A dive into Ottawa's attendance numbers show troubling results over the last five years
According to CBC, Thursday's attendance at the game between Ottawa and St. Louis marked the lowest number of people attending a game at Canadian Tire Centre in the last five seasons. Just 9,204 fans were at the game, just over half of the stadium's capacity of 17,000. Even more troubling is a dive into the numbers by CBC shows a steady decline in attendance over the last five years. As you can see by the graph below, created by the CBC, attendance has been steadily dropping since the 2014-15 season, from an average of just over 18,000 fans per game then, to under 15,000 last year (red represents a year Ottawa made the playoffs. Black represents a non-playoff year).
Another graph in the same article shows Ottawa ranked in the top five teams in the NHL for attendance in 2005-06, all the way down to the bottom five last season (again red represents a playoff year, while black represents years when the team didn't make the playoffs. In this case, the lower the number, the higher the ranking).
As for the number of sellouts at Canadian Tire Centre, Ottawa went from a high of 18 in 2015-16 to just two last season, representing a drop of 16 sellouts in only three seasons. That's even with Ottawa lowering capacity at the arena from 18,500 before the 2015-16 season to 17,000 before the 2017-18 season. Where the drop in numbers will end for the Senators is anyone's guess at this point.
Source: CBC Ottawa
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OCTOBRE 11 | 340 ANSWERS A dive into Ottawa's attendance numbers show troubling results over the last five years Do you believe Ottawa can turn its attendance numbers around under the current owner? | ||
| Yes | 130 | 38.2 % |
| No | 210 | 61.8 % |
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