CFL BOSS PUSHES FOR EFFICIENCY, LIKES THINKING BIG
Ambrosie working hard to change culture, busy rebuilding league’s business model
Randy Ambrosie is comfortable wearing golf shirts with a CFL logo on the pocket. But when he’s in CFL management meetings he’s tempted to wear a T-shirt that says, “Think BIG.”
“The biggest thing and hardest thing to change in anything is culture. And we’re trying to create a culture of thinking big and being fan-centric and a new way that you communicate,” said Ambrosie Wednesday.
It was back in Banff in January at the CFL Winter Meetings in that the commissioner stared out the windows of the Banff Springs Hotel and projected a vision of climbing mountains the league had never scaled before. Now it’s June. The earliest pre-season game in CFL history and only one ever played in the month of May drew 28,374 in Edmonton, Ambrosie arrived in the city where he won his only Grey Cup ring as a player back in 1993.
In town for Friday’s kickoff of Grey Cup ticket sales to the public as the organizing committee attempts to break the record of six days to a sellout set in 2010, Ambrosie will be almost as big of a focus this season starts as Johnny Manziel.
Commissioners are like quarterbacks. They get a year to carry a clipboard before you really start judging them. Ambrosie is now entering prime time. The former offensive lineman was following such a pathetic performance by his predecessor that he’d earned the right to present his platform those three days in Banff.
His main focus there was to convince the teams to examine their approaches to the business of the game and to allow him to attempt to lead the league into an era of managing their businesses more efficiently, being more transparent and user-friendly to both the fans and by extension the media.
Ambrosie said putting together a ticket-selling strategy was one of the most important things on his agenda.
Friday morning, Ambrosie will be the featured speaker at the Chamber of Commerce breakfast to kickoff the 2 p.m. start of general public ticket sales.
It’ll be something of a preseason “State of the Union” address similar to the one he’ll be required to deliver when he returns on Grey Cup week. It’s
We’re trying to create a culture of thinking big and being fan-centric and a new way that you communicate.
not going to be the usual “rah, rah” chamber of commerce fare.
“I’m going to tell them that most ‘State of the Unions’ talk about the good things. But to me that can create a ‘good is good enough’ mindset. I’m going to say we need to talk about ‘Where do we go from here?’ We need to stop thinking ‘We are as good as we can be’ and start thinking ‘How good can we be?’
“I could talk about sunshine and rainbows for 25 minutes and people would probably leave perfectly happy. But I want to talk about ‘Where do we go from here?’ ” So far, so good, he said. “We’re seeing a significant change. First of all, the off the field co-operation has been remarkable. The team presidents’ meetings have been really energized about how we can do more together. We brought in the head of the NBA team services group to our governors meetings and talked out getting past that compete-on-the-field against each other thing when it comes to business off the field. I think we’ve started that in a great way. I think we’re getting there. I couldn’t have asked for more out of these last five months.”
One example, he said, was thinking collectively and going to Apple Music and booking nine different bands to appear at all nine stadiums for halftime concerts during the year.
“It’s evolving. We’re just in the early days of a complete rebuilding of our business model.”
Edmonton, the team that used to pride itself in the Norm Kimball era of leading the league in every category off the field, he suggested, has taken first steps to adopting that philosophy again.
That may be an effect of timing involving the 106th Grey Cup being here. Edmonton has always thought big when it comes to being a big event host. But what Ambrosie is trying to do is lead the teams out of thinking small time to thinking big day in and day out. And he said Edmonton board chairman Brad Sparrow has become a league leader as co-chairman of the Grey Cup organizing committee.
“Man they’re thinking big. This is not going to be your mom and pop’s Grey Cup. I’m telling people all across the country that this isn’t going to be like any other Grey Cup festival you’ve ever seen. I love the way Brad thinks that, other than Canada Day, the Grey Cup should be the biggest celebration of our nation that there is. Brad has become such a big supporter of thinking big.”
The Eskimos, by deciding to create a special “Opening Day” game to celebrate their 70th season in the league and 40th season in Commonwealth Stadium, have added $70,000 to the 50-50 payout and will have the bonus of the Manziel Factor for their June 22 home opener against Hamilton. The Eskimos could open with 40,000 here. But what about the other eight franchises?
It’ll be a study. Randy Ambrosie is a study.