Snow doesn’t really stop the Saddledome crowd — an infographic study
By Bill Tran
5 years agoIt was technically still summer less than two weeks ago. The warning signs of winter were completely bypassed and its early arrival caught many Calgarians off guard. Of course, year-round snow in Calgary often seems inevitable, but the question remains: How does this affect the Calgary Flames?
In particular, how did it affect fans trying to watch the Flames? I was interested in how the harsh Alberta winter affected the home crowd. Is weather a big enough reason to stop people from making their way to the Saddledome, or is braving the cold just an inherent part of watching the game?
To see if there any correlation, I took reported attendance numbers from home games and plotted them with Calgary weather data — specifically daily temperatures and amount of snow on the ground — and combined it all into one big chart. Attendance data was obtained via hockey-reference and weather data from the Government of Canada’s historical weather database.
How-to:
- The chart details the attendance and weather for the 41 home games that the Flames played in 2017-18.
- Attendance is shown with red columns. Full capacity nights are represented by a darker hue, and less-than full nights by a lighter hue. The columns are scaled between a range of 17,000 to 19,289 attendees. Visiting opponents are also labelled above.
- Temperature is shown as the blue area plot, split into daily highs, averages, and lows for the respective game days. Steep changes in temperature likely come from a large span of time between games (or chinooks, of course).
- Lastly, the amount of snow on the ground is also shown by using snowflake markers for an additional layer of context.
- It is important to note the scaling for all three parameters are different, and should be read using their respective scales.
Combining all of this data gives a representative overview of the relationship between weather and crowd size. For the most part, the Saddledome drew strong numbers throughout the season, especially when comparing against the rest of the NHL. At least 18,000 people made their way to the Saddledome for 40 of 41 possible games; the lowest attended game of the season was the November game against the New Jersey Devils.
When the Flames played at home, the outside temperature was often frigid. In all but two games (played in early October), the temperature on game day either dipped below freezing at some point, or was below freezing for the entire day.
For a few games during the winter holidays, as well as during a stretch through February, the temperature was particularly cold, landing at or near season lows. However, these games actually had sellouts. Bundling up for the sake of watching hockey seems all too normal for the C of Red.
If temperature was not enough to convince fans into staying in the comfort of their own homes and watching the Flames on TV, did snow have any additional effect? As it turns out, probably not. There was snow on the ground for over 80% of the home games, often several centimetres’ worth. Again, during the winter holidays, when there was the largest amount of snow on the ground, strong attendance persisted.
If there’s any indication that the hockey market in Calgary is one of the strongest in the league, roughing it through the worst aspects of winter to still watch live hockey is as good an indication as any. Flames fans definitely don’t seem to mind the cold or the snow when there’s exciting hockey to be watched.
Worry about a cold winter all you want, but don’t bother worrying about the home crowd at the Saddledome, they’re doing just fine.
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