Habs Inside/Out, my newspaper’s most successful online venture so far, is seeing 100% traffic increases over last year, according to a recent post from Mike Boone. Those kinds of numbers put all of their other blogs (and mine) to shame, but they are well-deserved because of the efforts put into it by Boone, Dave Stubbs, Kevin Mio and Pat Hickey, who all contribute to bringing breaking news to the site in addition to their day jobs for the newspaper.
Olympic Stadium - with fans!
The news came just after halftime last night: There were 55,571 tickets sold for the Impact’s CONCACAF quarterfinal game against Mexico’s Club Santos Laguna at Olympic Stadium. That’s more than four times the 13,000 capacity of nearby Saputo Stadium where the Impact play regular-season games. (Though they might want to consider increasing that after all the demand this game has sparked.)
The best part: Winning
Of course, all that came secondary to ending the 90 minutes (plus three minutes added time) with a 2-0 lead on Santos Laguna. Both teams play the second game in Mexico and whichever team has more goals at the end of both games advances to the semifinal. That means the Impact can lose by a goal in that second game and still advance. Good news.
Impact fans do the wave
To me, more interesting than the game itself (the first goal came in the first five minutes, the second at the 77th minute, so there was a lot of dead time in between) was seeing the Olympic Stadium filled with fans for a soccer game. Those familiar with its sorry history know that this kind of activity is the exception rather than the rule. It’s rare even that the top balcony is opened up. But this time it was nearly full, with only the very far corners having empty seats. To be sure, the Grey Cup last fall had more people, though those tickets weren’t sold for $10 apiece.
Press box at the Olympic Stadium. Bonus points if you spot The Gazette's Randy Phillips, who had to rush to make deadline.
I spent $20 on my ticket in the 300 level, in a small room (about 100 seats) near the press box. It had the advantage of being able to see the whole field while not being too far away from it.
Hard-core Impact fans set off a flare
But I was a bit far away from the crazy fans, who emptied cans of blue smoke, set off flares and held their arms forward as if to bestow spiritual essence descended from Jesus himself onto the players on the pitch.
Ball kids (or whatever their title is) gather after the Impact game
An ambulance stands ready during the game
In the far corner, an ambulance (and its first responders) stood ready in case of any medical emergency. With that many fans in attendance, the stadium became the size of a small city. A small city that wants $4 for a coke or a hot dog.
And some people played soccer too
I’ll spare you photos of the game itself. Professional photographers lining the pitch had a better angle and better cameras. Instead, I’ll give you an idea of what 55,571 people look like:
Impact fans at Berri-UQAM
It was only when I got to the platform at Berri-UQAM that I remembered that tens of thousands of people heading to a soccer game causes a bit of a traffic jam. The STM added extra trains to and from the stadium, but even then I had to wait for the third train before I could get aboard.
Impact fans at Pie-IX metro
After being crammed into a metro car from Berri to Pie-IX, getting a bit too familiar with random people around me, I got off and joined another sea of fans trying to get from the metro to the stadium. Pie-IX is specially designed to handle large crowds, but it was easily overwhemled during the hour before the game.
Five minutes to go, and the crowd inches forward
I found myself stuck in a giant crowd of people in the hall leading to the stadium, with only minutes to go until the scheduled kickoff, mentally berating myself for not having left earlier. In the end, the traffic cleared up a lot easier than I had anticipated, and there was no line at the ticket office, so minutes later I was searching for my seat (holding an Impact T-shirt that I’d just bought at the only slightly overpriced rate of $20).
I ended up missing the first five minutes, but catching the first goal as I was locating my seat.
Post-game chaos leads many to go outside
After the game, the same thing in reverse. Many decided that taking the tunnel to the metro would take forever, and instead opted to go outside. I was one of those people.
Every man for himself!
Rather than take staircases to get to the footpath, lots of (young) people climbed walls and steep hills in the snow. I ended up freezing a couple of fingers trying to get my grip on the ice. They stung for a few hours but appear to have fully recovered.
