Depressing days for Ottawa fans

CFL Talk
21

Well, THAT was well thought out… :roll:

Aside from what I think should be obvious (that I did buy tickets and therefore you’re preaching to the wrong person), they (The Renegades) did sell a number of those tickets, but there were three things fundamentally wrong with the whole thing.

a) Those were sold AFTER regular season ticket holders were asked to renew. So someone who paid $400 for their tickets probably wasn’t crazy about sitting next to someone who paid a quarter of that. It crapped on the stongest supporters. You “reward” for renewing early was having someone pay a quarter of the price.

To the team’s credit, that finally sank in and the team promised to do something for the folks who renewed earlyer, but that never happened.

b) They said there’d be another one the following year. Dumb. Why would you pay upwards of $400 for something when you know it’ll be on sale for a quarter of that later?

Some people did take advantage of a Christmas sale anyway (2-1), to show the support that you know nothing about, but anyone trying to buy tickets from that point on couldn’t.

c) In a stadium the size of FC, it doesn’t matter how many $99 seasons tickets you sell, you’ll still lose all kinds of money.

Refer to the other thread about how Ottawa’s attendance of 18,000 was better than the rest of the East when those teams struggled, and on par with BC two years after they’d won the Cup. It’s got a lot of numbers though so you may want to have someone close by to help you understand it.

The bottom line is though that Ottawa fans have shown better attendance through far worse conditions than several other teams in the league.

And that our attempts to get involved have been ignored is not an opinion on my part, it’s a simple fact. Complicated for you maybe, but simple for most people.

My apologies to those who have had to read this a number of times now, but on the other hand, I have to read his kind of crap an awful lot too. :roll:

22

I agree with you CRFadmin, as much as someone who hasn’t been to Ottawa in 15 years can.

Perhaps a better strategy than the $99-season-ticket idea would be to cut ticket prices across the board? I doubt it would lose them more money (hell, it may even save them money) than their $99 idea.

Also, didn’t a good 6,000 people buy those tickets in a single day? I was thrilled to hear that news, for sure.

I commend you buying the expensive tickets nonetheless, to support the team … As we (should) all know, the people on these forums aren’t the ones who are at fault. And it’s also true that relatively speaking, attendance was not all that bad.

I can understand your gripe with the CFL/where you’re coming from a bit better, too. But I still suspect it’s a simple matter of nothing being finalized, and so nothing being available to report. These things do take time. When there is a team in the city, yes, there should be frequent updates - and there’s also more going on. But keep in mind that a) there’s still no team yet, and b) CFL news in the media, anywhere, is hard to come by between the months of November and May - it’s not Ottawa-specific.

It s-u-c-k-s (can we PLEASE get that word uncensored?!?) that you ended up with the Glieberidiots a second time - but my impression was they were the absolute last resort, otherwise the team would have been dead. In that case, it’s worth taking a chance. If you’re going to die anyway, why not give anything a try? No-one outside of the CFL office knows how much work was done to find different owners - it could have been completely exhaustive, but unfortunately with no results.

23

In fairness to the league, I believe that they prevented us from selling tickets because they knew the possibility of having to issue refunds was a pretty strong one. Fair enough.

My beef is more with the comments that Ottawa fans didn’t try. We did, we got told no. It’s that simple. Because it never saw the light of day, it’s assumed to not have been there and that is incorrect.

After the fact, we’ve tried to pass along feedback or ask for information. The person who responds best nowadays would prefer to not be named, so I’ll respect that, but I should single out Keith Pelley as one who tried to make contact and clear up some stuff. Most other people don’t bother to respond at all, even to acknowledge the message was received. I once got Alexis redmond’s (is that her name?) out-of-office alert two weeks after I wrote to her.

Yeah, seriously. What’s up with that? :?

I’m not really bothered by that. I recognize it for the Hail Mary throw that it was.

What bothered me at the time is that when the original owners took months to settle their affairs, all we ever heard was “Everything’s going to fine” when we could tell it wasn’t. They were asleep at the switch even though trouble was obvious.

What’s done is done, but the reason I brought it up a few days ago is to illustrate why, when the league now says “Don’t worry, we’ve got it covered”, I still don’t let out a sigh of relief. I’ve heard that story before, ya know?

24

A new article from The Sun from today:

D'Angelo Back In Hunt for CFL Club

OTTAWA -- Rumours continue to mount that there may be a resurrection of a Canadian Football League franchise soon in the nation's capital.

And Toronto's Frank D'Angelo is front and centre in the renewed effort to bring back CFL football to Ottawa.

It all started with a chance meeting between D'Angelo and Ottawa 67's owner Jeff Hunt.

The CFL currently is negotiating with only one group -- a primarily U.S.-based consortium headed by Bill Palmer -- but it appears those talks have slowed to a standstill.

A conversation between D'Angelo and Hunt came about last weekend, when the Toronto-bred food and beverage entrepreneur visited Ottawa to face pucks in a charity shootout at a 67's game.

Hunt admitted yesterday he could also see them becoming business partners one day.

