Marketing ideas for Argos

[Argoboy83]

There are more cfl fans in the Hamilton area than Toronto now and they can share the stadium similar to ny jets and NY giants do in New Jersey. They would no longer have to live in the shadows of jays leafs tfc raptors... point being the fat lady has sung anyone who thinks mlse has good intentions and will run this team long term after tannbaums and Manning comments this year is fooling themselves.

[AngeloV]

There are more cfl fans in the Hamilton area than Toronto now and they can share the stadium similar to ny jets and NY giants do in New Jersey. They would no longer have to live in the shadows of jays leafs tfc raptors... point being the fat lady has sung anyone who thinks mlse has good intentions and will run this team long term after tannbaums and Manning comments this year is fooling themselves.

Why are pretty well all of your posts an effort to move the Argos out of BMO? First Lamport and now Hamilton. Sounds like a TFC troll on here. Do you still have your no Argos at BMO sign?

[OV Argo]

There are more cfl fans in the Hamilton area than Toronto now and they can share the stadium similar to ny jets and NY giants do in New Jersey. They would no longer have to live in the shadows of jays leafs tfc raptors... point being the fat lady has sung anyone who thinks mlse has good intentions and will run this team long term after tannbaums and Manning comments this year is fooling themselves.

Yeah, and the BC Lions were doomed with Braley owning the team ... ooops, a very rich, sharp, local and caring guy took over.

[Mocha]

"Home is where the heart is. It's also where we hurt people."

Heh, not bad.

The physicality of the game is another aspect I think the league should market more.

What does the CFL have that its competitors (MLB, MLS, NFL, NHL, NBA) don't?

1. Canadian content--ruleset, all franchises, roughly 40% of players, national champions every year. (Only NHL comes close in some of these measures)

2. Contact / Collision / Toughness -- this is as aspect the other summer sports, MLB and MLS, in particular are lacking.

3. Rivalries -- Most Canadians in CFL markets have friends, relatives, colleagues, etc. who live in at least one of the other CFL markets. This can make for a sense of rivalry that the league hasn't emphasized enough. Lysko wanted to market around that, but the direction was a bit too politcally incorrect. I think that marketing strategy should be revisited and updated to appeal to modern sentiments.

["Issues"Mcgee]

BMO Field is the best place for the Argos and moving them to Hamilton is absurd and would be a historic humiliation. Considering the City of Toronto is a cornerstone in the history of Canadian Football.

You know what would really help the Argos? If they didn't follow up every succesful season with a complete disaster.

[Scooter McCray]

Moving this team should be the last resort and not until a legitimate effort were made to build a fan base by ownership. If ownership is not willing to do that the league should operate the team. The league needs a team in Toronto. Given the efforts made by the other ownership and management groups for the other teams and the effort MLSE put into their other teams, the league must be very disappointed with MLSE.

[BATKINSON001]

Moving this team should be the last resort and not until a legitimate effort were made to build a fan base by ownership. If ownership is not willing to do that the league should operate the team. The league needs a team in Toronto. Given the efforts made by the other ownership and management groups for the other teams and the effort MLSE put into their other teams, the league must be very disappointed with MLSE.

I don't know about the league but we argos fans sure are disappointed with mlse

[ArgoRavi]

I don't know about the league but we argos fans sure are disappointed with mlse

Bill Manning and MLSE are too busy trying to prop up their league worst soccer team at the moment to concern themselves with the Argos. When is $13 million man Insigne ever going to play anyway?

[ArgoGabe22]

Bill Manning and MLSE are too busy trying to prop up their league worst soccer team at the moment to concern themselves with the Argos. When is $13 million man Insigne ever going to play anyway?

TFC has just signed three Italian players in total. I wonder if Manning ever thought of any creative way in getting TJ Jones signed? Or is he too busy orchestrating soccer transactions?

[gilthethrill]

TFC has just signed three Italian players in total. I wonder if Manning ever thought of any creative way in getting TJ Jones signed? Or is he too busy orchestrating soccer transactions?

The Argos have no President.

[Scooter McCray]

The Argos have no President.

Honestly, where does the reluctance to install a fulltime Argonauts President come from with MLSE? It's a simple question that needs to be asked of them. Manning clearly has other interests. The football team needs attention. And someone like Mike Clemons would pleasantly surprise them on driving enterprise value.

[bannedforlife]

Honestly, where does the reluctance to install a fulltime Argonauts President come from with MLSE? It's a simple question that needs to be asked of them.