Pie-IX traffic jam in reverse
Once I found my way to the metro, it was the same thing again. Fortunately the STM were out in full force along with local police, and the process was smooth.
Impact fans line the platforms at Pie-IX
Impact fans heading west at Pie-IX
Metro train filled to capacity at Pie-IX
*Of course, not all of the 55,571 people were Impact fans. Some were cheering Santos Laguna. And they got some good-natured ribbing from the local hooligans after the game.
Mexico fans after the Impact game
My personal media player has recording capabilities, so I decided to test them out. It’s actually not all that bad. So here’s two minutes of the most cliché crowd sounds you can hear:
The Montreal Impact got the word last night: the weather will not be an impediment to their hosting Mexico’s Club Santos Laguna at Olympic Stadium at 8 p.m. tonight.
Which is good, because there are already more than 50,000 tickets sold for the CONCACAF Champions League quarterfinal game. (CONCACAF Champions League not to be confused with CONCACAF 2010 World Cup qualifying, where Team Canada stunk up the joint by not winning any of its six games in the third round last fall)
There are still plenty of tickets available (the Big O’s capacity is about 65,000, depending on how many seats are added to the floor) at rates ranging from $10 to $50, from Admission or at the Olympic Stadium ticket office. Fans are asked to wear blue to support their team.
If you’re a wuss and can’t make it out, the game will be carried live at 8pm on:
The main CBC networks will carry it delayed: Radio-Canada at 11:30pm and CBC at midnight.
La Presse scored the jackpot in Friday’s paper when it combined the four things that journalists and their bosses have wet dreams about:
The news dominated coverage yesterday and today, even as everyone was talking about Alex Kovalev’s performance problems.
Part of that was because of La Presse, whose hockey analysts were dropping hints on every TV sports show they could find Thursday night to say that a huge scoop would appear in the next day’s paper.
The various news sources did all they could to try and match La Presse’s story before it came out, but couldn’t gather enough before publication to put it all together. So while most just waited until it was out and summarized La Presse’s story or re-researched it, Quebecor-owned 24 Heures put out its exclusive story that four Canadiens players had been arrested.
The story, still available in the Google cache, by reporter Maxime Deland, quotes a single anonymous source “very close” to the Canadiens saying four players had been arrested on Thursday night on their return from Pittsburgh.
Of course, no such thing happened, so 24 Heures deleted the story. I found no correction on their website, and the story was not in Friday’s edition of the paper.
The story has gotten so big now we have the second (third?) day stories about whether the media is blowing this out of proportion. This piece at Fanatique summarizes the timeline of stories from the various news outlets, while Yves Boisvert, Patrick Lagacé and Mike Boone defend the media’s insane interest in the Canadiens as a mere reflection of what the fans want to read.
UPDATE (Feb. 26): Pierre Trudel says La Presse did a good job with its scoop… in an article in La Presse.
Thanks to Linda Gyulai’s most excellent CityHallReport Twitter account for tipping me off to the fact that starting Tuesday, the STM will be offering a shuttle service for Canadiens fans in the West Island as part of a partnership with the team and its The Goal is Green campaign.
It’s a one-way shuttle, leaving the Bell Centre 15 minutes after home games, and dropping off at “three specific locations”: Dorval, Pointe-Claire and Fairview.
Regular STM fares apply.
Speaking of the Canadiens, they’re looking for an in-game animator. Must be pretty photogenic and of a “pleasant appearance” and be fluently bilingual.
From Elias Toufexis, apparently a local actor, comes this inspired adaptation of a very popular recording.
ctvolympics.ca
More than a year before the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics begin, CTV has launched CTVOlympics.ca and RDSolympiques.ca, where it will have coverage of the games in English and French. (This pretty much seals that RDS, not TQS, will be the primary French-language network.)
