All things Lions Marketing/Promotions 2014

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JohnHenry
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Ravi wrote:Well, the home opener on a Saturday afternoon drew 24,500 and change. As an Argo fan, I am grateful to David Braley that he has kept the franchise going and stabilized it but, unfortunately, he has done little to grow it. I see the same situation in B.C. Bob Ackles was growing the franchise but it has clearly been in stagnation mode since. I am surprised to see 15k season tickets sold in B.C. (in a Grey Cup year no less) when Ackles had the number up to about 24k a few years ago in an inferior stadium. I remember Braley saying prior to the new B.C. Place opening that he expected average attendance to increase to 35k to 40k. However, the Lions have been nowhere close to that and won't be this year either. What is Braley doing about this?
I don't think Braley is in charge of selling Lions tickets. He's a hands-off owner who hired a team president, vice-president, GM, director of community relations, ticket and marketing managers, etc., to sell tickets and run the team. I guess he could paper the crowd like Cynamon and Sokolowski did in Toronto and give the illusion of success, but they lost their shirt and ended up losing the team. Braley prefers to run football team's like a business. You invest to develop your market but at some point revenue has to match expenses or you go out of business.
TheLionKing
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Ravi wrote:Well, the home opener on a Saturday afternoon drew 24,500 and change. As an Argo fan, I am grateful to David Braley that he has kept the franchise going and stabilized it but, unfortunately, he has done little to grow it. I see the same situation in B.C. Bob Ackles was growing the franchise but it has clearly been in stagnation mode since. I am surprised to see 15k season tickets sold in B.C. (in a Grey Cup year no less) when Ackles had the number up to about 24k a few years ago in an inferior stadium. I remember Braley saying prior to the new B.C. Place opening that he expected average attendance to increase to 35k to 40k. However, the Lions have been nowhere close to that and won't be this year either. What is Braley doing about this?
Apparently little or nothing. Skulsky seems to think they can grow the franchise by milking the season ticket holders.
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Ravi
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JohnHenry wrote:
Ravi wrote:Well, the home opener on a Saturday afternoon drew 24,500 and change. As an Argo fan, I am grateful to David Braley that he has kept the franchise going and stabilized it but, unfortunately, he has done little to grow it. I see the same situation in B.C. Bob Ackles was growing the franchise but it has clearly been in stagnation mode since. I am surprised to see 15k season tickets sold in B.C. (in a Grey Cup year no less) when Ackles had the number up to about 24k a few years ago in an inferior stadium. I remember Braley saying prior to the new B.C. Place opening that he expected average attendance to increase to 35k to 40k. However, the Lions have been nowhere close to that and won't be this year either. What is Braley doing about this?
I don't think Braley is in charge of selling Lions tickets. He's a hands-off owner who hired a team president, vice-president, GM, director of community relations, ticket and marketing managers, etc., to sell tickets and run the team. I guess he could paper the crowd like Cynamon and Sokolowski did in Toronto and give the illusion of success, but they lost their shirt and ended up losing the team. Braley prefers to run football team's like a business. You invest to develop your market but at some point revenue has to match expenses or you go out of business.
Not sure why "papering the house" was brought up as I agree that that is something that should not be done. However, if Braley runs his football teams as a business, should he not be trying to grow the business or is a stagnant business good practice these days? Also, who hires all of the people that you mentioned above?

Toronto, rightfully, gets a lot of flak for their attendance not being what it should be. Vancouver, however, isn't exactly doing that much better as today's attendance attests to and I am not seeing the attendance trending in the right direction in that city either. What was Bob Ackles doing that the current regime has stopped doing? Attendance has declined a fair bit since the late 2000s while the stadium has become one of the best in North America.
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David
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These things are somewhat cyclical Ravi, and we're definitely on the back edge of the cycle (the pinnacle of which was when Dickenson, Clermont, Simon, Murphy etc were in the line-up and Bobby was working his magic. I think we were averaging 34K). The club's attendance started to decline in the last years of the old BC Place and then they lost more season ticket holders when they went to the PNE - from which they've never recovered. But you're right. Things just haven't been the same since Bob Ackles' death. A combination of ticket price increases and HD TV have played a role.

