Quote:
Originally Posted by mistercorporate
I went for a walk around town yesterday evening and saw 3 different people with TFC gear and about a half dozen with Blue Jays gear, all within a couple hours. I have yet to see someone wear Argos gear in this city after 20+ years of living here. Please continue to minimize the opinions of Torontonians who insist that there's hardly anyone here who follows or watches the Argos. The Jays, Leafs and TFC are common water cooler talk, the Argos are nowhere to be seen but in these interpretations of media stats from CFL fanboys on this message board...
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I am not trying to make excuses here but aside from the fact that some (not saying you do) go out of their way to ignore the CFL, there are a few things about merchandising and visibility that are not as anecdotal as what I just referred to.
For starters, the CFL absolutely sucks at merchandising. It's better than it was before when it did not know what the word merchandising meant. But it still sucks at merchandising. The only teams that get merchandising are Saskatchewan obviously, and to a lesser degree Montreal.
MLS merchandising follows the hyperdriven American pro sports merchandising model. They know what they are doing. Since a rising tide lifts all boats, TFC and L'Impact (and I assume the Whitecaps) benefit from this. I see more Impact gear and promo items here in Gatineau, in Montreal and across Quebec than I do Alouettes stuff. And yet I still believe the Alouettes have a bigger following than L'Impact. By a decent margin.
Also, soccer is "in" among the hipster crowd. It's very 21st century, worldly, cosmopolitan. CFL, especially in Toronto, is not. Obviously TFC have a decent fan base of real soccer fans but they also have a bunch of "fashionable" fans. The Argos don't.