"We got along really well ... I like the guy," Hunt said. "Yes, I think we could work together.

"We both wanted to be involved in the CFL and we were both disappointed when we didn't get our wish. Of course we talked about football ... how could we not?"

Hunt, who has an impeccable reputation in the local community, was later signed up to be the frontman for Golden Gate Capital Corporation. But when the founder of that Toronto financial services company took ill, that bid was discontinued and Hunt was left with a desire, but no backer.

D'Angelo was the first to express interest in reviving the Ottawa Renegades -- shortly after they were pronounced dead by the CFL in the 2006 off-season.

Shortly thereafter, the colourful D'Angelo was told by the league that it was going to concentrate its efforts solely on the Palmer group -- effectively snubbing the first person to step forward and volunteer help in the rescue attempt.

D'Angelo was beaming as he was approached by people in Ottawa's downtown last week who started chanting his name when he walked into a local pub.

Skeptics will say that the league steered away from D'Angelo because of this kind of flamboyant behaviour.

"Sometimes flamboyant is misunderstood," Hunt said. "I think there was a hypersensitivity in this city, as it pertains to football, because of the Lonie Glieberman legacy."

[url=http://torontosun.com/Sports/Football/2007/03/21/3797102-sun.html]http://torontosun.com/Sports/Football/2 ... 2-sun.html[/url]
25

The thing to do here, CRF, is to make it so the league office CANT ignore you.

26

I love it. It just amazes me that all the Ottawa “fans” seem to have all the answers and excuses as to why they don’t have a team. There is only one reason - NO ONE SHOWED UP. You can find all the underlining reasoning you’d like - it still doesn’t change the bottom line; and in the end, this is a business, and you (not you specifically) didn’t support it - so it left. Offering $99 season tickets is not “crapp[ing] on the strongest supporters” - its a desperate last ditch effort by your club, attempting to put people in seats. If they haden’t done that, you’d have even less at your games. Don’t blame the management for making a last ditch effort, blame your fans for putting management in a desperate position. This is a perfect example of Ottawa fans not taking responsibility for their situation. blame management.

ahw - gee… I suppose you’re right … other teams have been worse off, so it must be OK to not support your team … the league will bail you out. (again). THE ONUS IS ON THE FANS TO SUPPORT THE TEAM UNDER ANY AND ALL CIRCUMSTANCES … Not look for excuses as to why the league should bail them out; because other teams have been bailed out in the past. or worse, reasoning on why its OK to not show up … poor record, bad coaching, bad product, bad stadium … blah blah whine whine whine … SHOW UP.

Go back 2 years ago … and read my posts regarding this situation before it happened … i said exactly that … SHUT UP AND SHOW UP - you’ll lose your team otherwise… and Ottawa “fans” argued that it was better to NOT show up, and “SEND A MESSAGE” to management that things have to change … and guess who was right?

and that is the exact moment in time, in which i stopped caring whether the CFL bailed out Ottawa again. Its too bad for the 15,000 regulars … I dont have any pity for the other million that let it happen.

The league already rejected this D’Angelo clown … and you morons still want ANY owner - yet last time the league put in the only two whackjobs willing to own a team in that fan deficient town - they whined he was nuts and a bad owner; so they didnt show. You’re about to get another slice from the nut pie with this guy - i guarantee it. Funny how history repeats itself.

StatiK76
GO BOMBERS!!!

27

You misunderstand me. The $99 sale WAS well-received.

I was pointing out the flaws in it though. Even if the entire stadium (or the portion that had yet to buy tickets) bought those, the team would have still lost money. You can’t sell your tickets at $10 a game and succeed financially. And you certainly shouldn’t do it at the expense of your most supportive.

Papa Glieberman saw what a money sinkhole this thing had turned into and bailed.

That’s not what I said. I said that claims that Ottawa does not support its team are unfounded. They continued to have 18,000 plus in the stands even despite not having a competitive club since the late 70’s.

Very few teams could claim to have THAT much support if their fans had to deal with the drought that Ottawa has.

So basically I’m saying that the support is better than given credit for. Hamilton, Toronto, BC and Montreal have shown that they would not have had that kind of support. But Ottawa did.

28

I apologize if I have misunderstood. However, selling a $99 season ticket is better than selling zero season tickets. You don’t lose money by putting more people in the seats, regardless of the cost of the ticket.

Ottawa was challenging for first place in the east when they drew 17,000 fans. I would consider that competitive. As far as the history of s^cking … The Toronto Maple leafs have s^cked my entire life - they seem to still have support. (granted, hockey is a tough example in this case … but you dont stop supporting your team because they s^ck). 18,000 is not something to be proud of, under any circumstances.

StatiK76
GO BOMBERS!!!

