Argos a tough sell in Toronto and there’s not much they can do
Brutal schedule just another obstacle facing struggling CFL franchise
The off-season letter to fans is supposed to be all about hope and optimism and grand visions of sporting glory.
Give Toronto Argonauts general manager Jim Barker credit for at least giving it a shot. His missive, sent out this week, talked about returning players, new additions and all the hard work that the Argos coaching staff was putting in over the off-season to try to get the team back to the Grey Cup.
But it was also kind of grim. “This past year was very difficult for all of us,” Barker wrote in the second paragraph. “I can assure you that we have worked diligently to overcome what obstacles may lie ahead in the coming year.”
Obstacles, you say? Indeed there are obstacles. The Argonauts’ schedule for 2015, released on Monday, has to be on the short list of worst schedules ever handed to a professional sports franchise. It begins at the end of June with a home game at SMS Stadium, which unfortunately happens to be located in Fort McMurray, Alta., about a 36-hour drive from Toronto.
Fort Mac is only about fourand-half hours from Edmonton, though, which is helpful news for the Eskimos, who get to have this game as one of their away dates.
After the home date that’s a few thousand kilometres from home, the Argos embark on a four-game road trip to Saskatchewan, Calgary, B.C. and Hamilton, meaning the team will finally play an actual game at the Rogers Centre on Aug. 8, in Week 7. Week seven! And still we are not done with the weird stuff: The Argonauts are then home for one of the next three games, so heading into Week 12, on Sept. 11, they will have played two games at the Rogers Centre. It’s a disaster for anyone who has to sell tickets, and a particular problem for a team that is losing money and saw its attendance drop from an average of about 21,000 in 2013 to about 17,000 in 2014 — thanks in part to the team being sent on an odyssey away from their home stadium last year that lasted from Aug. 17 to Oct. 4.
How do you lure fans back when the season will be half over by the team they have a chance to come see a game?
Chris Rudge, the team’s chairman and chief executive, says the Argonauts were hopeful they would have a more balanced schedule, but have to take what Rogers, which owns the stadium and gives priority to its Toronto Blue Jays, gives them.
“It’s not what we like, but it is what it is,” Rudge said in an interview.
That the stadium is the host site in July for the opening and closing ceremonies of the Pan-Am Games also limited the available dates, but it is evident that no one with Rogers much cared if the Argos ended up screwed.
The Jays play zero games at home between July 3 and July 27, and the Pan-Am ceremonies are on July 10 and July 26. Even allowing for turnover time at the stadium, it sure seems like there are a lot of blank dates in there that could have hosted a football game and kept the Argos from being nomads for six weeks.
But the Argos are a team without leverage: Their lease, which expires in 2017, will not be renewed, as Rogers plans to bring natural grass to the stadium and is effectively kicking the Argos out so they won’t wreck it. Asked if Rogers had started giving his team lousy home dates after it decided that it no longer wanted the Argos as a tenant, Rudge is diplomatic in his answer. In terms of having a balanced schedule, he said, “there has been some fall off.” As I say: diplomatic. Rudge says the experience of the last couple of seasons only underscores how important it is for the long-term health of the franchise to have more control over its own stadium. But on that front, there remains a stalemate over which the Argonauts have no control.
Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment is in the process of expanding and upgrading BMO Field, home to Toronto FC, but has not committed to a future alteration that would allow football. There has been talk that it is waiting for $10-million in government funding before proceeding
with that phase of the changes. (This is itself a bit rich since one of MLSE’s teams just traded for Nathan Horton, who they will pay more than $5 million US a year to not play hockey.)
On another front, the Argos remain up for sale, which is a difficult place to be when entering a season with such a dreadful schedule.
There is hope that MLSE, which has considered buying the football team in the recent past, will
finally relent, purchase the team, alter the soccer stadium and solve everything in one happy press conference.
But the conglomerate’s interest in doing that remains unclear: Putting artificial turf back at BMO Field would cause a nearriot among MLSE’s soccer fans, and making a move that would greatly benefit the CFL appeals to only one half of its two majority owners: Bell, which through TSN owns the CFL’s broadcast rights.
The other half, Rogers, competes directly with those broadcasts.
The Argonauts, in other words, are stuck, and there is precious little they can do about it.
“I ask you to stand and fight with us as we overcome whatever challenges are in front of us,” Barker wrote in his letter to fans.
If it sounds a little like usagainst-the-world, you can’t blame the Argonauts for feeling that way.