CFL keeps focus other leagues have lost
Asuccessful business is usually very good at keeping its goals simple. Decide what your product or service is, find your customer base, make your product as good as possible and do all you can to keep your customer happy. Most companies which do that have a very good chance of being successful over the long haul.
The CFL is celebrating its 100th year of existence, and by many accounts is as healthy a league as it has ever been.
Our TV viewership numbers constantly rank us as TSN’s No. 1-rated program. Even in the midst of a World Series, CFL games from last week took the top two spots, with the Toronto-Saskatchewan game drawing more than a million viewers.
In these days of million-dollar athletes, strikes and lockouts, it seems many sports leagues have forgotten or lost touch with what their job really is: Keep your product top of the line, and do whatever is needed to keep your customer, in this case the fans, happy.
As profits in many sports have grown, so has the focus shifted to greed. Players and owners now seem less concerned with providing more for their fans than with fighting over who gets more of the pie.
In saying that, I’m not naive about the fact that sometimes hard negotiations must take place. What the CFL has figured out, though, is that it must never come at the expense of your fans.
Twice in my 12-year career we have been on the brink of either a lockout or strike, and both times we started the season on good faith without a new contract. Yes, a new contract needed to get done, and get done properly, but both the players and the owners understood that you don’t just stop your product. You never want to risk upsetting your customers.
Look at the 1994 Major League Baseball strike. The seven-month work stoppage resulted in an attendance drop the following year of just over 20 per cent. It took the majors 10 more seasons to rebuild their average attendance to pre-strike levels.
The NHL is in its fourth work stoppage in 20 years, and the NBA has had two in the past 13 years.
Regardless of the issues at stake, every time the owners or the players decide to halt play, they are reminding the fans that they are no longer the most important part of the equation. Each time you do that you are inviting them to look elsewhere for a product to fill that void.
I am proud to be a part of a league that seems to be on a continuous steady climb upwards.
Almost every team in our league is profitable, which is not a stat easily found in other leagues across North America. Our attendance is on the up, our TV viewership is through the roof, and even our merchandise sales have taken off.
The Saskatchewan Roughriders now rank third in Canada for merchandise sales by a professional sports team. That’s a stat that would have sounded like a pipe dream 15 years ago. So, how have we done it?
By focusing on what is really important, and keeping a great product affordable.
Always keeping the fans first no matter what issues must get resolved.
Making our players even more accessible so there will always be a real link from the fan to player.
Connecting our players to their communities with countless school programs, heavy charity involvement and lots of guest coaching at the amateur levels.
We live in a very competitive age. Every business is fighting hard for the same consumer dollar. The CFL is no different. We, like all other sports leagues, need our fans to survive.
However, unlike other leagues, both the players and the owners in the CFL have never forgotten that.
The CFL has survived and thrived for over a hundred years by understanding the simple principle of keeping your customers happy.
Our game is here for you to enjoy, and as always, you support us like no other. Here’s to another 100 great years of the CFL, a league that truly understands and does it right.
Angus Reid is a Lions centre who writes before each home game for The Province in Blitz!