{"id":379653,"date":"2025-12-31T15:47:12","date_gmt":"2025-12-31T15:47:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/379653\/"},"modified":"2025-12-31T15:47:12","modified_gmt":"2025-12-31T15:47:12","slug":"year-in-review-1-saluting-bomber-nation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/379653\/","title":{"rendered":"Year in Review #1 | Saluting Bomber Nation"},"content":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s a scene that never gets old, whether it plays out in the scorching summer months or in the fall when the temperature drops to single digits.<\/p>\n

And the sights and sounds that come courtesy a raucous, sold-out crowd at Princess Auto Stadium is something absolutely no one in the Winnipeg Blue Bombers organization will ever take for granted.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s seeing the Rum Hut jumping once again, or fans bellowing along with PA announcer Bob McGregor \u2018and that\u2019s another Winnipeg FIRST DOWN!\u2019, to the cannon blasting and Captain Blue along with Buzz and Boomer doing their thing after every touchdown.<\/p>\n

What made the 2025 season so special \u2014 historic, even \u2014 was this: for the first time in franchise history every single regular-season game was played a capacity, sold-out crowd.<\/p>\n

And that included the 112th Grey Cup game, even without the home side participating and the arch-rival Saskatchewan Roughriders hoisting the storied trophy in celebration.<\/p>\n

That story \u2014 the sold-out season and a spectacular Grey Cup week and festival \u2014 comes in at #1 in our annual Top 5 Blue Bombers Year in Review series.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

\u201cThis has been built over the years by everyone in our building,\u201d said Blue Bombers President and CEO Wade Miller in an interview with bluebombers.com in October after the final regular season game had been declared a sellout. \u201cIt\u2019s a team accomplishment that is built by hard work all year by everyone in all departments \u2014 in fan services, to marketing, to the people who get the field ready, to all our volunteers. And our fans have been unbelievable in making game days such an experience.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe continue to build it, continue to refine it and make it better and our fans deliver. Now we\u2019re already focussed on how this organization can make it even better for 2026 and keep this party going.\u201d<\/p>\n

Now, to truly appreciate the significance of the story, we need to rewind to 2013 when the Blue Bombers had just posted a 3-15 season in their new building in south Winnipeg. Even with that, the team averaged just over 30,000 fans per game.<\/p>\n

Miller took the helm of the franchise in August of that year and quarterbacked the team through some initial struggles \u2014 along with a global pandemic \u2014 to now a place where the Blue Bombers franchise is one of the jewels in the Canadian Football League.<\/p>\n

His goal upon his first winter at the controls in 2014 \u2014 was to sell out every home game by 2025.<\/p>\n

Mission accomplished.<\/p>\n

The Blue Bombers played to a capacity of 32,343 for every home game this season and dating back to last year has now pushed its consecutive sell-out streak to 14. As well, the franchise has now led the CFL in attendance for a fourth straight season, with the numbers increasing by an average of over 6,000 since 2021 and following the league coming out of the lost 2020 season due to the COVID-19 pandemic.<\/p>\n

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The Blue Bombers have now played to more 30,000 crowds than any other team since 2018 with 33 \u2014 Saskatchewan is next with 21, followed by Edmonton with 11 and B.C. and Calgary at six each \u2014 understanding the stadium capacities in Ottawa, Montreal, Hamilton and Toronto are less than 30K.<\/p>\n

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A few things are working in concert here to have helped the numbers grow. During that span the team qualified for the playoffs for nine straight years \u2014 posting double-digit wins every season \u2014 and appeared in five consecutive Grey Cups from 2019-24, winning two titles.<\/p>\n

And get this: since 2017 the Blue Bombers are a remarkable 56-14 at home.<\/p>\n

Winning sells, absolutely. But so does the consistent party vibe at the stadium and the fan services from the club.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s amazing. It\u2019s one of those selling features we have for players and just how important our team, how important the Blue Bombers are to not only our fan base, but the community and the province. It\u2019s pretty cool,\u201d said Blue Bombers head coach Mike O\u2019Shea prior to the regular-season finale. \u201cI don\u2019t get to be up there with them, but you look around \u2014 and I\u2019ve said this numerous times \u2014 but you get that moment where you just pause and take in the atmosphere. They look like they\u2019re having a great time, and it\u2019s happened over and over and over again \u2014 not just this season, but other seasons when we\u2019ve sold out.<\/p>\n

\u201cTo sell out a whole season is a credit to them but also a credit to our salespeople, concessions, the Rum Hut looks like it\u2019s hopping and is the place to play to be. Wade\u2026 the way he\u2019s set up the stadium, the program he\u2019s built around it and the excellence, the amount of volunteers we have that help on a game day. All of that goes into a successful and positive experience for fans.<\/p>\n

\u201cThen the players play with a sense of urgency which makes the fans proud on a weekly basis,\u201d O\u2019Shea added. \u201cNo matter what the outcome, they play hard and over the last little while they\u2019ve managed to have some pretty damn good outcomes. The team and the fan base, we feed off each other, but the in-game experience can\u2019t be overlooked. All our staff and our volunteers do a damn good job of making the experience quite enjoyable.\u201d<\/p>\n

The encore came in mid-November when Princess Auto Stadium was again sold out for the 112th Grey Cup \u2014 two weeks after the Blue Bombers had been eliminated from the playoffs. That says something \u2014 it says a lot \u2014 about the fan base in this town who still kept their tickets to watch the biggest game on the CFL calendar.<\/p>\n

The game capped what many have called the greatest, if not one of the greatest, Grey Cup Festivals on record with one CFL executive telling bluebombers.com that week, \u2018this will be an incredibly tough act to follow.\u2019<\/p>\n

Events were jammed, whether it be the team parties, the Wawanesa Street Festival, the Canada Life Family Zone or the GMC Cheer Extravaganza. And the fifth Grey Cup held in this city delivered in so many ways, from a thrilling game between the Roughriders and Alouettes, to the outstanding entertainment wrapped around that from Our Lady Peace in the pre-game show, Catie St. Germain\u2019s national anthem, and MGK as the halftime act.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

The Blue Bombers Miller, who was honoured on Grey Cup Sunday with the Commissioner\u2019s Award \u2014 presented annually to \u2018an individual or group that has made an outstanding contribution to Canadian football\u2019 \u2014 offered this as the curtain closed on a spectacular event and after a season in which the fans delivered over and over again:<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m so proud of our team. Everyone rallied together and made this an unbelievable experience for every fan of the CFL and the entire province and city.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It\u2019s a scene that never gets old, whether it plays out in the scorching summer months or in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":379654,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[437],"tags":[49,48,521,522,520,82],"class_list":{"0":"post-379653","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-cfl","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-canadian-football-league","11":"tag-canadianfootballleague","12":"tag-cfl","13":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/379653","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=379653"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/379653\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/379654"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=379653"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=379653"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=379653"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}