Not to make excuses, but it's hard to sell an afternoon game on a long weekend. Our attendance also grows as the season progresses. People here are just not into attending football games in late June. I was counting on a win today and a split on the road to hopefully get a big gate for Chad Johnson's visit July 19.

If it's any consolation, I live on the west side of the city (think north Toronto) - a bit snobby. But I ran into 5 different people or groups of people with Lions gear on tonight, all of whom went to the game and I engaged all in conversation with every one of them (some younger people too). No one had a bad time there, some of the guys I talked to credited Edmonton's athletic DBs for some of the pics. It was great talking football again!


DH :cool:
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The schedule-makers haven't done the Lions many favours in recent years. Post Labour Day, Saturday night games always draw the best crowds, yet once again this year the Lions play five regular-season home games before Labour Day and four home games and five road games after Labour Day. It makes no sense. Summer is a tough time to draw crowds, let alone on a Saturday afternoon of what is effectively a long weekend. I thought the attendance was good, considering the terrible scheduling.

Another factor to keep in mind when comparing attendance with the Ackles era is that the Lions sold up to 5,000 discounted tickets to 7-Eleven (and Safeway before that) for each game and counted those tickets in their attendance, even though most of the seats were unfilled. There also were a lot more tickets given out to sponsors and advertisers as contra in those days. I could usually get my hands on up to 12 corporate tickets for each game, in addition to our corporate suite. Those freebies have dried up. The revenue per ticket is much higher now under Skulsky than it was under Ackles.

And on a positive note, a group of six of us who were at the game met at a restraurant in Langley afterwards. Several other groups wearing Lions gear arrived around the same time, including Sean Millington and his family at the table beside us. Friday night, I saw several groups of people in Lions gear at the new pub in the Langley casino, where there was a Budweiser-sponsored contest for tickets to the game. Lions' marketing and merchandise is everywhere.
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The advent of large screen HD TV and the inability to black it out has a huge impact on attendance, imo.
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JohnHenry
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It's TSN who is calling the shots on the schedule. The Lions game started at 3:00 on Sat. afternoon because TSN wanted to show a MLS game at 6:00 (they own a MLS team). TSN didn't show a CFL pregame show before the season opener this year because of the NBA draft. TSN didn't show a Friday Night Football game this week for the first time in a decade, wanting to show the NHL draft instead.

The league is willing to sacrifice ticket sales and schedule games when it's convenient for TSN, not the fans. Sunday afternoon or Fri/Sat night are the best times to attract the biggest crowds in Vancouver. I don't think we should blame David Braley for this. The league should remember team's still earn twice as much from ticket sales as from TSN.
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notahomer
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JohnHenry wrote:..... The league should remember team's still earn twice as much from ticket sales as from TSN.
Not arguing your point. I would agree except to state teams still earn twice as much from ticket sales IN SPITE of TSN. Meaning that if the Lions games were not so freely available in HD perhaps more fans might go to the games?
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David wrote:Not to make excuses, but it's hard to sell an afternoon game on a long weekend. Our attendance also grows as the season progresses. People here are just not into attending football games in late June. I was counting on a win today and a split on the road to hopefully get a big gate for Chad Johnson's visit July 19.DH :cool:
I saw the first indicator of the long weekend factor on Friday night. I flew in Friday afternoon and stayed at the HoJo on Granville. After a quick bite to eat around 9:30 I headed for my adopted neighbourhood pub Doolin's. Given it was Friday I was prepared for a small lineup but was able to walk right in and quickly secure a seat at the bar. The crowd fluxuated for the 3 hours I was there but it never came close to the usual elbow to elbow standing room only crowd I've come to expect there. When I left around 12:30 I looked back up to the closed off part of Granville and the immediate impression was that it was a slow night. There were lots of people out on the street but nowhere near as many as one would see on a normal Friday night. Walking back to HoJo past some other clubs lineups that are normally 20 or 30 deep were no more than a handful standing line or there was no line at all.
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Toppy Vann
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DanoT wrote:The advent of large screen HD TV and the inability to black it out has a huge impact on attendance, imo.
And combined with the quality of the actual broadcasts and quality panel is a factor.

I'm in Hong Kong mostly but when I was home and there'd be a 4:30 game on TSN and I had to leave for the Lions game - it was not lost on me that sitting home would have given me both games.

