for mikem: Bills in Toronto a FAILURE!

[anon49913191]

@"drummer_god"

The latest articles state they will not have to paper the skydome this year, as the tickets are 80% sold, yet a simple google search will show you many Rogers-owned radio stations are giving them away in contests.

Rogers has just figured out how to give away the tickets in less obvious manors than scalpers giving them away outside the skydome on gameday.

Acording to google searches, there are many different ways you can win bills tickets right now. :roll:

Yes they are “sold” to the various Rogers owned media outlets. So yes the tickets were paid for. But what they don’t want anyone to know is that the general public would have never bought those tickets on their own. So rogers buys them up (no profit there) and gives them away to fill the stadium…this is the definition of a resounding failure!

[anon49913191]

@"mikem"

@"drummer_god"

http://o.canada.com/2012/05/25/bills-in-toronto-extention-no-problem-for-cfl-argos/

Toronto has not yet embraced the Bills as their home team and it has resulted in the Bills’ “home? games at Rogers Centre feeling very much like neutral site games.
Sagging tickets sales have resulted in several of the games falling short of sellouts and being heavily papered with free tickets.
if the last five years are any indication, the CFL has nothing to worry about in the next five.

[url=http://slam.canoe.ca/Slam/Football/NFL/2012/12/03/20404516.html]http://slam.canoe.ca/Slam/Football/NFL/ ... 04516.html[/url]

The fifth Bills-in-Toronto game is “80-90%” sold, and there will be no papering this year to fill up the Rogers Centre.

That’s according to the game’s new executive director, Greg Albrecht.

[url=http://www.toromagazine.com/sports/egos-and-icons/4f2174c7-1220-40f4-f98a-32b3554f5d5b/NFL-in-Toronto-No-Fun-League/]http://www.toromagazine.com/sports/egos ... un-League/[/url]

With four games down and four to go, you’d be hard-pressed to call the Bills Toronto Series anything other than a business failure so far, one that may prove costly to this city’s long-term chances of hosting NFL football.
The streets around the stadium were lifeless in the lead-up to kickoff, the stands less than half full when the game got underway. Scalpers were offering deep discounts, up to half off face value in some cases. So much for spectacle. This had all the buzz of a lazy fly circling a pile of poop.

It all made a mockery of Phil Lind’s comments to the Fan 590 earlier that afternoon, with the Rogers vice-chairman claiming the Bills series was “working out very well … playing out almost exactly as we thought it would.?

I don’t think so, Phil. You guys overpaid for the series, overshot ticket prices by a huge margin, tried to force multi-game packs on prospective buyers and upset the few full-price customers you got by giving away thousands of freebies to make sure the 2008 series opener didn’t look as empty as this week’s affair. If that’s what you call going according to plan, I’d hate to see your idea of failure. The way I see it, all you’ve really succeeded in doing is coming up with something more distasteful than negative-option billing.

http://www.intelligencer.ca/2010/08/23/bills-flop

With ticket prices in the high hundreds and even thousands of dollars, the opening game in this five-year experiment was far from a sellout forcing organizers to fill the seats by handing out thousands of freebies. That didn’t impress the guys who actually dished out a mortgage payment to get into the game.

And nothing has really improved since.

The ticket pricing has had to be adjusted so fans can actually afford to go to these games. But they still can’t fill the stadium.

Rogers paid $87-million to get the Bills to Toronto and it isn’t going to come close to getting that much money back.

What was at first believed to be an easy money-maker for Rogers has become a financial nightmare.

This Bills in Toronto idea has to be considered a major failure. They haven’t even sold out the two regular season games that have been played.

80 to 90 Per Cent sold already? Isn’t that good?
When was the last time the Argos were 80 to 90 Per Cent sold out 2 weeks before the game???

If it’s 90% sold out now, that translates into 45,000 tickets sold with 2 weeks left . The average ticket is $150 times 45,000, so that means close to $7 MILLION dollars so far and probably $9 Million by game time. That is more revenue from tickets sales than the 70,000 in Buffalo.
The Bills aren’t even Toronto’s team and they are well out of a playoff spot.
The comments you posted above are from 2010 !!! what relevance has that to today?? If it’s a failure why did the Bills just renew the contract for another 5 years??

