win medals in large numbers). I think their image gets hurt in Canada because we rank them 3rd (behind Olympics and Commonwealth games) when we think of the summer multi-sport games...we also rank them below things like the winter Olympics because we are a 4 season country.......so they get less profile here than they do in some places.

In most of the Americas, though, they are the second biggest multi-sport event and get decent attention.
 
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