Pics of the Stade Moncton 2010

[RLeb]

Here is what the stadium looks like in it's format for the World Junior Track and Field Championships.

[Cool]

Thanks for the post. Looks really good. Too bad the weather hasn't been cooperating.

[RLeb]

Apparently 75,000 tickets were sold in the 5 first days of the competition.

A ticket is good for a half-day so that adds up to about 13,000 tickets per day. Those are pretty good numbers for track and field.

The 2008 World Juniors in Poland brought in roughly 9,000 a day according to the IAAF website.

I went on Thursday evening and it was actually really neat. There were 2, 3, sometimes even 4 events running simultaneously. At one point the Discus, Long jump, Pole Vault and some various sprints were running all at once... and a few minutes after the sprint there was a podium ceremony going on as well. It was all very well organised.

Shuttles were bringing people (fans and athletes) in and out of the Stadium every 30 minutes right till 11pm, and would go to both major shopping centres, the athletes took over all the residences at both U de Moncton and Mount Allison University in Sackville, and despite having a large section of Main Street (the city core) and the entire U de Moncton campus (the geographical centre of Moncton) blocked off to traffic, the rest of the city saw very little changes in traffic despite having 10,000 to 20,000 visitors + the regular tourist crowd. I was scared an event as complex as this would cripple the city, but it hasn't. It's been quite fun but also no inconveniences at all for the Monctonians going to work or whatnot. Very nice!

Bring on the CFL!!!

[Cool]

Good times. Nice to hear postive reviews. With ticket sales, hopefully it will be a revenue generator as well.

[RLeb]

The T&T and CFL said (can't remember exactly which article) that if the CFL games are sellouts, each game will pump roughly $4 million into the Moncton and surrounding economy. That means that if they have a 5-year deal, the tiny 17 million they spent on that stadium will be paid off with essentially a year to spare... not to mention the revenue generated from other sporting events that will happen with this new facility (For example, thanks to the new facility, it was announced about a month ago that Moncton was chosen to host the 2013 and 2014 Canadian Senior Track and Field Championships too.)

If the five CFL games go well, I suspect the Stadium will get a significant facelift after that, and could lead to more good stuff.

[hfxbomberfan]

Sounds good to me.

I would bet that there are serious developments going on behind the scenes in Moncton and New Brunswick to bring the CFL here within the next 10 years. If a business group wasn't involved, we wouldn't be getting a game a year for the next 5 years.

[iso_55]

What is the seating capacity right now?

[RLeb]

For the World Track and Field = 10,000 or 11,000 I believe

For the CFL game = 20,659

[hfxbomberfan]

For the World Track and Field = 10,000 or 11,000 I believe

For the CFL game = 20,659

SWEEEEEEEET ! ! !

I can't wait until the game on the 26th Sept. CIS brunch Tailgate and game on the 25th, party at the PumpHouse Brewery on evening of 25th, and then CFL Tailgate and game on 26th !

I'm gonna have some serious withdrawal symptoms on the morning of the 27th !

[alawishus]

Sounds good to me.

I would bet that there are serious developments going on behind the scenes in Moncton and New Brunswick to bring the CFL here within the next 10 years. If a business group wasn't involved, we wouldn't be getting a game a year for the next 5 years.

The way things are going in Hamilton, Moncton could be getting a CFL team next year. The Atlantic Tigers.

[RLeb]

Moncton was/is a railway and transportation hub... so I think the best name would be the "New Brunswick Express" For some reason I really dislike the "Atlantic" name. It should be either the city's name or province's name.

[hfxbomberfan]

Moncton was/is a railway and transportation hub... so I think the best name would be the "New Brunswick Express" For some reason I really dislike the "Atlantic" name. It should be either the city's name or province's name.

Ditto RLeb!

I've disliked that Atlantic Schooner's name since I first saw it. It's associated with past failure.

[RLeb]

Don't get me wrong, I like the Schooners name, but I think "Express" would be a better name for a New Brunswick-based team, thanks to the railroading heritage and the presence of the massive CN Rail Yard that employed nearly 1/3 of Moncton at one point. I think people around here would really relate to the name. Railroads and trains have been a way of life in NB for over 50 years.

The "Schooners" name would be better-suited for a Nova Scotia-based franchise since it was the home-province of the Bluenose fishing schooner which was the fastest race ship from the early-1920s to the mid-to-late 1930s.

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On a semi-related note, I did some homemade research to see just how many people were within a reasonable drive of both Moncton and Halifax.

I used google maps and looked at which counties were within 2 hours and 3 hours of both Moncton Stadium and Halifax Commons (just to centralise it a bit for Halifax) and this is what I found:

- Moncton has a population of 729,624 which are in counties under 2 hours according to google maps.
- Halifax has a population of 677,522 which are in counties under 2 hours according to google maps.

Of that population, only three counties (Nova Scotia's Cumberland, Colchester and Pictou counties) are overlap (within less than 2 hours drive of both), which totals 128,582.

If you split that half-way and give an equal population portion to each, you get:
- Moncton: 665,333 within 2 hours
- Halifax: 613,231 within 2 hours

Note: Two hours' drive is nothing for a maritimer. For example, my buddy is a paramedic and he drives 2 hours every morning to work. It is also very common for people in northern NB to drive down to Moncton repetitively every few weekends... we get a lot of business from them especially in summer and during holidays.

If there is only one team and overlap is not an issue, Moncton has 729,624 within two hours and 1,340,928 within three hours.