That question has to be asked organically by the fan base. You certainly won't hear that from a complicit media. What the hell has happened to reporting when reporters are now in bed with corporations and government.

Don't look for MLSE to "fix" the Argos, that will have to be done by the remaining fans doing what they can do to get more people involved.

[Mocha]

That question has to be asked organically by the fan base. You certainly won't hear that from a complicit media. What the hell has happened to reporting when reporters are now in bed with corporations and government.

Don't look for MLSE to "fix" the Argos, that will have to be done by the remaining fans doing what they can do to get more people involved.

I'm curious as to what other teams, especially the successful ones, will have to say about it. If the Argos want those other teams to share their revenue with the Argos, then you'd think the teams would expect a certain level of effort from MLSE. And hiring a president for the club seems a basic step.

[OV Argo]

I'm curious as to what other teams, especially the successful ones, will have to say about it. If the Argos want those other teams to share their revenue with the Argos, then you'd think the teams would expect a certain level of effort from MLSE. And hiring a president for the club seems a basic step.

Too bad the other teams can't just vote clowns like MLSE off the island.

[bannedforlife]

I'm curious as to what other teams, especially the successful ones, will have to say about it. If the Argos want those other teams to share their revenue with the Argos, then you'd think the teams would expect a certain level of effort from MLSE. And hiring a president for the club seems a basic step.

Damn right they're pissed. Can you imagine Saskatchewan giving money to Toronto, outrageous. Frankly, if I had any morals and was part of the largest market in the country and accepting revenue sharing from the smallest, you would think you would be embarrassed by professional courtesy alone. At least Montreal and Vancouver are trying and are trending upward no matter how small so far.

It's terrible having to do this in an Argo thread. It's not the Argos or their still loyal fans who should have to hear this but the losers at MLSE. You knew what you were getting into. Tanenbaum going on about valuation, are you f'n crazy? A guy once told me it cost the same amount of money to make a good TV show as a bad one. So instead of losing however many millions a year, why not do what you have to, to make a small profit. One of your own guys years ago said the Argos could make a couple million a year profit but it wasn't enough for MLSE to buy the club at that time. Well you've got it now and your marketing geniuses are executing an epic fail with no public face or long term plan to make it better. And the worse part is I don't think they care if they let a nearly 150 year old institution die.

I would actually love it if they had someone at MLSE come on here and give me a blast and tell me how wrong I am, but I doubt if they care.

[bannedforlife]

I'm trying not to come across as naive in my posts (see above) but I will inject some anger over reason now. I get a lot of the Argo/MLSE issues but I also know diligent and focused work pays off, and having an actual face of leadership for the franchise can only help. If corporate giants like Bell and Rogers and their marketing and sales departments can keep ripping us off with insane utility costs, one would think they could figure out a way to sell 20k tickets in a market of 5/6 million, ten times a year. If they sold the CFL the same way they have the NFL on CTV (with the wider exposure) the Argos would be in much better shape. Pushing an American product over a Canadian one is unconscionable, you should be ashamed. During war time they used to have a name for things like that.

[bannedforlife]

An old article with some still relevant ideas

Solving the Argos Attendance Woes
Brendan McGuire lastwordonsports.com July 7, 2017

The Canadian Football League’s struggles in Canada’s biggest city are nothing new, but the league and team continue to struggle for a solution. However, I’m willing to solve the question of how to make the CFL in Toronto work for everybody right now, and finish the Argos attendance issues for once and for all.

Solving the Argos Attendance Woes

Identifying the problem

We can start by identifying where this whole thing went wrong. The big smoke loved the Toronto Argonauts enough to hold a parade for them after losing the Grey Cup in the rain bowl of 1982, and then another when Bob O’Billovich and the Double Blue broke a thirty-one-year championship drought the very next season. The team stayed competitive throughout the eighties but by the end of 1988, brewing giant Carling O’Keefe began sudden bleeding red ink from the team’s budget. They sold the franchise to Harry Ornest to recoup the five million dollars they lost in the previous three seasons.

So what the heck happened? Was it on-field performance? Not at all – the Argos had just one losing season in the previous five. Was it the need for a dome to get inside from Lake Ontario’s elements raining over the old decrepit CNE stadium? Not a chance. The Argos attendance inside of the Skydome (now Rogers Centre, but who likes these corporate names?) sucked throughout their twenty-seven year climate-controlled stay. Lack of big name stars? Nope. Rocket Ismail, Pinball Clemons, Doug Flutie, Ricky Williams, and Ricky Ray are as big as it gets in this league, and they couldn’t fix it either.

