Problem The CFL Faces in Toronto

No question leagues like the NFL, NHL, MLB and NBA have so much more money and clout and exposure and marketing resources than a small league like the CFL that doesn't have the resources. Not saying the CFL shouldn't be more aggresive, it should, but exactly how aggressive it can be I'm not so sure.

Personally I think it would be wiser to tag along with our natural league that plays the same game essentially, the NFL, and do more coomarketing all the time. One example I noticed is the Budweiser truck that has NFL logo's on it but also a CFL logo, I saw it at some TiCat games when Bud was a sponsor. This is the direction I would take, the CFL should approach the NFL and try and work together more in the future, this makes sense to me. The NFL has more of the tools and the CFL may have a few things the NFL has, like some Canadian connections.

Lots of people in Toronto relate to soccer with their multicultural backgrounds, Toronto FC has increased seasons tickets to 16,000 in a 20,000 seater and had to cut off season ticket sales in order to have enough for walk up.

wewant, the NFL in Toronto will be able to draw from all over southern Ontario. It will be successful if it happens, no doubt about it. But the Argos, with a great 25,000-30,000 core fan fase will be solid playing at BMO in my opinion, it will be a great venue for football. The soccer people love it apparently. The NFL can have the RC.

EArl.
You overestimate interest in teh NFL in Southenr Ontario. It only gets a couple of hundered thousand viewers for their games on TV. If that many. People from southern Ontario will not flock to the NFL. We have our own teams to worry about.

The only team that has diehards in southern Ontario outside Toronto is the Maple Leafs. The Raptors and Blue Jays don't matter. Why would the NFL be any differnet?

The only reason I'm thinking berezin is that most people know the NFL is the king of all kings of leagues with the marketing they do and how all games are on TV and the way they revenue share etc. It's the biggy although Anaheim just recently told them to go shove it, LA seesm to be doing this on the whole, which is interesting.

I agree that maybe Godfrey and Tanenbaum might, and I stress, might, be overestimating how popular an NFL team might be in Toronto, I don't know. The NFL, all football for that matter, has viewer games with each one more of an event than any other sport. I know that an NFL team in Toronto would draw on so many cities in southern Ontario where people won't go to Toronto, or Hamilton, for a CFL game since it's not the NFL. I'm sure of this.

lol - I always love when you say that the Raptors and Jays don’t matter…
The Raptors are selling our the ACC - avg of 19171 and are 9th in the NBA for attendance this season.

The Jays avg 29145 - 18th in MLB (2006 figures)

The Argos avg 30931

So obviously someone thinks the matter.

Besides, if you think the NFL won’t do well up here why do you argue so much against it? Why not just sit back and allow the furture to unfold?
Personally I think there is room for both. The NFL will draw from upper NY state and southern Ontario well enough to support it - mainly due to proper marketing and season ticket sales. The CFL will continue to draw well from its fan from traditional markets.

http://www.canadaeast.com/search/article/109040

Good read Mass, thanks. Flutie has some reservations also about how well an NFL team could draw on a consistent basis knowing the price of tickets will be much higher than for Argo games. He didn’t mention though if the Argos move to BMO and what effect that would have, if the NFL moved into RC fulltime. That would be the Argos saviour to play at BMO IMHO.

J-93, don’t underestimate the exposure that a big brewery can bring. Especially in Toronto, where new immigrants may have never heard of the CFL. They will walk into a beer store, and maybe they will ask someone about this NHL NFL thing. They are then introduced to NFL.

When will they be introduced to CFL? Just by chance maybe someone will come along and tell them about this other Canadian league. Hopefully the CFL isn’t relying on that for their promotions.

Also, don’t forget when Labatt owned the Blue Jays. Remember when you couldn’t enter a bar anywhere in Ontario without seeing some sort of Blue Jays poster. Those were the days when you had to fight to get a ticket. They promoted the team clear across the country and had bus trips coming in as far away as Vancouver.

I’m not saying that Labatt is solely responsible for that success, there were obviously a lot of other factors. But, having them promote the team didn’t hurt.

Include Sporting Goods store in item #3. Other than Jersey City, finding CFL gear is very difficult.