How is that a failure? Am I missing something? I don’t understand what you are trying to prove by pulling out old news and then somehow saying that 90% sold out is a failure?

Funny thing is when you read the story in the Sun, they are positive about 90% sold and “sales moving briskly”
You must be one of these the glass is 10% empty kind of guys. Would you then say the Argos are consistenly 20% FULL in the Rogers Centre…lol

[url=http://www.ottawasun.com/2012/12/03/bills-seahawks-game-in-toronto-80-90-sold]http://www.ottawasun.com/2012/12/03/bil ... 80-90-sold[/url]

Yes they are “sold” to the various Rogers owned media outlets. So yes the tickets were paid for. But what they don’t want anyone to know is that the general public would have never bought those tickets on their own. So Rogers buys them up (no profit there) and gives them away to fill the stadium…this is the definition of a resounding failure! Do you get it now mikem???

[Earl]

@"Xvys"

@"Earl"

It would be interesting to know what Roger Goodell thinks of the company apart from the fact they have a lot of money.

Interesting that Goddell hasn’t set foot in Toronto since they announced the series. He will come no closer than Buffalo and issue his press releases about the Toronto game from there. Goddell was front and centre for the NFL games in Mexico City and London, saying they were potential expansion sites. Not so in Toronto, which he has completely disassociated himself from…except for Rogers fat wallet, over-flowing from the suckers who grossly overpay for their wireless and cable services in Ontario.

And Mikem, when Rogers says there 80-90% sold (which is it?) does that mean they’ve actually received money for those tickets or were they “tickets distributed”…which is more the Rogers practice (and they could only find 40,000 takers so far?) or are they really telling the truth this time? :oops:

Interesting Xvys, well said and agree. Goodell isn’t going to step on Ralph Wilson due to respect for who he is and I get that totally.

[kasps]

So where is a owner for the Argo's? Everybody is so worried about the Bills. If it wasn't for a existing owner, the Argo's would have folded. This franchise is still not healthy and until somebody steps up to give a 8 team league 8 owners, not all is well. Hopefully the GC will help with fans coming back to support the Argo's.

[Massdestruction]

Rogers is advertising in the most embarrasing manner, "Your Buffalo Bills"?

How embarrassing particularly after such a great Grey Cup !

Now slagging Senator Braily?

[drummer_god]

@"kasps"

So where is a owner for the Argo’s? Everybody is so worried about the Bills. If it wasn’t for a existing owner, the Argo’s would have folded. This franchise is still not healthy and until somebody steps up to give a 8 team league 8 owners, not all is well. Hopefully the GC will help with fans coming back to support the Argo’s.

Why does it matter that brailey owns 2 teams, yet no one cares that1 guy owns a third of mls franchises? Or that, the nhl owns phoenix?, the commissioner of baseball owns the brewers?
Every league has ownership problems or less than ideal situations with ownerships.

[MulderS]

A guy who regularly posts on Argofans.com says he has insider knowledge that only about 24,000 tickets have been sold.

He's usually been spot on with his source during the season with Argo game tickets sold.

[deerkeeper]

Am I missing something. Since when did the former Skydome total football seating capacity suddenly become 45300?

[MulderS]

@"deerkeeper"

Am I missing something. Since when did the former Skydome total football seating capacity suddenly become 45300?

No idea
If you look at the seating map, they’ve even added seats in both endzones, looks like about 2000+ extra.

Is really they should be drawing somewhere around 56,000.

[tc23]

That's according to the game's new executive director, Greg Albrecht.

This guy is full of it. I heard yesterday from a reliable source that only around 24,000 have been sold and approximatley 10,000 have been given out to corporate sponsers.

[ArgoT]

@"geo365"

@"mikem"

@"drummer_god"

http://o.canada.com/2012/05/25/bills-in-toronto-extention-no-problem-for-cfl-argos/

Toronto has not yet embraced the Bills as their home team and it has resulted in the Bills’ “home? games at Rogers Centre feeling very much like neutral site games.
Sagging tickets sales have resulted in several of the games falling short of sellouts and being heavily papered with free tickets.
if the last five years are any indication, the CFL has nothing to worry about in the next five.

[url=http://slam.canoe.ca/Slam/Football/NFL/2012/12/03/20404516.html]http://slam.canoe.ca/Slam/Football/NFL/ ... 04516.html[/url]

The fifth Bills-in-Toronto game is “80-90%” sold, and there will be no papering this year to fill up the Rogers Centre.

