The Whitecaps and Lions are out-drawing the Canucks

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This week we begin a new project: Every weekend, I’ll put together a column pondering some of the issues going on in our local sports world …

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Two weeks in a row now, the Vancouver Whitecaps have packed in 26,000-plus into the confines of B.C. Place’s lower bowl.

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Jerseys are pretty much sold out.

Müller-mania has grabbed the local sports marketplace in a way we have not seen in some time.

There was the buzz the Canucks generated with their very fun 2024 Stanley Cup playoff run — but they flopped last year and seemed to have dropped so much of the momentum they had begun to build.

It does feel notable that not only have the Caps signed a true international star — Thomas Müller has the third-largest following among soccer players on Chinese social media, his own content team, and 15 million followers on Instagram — but these past two games have packed in crowds that are 33 per cent bigger than the largest hockey crowd pulled in last season, the 19,000-plus who showed up at Rogers Arena for the PWHL game in January between the Toronto Sceptres and the Montreal Victoire.

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The hot ticket to entertain friends and clients remains the Canucks, but if the Whitecaps keep these big crowds rolling through the rest of the regular season and into the playoffs, they could be on to something.

And the same goes for the Lions. In their five home games this season, only one has not surpassed the Canucks’ maximum capacity. And of course the Lions again had a smash hit to open the season, selling nearly 53,000 tickets to the home opener, which also featured a Snoop Dogg show.

Of course, that is literally a handful of home dates, compared to the 41 regular season games the Canucks put out there. In total attendance, the Canucks remain king. It’s still important to note how well the ball-teams are doing on a night-to-night basis. That surely means something about where sports fandom is in this market.

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People want to be entertained in this town, and the two main rivals to the Canucks have been putting on a pretty good show of late.

Rugger Time

Did you know Canada has the best group of rugby forwards in the world? Yes, Canada’s women’s squad have the most feared forward pack in the game right now.

And it’s the women’s edition of the Rugby World Cup kicking off this weekend.

Canada are ranked second in the world and that’s no accident — our women knocked off New Zealand in June, an all-time first for the women in red.

Talk about peaking at the right time.

The women’s program remains a mostly self-driven operation, with many players semi-professional at best, the organizing of funding a case of player power, backed by the disciplined organization of a coach (this time around Kevin Rouet).

In comparison, this World Cup’s host is England, and the England women’s squad is fully professional. This is all they do. They are a monumental target for the Canadians, but if you can beat New Zealand, you can beat anyone.

In 2014, a very plucky Canadian side made the final but ran into a brick English wall. Can they flip the story this time around?

It all gets going for Canada on Saturday against Fiji.

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The price we pay

A video from American sports journalist Joon Lee landed in front of me the other day. He has started highlighting how much more expensive it is becoming to be a sports fan.

From ticket prices through the roof to everything shifting to streaming services, fans are paying thousands of dollars to follow their passions — when it used to just be hundreds.

There is the obvious smacking of your wallet that’s a problem. But I was taken by his other argument: how to this point sports had been the last standing shared experience.

So many other elements of North American life have been shattered over the past three decades, and let’s be honest, few of those changes have led to greater social good. The loss of the commute isn’t missed by many, but it did create the opportunity for accidental encounters. Same goes for the linear era of television: our viewing overlapped well enough that we could talk to our friends about the same TV shows. When was the last time you had an in-depth exchange about a show, rather than a simple query around whether you’d seen Andor or The Bear yet?

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Kids walking or riding their bikes to school? We’ve allowed monster vehicles on the roads which has subliminally altered how many parents feel about letting their kids get to school on their own.

More and more, we are bowling alone, and that’s leading to immensely problematic examples of community breakdowns.

And now sports are getting shattered too. Leagues are looking to maximize every corner of revenue they can find, and that means how fans watch games at home. Think about the price increases we have seen in just the past few months to access the NHL or the English Premier League. Major League Baseball seems like the next target, given ESPN is taking over the long-standing, and well-enjoyed, MLB.tv service.

“It’s also just cracking the community we see around these teams,” Lee said earlier this summer of the knock-on effect of every league chasing every last dollar they can through streaming.

I’ll be writing more on this in the days to come.

pjohnston@postmedia.com

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