Concerns over seating at new Mosaic Stadium

Even though there appears to be more room, somehow there’s still a seating problem. Go figure. / Brett Nielsen

Unhappy Rider fans becoming vocal

Some Rider fans are getting a little antsy about seating come the 2017 season. With concerns that the number of seats is going to decrease, and season tickets are going to increase in price, people are trying to learn what they can about how to prepare themselves. The Roughriders fan forum at riderfans.com provided a lot of insight into how people were feeling about the upcoming seat shuffle. Many were concerned about how they would be seated and if they would be capable of affording their new placement.

Riderfans user “Mr. Furious” helped clear up some confusion.

“The next steps is [sic] to meet with people based on seniority and get their change request. They are holding back five per cent of seats in each section to accommodate some moves and then are basically going to be brokering deals between season ticket holders.”

If what “Mr. Furious” says is true, this means that there will be opportunities for season ticket holders to move out of more expensive seats for places more affordable and similarly allow people to move into those pricier seats that were just abandoned.

The website for the new stadium also helped with clearing up pricing concerns and worries.

“Four of six Season Ticket pricing tiers will increase by three per cent or less” and that “The highest priced (Tier 1) Season Ticket will see a 10 per cent increase based on Early Bird pricing”.

Not all of it was bad news, though; the lowest priced seats will be seeing a “decrease by seven per cent from current Mosaic Stadium.” As it stands, the number of seats in both Mosaic Fields is fairly comparable, both sitting at about 33,000. The new Mosaic website does say that the seating number can be increased to 40,000 with temporary seating though.

There were also concerns that youth and senior pricing would disappear but, fortunately, the Mosaic website also cleared up this issue and confirmed that there would still indeed be special pricing for the young and old.

Some are upset and confused with the new seat allocations and very clearly made their concerns heard. One user, by the name of “GM,” after being made aware that some of the less premium seats have better sight lines and cost less, stated “Put me up on a crane on Elphinstone at center field, before corner or end zone seats”.

Overall, the move to the new stadium brings a lot of growing pains. The whole business of reshuffling season ticket holders is expected to take the entire 2016 season in order to accommodate everyone. Other concerns were also raised about the lack of a roof on the building, the increase in property taxes that paid for the stadium, and any other gripe a Saskatchewanian would have. The new stadium is very much a hot topic right now, and whether one is a season ticket holder or not doesn’t seem to change the fact that it is on their mind.

Amidst all the speculation and information gathering, a user by the name of “firetomb” seemed to have their priorities straight.

“What, how come the beer prices weren’t released lol.”