Golfers out there might know that, when you buy a membership at a Club Link owned golf course in Canada, you can play for free at another Club Link owned golf club.
I know teams would have to agree, but, a season ticket holder to one one club (eg. Ticats) should be able to show their membership at another team’s home stadium (eg. Alouette) and get a free available seat for that game. No guarantee on where that seat is. Yes, that would help the Argos, but it would also help other teams too.
This idea will appeal to current fans and to younger fans and their families who go to school but may be somewhere else for the Summer. If you have ever read the book “What Would Google Do?”, you will get what I am saying.
The CFL has the advantage that it is a small league and a fan can enjoy the whole league, not just one team.
Maybe not a free seat but if you are a season ticket holder with another club then receive a 20% discount on available seats.
But Pricing is not what is keeping fans away, in Toronto, Ottawa, Edmonton, Montreal there are $20. -$30 seats available, that’s almost a giveaway. But fans are not buying them.
I like your Idea Humber. They would at least get some concession and parking money. It wouldn’t help us much out here on the Westcoast. If we were to go all that way we wouldn’t take the chance on a stand-by seat but I could see it helping Ed. and some eastern teams.
It’s not a bad idea to at least give discounts to season seat holders from other teams. But I’ll go one step further - that whole second tier section that you see completely empty at every Argo game at BMO? Just paper it with free tickets handed out at GTA schools. Get 5000 kids in there for free and give the place a bit more atmosphere. Guarantee concession sales would be through the roof, not to mention better optics for the viewers on TV and the kids might actually grow up to become paying customers and drag their other friends/ relatives out.
I agree in principle but I also know that there will be no shows amongst the school going crowd. In my high school days one of my teachers was selling tickets for minor league baseball. All my friends bought because it only cost a dollar. None of my friends went to the game. In my opinion it’s better to advertise in the schools that tickets for kids under a certain age are free when accompanied by an adult or arrange a field trip organized by the school.
I agree that just blanket ticket giveaways don’t always work so well. But I think the Argos (and other teams) could target players on high school and other youth teams for giveaways.
Make an event out of it and hold kick-pass-punt competitions involving players from two rival high schools, for example, with the winning school getting some sort of reward.
I’d like to see the Argos also have one UofT vs York night with the same ideas. Invite Blues and Lions players and cheerleaders to be seated prominently in the lower east stands and offer special rates for York or UofT students.
The Argos like every other CFL team employ marketing people to come up with ideas. Not sure how much more they can do.
They have done the free tickets for kids at Varsity stadium for a pre-season game last year, they have the cheap tickets available every year, you can buy the cheap tickets on-line and get a further discount of 10% on top of that.
They have the pre-game party at the Shipyard with $4 beers and $4 burgers, they have the $5 draft in the stadium.
They have tried the half time concerts with entertainers geared toward the young people. Bobble head nights, GC ring giveaways, T-shirt give aways. Plenty of ads on TV and the TTC. They have the Argo players in the schools promotion.
The Argos are lucky that they have the rich owners that have put up with the small crowds year after year.
People keep repeating the same thing "just give away tickets to young people and they will come back when they are older and buy tickets? - that doesn’t work, it’s not about the price of tickets. They can make the upper deck free, they can spend more money on marketing but it’s not working.
When the Argos played at the Rogers Centre the complaint was the stadium is too big and a move to BMO will accommodate all the fans and very few empty seats.
Now BMO is too big for the Argos.
Playing in front of 12k to 15k is the norm and more giveaways/freebies is not going to change anything.
Nothing wrong with BMO Field. Great place. But free tickets? Nope. Try standing at Bloor and Dufferin Subway station on game day and aim to hand out 200 of those cheap but effective Argos t-shirts and get people to come to the game and buy their own tickets. Or, York University. Or. Yonge and Sheppard. Or St. George. Or Eglinton West. Or Scarborough Town Centre. Each game day, aim to hand out 200 or so…heck…more if you have time to spare…of those t-shirts to people coming in and out of Subway. Free t-shirts. No free tickets.
Season is starting way to early, football is a fall sport, they should start the season games in July , Canada Day, then you would have more games in sept. Thus more fans .
You can watch games from the comfort of your own home for free.
They need to make the game experience as or more comfortable than being at home.
Take out some seats and make lounger sections. Need to move away from relying on gate admissions. Focus on offering good food and drink products as well as finding a way to increase merchandise sales.
Allowing players to self promote may go along way as well. No reason why some of the stars couldn’t set up jersey sales in their home towns etc.