Things not so tickety-boo at gate

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 09/07/2010 (5893 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

You’ll have to excuse your humble agent’s fixation with ticket sales when it comes to the local 12.

After all, covering the Bombers at the turn of the century — when the franchise was beggar-poor and office employees had to take their own toilet paper to work — can make you penny wise. Like the folks who lived through the Depression, who decades later, would still wear their the shoes until the soles wore to the sock.

It becomes almost instinctual. Where farmers look to the skies for rain clouds, people like me watch Bombers crowds not for how much noise they make, but for how much money they generate.

To that end, I’m not sure if the Bombers are getting too worried yet. Don’t know if they should be, either.

Regardless, for a team that has spent the last few months doing and saying all the right things — both on and off the field — it’s not like fans have been storming the ticket booths in the early days of a new Bombers era.

Sales to last Friday’s season opener were soft, although a final tally of 26,302 for a long weekend game wasn’t considered ominous. (This is a debatable point. To wit, does everybody in this town own a cottage?)

Yet the Bombers actually upset the Hamilton Tiger-Cats 49-29, their brand new quarterback was a roaring success in Week 1 generating almost 400 yards in personal offence, the home team generated seven sacks and, in the immortal words of Cactus Jack, it turned out nice again.

And if wonders never cease, the Bombers are now actually sitting atop the East one whole week into the season. Who knew?

So why are ticket sales still hovering around the mid-20,000 range for tonight’s dance with the Toronto Argonauts? More disconcerting, why are the Bombers so loathe to actually make the number available to the public?

Is it the lure of the Winnipeg Folk Festival?

Are the Argos, who’ve had issues that make the Bombers operation look like a military parade in the Red Square, a bad draw?

Do Winnipeggers just look for excuses not to go to Bombers games out of habit?

Or does the damage that occurred last season, where many fans were insulted and alienated like never before under the Mike Kelly regime, still have some customers sitting on their wallets?

Of course, we’re not talking about the vast majority of the diehards that are the team’s lifeblood. We’re talking about the casual fans who are the difference between a middling crowd of 26,000 and a sellout of 29,500 — which translates over a season into breaking even or being $1 million in the black.

Yes, we’re talking about the dreaded bandwagon jumpers, who although viewed as faint-hearted by the loyalists are critical to making a profit or bleeding, say, $1.2 million, which was the red ink on the Bombers’ grim financial sheet in 2009.

The fallout of that lost season was a front office and coaching purge where every subsequent decision has been to appease the angry constituency of fans who vowed last fall never to return. And so far, many of them haven’t.

That might begin to gnaw at the new franchise caretakers on Maroons Road, but perhaps it’s asking too much for all to be forgiven so soon. And if 26,000-plus are the worst crowds the Bombers draw in 2010, they will look like manna from heaven compared to the 21,000-22,000 range at the nadir of last season.

(A cynical argument could be made that without the controversy and calamity under Kelly, there is no media buzz around today’s Bombers. Whatever. The Bombers scored less than 20 points 10 times last season, had no quarterback and no discernible offence. Sell that. They scored 49 points under Pierce in Week 1. End of debate.)

So maybe after kissing up to Bombers fans since last November, the franchise is going to have to woo them a little longer from a distance. In time, the estranged relationship between team and 29,500th fan might eventually be restored.

No one said this was going to be easy. The Bombers are a product, the fans are consumers, and you don’t so blatantly tarnish the brand without consequence.

For what it’s worth, however, another few weeks of promise and results will be like spring rain to a seeded field.

Long under repair, the bandwagon waits.

randy.turner@freepress.mb.ca

Randy Turner
Reporter

Randy Turner spent much of his journalistic career on the road. A lot of roads. Dirt roads, snow-packed roads, U.S. interstates and foreign highways. In other words, he got a lot of kilometres on the odometer, if you know what we mean.

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