This is the first time in over a decade that CTV will be the Canadian Olympic broadcaster, and so much has changed since the early 90s (this thing called the Internet, for example).
For its first Olympic website, it does look pretty impressive. That said, I couldn’t get the video player to work (it’s Microsoft Silverlight-based, though I have that installed), and this is what happened when I tried to play with the past medal count widget:
How dare you try to compare more than four countries? Behold our grammatically-incorrect error message!
Fortunately they have a year to sort that kind of stuff out.
An anonymous commenter pointed me to this video posted on YouTube last fall showing all the problems that happen when an NFL football game is substituted by cable companies:
Theoretically, CRTC rules don’t allow for any of these (well, the popup ads are debatable). Canadian networks can’t substitute U.S. signals with Canadian ones that are of lesser quality. Cable and satellite providers (they’re the ones who actually “throw the switch” based on schedules provided to them by the Canadian networks) would be in their rights to refuse to substitute the broadcast.
But what happens in reality is that they don’t really care (at least, outside of Super Bowl Sunday), and so errors like these are common. Usually they’re not so bad, either repeating the first few seconds of a program or cutting off the last few seconds of the credits because the stations aren’t in perfect sync. The problems are worse during NFL games because they’re live and their commercial schedules and end times aren’t predictable in advance.
If this kind of thing annoys you, you could try petitioning CTV and Global to get them to stop, but there’s no way they’re just going to give up on free ad money. Instead, you have to focus your efforts on the CRTC and your Member of Parliament to get them to eliminate simultaneous substitution.
The consortium of private broadcasters headed by CTV has announced a huge lineup of play-by-play announcers, news anchors, former Olympians and other analysts who will travel to Vanvouver and Whistler for the 2010 Winter Olympics. It also tells us what networks coverage will appear on.
In English, the team is headed by Olympic veteran Brian Williams, who left CBC in 2006 after CTV won the rights to the 2010 Games. English Games coverage will be carried on CTV’s main network, CTV-owned TSN, Rogers Sportsnet, Rogers-owned OMNI, Rogers-owned OLN (Outdoor Life Network), and ATN, along with Rogers radio stations, CTVOlympics.ca and the Globe and Mail.
There’s also, I’m sorry to say, entertainment (eTalk/Ben Mulroney) and music (MuchMusic) reporting to go along with it. (I’m not quite sure how much music-related coverage there can be of the Olympics, but whatever…)
In French, the team will be headed by Canadiens play-by-play man Pierre Houde and Olympic broadcasting veteran Richard Garneau. French Games coverage will be carried on RDS, RIS Info-Sports, the Aboriginal Peoples’ Television Network and … TQS.
There’s a certain irony in TQS being part of the deal. Its participation predates its bankruptcy and change in ownership, going back to when it was part-owned by CTVglobemedia. At the time (2005), TQS was supposed to be the primary broadcaster of French Olympic coverage. Now it seems clear that, even if TQS is going to have original Olympic programming and priority for the big-ticket events like hockey, the main network behind coverage in French is RDS.
TQS also has another problem: Unlike Radio-Canada (and to a lesser extent TVA), it doesn’t broadcast outside Quebec. So francophones outside Quebec who don’t get TQS or RDS on cable or satellite (let’s for the moment assume this is a nontrivial figure) are out of luck. On the plus side though, apparently a deal has been worked out to give cable users outside Quebec free access to RDS and TQS during the Games.
Meanwhile, advertisers are noting the highly inflated rate card CTV is using to make up for the $150 million it spent to secure rights to the 2010 and 2012 Games.
At least that’s what NHL all-star ballot stuffers think. Because of rampant stuffing from Canadiens fans, and then counter-stuffing from Pittsburgh Penguins fans, the Eastern Conference starting lineup has four Canadiens players (Alex Kovalev, Andrei Markov, Carey Price and Mike Komisarek) and two Penguins players (Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin).
