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Originally Posted by esquire
I distinctly remember you making that point some time ago, that people in Toronto had gone from indifference concerning the Argos to not even knowing that the team exists.
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The only thing i'll add to this is something that i've tried to pay attention to in my many times visiting larger cities and, in particular, Toronto. It goes without saying that it's a massive city, especially on a Canadian scale. Any one single event can be lost in a dizzying sea of activity where there are endless entertainment, food, and social options.
The thing about being a sports team in such a large city is that you have to find some sort of way to be relevant. Whether that's winning championships, being affiliated with celebrities or other teams, or just being popular in general. If you're not
in you'll be quickly forgotten about. There's no time to sit around thinking about things when you can go out and get something better. There have been quite a few weekends i've spent with friends where sports didn't even come up on the radar because we were too busy going to shows, or eating, or just hanging out. A team like the Argos aren't going to be as visible in a giant, world city like Toronto like they're visible in Ottawa or Hamilton or Regina. It's simply bigger with more things to do, and one can easily be washed away by malls and eating and anything else to do instead.
How many Torontonians do we think are aware of the Rock? Or Wolfpack? Or Arrows? It's probably very few. The Argos, at least IMO, aren't that much of a step up from something like an NLL team in a market like that. People absorb things in Toronto if they're the very best, or the best you're able to get in such a large city. Why go watch lacrosse when the Jays play tomorrow? Why go watch rugby when X is opening down the street tomorrow? You're only really going to get the diehards of that sport or the odd casual fan who's been invited or saw some promotion for the team.
Toronto is such an endless maze of options that it's not surprising to me that the Argos are an unknown. I know the older demographic on this forum scoffs at the idea that a CFL team is an unknown in any Canadian city but younger people are genuinely separated from local events and especially local sports events. Everything is consumed from a wide web of whatever shows up on their social feeds and sports simply don't register with younger people like they did ten or twenty years ago. At least, not with the same width of brush anyway.
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Originally Posted by esquire
I find that state of affairs perplexing... do people not read newspapers or watch the local news anymore?! Or for that matter, watch any sports on TSN? If you watch so much as one hour of TSN during the CFL season you will inevitably see promos for CFL games. Hell, the souvenir kiosks at Pearson still have some Argos merch available.
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To this point I will say: no, at least not young people. Young people don't read newspapers or watch local news. They might watch TSN but there's twenty different options out there, too. Thery're more likely going to be watching Instagram/Youtube/Snapchat than any boring cable TV network that charges you a subscription fee AND shows paid commercials. If young people want to watch sports they'll either stream it at home or go out to a bar with friends - and when you're at a bar or out watching it somewhere it doesn't really matter what channel it's on as long as the game is on (and nobody is likely paying attention to the promo spots during commercials).
Going out to watch the Raptors this postseason at bars in a non-Toronto city has been a pretty interesting litmus test to what I try to get across on this forum and on others. The one thing to take away from the Raptors win in Game 6 is that the crowd was
overwhelmingly younger than any other sport i've followed. There were 100 people in my bar in boring Ottawa and they were all under 35 and passionate about the game unfolding. A lot of it is bandwagon, sure, but basketball and the NBA has the power to create and ride that bandwagon for all its glory. The Raptors are doing this now, the Jays did this a few years ago, and the Leafs have the power to do this. They're probably the only three teams in Canada today that can pack bars out in non-local cities whilst simultaneously getting 30-50K people on the streets after a game.
How do the Argos become relevant again? It's not a simple answer, and a lot of it is going to ride on the general societal viewpoint of the CFL and football as a whole. How do you make the Argos relevant in a city where there's four or five more popular sports teams? How do you make the CFL more relevant when the NFL is such a juggernaut? How do you make football more compelling for young people vis-a-vis other sports? They're all questions I don't really have an answer to, and they likely won't have simple answers.
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