The real answer is that the Toronto Blue Jays won their first American League East pennant in 1985 and challenged for a World Series berth that fall. They blew a three to one lead in the American League Championship Series to the eventual world champion Kansas City Royals, but that’s beside the point. Toronto got a taste of something really big league other than hockey (if the Maple Leafs even count). Along with the construction of the new Skydome and all of the attention it received from all over the world, the city’s attention shifted to bigger things than the adorable CFL and its two Roughrider teams.

Solution

So how does the Canadian Football League and Argo business department fix this? Throw money at it and hope stars and a winning team solves everything? Nope. Been there, done that. Failed miserably every time.

The first step is to take notice that North American football is not a global game. Its fan base is dominated by people who grew up in North America watching the game since their youth. It relies heavily on a rural audience. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that Toronto and all of Canada have become more diverse and urbanized in the thirty years since the Argos became the team the Big Smoke forgot about.

Football is also a complicated game. Start educating the public on what they’ll get for investing their time in our great game. Hire a person like Paul Beeston or Jeff Hunt to run the ship. If owner Larry Tanenbaum doesn’t want to be the guy on the street pumping up this organization, then find somebody who will. Current Argonauts President-CEO Michael Copeland is a competent executive when it comes to research and organizing the business, but he is not the guy to have on the street selling this thing to ordinary Joes.

It wasn’t hard to spot a familiar demographic at last November’s Grey Cup at BMO Field: grey-haired white men. This has to change. The Raptor game one night later was stocked aplenty with men and women, young and old, of all ethnicities. It was wonderful. This is what the Argos need.

Connect with Students and the Middle Class

A good start might be Argo university nights at local restaurants and pubs. Partner with these establishments’ managers and owners to bring people in on different nights of the week and talk about the Argos and Canadian football. Have players and coaches show up to explain the rules. Give tickets to some and encourage them to bring their friends and teach them about the game too.

A small business owner in Ottawa recently explained to me about how he never would have invested into the Ottawa Redblacks had it not been for chairman Jeff Hunt visiting him face to face and introducing him to the crowd. The Redblacks are a good template to follow for coming back from the dead. The Argos need their own Jeff Hunt on the ground, to connect with middle-class folks throughout the GTA and translate his or her love of the Toronto Argonauts in a way that would make John Candy proud. Paul Beeston’s passion for the Toronto Blue Jays re-ignited that brand. It could happen for the Toronto Argonauts too.

In a region with roughly six and a half million people, there are plenty of eyeballs who cannot afford Blue Jays, Leafs or Raptors tickets. The Argos need to hang their hat on families and the middle class. The Argos are fun, affordable—but not cheap, there’s a difference—entertainment. Emphasize that when you’re selling the team to these ordinary folks. Don’t try to be the NFL, or anything else you’re not.

League needs Toronto to Maintain TSN, Corporate Canada

The Argos are a viable brand in Toronto. The on-field product is superb and so is the in-game experience of outdoor BMO Field. And it’s vital for the CFL to make this work.

If you want to know what would happen to the league with the loss of Toronto, just ask legendary Montreal Expo owner Charles Bronfman about what happened to his business when MLB shut them out of the Toronto TV market. Corporate Canada lost interest in that whole thing real fast. The Expos didn’t make it, and the CFL cannot afford to take a hit like that.

The Argos need to survive and need to thrive. The Canadian Football League depends on it more than it’s depended on anything before.

["Issues"Mcgee]

I think one thing to watch for when giving away tickets is to not piss off the STH. It's like when the phone company gives new customers all the deals and the old loyal customers have to pay the old high rate. That's something they shouldn't have to complain about.

As an STH I wouldn't mind if they gave away single seats that would be empty otherwise.

I believe the greatest advertisement a football team could have is a full stadium with a good crowd.

[Argo57]

TFC has just signed three Italian players in total. I wonder if Manning ever thought of any creative way in getting TJ Jones signed? Or is he too busy orchestrating soccer transactions?

The TJ Jones saga falls on the leagues idiotic rules.

[gilthethrill]

The TJ Jones saga falls on the leagues idiotic rules.

I would bet the farm that Manning has no clue who TJ Jones is.