Melnyk Rubs it in CFL Face?

Ottawa REDBLACKS
1

Is it only me, but did anyone else notice how your low life hockey team owner "purposely" scheduled a Senators game yesterday at a ridiculous 5pm slot?
Just another in an ongoing attempt by this owner to rub his nose in our leagues face.

2

Purposely? How the hell do you know that? And why the quotation marks?

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Maybe the fine people of Ottawa who are Sens fans, can tell us whether there ever have been any games scheduled at 5pm or even on a Sunday?
If not, then I stand by my point how this appears to be more then a mere coincedence.

4

Calgary and Toronto also played on Sunday, with Calgary having the most conflict at 6:00pm EST. Melnyk knows nothing about the CFL, so I doubt he even knew the Grey Cup was being played on the 27th when they were making schedules.

5

Does Melynyk have autonomy on team schedules?

I had surmised that NHL HO was in charge of scheduling. :?

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A low life owner??? How about low life trolls?
another ongoing attempt to rub his nose in our league? how?
Melnyk did put an offer to partner with the city to build a stadium and have a CFL team and soccer team next to the ScotiaBank place in Kanata, but the city chose OSEG. He is far from being anti CFL
Since when does the owner schedule games anyway? It’s the league and then the TV networks doing the scheduling.

By the way I’m looking forward to watching the new Ottawa team no matter what the name is. The way you guys in Toronto support the CFL they could be called the Ottawa Argos. Also looking forward going to the Rogers Centre to watch the NFL!!!

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You may wish to check your facts, Melnyk is no fan of the CFL,The only way your going to see the NFL in the Rogers Center is if they move the Rogers Center to the States

8

Precisely, Melnyk did not want anything to do with Hunt and the ownership group.

9

Melnyk softened his stance when opposing the CFL seemed to be harming his cause. So at the end there, he became more open to housing a team too, but after his camp spent a few weeks runnin gdown the sport and league, it didn't come off a real genuine. :?

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ArgoT wrote

You may wish to check your facts, Melnyk is no fan of the CFL,The only way your going to see the NFL in the Rogers Center is if they move the Rogers Center to the States
The Bills game this year at the ROGERS CENTRE brought in twice the revenue as a game in Buffalo. Despite the Bills drawing 70,000, the high revenue was not just in ticket sales but more to do with advertising revenue. Toronto wants their NFL and their own team not the Bills playing there. You can bet the NFL would love to get into that market - Toronto is rich, not just in the average salary of the population but the huge advertising and TV potential and it would have one of the largest population bases in North America to draw from. Torontonians just don't want the CFL

Toronto has an MLB team, Toronto has an NBA team, Toronto has an MLS team they are also talking about a new NHL arena and they could finally get a professional hockey team just like Ottawa. So its logical that they will get an NFL team.

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Rogers is losing millions on the Bills games.The last Bills game sold only 29,000 tickets, as reported by the Toronto Star. After the first game, anyone who admitted that they actually paid for their ticket was seen as a fool. They had to paper the house for the NFL, this is a known fact. The NFL is not pleased with T.O response to the games.The NFL makes their money off TV revenue, what a Canadian TV deal would bring into the league would be nothing, compared to another US City. The US networks only count US viewers to justify their commercial billing rates. Canadian viewers again would mean nothing to them The NFL is very political, if you think some US governor or Senator is going to let their team move to Canada, without a fight your nuts. Americans don’t want to watch or care for a team from Canada, hence why the Raptors and Jays are one of the lowest road teams for drawing people. Americans would rather watch a team from bum hole Idaho, then some team from other country. People from T.O have a hard time understanding this, but as someone who married an american, I can back this up. I was at the last game, when a couple in our section found out that no one had paid anything for their tickets, they went screaming down to customer service. it was funny

12

Mike you really have to do some homework.
The Bills series is hemorrhaging Rogers, and by the way good on them, big time to the tune of a minimum $10M per game.
It has been a financial disaster.
Literally no one or less then one half of the stadium is buying much reduced tickets.
Freebies are being given away to anyone who wants them and stories persist how many homeless people around the downtown core have been given to fill the house.
A Rogers customer be it cable or cell phone will get you a pair.

13

you're a fool if you think the NFL is moving to Toronto permanently. Do some research. Meanwhile, I suggest going to next year's bills game in Toronto. It may be the last of such games for a while.

Having said that, I don't think the scheduling has anything to do with sticking it to the CFL. Plus they don't owe the CFL anything. They can do whatever they want. Just like the CFL can do whatever it wants.

14

I just don't buy the "Toronto doesn't want the CFL" argument at all. It's preposterous that city of that size can't support a single CFL franchise. It should be able to easily handle multiple franchises.

A more accurate statement might that Torontonians just don't care all that much about any sport other than hockey unless that other sport has a team that wins consistently.

