A WIND IN THEIR SAILS
New Argo GM ready to rock the boat
Michael Copeland is talking enthusiastically about being hated.
The new president and chief executive of the Toronto Argonauts is sitting across a table on the 43rd floor of a Bay Street office tower, and he is describing, with some relish, the prospects of becoming something like the New York Yankees of the Canadian Football League. The big city, the deep pockets, the perennial playoff appearances.
“We want every team in the league to hate our guts,” Copeland says. “That’s good for the league.”
Copeland, who spent 10 years in the front office at the CFL, is well aware of the sinkhole that the Argos had become. While the league flourished in many markets, in large part because of a broadcast deal with TSN of which Copeland was a major part, the Argonauts have become an afterthought in Toronto, hitting a low point in 2015 as they wandered the country in search of a stadium to host games and as outgoing owner David Braley paid for a marketing campaign that appeared mostly confined to word of mouth.
Copeland says that while fixing the Argos was always a priority at the league, where he was most recently president and chief operating officer, he came to realize that change in Toronto couldn’t really be driven from the outside. It had to come from within the team.
So, now he gets to try it himself. Copeland has the remarkable good fortune of having the Argos’ greatest problem — the need for a new stadium — solved before he even officially starts the job. The sale of the team to Bell Media and Larry Tanenbaum in the spring included a relocation from the cavernous Rogers Centre to BMO Field, the intimate waterfront stadium used primarily by Toronto FC.
The new facility, all involved insist, is the key reason for optimism that the Argonauts can be revived in this market where, even as they made the playoffs, they couldn’t crack 18,000 fans for a rare home date in November. Punted down the road to Hamilton while the Blue Jays went deep into the playoffs, the Argos couldn’t rouse 4,000 fans to make the hour-long drive amid a playoff push.
“The cards were stacked against you, operating in the Rogers Centre,” Copeland says, but he adds that moving to BMO Field only means that there is new opportunity for success: “Just opening the doors isn’t going to do it.”
And so, he says, the new owners and new management are going to do all they can to create a passion where one does not, presently, exist.
“We need to restore pride in the franchise, pride in the brand,” Copeland says. So, yes, there will be marketing, and lots of it. But he also says “the real key is redefining the game experience and what it means to go to an Argos game.”
It is probably with some annoyance that CFL fans elsewhere in the country read that Torontonians need some other lure to bring them to see the Argos beyond the fact that a football game is taking place, but in truth people couldn’t be persuaded to go to see the Buffalo Bills play at the Rogers Centre, either. If the Argos are to become a thing again, it is true that it will be the attraction of a full-on event that does it. Copeland says game days at BMO Field will have a major focus on what happens outside the stadium, where there will be something approximating a tailgating section even if it doesn’t include a boozy parking lot. He pictures a “village atmosphere,” he says, where there will be access to beer and food — affordable beer, even — and music and people throwing around footballs and hopefully not too many fights.
Copeland says the opportunity for a game-day party feel is there to attract fans in that large under-40 cohort who haven’t generally paid the Argonauts much attention.
That demographic does tend to include a lot of Toronto FC fans who, at present, resent the football team’s move to BMO Field because it threatens to chew up the playing surface. Copeland’s response to those worries: “Wait for the first TFC game that follows an Argo game to make any judgment. When you see that it is pristine as it’s always been, I think this issue will go away.”
He’s not worried, either, about questions that might arise about the fact that the Argos are now owned by the league’s official broadcaster, or that the CFL’s second-in-command became the guy running the team. Could you blame someone in the Prairies for wondering if the fix was in?
“If I’m in a position that people are saying the fix is in, then that likely means we’re winning which means I don’t care,” Copeland says. “Having people across the country, outside the GTA, hate the Argonauts is probably a good thing for us.”
It would definitely beat indifference.