Ticket Prices / Lions' Marketing

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BC 1988
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TheLionKing wrote:Heard a suggestion on the Team that CFL teams make public who is available for the expansion draft and maybe have TSN football panel do a mock draft to see what the RedBlacks might look like. I like the idea, keeps the CFL in the spotlight.
Yes, I think it was Blake Price mentioned that. He didn't think it was likely the CFL would go for it though, that they were still acting "like it was 1971."
I'd like to see them do that too.
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BC 1988 wrote:
TheLionKing wrote:Heard a suggestion on the Team that CFL teams make public who is available for the expansion draft and maybe have TSN football panel do a mock draft to see what the RedBlacks might look like. I like the idea, keeps the CFL in the spotlight.
Yes, I think it was Blake Price mentioned that. He didn't think it was likely the CFL would go for it though, that they were still acting "like it was 1971."
I'd like to see them do that too.
It does seem to come off like the league is not being fan-friendly and/or media-friendly about this (perhaps unintentionally). But I think the real issue could be more that teams don't want their own players — or at least the ones that Ott passes up — to know that they were left unprotected as it might hamper re-signing them should teams wish to later do so. It's not like teams want to ditch every last unprotected player but this unwantedness is how it could come off toward some particular unprotected player and might discourage them from coming back. Might also disrupt team chemistry: "*I* was the one they protected, not YOU!" Maybe not a huge factor, but not totally implausible I would think.
Sports can be a peculiar thing. When partaking in fiction, like a book or movie, we adopt a "Willing Suspension of Disbelief" for enjoyment's sake. There's a similar force at work in sports: "Willing Suspension of Rationality". If you doubt this, listen to any conversation between rival team fans. You even see it among fans of the same team. Fans argue over who's the better QB or goalie, and selectively cite stats that support their views while ignoring those that don't.
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TheLionKing wrote:Heard a suggestion on the Team that CFL teams make public who is available for the expansion draft and maybe have TSN football panel do a mock draft to see what the RedBlacks might look like. I like the idea, keeps the CFL in the spotlight.
I'm certainly looking forward to dissecting it all here after its over. I definitely would like to see who was available. I'm betting the teams don't want to let people (translation-the players) know.
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notahomer wrote:
TheLionKing wrote:Heard a suggestion on the Team that CFL teams make public who is available for the expansion draft and maybe have TSN football panel do a mock draft to see what the RedBlacks might look like. I like the idea, keeps the CFL in the spotlight.
I'm certainly looking forward to dissecting it all here after its over. I definitely would like to see who was available. I'm betting the teams don't want to let people (translation-the players) know.
Yep that's my suspicion, too.
Sports can be a peculiar thing. When partaking in fiction, like a book or movie, we adopt a "Willing Suspension of Disbelief" for enjoyment's sake. There's a similar force at work in sports: "Willing Suspension of Rationality". If you doubt this, listen to any conversation between rival team fans. You even see it among fans of the same team. Fans argue over who's the better QB or goalie, and selectively cite stats that support their views while ignoring those that don't.
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sj-roc wrote:[Makes sense — the end zone seats at Tempire were just benches with no backrests whereas the sidelines had individual bucket seats, which prob helped to keep the construction cost of each seat more commensurate with its generated revenue. Wasn't this also the case in the old Wpg stadium where the cheaper seats were just aluminum benches? I think McMahon follows the same concept, prob others as well, and not just in the CFL.
McMahon is the same. Once you get down around the goal line the seats become aluminum benches with I believe an aluminum bench type backrest. No 22" wide c/w cup holders with state of the art HD replay board. They probably allow you 18" of buttspace per seat so you can sit buttcheek to buttcheek next to the cowboy beside you as you. All that comfort for $33 or $39 single game price depending on section beside the endzone.
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Cougar Country wrote:
sj-roc wrote:The back row of the upper deck in BCP goes for the same price as the lower bowl front row seat directly in front of it. The R&N seem to get that there's something a bit off with this notion, but not the Lions.
A truly absurd pricing scheme, thanks for the reminder of how bad it is. Honest question, is there another pro football team that doesn't get it this bad?

The aura of being overpriced, which the Lions actually seems to have cultivated intentionally, will be hard to shake as the average dollar continues to lose its purchasing power in one of the most expensive cities on the planet where basics like housing and food are getting less affordable than ever. Wasn't watching football s'posed to be a blue collar pastime?
It's the same in Regina. The highest nosebleed in the highest row where you can see both the game and Moose Jaw is the same price as the Row 1 behind the players benches.
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Hambone wrote:
Cougar Country wrote:
sj-roc wrote:The back row of the upper deck in BCP goes for the same price as the lower bowl front row seat directly in front of it. The R&N seem to get that there's something a bit off with this notion, but not the Lions.
A truly absurd pricing scheme, thanks for the reminder of how bad it is. Honest question, is there another pro football team that doesn't get it this bad?