That’s according to the game’s new executive director, Greg Albrecht.

[url=http://www.toromagazine.com/sports/egos-and-icons/4f2174c7-1220-40f4-f98a-32b3554f5d5b/NFL-in-Toronto-No-Fun-League/]http://www.toromagazine.com/sports/egos ... un-League/[/url]

With four games down and four to go, you’d be hard-pressed to call the Bills Toronto Series anything other than a business failure so far, one that may prove costly to this city’s long-term chances of hosting NFL football.
The streets around the stadium were lifeless in the lead-up to kickoff, the stands less than half full when the game got underway. Scalpers were offering deep discounts, up to half off face value in some cases. So much for spectacle. This had all the buzz of a lazy fly circling a pile of poop.

It all made a mockery of Phil Lind’s comments to the Fan 590 earlier that afternoon, with the Rogers vice-chairman claiming the Bills series was “working out very well … playing out almost exactly as we thought it would.?

I don’t think so, Phil. You guys overpaid for the series, overshot ticket prices by a huge margin, tried to force multi-game packs on prospective buyers and upset the few full-price customers you got by giving away thousands of freebies to make sure the 2008 series opener didn’t look as empty as this week’s affair. If that’s what you call going according to plan, I’d hate to see your idea of failure. The way I see it, all you’ve really succeeded in doing is coming up with something more distasteful than negative-option billing.

http://www.intelligencer.ca/2010/08/23/bills-flop

With ticket prices in the high hundreds and even thousands of dollars, the opening game in this five-year experiment was far from a sellout forcing organizers to fill the seats by handing out thousands of freebies. That didn’t impress the guys who actually dished out a mortgage payment to get into the game.

And nothing has really improved since.

The ticket pricing has had to be adjusted so fans can actually afford to go to these games. But they still can’t fill the stadium.

Rogers paid $87-million to get the Bills to Toronto and it isn’t going to come close to getting that much money back.

What was at first believed to be an easy money-maker for Rogers has become a financial nightmare.

This Bills in Toronto idea has to be considered a major failure. They haven’t even sold out the two regular season games that have been played.

80 to 90 Per Cent sold already? Isn’t that good?
When was the last time the Argos were 80 to 90 Per Cent sold out 2 weeks before the game???

If it’s 90% sold out now, that translates into 45,000 tickets sold with 2 weeks left . The average ticket is $150 times 45,000, so that means close to $7 MILLION dollars so far and probably $9 Million by game time. That is more revenue from tickets sales than the 70,000 in Buffalo.
The Bills aren’t even Toronto’s team and they are well out of a playoff spot.
The comments you posted above are from 2010 !!! what relevance has that to today?? If it’s a failure why did the Bills just renew the contract for another 5 years??

How is that a failure? Am I missing something? I don’t understand what you are trying to prove by pulling out old news and then somehow saying that 90% sold out is a failure?

Funny thing is when you read the story in the Sun, they are positive about 90% sold and “sales moving briskly”
You must be one of these the glass is 10% empty kind of guys. Would you then say the Argos are consistenly 20% FULL in the Rogers Centre…lol

[url=http://www.ottawasun.com/2012/12/03/bills-seahawks-game-in-toronto-80-90-sold]http://www.ottawasun.com/2012/12/03/bil ... 80-90-sold[/url]

Yes they are “sold” to the various Rogers owned media outlets. So yes the tickets were paid for. But what they don’t want anyone to know is that the general public would have never bought those tickets on their own. So Rogers buys them up (no profit there) and gives them away to fill the stadium…this is the definition of a resounding failure! Do you get it now mikem???

So you believe that between 80-90% are sold?
Yea sure, that’s another Rogers lie.
Just like previously they were not papering the house?

[ArgoT]

@"tc23"

That’s according to the game’s new executive director, Greg Albrecht.

This guy is full of it. I heard yesterday from a reliable source that only around 24,000 have been sold and approximatley 10,000 have been given out to corporate sponsers.

Now this I would believe.
Right on track to paper between 25000-30000, anyone who wants a ticket including homeless people will get one.

