Why Are We Getting Less At Lansdowne? PATTON
Why are we paying big bucks for a facility at Lansdowne that’s less than we have now?
A Less Than Product at a More Than Price
Mike Patton is the former communications director for Mayor Larry O’Brien and a Conservative activist.
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– The Bulldog – News Feed Enter 
Don’t forget, there is no urgency to replace. The engineering reports gave it 20 years until something had to be done. Maintenance has been carried out by the one benefiting from the deal, OSEG. Many question: is less maintenance being done that is needed to keep it going?
If you look at the average number of seats sold for the Ottawa women’s professional hockey team, it exceeds the number of seats that will be available at Lansdowne bybnearly 50%. It probably makes the team unviable if they stay at Lansdowne. Essentially Lansdowne 2.0 drives the team out of Ottawa unless they are allowed to use the Canadian Tire center.
Let’s assume there’s only so many dollars in the Ottawa market for hockey and so many fans willing to pay the ticket price to see games in person. The Sens have been getting a portion of that and so have the 67’s. Have the 67’s looked over their shoulders and realised that some of the hockey dollars and fans in seats that the PWHL will attract will come at their expense?
Maybe the boys at OSEG want to keep their part of the pie and one way to do that is to control how much pie someone else gets. By removing thousands of seats, the arena still serves the 67’s well but limits the potential audience and income of the PWHL team.
If this results in the women moving to the Canadian Tire Centre, there will potentially be huge problems generating the revenues to fund Lansdowne 2.0. That, of course, isn’t an OSEG problem but will be a City problem.