Doug Smith's wishful thinking for Raptors season tickets

As Neate pointed out earlier on in the week it truly is getting harder to write on the Toronto Raptors in a way that isn't just really an act of redundancy. The play on the court has not changed in a while, and even the TSN2 debacle is beyond frustrating. Unless Chris Bosh is given other gigs around town to match his weatherman appearance on CTV last night it pretty much is just looking forward for this squad.

But today the Toronto Star's Doug Smith, conjuring up a conversation that he hopes goes down in the MLSE boardroom. I too wish it would take place this way, but have my doubts it would be given consideration:

Wanna know what happens in my perfect world?

Wait, I take that back.

Wanna know what happens in my perfect world regarding one facet of basketball that I have to write about every day?

Here’s what happens:

The bean counters and tall foreheads over at Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment are sitting around deciding when to spring the full season ticket renewal thing on the unsuspecting customers.

They call this guy, let’s say Mr. Grunt, and invite his input.

Them: “Mr. Grunt, oh wise one, what should we do?”

Grunt: “Sit down, folks, and listen closely.

“First, do not – I repeat DO NOT – even contemplate as much as a one penny increase in a single seat in your arena.

“In fact, you need to freeze the prices of every seat in the bottom half of the lower bowl and you have to reduce the price of the top half of the lower bowl by about three per cent.

“You need to reduce the price of seats in most of the upper bowl by five per cent and you cut the cost of seats in the corners by seven per cent.

“These are horrible economic times, people are losing jobs left and right, the amount of disposable income is drying up rapidly and if you want casual fans to augment your season-ticket base, those tickets have to be affordable.

“The Phoenix Suns, Minnesota Timberwolves, Charlotte Bobcats and Detroit Pistons have already announced they’ll reduce or freeze ticket prices so there is precedent in the league today.

“Oh, and one other thing, if season ticket holders want to pay over time, you allow them right now to make seven or eight equal monthly payments – with no interest charges – and if they want to pay it all up front, you give them another two per cent off.”

“You’ve put a substandard product on the court this season, you’ve been party to one of the all-time fan screw jobs in history with this Rogers, TSN2 mess you got yourself into and, trust me, you don’t have a lot of goodwill with the people.”

Them: “Are you out of your frickin’ mind!”

Mr. Grunt: “Power to the people, baby!”

Boy do I wish Mr. Grunt wouldn't get shouted out the Office...wishful thinking, of course. With other teams freezing their ticket prices who knows, maybe the MLSE will learn a thing or two!

Maybe...?

Playing the Game: The Ti-Cats vs. The Fans

It's always amazing to see the Hamilton Tiger Cats fanbase, while not the biggest city around they're very passionate about their football team! The Hamilton Bulldogs - Montreal's AHL affiliate - is definitely not enjoying much of a draw from the fans but then again the city has never been hockey first. While growing up in the Hamilton-Wentworth area I definitely felt that both basketball and football were more prominent than hockey, maybe it was because that's what I played but I thought it was also a trend with my friends at school.

Despite losing seasons the crowd still turned out for the Cats, in seasons where they couldn't manage more than 5 wins on the season there was still an average turnout of more than 26,000 in a stadium pegged to hold just under 29,000 (in that 5-13 season they actually averaged 800 people short of capacity, granted that was following a winning season still shows even some success translates very well in Steeltown). But recently, the attendance has started to slip, and for pretty obvious reasons...

Only averaging 21,153 this season while on the way to putting in a second consecutive 3-15 campaign, is not a good sign - really attendance has dropped by about 3,000 at a time these past few seasons. And it's for that reason that the season tickets prices will not budge, they will stay the same and there will be no extra charge, according to Scott Radley of the Hamilton Spectator. However therein lies the dilemma, especially since so much has been made about getting back in black for the Cats - Team President Scott Mitchell has stated publicly that the team will be run as a business, and so they are intending on making money. So the inevitable hit now falls on the single game ticket owner.

I don't know what the Tabbies are really trying to accomplish here because...well maybe they didn't get the memo, but the economy is as promising as a Fine Young Cannibals reunion tour right now (hey if it can work for the New Kids, one can always dream!). The Ti-Cats organization seems to believe that people will drop more money for an entire season rather than just for the occasional game here and there, even with a stagnant and inferior product on the field. I agree with not budging the seasons ticket prices but can't help but think that the logic behind this move is rather flawed...

Radley sums it up very well himself though in his article:

The reality is, there's only one way the bleachers at Ivor Wynne get filled again anytime soon. It's not a sales job. It's not a discount. It's not clever promotions, clean bathrooms, better concessions or even good weather.

It's winning. Period.

If the Cats could ever figure out how to do that with some regularity, ticket sales would take care of themselves and instead of worrying about crowd sizes, everyone could go back to complaining about the cost of beer.

This sort of move will effectively scare away the casual fanbase - as many hardcores as there are in Hamilton, you must always expand your reach to survive and a move like this contradicts that very notion! Yes you need to spend money to make money and they need to go out there and get the star players but they've done that already, signing Casey Printers and Kenton Keith makes it clear that Hamilton is willing to spend the dough to improve the team! More money for more players, who are even being shown up by current third stringers on the team, is certainly not the answer to righting the ship.

There's something wrong in Steeltown, and this life long Tabbies fan hopes that it's on the road to being corrected and not the other direction. When the crowd is out Ivor Wynne is one of the toughest places to play out of the entire CFL, I'm certainly one who is hoping to see that raucous crowd return sooner rather than later...

Why should fans buy rock-bottom Cat stocks?