Though Habs and Penguins fans should be embarrassed by this, the fault lies in the National Hockey League, which setup a system of unverified voting for its all-star lineup and even encouraged people to vote as many times as they wanted.
Maybe it’s time to realize that online voting isn’t a proper way to poll the public on anything.
For those who need a refresher, the Canadiens rule suck rule really suck suck rule need to help their goalie are OK disappoint are an absolute embarrassment WILL WIN THE STANLEY CUP! suck
Herb Zurkowsky: Don't mess with him
As everyone’s eyes were focused on the Grey Cup this weekend, the Canadian Football Hall of Fame honoured Gazette CFL writer extraordinaire Herb Zurkowsky by including him in its illustrious group. (The story is penned by a Canwest writer only because no Gazette sports reporter could write one without referring to their colleague as “Sunshine Zeke”.)
Mind you, next to story-that-writes-itself Tony Proudfoot, who was also inducted, Herb took a back seat in non-Canwest stories about the inductions (where such stories even existed at all).
But the honour was absolutely deserved. Like his compatriot on the hockey side Pat Hickey, Zurkowsky works like crazy churning out copy on a daily basis (and in many cases, two or three stories a day). But while there are hockey games every couple of days, there’s only one game a week for the Alouettes, so Zurkowsky has to dig deep to find stuff to write about. That usually comes in the form of feature stories about the individual players.
But what I like more about Zeke Herbowsky is that he’s not afraid to be a troublemaker. The players regularly get pissed off at him. General manager Jim Popp, who Zurkowsky heavily criticized last year when he was head coach, refuses to talk to him. And yet, Zurkowsky always has the scoop on the team, knows what management is thinking and what the players are doing. His access to the team, even having alienated the GM, is the envy of whoever else is left covering CFL football in Montreal.
Don’t worry though, Zurkowsky isn’t letting the award getting to his head. He’s not being a diva or anything (I’m kidding, of course – besides, he has some backup there).
Besides, his novels are long enough as they are. Last thing we need is him thinking he’s some sort of reporter superstar and start filing 1,500-word articles.
The Score, that sports channel nobody gets because it doesn’t show anything, has launched what it calls the “thescore.com Sports Federation”, a network of independent sports blogs for the various Canadian NHL teams, the Jays and Raptors:
Toronto’s Score Media Inc. has launched theScore.com Sports Federation, connecting together a network of independent sports websites, and empowering them to reach a larger audience – with the help and support of a national multi-platform sports network.
Here are the blogs they list, not one of which (except maybe CISblog) I’d heard of before today:
Now, I don’t follow non-Montreal sports that closely, so I’m not in a position to judge most of these, but is Lions in Winter really the best Habs blog out there? Better than Fanatique, Habs Inside/Out or François Gagnon?
Yes, my three examples are blogs backed by Big Media, but that’s kind of the point. Without the access and resources of big media (whether conventional big-city newspapers like The Gazette or La Presse, or hip new media like Branchez-Vous), all you have is some guy talking out of his ass (with all due respect to my fellow ass-talkers).
Small, part-time do-it-for-the-fun sports blogs are much more likely to be successful covering niches that big media ignore: university sports, junior leagues, soccer/golf/tennis, etc. The audience is smaller, but it’s also much less fragmented.
UPDATE: Getting some awesome linkhate from Drunk Jays Fans and RaptorBlog, who I guess dilligently check their incoming links. I must admit, calling me “Guy Faguette” is a rock-solid argument and really shows me how much I erred in suggesting these blogs might not be the most professional.
Anyone else find it funny that the Montreal Juniors have both a Layton and a Dion on the team?
Last night, Layton (the highest-scoring player on the team) scored three goals, while Dion scored one and got a penalty.
It’s amazing how many people will write songs about their local sports team. I listed some of them during the playoffs last season, though I’m sure half of those links have since gone dead. Many of the songs are professionally produced, and feature catchy music, inspiring lyrics and on-key singing. Or they’re just funny.
The following is none of those things:
Sorry.