Now that the Cats know that they can't play at Mac this year, where will the team play? The Cats would like to keep the team as close to Hamilton so fans can continue to attend live games. I can understand this rationale, but with television and a new stadium I'm not sure if this is a potentially big problem getting fans to come back the following season. The Cats would also like to not be too financially burnt in 2013. Cat fans attending games will probably buy more high margin merchandise, both at games and around town.
However there's a tradeoff with locations that potentially might make it worth the Cats while to play. At last year's Moncton game the league made sure the Cats didn't lose out financially from playing a home game there. There's no Moncton game this year after two years of games, so I'm sure Moncton would like another game next year under similar terms. The Cats could play two games there early and late in the season so that the cost of extra seats added could be spread over two games. Not great for local Cat fans, but perhaps good for the Cats financially. Montreal would probably work as an opponent for one of the games.
The Labour Day Classic could be played at the Rogers Centre, however the Argos might want that as one of their home games. If it was a Cats game, I'm sure a decent crowd would show up, but booze and merchandise wise, I'm not sure how it would compare to Labour Day, which the Cats traditionally make a lot of money off of.
PEPS Stadium at Laval University is a possible venue for a one off game, with the Alouettes as the opponent. According to Wikipedia the largest attended game there was 19,500 and there was an exhibition game between the Als and the Renegades in 2003. Perhaps the consortium who runs Laval's football team could guarantee money like Moncton, although I wouldn't bet on it. The game could be a test run for interest in Quebec City for a future CFL team. I haven't heard many rumours about PEPS though.
That leaves the TD Waterhouse Stadium at Western in London. Wikipedia claims it can be expanded to 16,000. One assumes the Cats would like to get to at least 20,000. The Cats could run bus and ticket combos, individually and as part of season ticket packages for Hamiltonians. Hopefully local London area fans would come out too. Assigning the Rider game would probably help for boosting attendance too.
I would doubt Western would offer the incentives that Moncton would, however they and London probably wouldn't mind the publicity, especially the big television audiences the games would bring.
I think at least one Moncton game is a given. Western will probably host the majority, with the question of how many? Potentially it could be eight regular season games, or as few as five, if two games are in Moncton, the Cats host Labour Day in Toronto and a game in Quebec.
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