With a mission to inform, empower, celebrate and advocate for British Columbia's current and aspiring business leaders, BCBusiness go behind the headlines and bring readers face to face with the key issues and people driving business in B.C.
Issue link: http://digital.canadawide.com/i/1505828
ADAM BLASBERG SEPTEMBER 2023 BCBUSINESS.CA 59 S P O R T S In the pages that follow, we look at how B.C.'s top sports franchises are faring at the box office. The first stop is BC Place, where the Lions' home opener once again proved popular. Keeping up the momentum for the rest of the season will be the hard part b y N A T H A N C A D D E L L T he excitement cascading out from Duane Vien- neau is hard to ignore. The president and chief operating officer of the BC Lions is practically yelling into his phone's mic as he details the many different initiatives and projects that the team has forthcoming this season. But there's something else mixed in with all that passion: the teensiest, tiniest trace of trepidation. It's early July, and the Lions' season has started much in the same way last year's did: a sold-out lower bowl at BC Place and a big win against the Edmonton Elks. The home opener—labelled the team's Concert Kickoff night—featured OneRepublic last year and LL Cool J this time around. Both events were, by all accounts, massive successes and representative of the overall excitement and enthusiasm being brought to the team by its new owner, local business figure Amar Doman. But the shine came off quickly last year. That OneRe- public game brought 34,082 people to 777 Pacific Boule- vard—the largest number posted by a CFL team in 2022. The next Lions' home game was two weeks later as BC hosted the Toronto Argonauts. With Victoria-born quar- terback Nathan Rourke (the closest thing the Lions have had to a homegrown star since Lui Passaglia) slinging it, the Lions stomped the Argos 44–3. Attendance wise, however, it wasn't so pretty: 15,500 fans made it to the game. For a stadium that has a capacity of over 50,000, that isn't exactly ideal. For the rest of the year, the story was similar. 17,603 for the Family Day game against Winnipeg. 16,155 against M A N E FOCUS