Look to Roughriders’ example to solve CFL’s woes

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This article was published 24/11/2017 (3171 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A large three-topping pizza. Ten chicken wings. Four cans of pop. Two dipping sauces. And a pair of Grey Cup tickets — all for $29.99.

It was a year ago this week that a promotion by the fast-food chain Pizza Pizza told us everything we needed to know about the sham that was the 2016 Grey Cup in Toronto.

After months of Toronto organizers telling anyone who would listen that the big game was on the verge of selling out “any day now,” the Pizza Pizza promotion in Hamilton during Grey Cup Week last year revealed what many had long suspected: organizers quite literally couldn’t give away Grey Cup tickets to uninterested Torontonians and had to throw in a pizza, three toppings and a bunch of other goodies just to make the deal palatable.

Word of the promotion got out — funny how “promotions” have a tendency to become public — and the whole thing blew up in the league’s face. In the end, the CFL ordered the promotion stopped, claiming the 16 Pizza Pizza outlets in Hamilton who were giving away Grey Cup tickets “didn’t have proper authorization.”

Which was no doubt true, but it was also besides the point. Because what those Pizza Pizza outlets did have was lots and lots of free Grey Cup tickets in a week when the CFL was forced to paper the house at BMO Field, lest the league’s biggest showcase of the year be turned into a sea of empty seats and yet another very visible reminder of how no one cares about the CFL in the country’s biggest city. Still.

We take this delicious trip down memory lane to call your attention to the striking contrast between last year’s gong show in Toronto and a championship game between the Toronto Argonauts and Calgary Stampeders in Ottawa this Sunday that’s been sold out for over a month.

You can still buy pizza in Ottawa this week. (I recommend Ricardo’s on Bay Street.) And you no doubt can buy a pair of Grey Cup tickets somewhere on the secondary market this week too, although you’ll pay a premium.

But what you definitely cannot do in Ottawa this week is buy those two things together at the same time and the same place, not in a city that has embraced the CFL since its return in 2014 and has in TD Place what is, for my money, the funnest stadium and surrounding area to enjoy three-down football anywhere in Canada.

You know how wealthy owners of sports teams always promise that the new stadium or arena they want hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars to build will “revitalize” an area?

Well, Ottawa is one of the rare examples of that actually happening. A $200-million renovation of old Frank Clair Stadium has turned a crumbling set of grandstands and the dilapidated grounds adjacent to it into a vibrant mixed-use area that now includes restaurants, bars, high-end condos and — the ultimate symbol of gentrification these days — a Whole Foods store.

In a city that rolls up the streets at 5 p.m. every weekday when all the bureaucrats go home for the day, the area surrounding TD Place has become an oasis of late-night life and fun.

The area attracted over 1.5 million visitors in just its first year and the primary tenant of TD Place, the Ottawa Redblacks, rewarded locals for their enthusiasm with a Grey Cup championship in Toronto last year in what was just the third year of existence for the expansion franchise.

Fast-forward to Year 4 and the city’s love affair with the CFL is still very much in full bloom — the Redblacks played to 99.46 per cent capacity this season.

All of which is to say that the CFL is working in Ottawa and Ottawa is working for the CFL.

Just like it’s working, more or less, in Winnipeg and Regina and Calgary and Edmonton and Hamilton.

You know what those six cities have in common? They’re not Toronto, Vancouver or Montreal, where the CFL is not working.

It says a lot about both the present state of the CFL and its future that the three largest cities in Canada also had the three lowest attendances in the CFL — by a mile — this season.

The Lions attracted an average of just 19,851 fans per game in 2017, which is almost 5,000 fans per game lower than the league average of 24,644 — and barely over one-third of the 54,500-seat capacity of B.C. Place.

And the story just gets worse from there for the CFL in Canada’s biggest markets.

The Alouettes have been in an attendance freefall for the last couple years, and hit a new low this season — on the field and off of it — when they drew an average of just 19,522.

And then there are the Argos, who we were told last year would thrive in their new, more intimate surroundings at BMO Field, but continue to struggle at the gate in their new stadium the exact same way they did at Skydome and old CNE.

The Argos drew an average crowd of just 13,914 fans per game this season, which is basically one-half of the 27,681 the Blue Bombers averaged at Investors Group Field.

That’s a joke, and anyone who points to a near capacity crowd for this year’s East Final at BMO Field as evidence the Argos have turned a corner in the Toronto market is deluding themselves.

The Argos’ opponent in that East Final were the Saskatchewan Roughriders and that fan base travels like no other in the country. Where last year’s Grey Cup was papered by pizza, this year’s East Final was papered by green.

Want to fix Toronto’s CFL problem? Move the Riders there.

Now, some of the CFL’s big-city problems are fixable.

It wasn’t that long ago, for instance, that Montreal was one of the league’s biggest success stories. After struggling for years to make things work at Olympic Stadium (slogan: Where professional sports goes to die), the Als struck gold with their move to Stade Molson, a small, quaint, affordable and centrally located stadium that Montrealers actually enjoyed attending.

Throw in a winning football team and the Als were the second-hottest sports ticket in Montreal for years, all of which would seem to suggest that there’s nothing so wrong in Montreal today that a winning team couldn’t fix.

I’m more dubious about the long-term prospects for the Lions, who have the misfortune of playing in B.C. Place — a stadium grossly overbuilt for the CFL in any city not named Regina — and an owner in David Braley who lost interest long ago.

B.C. Place is a great place to watch U2. It is positively cavernous for watching the CFL, even on the rare occasions the Lions actually do draw a decent crowd.

And the Argos? If they were your poodle, you’d have put them to sleep years ago.

Yeah, I know the Argos are playing in the Grey Cup this weekend. Yeah, I know they even might win — although I doubt it.

But here’s an existential question for you:

If a Grey Cup falls in a forest, but you don’t have any fans who actually care, does it exist?

You want to relocate a sports franchise to Eastern Canada? Never mind moving the Arizona Coyotes/Carolina Hurricanes/Florida Panthers/Calgary Flames/Ottawa Senators to Quebec City — I’d move the Argos to Halifax, where the CFL met this month with a group of businessmen who have the money and interest to finally make the Canadian Football League a true coast-to-coast presence.

A CFL team would be a hit in the Maritimes in the same way the Riders are a hit in Saskatchewan.

Like the Riders, they’d be the biggest show in town. Like the Riders, they’d be based in one city, but draw support from an entire region.

And like the Riders, it’d be the football — not the pizza and dipping sauces — that would sell tickets.

email: paul.wiecek@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @PaulWiecek