How often does Abbotsford have a sex show cancelled one day, and virtually the next an announcement that Lingerie Football will be calling our Entertainment and Sport Centre home?
I would guess fans won’t care less who wins or loses ... it will be all about wardrobe malfunctions – and it appears from what I have seen in news photos of the players, scanty wardrobes at best.
Granted, since this is apparently a full-contact ‘sport,’ the gals will be wearing helmets, shoulder and knee pads. The rest of the uniform, however, leaves little to the imagination.
Thus I would suggest that the most popular seats when the girls play home games will be in the end zones, and whoever holds the concession for binocular rentals will likely be rolling in dough.
At traditional football games, the binocular boys usually concentrate on the cheerleaders, which brings up the question: If fully clad footballers have scantily clad cheerleaders, then what will the lingerie-attired players have in their cheering squad – business-suited men?
It will be very interesting to see what kind of attraction (aside from the obvious to the testosterone-fueled male) this sport will have in Abbotsford and on the Lower Mainland. Be quite an eye-opener if lingerie football outdraws the Heat hockey team in the number of paying fans.
Then again, if bums on the field put bums in seats, the community’s costs to operate and maintain the facility will go down, and that is the bottom line in the operation of this and all other civic facilities.
And that reason – money in the door – I suggest is why the Taboo Sex Show at Tradex was cancelled.
The organizers blamed/credited the protests of Gerda Peachey with their decision to cancel, but I think the reality was that they were denied a ‘walk-about’ liquor licence, which if granted would have increased their revenues.
Additionally, it would not surprise me that the number of ‘exhibitors’ at the show was insufficient, in today’s economy, to make the event financially viable.
Thus it wouldn’t surprise me if Ms. Peachey’s cited objections were merely used as a convenient excuse to lay blame rather than admit it didn’t make economic sense to hold the event if revenues were based only on attendance rather than the much more lucrative onsite sales.
I am neither an advocate nor an opponent of the show.
I believe in the old axiom of ‘live and let live,’ and if people want to attend such an event that is their choice.
It was not harmful to adults, and while it may have irritated some sensibilities, it is no more annoying in my mind than UFC fighting or monster truck shows.
For the record, I have never attended the Taboo show – at my age I’d only be window-shopping anyway, so why bother?
As for lingerie football, it will only be as prurient as one wants to make it.
A flick through almost any magazine, or department store catalogue for that matter, will display models wearing less attire.
And, while the notion of barely clad football players may be titillating, I have to believe it is not a sport long-lived and certainly not something to get your moral knickers in a knot over.
markrushton@abbynews.com