The aura of being overpriced, which the Lions actually seems to have cultivated intentionally, will be hard to shake as the average dollar continues to lose its purchasing power in one of the most expensive cities on the planet where basics like housing and food are getting less affordable than ever. Wasn't watching football s'posed to be a blue collar pastime?
It's the same in Regina. The highest nosebleed in the highest row where you can see both the game and Moose Jaw is the same price as the Row 1 behind the players benches.

In Regina, I guess the answer for what this post notes is simple- because they can charge that and the fans will buy that ticket.

Why it won't work in BC as well as football is not the same culture in BC with hockey so high as are the Riders. I hired some consultants from Sask and these guys at lunch talked football and would email some of my managers if the Lions lost or there was a big win for the Riders.

What I do fear in BC is what I gather the Whitecaps do - and that is cut the number of seats and max the per seat revenue. They just need to look across the way to the NHL where seats are fewer but dollars per seat much higher. This keeps the costs of security, staffing, cleaning down and gets more profit.

I would like to see them grow the game and market better.
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Toppy Vann wrote:
What I do fear in BC is what I gather the Whitecaps do - and that is cut the number of seats and max the per seat revenue. They just need to look across the way to the NHL where seats are fewer but dollars per seat much higher. This keeps the costs of security, staffing, cleaning down and gets more profit.

I would like to see them grow the game and market better.
Fans aren't going to pay premium prices to sit in the nosebleeds. They will stay home and watch it on TV
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LU has posted a year-end interview with Dennis Skulsky that touches on a variety of topics, with a heavy focus on ticket prices and marketing. Some highlights:

- There will be a 2% "cost of living" increase in ticket prices next year, plus 25-cent increases in the stadium fee (to $2.75) and Ticketmaster fee to $6.00).
There’s $8.75 that five years ago didn’t exist. It’s the world we live in today.
Skulsky expounded at length on the team's philosophy on ticket pricing, which he says comes from David Braley. He said revenue was up this year despite a drop in average attendance of about 2,000 fans.
We don’t do discounting. We introduced a family zone and party zone. It worked. How well it worked we’ll look at for next year…

The question is what the market will bear. If you’re going to be in business and be successful you can’t afford to be wishy-washy. Either you believe the product is worth this much money or you don’t. What Braley hasn’t allowed the organization to do is to deep-discounts. We might have a (season ticket) incentive in place but in terms of discounting on tickets that really is a thing of the past.
- The Lions are working with B.C. Place and the Whitecaps to get more Saturday games next year.
We’ve been working with the Whitecaps and the stadium people for the last month. I take responsibility for the schedule of 2013. It should have been better. I wanted to try a holiday Monday and a Sunday. Credit to my boss. He said ‘I can tell you what’s going to happen but you’re going to have to go through this.’ It’s very clear. Our marketplace is a Saturday marketplace. We got to support the league and TSN with some Friday games but the reality we’re a Friday/Saturday marketplace.

I’m not sure the [stadium] can guarantee a 24-hour turnaround. If they can there’s a significant cost. The direction the Whitecaps and us have decided is that we have one weekend, they can have another weekend. Just keep it clean.
- The league's new TV contract with TSN (which Skulsky spearheaded) allows for fewer TV blackouts but the specifics haven't been worked out.

He also touched on the Grey Cup, LU's poll on team coaches and players and David Braley's ownership (don't expect any changes before the 2014 Grey Cup).

Q & A: Lions boss talks ‘closure’ to season
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notahomer wrote:
TheLionKing wrote:Heard a suggestion on the Team that CFL teams make public who is available for the expansion draft and maybe have TSN football panel do a mock draft to see what the RedBlacks might look like. I like the idea, keeps the CFL in the spotlight.
I'm certainly looking forward to dissecting it all here after its over. I definitely would like to see who was available. I'm betting the teams don't want to let people (translation-the players) know.
Brendan Taman made some comments that made sense. Now I don't know the exact timing of things but I don't think the protected lists will have to be turned in much before the draft. If anything it may only be import list that has to be turned in in advance. Depending on who you lose in the import round (ie QB) you may get to add to the protected list in the 1st NI round which in turn means changes to your 2nd round list. Definitely who you lose in the 1st NI round can impact who you protect in the 2nd round. Certainly the player in Rd 1 can't be on the Rd 2 protected list and I think the position of the player lost in the 1st round will likely have bearing on who is protected in Rd 2. Lose an NI WR or OL and you probably want to make sure you're not as vulnerable to losing a second player at that position in Rd 2.
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It's long been my suspicion that Braley sets the club's pricing strategy, and it's hardly a surprise to read that discounts are not part of this strategy.....why give the customer a price break when we can give them a scarf or car flag?. Zero giveaway nights for young fans yet again. The fact is, Mr. Braley is out of touch with the realities of this marketplace. While there's a dedicated core group that attend home games, it's not a coveted ticket. They've failed to capture the imagination of this city and, if they had their finger on the pulse of the marketplace, would realize that things have become rather stale in Lionland (the introduction of a snappy 3rd uniform notwithstanding). The Whitecaps skunked them this year when it came to generating buzz (despite their struggles on the pitch), and Lenarduzzi scooped up the Saturday dates while Skulsky was asleep at the switch (and really? You thought a Holiday Monday would be a good idea?? Yeesh.).

