Argonauts relaunch gets reboot
League needs club back on track after slow year one in new home
During a recent town hall meeting for Argonauts season-ticket holders, a fan asked club management when they planned to make BMO Field their home, and not just a place to play.
Where was the Argos signage, and the giant “A” painted at midfield? And where were the championship banners?
Team president Michael Copeland assured everyone present that banners honouring the club’s 16 Grey Cup wins would appear this season.
But when crowds will show up at the Argos’ new home is a critical issue with implications for the entire Canadian Football League.
The Argos are the CFL’s oldest club and occupy its biggest market, home to both potential fans and corporate support. But four seasons without a playoff win have led to fan apathy that shrinks the entire league’s footprint.
Last season’s league-wide attendance averaged 24,692, compared with just 16,380 in Toronto. Factor out the Argos and the figure jumps to 25,730.
The Argos enter their second season at BMO cognizant that overcoming inertia at home could restore relevance and boost business for the whole CFL.
“This is a rebuild; there’s no other way to put it,” Copeland says. “The health of all our franchises is important in a nineteam league. Everybody is aware of it and has been for quite some time.”
The CFL isn’t alone in trying to convert a major-market team’s glorious history into sustained ticket sales. New York Yankees attendance is down even though the iconic club entered this weekend leading the American League East. While the Bronx Bombers cite high ticket and luxury-suite prices, they also acknowledge that they’ve struggled to solve millennials’ buying habits and market their product accordingly.
“Baseball, I think, has somewhat struggled with the millennial problem,” Yankees executive Hal Steinbrenner told the New York Times. “We recognized in looking at our fan base, we recognized in looking at our (television) viewers, that that age group is not what it could be and not what it should be.”
MLB’s revenue-sharing program spreads contributions among 30 teams, mitigating damage when big earners such as the Yankees have a slow year. But with just nine teams, the CFL feels a single team’s struggles more acutely. If the Argos had averaged 20,000 fans at BMO last season the league average would have jumped by 402 spectators per game. Attracting 22,000 per game would have pushed the overall average from 24,692 to 25,316.
The league realizes the Argos, who lost 13 of 18 games last year, can correct that by winning more often.
“In a nine-team league with a fourteam East Division, it doesn’t do anyone any good for games to become meaningless,” says CFL board chairman Jim Lawson. “Everybody is pulling for the Argos. Everybody wants some parity.”
Boosting attendance remains an uphill struggle for the Argos. Copeland says season-ticket sales trail last year’s pace, but adds that’s normal in post-Grey Cup years, as buyers who signed up mainly to get Cup tickets let their subscriptions lapse. Toronto hosted the Grey Cup last year, coinciding with the Argos’ move to BMO.
But as another town-hall attendee pointed out during the Q&A session, core season-ticket holders skew white and Anglo and middle-aged. A 2015 poll for the Star by Forum Research showed the Argos ranked last among local pro teams in popularity among 18- to 35-year-olds.
Copeland recognizes growing that base means making it younger and more diverse, and says the move to BMO Field was meant to address that issue. But a lacklustre 2016 dulled any buzz the club had generated by relocating to Liberty Village, and making the Argos relevant again remains this season’s challenge.
The club has hired a group sales co-ordinator and increased its marketing staff, hoping to target casual sports fans while engaging non-traditional football audiences.
“We want people to say, ‘I want to be a part of that brand. That reflects who I am,’ ” Copeland says.
The last time the Argos changed home fields, big crowds followed. In 1989, the team’s first year at the stadium then known as Sky Dome, the Argos averaged a league-best 35,069 at home games. Two seasons later, a team stacked with stars such as Mike Clemons and Raghib (Rocket) Ismail again led in attendance, drawing 36,304 fans on average to home games and winning the Grey Cup.
Back then, the Argos didn’t compete with Toronto FC and the Raptors for fan and sponsor support, points out former club president Brian Cooper. He also says Clemons, Ismail and later quarterback Doug Flutie did for the Argos what Jozy Altidore and Sebastian Giovinco are doing for TFC — boosting the franchise’s profile and value by driving on-field success.
“Without the Argos being relevant, it hurts (the CFL) and they need to step it up,” says Cooper, who now runs the sport and entertainment consultancy MKTG. “The best formula for becoming relevant: start winning. You’re going to have to spend some money … I would spend more money on players than I would on marketing, because once you start winning it all falls into place.”
Instead, the club overhauled its football operations this off-season, betting GM Jim Popp and head coach Marc Trestman can rejuvenate the on-field product. The pair combined for two Grey Cups in Montreal before Trestman left to coach the Chicago Bears in 2013.
In a four-team East Division that saw every club post a losing record last season, Copeland realizes a playoff berth — and the ticket sales that come with it — are only a few small improvements away.
“This isn’t an ‘if you build it, they will come’ situation,” Copeland says. “Now, it’s about execution.”