By the logic being used on here....if Regina can provide 28,000 CFL fans every game...and has a population of about 200,000....then Toronto should be able to get 700,000 fans out for Argo games....right?
They better get to work on building a new stadium to keep up with any marketing campaigns the Argos/CFL undertake! I wonder what their 700,000 seat stadium will look like?

Also, I'm quite appalled at the apparent stereotyping of new Canadians as impressionable morons that have no clue what the NFL or football even is. These 'new Canadians' that you speak of that have no clue what North American football is...have never heard of the NFL or CFL and will be immediately influenced to support one or the other....what exactly are they doing in the beer store anyway? How did they find out where it is? I haven't seen many Beer Store commercials on TV. What are they buying there? The best odds of seeing a beer commercial is when watching sports on TV, something these new Canadians, as you say, know nothing about.
If these newcomers to Canada/Toronto are as daft as you portray them to be...they'd never be able to find their way to the beer store or even understand how our currency works, since nobody has done any marketing to inform them of this, how else would they possibly find out about it?
The Argos get enough coverage on tv and radio to let any newcomer to the region well aware of their existence and their schedule.
You might be able to argue this no marketing/no publicity theory if discussing Hamilton...but not Toronto. In Hamilton unless you specifically look it up on your own..the only way you can find out when the Ticats are playing at home is to drive past the stadium every weekend and see if people are there.

I'm going to assume you don't live in Hamilton J-93. Cause the marketing presence the last couple years has been pretty big.

I don’t live there but am there quite often, it has improved quite a bit lately but it still isn’t where it needs to be and where it should be.

I have been working with some people who moved to Canada from El Salvador back in the mid 90s. They have been living in the GTA since then. They are San Diego Chargers fans. They lived in this country for over 8 years and had never heard of the CFL, the Argonauts, or the Tiger-Cats until I mentioned it to them a few years back. Of course they had heard of the NHL and hockey, but they didn’t believe me when I told them that we play football in Canada also.

These people aren’t stupid, it’s just that the CFL never registered with them.

And that’s the issue. The CFL is not on the radar.

These people have lived in Toronto for 10 years and have never heard of the CFL?
Sorry. These people are stupid.

Amen.

I guess they don’t have cable…or CBC, I mean…even my dog has sat on the remote and managed to tune into the CFL highlights…and she’s a stupid dog.
So, these people you are “working with” are more stupid than a stupid dog…that or you’re full of crap and are exagerating to try to prove a weak point.

Which is it?

Well, in their defence, I've lived in Hamilton since 1986 and didn't realize there was a Hamilton Philharmonic Ochestra until a couple of months ago. Maybe my eyes passed by it in the entertainment news or on a local news TV broadcast but it didn't register because this isn't my cup of tea. Not on my radar just like the CFL might not be on someone else's radar.

Yeah, but Earl, unlike the Philharmonic, from June to November the Argos and the CFL are in the newspaper, on TV, on the radio. How can anybody not notice that there's another team in your city when its called the Toronto Argonauts?

Well, agree it does sound a bit weird to me but then maybe people from that part of the world have brains that work a bit differently than others. lol

Ok, maybe they are stupid. More than likely they just don’t speak or read English that well. Nevertheless, they lived in this country for close to ten years and had never heard of the CFL.

The issue is still the fact that the CFL never registered with these people.

BTW, not everyone watches the CBC. I know that I don’t.

Ok so I went to get a slice of pizza at this pizza parlour and I ask the girl working there what she thinks of the Argonauts.

"The who, sorry?" She says.

"The Toronto Argonauts" I reply.

"What are they?" She says.

...the investigation continues.

My cousins who live in Toronto and are the most arrogant people I've ever met almost, I avoid them as much as I can, just hate it when the Argos and the CFL get any attention since it isn't a big American league. But I recently found out they actually hate soccer and Toronto FC more, at my uncle's 80th party which we attended, in his speech he declared that soccer wasn't even a sport. They know I'm a huge CFL fan and I was expected a CFL is crap comment but I guess maybe they aren't quite as arrogant as I thought, they knew I was there so the soccer comment came out. I had to chuckle actually.