The biggest problem in Toronto isn't that nobody wants the CFL, the biggest problem is poorly run teams year after year after year. It will take a long time to fix the problem, but it can be fixed. A regular TV presence in the states — and I'm talking 5-10 years or more — will go a long way towards helping the Argos. Especially if ESPN starts showing highlights. Torontonians just need validation that they're taken big-time seriously. It won't take an NFL franchise to do that.

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Mike you really have to do some homework. The Bills series is hemorrhaging Rogers, and by the way good on them, big time to the tune of a minimum $10M per game. It has been a financial disaster. Literally no one or less then one half of the stadium is buying much reduced tickets. Freebies are being given away to anyone who wants them and stories persist how many homeless people around the downtown core have been given to fill the house. A Rogers customer be it cable or cell phone will get you a pair.
Argot T - please to do some proper homework. Don't believe these silly stories about homeless people getting free tickets or that only 29,000 tickets were actually sold and that Rogers is taking a big loss. I suppose that makes some CFL fans feel good but it's just not true.

Again you guys are focused on the “tickets sold” as the only source of revenue - the Bills come to Toronto because they are generating close to $10million a game as opposed to $4.5 million a game in Orchard Park. The TV ads and the other advertising revenues plus the sale of the “private boxes” and club seats is where the money is. The Bills just aren’t making the same revenue with 70,000 fans at Orchard Park. Most NFL teams are generating more revenue from having 100 or so “private boxes” and a few thousand “club seats” then they are from regular ticket sales.
Toronto could easily sell out private boxes - they have the corporate community and rich individuals who are willing to pay the big bucks for the private boxes. Look at Cincinatti’s ticket pricing - $76,000 to $170,000 for a “private box” that is a season times 112 boxes!! Pluse they have the “club seats” that bring in millions.
One hundred private boxes at a Bengals game will generate more money than an average crowd of 35,000 paying $50 a ticket. If their regular season attendance is down one year it just doesn’t matter since it’s about the corporate community and rich people paying for the Boxes and Club seats plus the huge advertising revenues.
That is why Toronto is a potential hot place for an NFL team, lots of corporate money, rich people willing to pay for the private boxes and club seats. There may be some empty seats for Bills games in Toronto but let’s face it, there are many in Toronto that love the NFL but just not the Bills, they don’t see them as their team. Last year when they played in Toronto they were well out of the playoffs and they played the Dolphins that were way out as well.

http://www.bengals.com/tickets/suites.html

By the way the Bills against the Redskins was just short of 2,400 below capacity, who said 29,000??!!

[url=http://sports.nationalpost.com/2011/10/30/bills-in-toronto-not-perfect-but-signs-of-progress/]http://sports.nationalpost.com/2011/10/ ... -progress/[/url]

Bills money in the bank in Toronto:

[url=http://www.buffalonews.com/sports/bills-nfl/article379741.ece]http://www.buffalonews.com/sports/bills ... 379741.ece[/url]
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The Bills got the money from Rogers up front, when Rogers thought they could sell the place out, no problem. The Bills don’t care if T.O sells one ticket or 50,000 they got there money already. What is show is there is not the market there for NFL football, end of story. The facts if you owned the T.O NFL team, right now you would be losing 10 million a game. The Bills Redskins game did 29,000 in sales. That a know facts from may media outlets, including Bob Mccowan from the Fan 590 and Dave Perkins from the Toronto Star. If you went to the game, like i did, you could not find one person who paid near anything for their tickets, even most of the 29,000 tickets were corp seats.

17

If the $100 mill plus reno goes ahead in Buffalo which I'm sure it will, forget the NFL in Toronto. mikem, of course the NFL would love the Toronto market and would rather be there than Buffalo right now but that's not the case and Buffalo is working hard, the city and team and state government, to keep the team in Buffalo. This reno ensures it with some 30 year lease that will come with it. Toronto is in the Buffalo market.

[url=http://sports.nationalpost.com/2011/10/20/bills-stadium-renovations-suggest-team]http://sports.nationalpost.com/2011/10/ ... ggest-team[/url] -to-stay-put/

All Toronto needs, and all in this case is a big all, is a football specific stadium, the RC isn't a stadium people much like going to for football. A lot of the people at the Bills games in Buffalo are freebies and Bills fans from New York State.

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[url=http://www.thestar.com/article/1089590--perkins-who-cares-who-owns-leafs-so-long-as-they-win]http://www.thestar.com/article/1089590- ... s-they-win[/url]
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Oops, sorry mean’t the people attending the Bills games in Toronto are freebies and Bills fans from New York State.

As for Melnyk I don’t think it matters at this point what he thinks or doesn’t think and he is busy enough with the Senators. Maybe he doesn’t like Jeff Hunt and the Lansdowne group, I don’t know. Who cares really.

20

This was mentioned in another thread. I found the link. It's not a scathing indictment of the chances of the NFL in Toronto, but it makes it clear that it's not going to happen for a long time.
Toronto not Sitting Pretty with the NFL