Where have all the fans gone?

Sporting events have always been a family affair in my life. My dad took me to my first Edmonton Oilers game when I was just a few months old. My dad also wasted no time with his first grand daughter, who was also less than a year when she went to her first sporting event. My parents frequent the Manitoba Moose, The Winnipeg Gold Eyes, campaigned to save the Winnipeg Jets, and of course, are BIG Blue Bomber fans. My dad just recently bought my neice a Milt Stegall jersey, and she's only 2. My sisters and our husbands also patronize our local sports, but are all especially fans of the Bombers. My first brother-in-law, hubby's brother, is also a huge football, and Winnipeg Blue Bomber, fanatic. It's a great way to spend time as a family and share our mutual love of the game and our hometown team. I expect we are not the only family who is like this, and I suspect most people got their love of sports because it was a family interest. For our family, it's the way it has always been, and Bomber games were a nice family tradition.........until the last few years.
It started with a time a few years ago when my parents, just a couple sections over from my husband, BIL #1 and I, were sitting in front of some very rowdy individuals. My parents noticed they were bringing in their own alcohol and getting rip roaring drunk. They began to spill beer with every move they made and were spilling it on my parents. My parents, for the sake of the love of the game, put up with the, too often found, lewdness of their fellow fans but my dad drew the line at spilling beer all over my mom. He nicely ask that they refrain from doing so and all he got was a string of expletives and derogatory comments about his wife, as well as an invitation to take it outside. Of course my dad declined and just asked for a little respect, so that they weren't receiving a beer bath. They just got more incensed and for the rest of the game intentionally razzed my parents. We were too far over to notice and do anything to help either. As I remember it, dad did report it to security but I can't remember if they just took the alcohol away or if they just ignored dad's concern altogether, but what they should have done was kicked these guys out, not only for bringing in contraban, but because they were disturbing the people who were there just trying to enjoy the game, not to enjoy alcohol. That's right, they didn't even kick them out.
Unfortunately, it doesn't matter if you bring your own alcohol in or not, because you can get just as drunk by buying their booze, they seem to have no limits on how much they will sell to one person (unlike bars and other liquor-serving establishment who by law are required to stop selling to someone who appears intoxicated). And with the incidents piling up of drunk misconduct it's amazing that they just beef up security and not correlate that their lack of regulations on liquor might have something to do with drunk idiots. I mean, there was the drunk who ran out on the field a couple years ago and the Bomber players were more effective than security. Just a few months ago a man was trying to be helpful by cleaning up empty cups lying around, touched the wrong drunk's cup and was beat by this drunk and some drunk cohort within an inch of his life. Where was the beefed up security then? It's obviously not doing anything.
I don't understand why they think they have to cater to these intoxicated maniacs in order to keep butts in the seats. They should have full stands everytime by those assumptions, but they can't even fill the stands to a play off game. Do you know why? Because sports are a family affair. We want to bring our children, our grand children, our neices, nephews, our Little Brother or Sister, and instill in them a love for the game. We want to share our love of football with those we love. But would you bring your children to that type of environment? My husband won't even bring me to that type of environment, says he's too worried about my safety there. And so the love of the game is not being passed on to the next generation, or at least not in the same numbers. And they are losing real fans, and the next generations of fans, by trying to buy full seats with unlimited liquor. To those who say that is why the family fun zone is there, they have obviously not witnessed that it is not immune to 'un-family friendly' lewdness, and even if it was, it's such a small section compared to the percent of people coming who would want to be in a 'family fun zone' type atmosphere. The family is obviously not recognized as the reason for a continuing loyal fan base.
And so where have all the fans gone? Watching the game from the safety of their home, someone else's home, or a bar (yes, there are some who consider some bars more safe than the stadium). Watching on t.v. is just not the same, it loses some of the excitement, the passion, the exhileration. There is nothing that brings a city closer together than the bonding you can have with strangers just because you've shared hometown victory. But you can't really get that on your couch or even at a bar. But at least we won't end up in the hospital. Even though it makes Bomber fans look kinda like fairweather fans. Heck, we've had offers from our Saskatoon branch (former Winnipegers) to come and help fill our stands! It's sad when a city 1/3 our size can draw in spectators from 3 hours away, who will drive that distance and back every home game, and almost always have every seat full. It's even more sad that we have to choose to keep my neices safe as opposed to being able to share that kind of hometown loyalty with them.