While one can make a business case for increasing revenues over actual butts in the seats, atmosphere will suffer if they're drawing 26,000-28,000 a game and the 'noise' they so covet for home field advantage will be compromised. And if atmosphere suffers, it becomes self-perpetuating as fewer people will want to attend.

It's a very short-sighted way of building the business.


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I'm pleased to hear that there might more Friday, Saturday games.
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TheLionKing wrote:I'm pleased to hear that there might more Friday, Saturday games.
Me too. I've been telling the Lions for years that this is is a Saturday marketplace. Schedule more games on Saturdays, especially after Labour Day, and crowds will go up.
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Interesting article. Can't believe Braley warned Skulsky the Sunday and holiday Monday games wouldn't work and that B.C. is a Friday or Saturday football town. So he allows Skulsky to go through with it just to prove his point and loses potential revenue because of it. How many owners would do that?

David's right. The Lions currently have a pretty loyal season ticket base that ranges between 17,000-20,000 fans depending on the previous year performance and on field product. These people not only purchase tickets but, for the most part, also spend a lot of money on Lions gear and other club revenue opportunities such as Operation Orange. After that they are kind of lost on how to make it more attractive for the casual fan and that resulted in attendance ranging between 24,000 to 37,000 last season. It seems like as long as their in the black each season, they are content with their marketing efforts — even though they lean heavily on that loyal season ticket base to realize their financial goal.
It's going to take different ownership seeking additional revenue before we see some fresh ideas. I suspect that will be sometime in early 2015 with next year's Grey Cup being Braley's official send off.

They're actually lucky soccer has never really taken off in this town, despite the Whitecaps marketing efforts, the way it has in Seattle.
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B.C.FAN wrote:- The Lions are working with B.C. Place and the Whitecaps to get more Saturday games next year.
We’ve been working with the Whitecaps and the stadium people for the last month. I take responsibility for the schedule of 2013. It should have been better. I wanted to try a holiday Monday and a Sunday. Credit to my boss. He said ‘I can tell you what’s going to happen but you’re going to have to go through this.’ It’s very clear. Our marketplace is a Saturday marketplace. We got to support the league and TSN with some Friday games but the reality we’re a Friday/Saturday marketplace.

I’m not sure the [stadium] can guarantee a 24-hour turnaround. If they can there’s a significant cost. The direction the Whitecaps and us have decided is that we have one weekend, they can have another weekend. Just keep it clean.
This will likely be less clearcut than Skulsky makes it out to be. We need Saturdays, yes, but it also matters which Saturdays. Labour Day weekend and BC Day weekend and the fireworks Saturdays in July wouldn't work for us. If the Whitecaps get the two Saturdays sandwiching Labour Day weekend, for example, then this means three weeks in a row that we don't get a good Saturday home date. Going forward with a nine-team league, chances are LD will be a bye week for us but the schedule won't work out for us as well if the Whitecaps try to take the week before and after instead that open LD weekend.

Here's another marketing angle that kind of raised my eyebrow recently. I was in Save-On-Foods last week and I noticed this display of sports team-themed beaded necklaces (if you've seen these you prob know right where I'm going with this). Right away you could notice the Canucks and pretty much all of the Cdn-based NHL teams represented. Fair enough I thought, in this country hockey's king and that's the way it is. Then I saw the Seahawks and a few other NFL teams. Again, no big deal, I figured; the NFL's got all kinds of scratch to dump into something like this. Of course I probably don't need to tell you there were no Lions or any other CFL teams represented in this display. I certainly wasn't surprised they were absent, but the story doesn't end here.

Here's where I was really taken aback: among the NHL and NFL teams, they also had the Whitecaps! HUH? Now let me be clear, I am NOT ripping any of these other teams or leagues. Leagues are going to market themselves, which is fine, let 'em have at it. My problem is this: AFAIK the Whitecaps play in a league where the monies are lower scale than those of the CFL. If even they can get involved with something like this, why can't the Lions? Now maybe there's not a lot of money to be made here, but the Lions, and the CFL in general, don't seem to invest much in these sorts of ventures that would boost their visibility in the broader market.

We're all used to being inundated with NHL and NFL gear in the broader market, but the Lions are getting totally shown up by even the Whitecaps on this one. It's like they're content with the revenue they get from the same ~20k fans who spend the most discretionary dollars on CFL stuff, and as David mentions it's a rather short-sighted approach. I don't sense much ambition to achieve a broader market share. The Lions' fan base may be miles deep but it's only a half inch wide and we need more horizontal growth before we revert to a late 90s scenario.
Sports can be a peculiar thing. When partaking in fiction, like a book or movie, we adopt a "Willing Suspension of Disbelief" for enjoyment's sake. There's a similar force at work in sports: "Willing Suspension of Rationality". If you doubt this, listen to any conversation between rival team fans. You even see it among fans of the same team. Fans argue over who's the better QB or goalie, and selectively cite stats that support their views while ignoring those that don't.
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