29

Ottawa tried community ownership before and it didn't work. Mainly IMO because the City is too cheap and the Ontario government wouldn't give bail out guarantees like Sask and Manitoba do, probably because of there being three teams to have to bail out. lol
I know PM Harper, Finance Minister Flaherty and Peter McKay all like CFL football and would probably like to help somehow, but they would have to be careful as special interest group would be screaming from the rooftops if the CFL got any Federal money...if I understand it correctly a city like Ottawa or Halifax has to show some leadership and then the other levels of Government can assist especially concerning stadiums. IMO there is no will at the city government level to help get the ball rolling.

30

I know PM Harper, Finance Minister Flaherty and Peter McKay all like CFL football

Didn't know that DB. But yes, they have to be careful and really should be careful to be honest.

31

Is that right? I’ll send a couple of Jehovah’s witnesses to your house with that specific peice of advice then. Don’t give up, MAKE him convert!

I’m obviously kidding, and I don’t mean what I’m going to say next to sound insulting, but what you’re saying is not all that realistic. Before you slam my crap attitude, hear me out.

The initial report was that Glieberman and Smith were meeting with Wright to talk about how to divide costs. The league announced that the Renegades were on sale on March 20th and pulled the plug on April 9th. So we had just under three weeks to “prove ourselves” and we weren’t aware that it was going to be expected of us.

The ticket drive I mentioned earlier was “announced” on television (A-channel). No one knew it was going to be talked about, it was John Jenkins’ idea and he didn’t tell anyone until he got on TV. A number of us were at the station and afterwards we went to a local bar in agreement to participate and discussing the whole thing.

Tom Wright had been invited but declined to show up (for a reason I can’t recall), so we had no contact with him. No one from the league was present.

When we later tried to find out what the plan specifics were, someone at the Renegades office made us aware that the league had scuttled it.

Independently of all that, I started something with other fans by which we’d buy tickets and donate them to charities (kid-based stuff, like Boys and Girls Clubs, Bif Brothers, etc. Get some young fans into the stands). A number of fans in my little circle were interested, and we were going to go public with it (I wanted to give the fans that I didn’t know an opportunity to show their own support as well, or even interested businesses that would be negatively impacted by the loss).

I e-mailed Tom Wright, I believe Bob Young and I forget who else to let them know what I was up to, and what kind of numbers I’d already drummed up (without having gone public yet). There again, I never heard back from anyone. And I was facing a nasty possibility of taking money from people for which I’d have nothing to buy.

Maybe the whole thing sounds lame, I don’t know…but the point is that we were going to ask fans to put their money where their mouth is, and do a nice thing at the same time. We weren’t allowed to, and even if I could have produced mind-blowing numbers that the league simply could not refuse, I don’t know if three weeks would have been enough to pull it off.

I don’t pretend to be any kind of expert with these types of situations. I tried what I thought was a good idea at the time, under time constraints. You’re saying that we should have come up with a plan, in the space of three weeks, to convince the league BOG that they could offset the bulk of that 6 million dollar loss they were expecting. Far easier said than done.

32

Your first point is incorrect. You can still lose money. You’d lose LESS money if you sold more of those seats, but you’d still lose money.

Teams lose money now with ticket prices as they are. If the bulk of your seating is sold for under $10 a game, there’s no way you’d make money on it.

Your comparison with the Leafs is not accurate. I’m not a hockey fan, but I recall the Leafs making the playoffs not that long ago (because they had a series with Ottawa). They haven’t sucked your entire life. They may not have won a championship during you life time, but they haven’t sucked the whole time.

For a generation or two, Ottawa HAS sucked their entire lives. And you’re dreaming if you think ANY group of fans would support that for any length of time. It’s already been shown to not be the case for half the league, and the only reason I didn’t list the other ones is because I don’t have the numbers available. I can’t know, for example, how Edmonton fans would react to 25-year drought because they’d made the playoffs for 30+ years in a row.

33

It’s hard to say, because they say everything you want to hear, right? Someone that used to work for the team told me that the city claimed to charge them based on “cost recovery”, and it totalled $650,000 per year.

I’d be interested in comparing that to other deals around the league, if anyone knows those details. It seems high to me.

There was a new mayor elected last year and he’s said to be more sports-friendly. Some of us have contacted him in order to express support for a team and suggest renovations to the stadium. Especially with the soccer event coming this summer. The place is becoming an embarassment in some ways. The sound system is particularly lousy on the South side.

34

Well BC Place charges around $25,000 a day for a sports event or 15% of the gate which ever is greater.

http://www.bcplacestadium.com/pdfs/spectatorevent1.pdf

A crowd of 25,000 at $40 each generates $1 million and would pay $150,000 per game or $1.5 million a year for a 10 game season. Not sure how the concession is handled and the Lions might get a break for the number of games. Still seems to me that $650,000 a year or $65,000 per game is not out of line. Do not know who gets the concession revenue.

Did the Ottawa team use the field for practices? Did they have offices at the stadium?

I can not remmeber the exact details here in Regina, but I believe that the team pays nothing for rent until a certain number of spectators are reached. Plus they have offices and use the facilities throughout the year. So in comparision they get a good deal, but then again they are a community team.

35

Yes to both. I should have taken that into account.

36

Here it is, Sambo.