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B.C. Lions president Duane Vienneau explained: “The economics make sense for a one-game event.”
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Published Sep 06, 2024 • 4 minute read
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The B.C. Lions run onto the field before a CFL game against the Ottawa Redblacks in Victoria on Aug. 31. Photo by DARRYL DYCK /THE CANADIAN PRESS
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The B.C. Lions are pleased with how Touchdown Pacific played out, but don’t expect them to use Victoria as their temporary home base when FIFA World Cup 2026 takes over B.C. Place for several weeks in two year’s time.
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That’s the word from Lions president Duane Vienneau, who maintains that a multi-game stay on Vancouver Island simply isn’t feasible financially for the CFL squad.
The Lions announced a sellout crowd of 14,727 to the much-expanded Royal Athletic Park for Saturday’s 38-12 win over the Ottawa Redblacks. Considering that, and the positive feedback that the Leos received about the festivities ahead of the game, Vienneau says that they’re considering a Touchdown Pacific sequel there next season.
The Lions believe they can get even more seats into Royal Athletic. It’s usually the home of the Victoria HarbourCats, a collegiate all-star summer baseball squad who list their game capacity at 5,280. Even with considerable tweaking, though, the Lions would be hard pressed to draw a crowd of 30,000 or more there, which is what they aim to attract for games at B.C. Place.
Losing ticket revenue for a night is one thing. Losing it for two or three nights is something else entirely.
“The economics make sense for a one-game event,” Vienneau said of going to Victoria.
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We lied, there’s one more Touchdown Pacific video and this one is EXTRA SPECIAL 😎
Come along as Ronald Kent Jr. (@Kent_jr2) takes us behind the scenes as the players land in Victoria and take part in all of the activities surrounding TDP!
📹 Shot on an old-school Camcorder pic.twitter.com/vvIjyeTwyc
— BC LIONS (@BCLions) September 4, 2024
It does look like the Lions could get through that stretch without B.C. Place at their disposal with a combination of extra road games and bye weeks and then double up on home dates in the second half of the season.
Stadium officials couldn’t say Friday exactly how long FIFA wants control of the downtown dome for the tournament but there are seven games scheduled there, with the last one a Round of 16 playoff encounter slated for July 7.
Using this year’s Lions’ schedule as a guide, that would affect the first two home games of the B.C. regular season, as well as the exhibition game that they usually host. Going off of this year, it would be five weeks into their regular season overall, plus the two pre-season weeks.
“I think we can schedule around it,” Vienneau said of that FIFA stay. “Once we officially know what we’re working with in 2026, we’ll start to build it out.”
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Vienneau says that the response to Touchdown Pacific, which featured festivals and other special events in the days leading up to the game, has been strong. He worked previously on Touchdown Atlantic, which has been the CFL’s foray into the Maritimes, and he always used “mini-Grey Cup” to promote it ahead of time. He started getting that exact description from other people in Victoria last weekend, and believes that “means the vision became a reality.”
“(Victoria) has said they want us to do it again. The province has said they want us to do it again. Our owner wants to do it again,” Vienneau said, pointing to Amar Doman, who’s from Victoria and still has family there. “We want to do it. Absolutely. But we also want to make sure that we analyze this one and make sure we can make it better.
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“There are so many factors but we have to get on it quickly. If we want to do this next year, we have to start talking about the schedule now. It’s a hurry-up offence, if you will.”
There were snags and snafus. A new restaurant does several nights of test runs before its grand opening. That wasn’t an option for the Lions. They did what amounted to opening up a “brand new restaurant for 14,500 people on the fly,” to borrow a turn of phrase from Vienneau.
“We didn’t really know what was going to work and what wasn’t going to work. We didn’t really know the traffic flow patterns of this and that,” he continued.
On one side of the stadium the Lions didn’t “service our catering well enough,” according to Vienneau.
The weather was warm. Fans wanted beverages, and the lineups wound up being tedious.
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“If we do this again, we need to make sure that piece is looked after,” he said. “It wasn’t for lack of trying. It was just that we didn’t do well on that side of the business in my opinion. But you know what? As long as we learn from it, we can fix it in the future. But I don’t want to hide from that. We didn’t provide the best service we could have for some of the fans.”
The changeover to a football stadium started on Aug. 8, and forced the HarbourCats to move their home playoff games to Nanaimo. Managing partner Jim Swanson told Postmedia News last month that he felt the city and the Lions could have found a workaround to let his team have post-season games at Royal Athletic. The squad lost out in the best-of-three first round, getting one game in Nanaimo on Aug. 10. They’ve been members of their West Coast League since 2013.
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“Obviously this has not been a good situation for us,” Swanson said.
SEwen@postmedia.com
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Courtesy : https://theprovince.com/sports/football/cfl/bc-lions/bc-lions-touchdown-pacific-sequel-fifa-2026-tournament