Bell out of MLSE, Rogers will own 75%

[ARGO57]

Some food for thought in this article.

https://3downnation.com/2024/09/19/futu ... p-of-mlse/

[IssuesMcgee]

Man that few years when we didn't have to worry about the future of the Argos was awesome, eh guys?

[Scooter McCray]

Man that few years when we didn't have to worry about the future of the Argos was awesome, eh guys?

You stopped worrying? Good for you. I could never quite get there. Attention was put on the field to field better teams, but that happened only because of the hard work of the player ops people and Pinball and the coaches and players themselves.
But there has never been any kind of attention towards business management/planning/marketing etc
That lack of commitment over many years now has left us with the underlying anxiety we all still have regarding our team and league.
I hope someone at Rogers can see some potential in the team and league rather than outright contempt and hatred for them. Their past treatment of the team and league does not provide a great precedent unfortunately. And that's all we have to go on for now.

[ArgoRavi]

Some food for thought in this article.

https://3downnation.com/2024/09/19/futu ... p-of-mlse/

This part is concerning:

"The Argonauts are still a competent team on the field but recently lost two key personnel staff in Alex Russell and Vince Magri, who fled for the Ottawa Redblacks and Buffalo Bills, respectively. There are also murmurings about further changes to the team’s ever-shrinking personnel department currently taking place but that’s a story for a different day."

[ARGO57]

Some food for thought in this article.

https://3downnation.com/2024/09/19/futu ... p-of-mlse/

This part is concerning:

"The Argonauts are still a competent team on the field but recently lost two key personnel staff in Alex Russell and Vince Magri, who fled for the Ottawa Redblacks and Buffalo Bills, respectively. There are also murmurings about further changes to the team’s ever-shrinking personnel department currently taking place but that’s a story for a different day."

That caught my attention as well Ravi.
In the last few seasons we as fans have become accustomed to the Argos having an excellent player ops department, hopefully ownership doesn’t decide to operate on the cheap as that strategy will undoubtedly adversely affect the on field product.

[Scooter McCray]

The Argos don't need to be an albatross around anyone's neck. MLSE / Rogers owning this team could do one simple thing and not have the Argos be any kind of financial burden to them.
Require Maple Leaf season ticket holders acquire a pair of season tickets to the Argos at $35 each or $70 per pair. That's it. No work required. That would ensure a sellout, maximize gate plus TV money and you would have $15 Million coming in to cover your operating costs. If they wanted to make money they charge more.
That equates to a corporate season ticket holder of the Leafs paying $630 per pair extra a year on top of the tens of thousands they are paying for the season seats - its a service fee.
My preference is they build a proper fanbase through traditional means, but if they are feeling lazy and don't want to - that is all they would need to do. They could have been doing this from the get go, and didn't.
This is how they created a Raptor fanbase initially as well. It was a requirement to buy Raptor season seats when you bought your Maple Leaf season seats.
The only question is Do They Want to do This? They haven't up to now.
It is real easy, simple, costs them nothing and ensures they cover all of their costs associated with the team. If they are greedy they can charge a little more, certainly for playoffs. And they can always grab a Grey Cup as often as they like and make some additional profit.
The only reason they would not do any of this, is they are intentional in seeing the demise of the Argos and the CFL. But to what end? As many have pointed out - getting an NFL team here will not be quick, will not be easy, will not be cheap, and probably is very low down on the NFL's priorities and could undermine their acquisition of a future team if they intentionally kill football in this country.

[shayman]

Require Maple Leaf season ticket holders acquire a pair of season tickets to the Argos at $35 each or $70 per pair. That's it. No work required.

Geez, I dunno. There's gotta be a better solution than forcing uninterested people to buy tickets.

On the other hand, nothing anybody has tried in the past 30 years has actually worked either.

[OV Argo]

IF this is true - that Raptors season tix had to be bought by Leafs season tix buyers back at the time (?) - then why didn't MLSE just pull the same stunt when they bought the Argos ?

I would have an obvious answer to that, but just wanted to know if the forced Raptors' tix thing was true ?

[paulwoods13]

A building full of empty seats belonging to people who were forced to buy them but don't want to use them -- which, let's be honest, is what would happen with most of these "buyers" -- is not a recipe for success IMO.

[Scooter McCray]

Just to be clear. That is not how I would want to operate my team. I want to build up a fanbase the old fashioned way. But this organization did do that in the past with the Raptors back in the day. Would there be alot of empty seats - probably, but I am saying you only do that for now with the upper deck on the East side which they never open in the first place - 10,000 seats I am guessing. The team already has enough organic natural demand to fill up the lower bowl now more often than not.