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Alouettes defend attendance figures

Former Montreal Alouettes president Larry Smith is denying the CFL team exaggerated its home attendance as a tactic to persuade governments to fund a stadium expansion.

MONTREAL — Former Montreal Alouettes president Larry Smith is denying the CFL team exaggerated its home attendance as a tactic to persuade governments to fund a stadium expansion.

Smith, who left the Alouettes following the 2010 season, was reacting to a report this week in Montreal La Presse that said many of the team’s announced sellouts in recent years actually fell short of capacity.

The newspaper quoted two unnamed team sources saying the club’s chances of securing public cash for its $29-million stadium expansion may have been damaged if the club announced anything less than a sellout.

Smith told The Canadian Press on Thursday that the allegation is “completely erroneous.”

“We didn’t have to — just check our revenues,” Smith, who now sits as a senator, replied when asked whether the team fudged attendance numbers during its streak of 105 consecutive sellouts.

“We sold the seats.”

The Quebec government paid $19.3 million for the project, the City of Montreal injected $4 million and team owner Robert Wetenhall added the rest. The overhaul of Percival Molson Stadium was completed before the start of the 2010 season.

The Alouettes’ impressive string of sellouts came to an end last week when the two-time defending Grey Cup champion’s regular-season home opener drew an announced crowd of 22,317, nearly 3,000 less than the stadium’s capacity of 25,012.

There was no attempt to hide unsold seats, as a large section of the northeast grandstand sat empty.

Smith insisted the Alouettes’ push for public funding in recent years was not based on attendance but rather on the fact the team had the smallest stadium in the CFL.

“(It had) nothing to do with how many seats we sold because we sold all our seats,” he said.

He said team revenues jumped in 2010, the first year Montreal played in its expanded stadium with about 5,000 more seats.

“Just take 5,000, multiply it by your average ticket price of about 50 bucks a seat, it comes out to $2.5 million (over the season),” he said. “Our ticket sales were $2.5 million higher than they were the previous year when we were sold out also.”

The report did not specify which games were not sold out or how many seats went unsold.

The newspaper also said spectators can spread out on the stadium’s benches — individual seats are only found in private boxes — making the bleachers appear to be full when that’s not the case.

Smith believes the team’s sellout run finally came to an end because of crippling traffic problems in Montreal, where road closures caused by crumbling bridges and highways have created chaos for motorists.

He also blamed the lower attendance at the home opener on the fact the game was scheduled at the start of the Canada Day long weekend, a holiday period he always avoided in the past because fewer people are in the city.

“I just never would allow playing football in Montreal on July 1st because it’s just a tough date to get people out,” Smith said.