[kasps]

@"drummer_god"

@"kasps"

So where is a owner for the Argo’s? Everybody is so worried about the Bills. If it wasn’t for a existing owner, the Argo’s would have folded. This franchise is still not healthy and until somebody steps up to give a 8 team league 8 owners, not all is well. Hopefully the GC will help with fans coming back to support the Argo’s.

Why does it matter that brailey owns 2 teams, yet no one cares that1 guy owns a third of mls franchises? Or that, the nhl owns phoenix?, the commissioner of baseball owns the brewers?
Every league has ownership problems or less than ideal situations with ownerships.

A healthy league shouldn’t have issues attracting owners in the largest market in Canada. Phoenix, will have a new owner and baseball does not have any owners that own two teams.If Brailey didn’t step up , the Argo,s would have folded. 8 owners for a 8 team league shouldn’t be that difficult. If the Argo’s would have played the Lions, the CFL would have looked like a complete joke and lost a lot of credibility.

[tc23]

@"kasps"

@"drummer_god"

@"kasps"

So where is a owner for the Argo’s? Everybody is so worried about the Bills. If it wasn’t for a existing owner, the Argo’s would have folded. This franchise is still not healthy and until somebody steps up to give a 8 team league 8 owners, not all is well. Hopefully the GC will help with fans coming back to support the Argo’s.

Why does it matter that brailey owns 2 teams, yet no one cares that1 guy owns a third of mls franchises? Or that, the nhl owns phoenix?, the commissioner of baseball owns the brewers?
Every league has ownership problems or less than ideal situations with ownerships.

A healthy league shouldn’t have issues attracting owners in the largest market in Canada. Phoenix, will have a new owner and baseball does not have any owners that own two teams.If Brailey didn’t step up , the Argo,s would have folded. 8 owners for a 8 team league shouldn’t be that difficult. If the Argo’s would have played the Lions, the CFL would have looked like a complete joke and lost a lot of credibility.

Those are all, What ifs?? and never happened. The 100th Grey Cup was the most successful Sporting Event in
Canadian History :thup: :rockin: :lol:

One NFL game in Canada a year and its a Disaster. It would be far to say that this is Canada’s Super Bore :cowboy:

[Xvys]

@"tc23"

That’s according to the game’s new executive director, Greg Albrecht.

This guy is full of it. I heard yesterday from a reliable source that only around 24,000 have been sold and approximatley 10,000 have been given out to corporate sponsers.

Thanks for the info tc23. I know you’ve always been amazingly accurate with your ticket sales counts. Obviously they still have a “robust” supply of tickets, with all the advertising, email promotions still ongoing.

[Xvys]

@"kasps"

If the Argo’s would have played the Lions, the CFL would have looked like a complete joke and lost a lot of credibility.

I didn’t hear the media questioning the MLS’ credibility when the two teams in the 2012 MLS Championship were owned by the same company, AEG? Not sure who’s the complete joke here, kasps?

MLS games averaged 155,000 U.S. viewers nationally, on the NBC Sports Channel this season.

[saskfan23]

On top of it all like someone mentioned with the commercial they are bringing in Korean Rapper PSY to perform at halftime. I know the CFL brought in Bieber for our half time but the dude is actually canadian now there just bringing in the hottest internet/music sensation/one hit wonder rapper with his song "Gangnam Style" (Youtube it you'll find it) Unless there's over 50 000 fans screaming for the bills, this thing can be deemed as a failure.

[tangledweb]

tc23 wroe: [b]One NFL game in Canada a year[/b] and its a Disaster.

and this is why the T.O./Bills Series is a fiasco of epic proportions. A once-a-year Special Event NFL game that is a difficult sell to the supposed NFL-adoring public.

Even Mexico City and London drew approx. 100,000 non-papered patrons to a few NFL games.

[Earl]

I like watching the NFL and when I've wanted to go to games I've gone to Buffalo to get that real American type NFL experience. That just can't be translated in Toronto IMHO and I think many people understand that.

[Niagara_Als]

Toronto Star, Sports section, today Dec 5: John Wawrow notes writes that " Organizers hope ticket price fills the stadium". After having difficulty selling the NFL games, this year tickets have been reduced to average $99.00 from $160.00 in 2008 prices. It's still a marked drop from 1st year when prices ranged from $99 to $275. This year they range from $48 to $225."'