Quote:
Originally Posted by shermanator
As for McMahon, unless a Calgary ownership group wants to build a modular soccer specific stadium (which is the way other rumoured cities are going), I think any Calgary club is stuck at McMahon. It sucks, but I don't know of any alternative that doesn't require a new stadium.
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Yeah, I don't know the answer either. But I honestly feel that McMahon would be the Achilles heel for a club in Calgary. It will enough of a tough sell to get casual fans excited about it, and then they'll go to a 1/3 full football stadium where they are sitting miles from the pitch, and I don't know that many will go back.
The MLS figured it out - it is all about the culture and the atmosphere, and you can't create that in a cavernous stadium. While many here wouldn't consider McMahon to be "big", especially compared to the big American football stadiums, it actually has a larger capacity than over half of the English Premier League stadiums. Not to mention that, because the seats are only on the sides at McMahon, plus the huge gap between the sidelines and the seats, everyone ends up being further from the action.
I would take a semi-temporary modular stadium any day of the week over McMahon. Sure, it would mean food trucks and outhouses, and would be an extra cost compared to using something that is already there. But the success of this league is going to hinge on people getting excited about it, and to do that they need to showcase the atmosphere. I'll even go as far as to say that using McMahon will make this venture dead on arrival.
Anyway - enough negative Nancy for today. I really hope it does well, but I don't trust the Flames (or the future CPL) to avoid repeating history by putting a team in McMahon and then shrugging their shoulders when people don't show up.