I think marketing to non-traditional groups especially those living in Vancouver is the way to go. SFU Alumni of which I am a part seems less of a sensible target group. The CFL needs to go visit the English Premier League teams and determine how they do it consciously.
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sj-roc
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Not sure whether or not this thread is meant as a "sequel" of sorts to the long marketing thread that ran over the 2013 season. If not then this post might be better placed there but I found this one first so here goes:

There's a poll on teamradio.ca right now asking "How long will it be before Whitecaps are second biggest sports franchise in Vancouver?" Options are 1-3yrs, 3-5yrs, 5-10yrs, 10-20yrs, and Never.

Never is leading by a fairly wide margin as I type, but to even ask the question kind of sounds like they're saying something about the direction of Lions business ops, you think?

Edit: I just checked again and they added another option: They already are.
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JohnHenry wrote:It's TSN who is calling the shots on the schedule. The Lions game started at 3:00 on Sat. afternoon because TSN wanted to show a MLS game at 6:00 (they own a MLS team). TSN didn't show a CFL pregame show before the season opener this year because of the NBA draft. TSN didn't show a Friday Night Football game this week for the first time in a decade, wanting to show the NHL draft instead.

The league is willing to sacrifice ticket sales and schedule games when it's convenient for TSN, not the fans. Sunday afternoon or Fri/Sat night are the best times to attract the biggest crowds in Vancouver. I don't think we should blame David Braley for this. The league should remember team's still earn twice as much from ticket sales as from TSN.
the MLS game has no impact. The lions get 700,000-800,000 per game on TSN. The whitecaps get 50,000-75,000 on TV with no commercials. TSN would prefer primetime in all time zone plus i think the lions want to see which the interest level is for afternoon games. I think a few afternoon games are good because you draw kids and older demo from suburbs/island to the game.
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sj-roc
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Qman wrote:
JohnHenry wrote:It's TSN who is calling the shots on the schedule. The Lions game started at 3:00 on Sat. afternoon because TSN wanted to show a MLS game at 6:00 (they own a MLS team). TSN didn't show a CFL pregame show before the season opener this year because of the NBA draft. TSN didn't show a Friday Night Football game this week for the first time in a decade, wanting to show the NHL draft instead.

The league is willing to sacrifice ticket sales and schedule games when it's convenient for TSN, not the fans. Sunday afternoon or Fri/Sat night are the best times to attract the biggest crowds in Vancouver. I don't think we should blame David Braley for this. The league should remember team's still earn twice as much from ticket sales as from TSN.
the MLS game has no impact. The lions get 700,000-800,000 per game on TSN. The whitecaps get 50,000-75,000 on TV with no commercials. TSN would prefer primetime in all time zone plus i think the lions want to see which the interest level is for afternoon games. I think a few afternoon games are good because you draw kids and older demo from suburbs/island to the game.
I think MLS is having an impact on the Lions schedule. I'm fairly sure today's Lions game would have had a 7pm kickoff if TSN weren't already airing the Whitecaps game from Salt Lake City at this same time, although I agree that at least some earlier starts are a good idea in terms of getting kids interested.

MLS released their 2014 schedule last November, either before or only shortly after the CFL 2013 season wrapped. As such, and with their season starting in March — around the time the CFL schedule is released and a full 3+ months before our season starts — I think this will always give the Whitecaps a leg up on the Lions for first pick of dates and game times, certainly as long as we're sharing the same venue.

As for the 1040 poll question I posted above on the possibility of the Whitecaps overtaking the Lions in the Vancouver sports landscape, Tom Mayenknecht discussed this matter with Moj on their 11am crossover segment this morning. Moj is about as solid a CFL propopent as there is on 1040 and even he admitted he could see this happening in the next 20 years, his thinking being that today's kids are forging their sports allegiances differently than his generation.

This poll is no longer up but last I saw, only about 40% said it would never happen; i.e., a majority of those answering think it will happen at some point. Admittedly a non-scientific poll but I think the Lions should be concerned about this.

The new poll question is whether you're going to today's game specifically on account of watching Ocho play. It's running about 80-20 no-yes at the moment.
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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Johnson has been a non factor in all of the Als game so far.
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Ravi
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TheLionKing wrote:Johnson has been a non factor in all of the Als game so far.
And he was almost invisible at B.C. Place.
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