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Toronto: 16,734, ****.

Hamilton: 22,287, 22,407, 22,407, 22,921.

Ottawa: 23,453, 20,426, 21,536.

Montreal: 18,673, 16,137.

In Edmonton there definitely has been the economy and especially a weather factor involved.

“With the first two games weather was just a huge factor. The week leading up to both game days resulted in no pre-game ticket sales at all. For the second game we had that monsoon with 100 millimetres of rain leading up to the game,” said Johnson.

There were far fewer actually there than announced as the number of empty season ticket holder seats revealed. That appeared to be the same situation with last weekend’s game in Calgary against the Argos in a post-Stampede date when a significant number of the citizens traditionally head out of town.

In Alberta with the pipeline problem and other political issues, there’s no double about the economy.

“The $22 ticket, for sure, was trying to hit that. We heard from people who felt that our games may not be affordable,” she said.

The Eskimos are a frustrating organization in that they can produce the most ballistic Grey Cup hosting in history in November and go back to being almost dysfunctional by May.

Despite not having a president or CEO to replace the departed Len Rhodes, the Eskimos decided to find a fix the tix situation before the new person was hired.

While they’ve waited for the new CEO to be hired, the employees and the board have been combining to make management decisions.

“Until the new president and CEO steps in and puts his branding and visioning on it, the executive management team has been working closely with our board members,” said Johnson.

“We’ve been looking at doing something like this for a while but to be honest we were looking at 2020. After the attendance the first two games, we asked ourselves ‘Why wait for 2020 to pull the trigger?’ It was really 2020 planning we decided to pull forward to this year.”