Brampton and Bollywood goes together like aloo gobi

A winning major junior hockey team smack dab in the middle of a huge South Asian enclave is brain candy for a sports obsessive, or at least the ultimate how-not-to from Marketing 101.

Toronto Star junior hockey reporter Sunaya Sapurji, over at Loose Pucks, is calling on the OHL's Brampton Battalion to have a Bollywood night next season in an attempt to get out new fans, just as Hockey Night in Canada telecasts are now available in Punjabi. The suggestion sort of hits on the mild obsessions with the OHL's endless expansion experiment in Toronto and the question of whether major junior hockey can be sold to a to people whose cultural frame of reference doesn't involve ice, snow and skates.

Brampton is a perfect storm in those regards, although there is no one catch-all for why it struggles to get fans out consistently despite being a solid team year-in, year-out under coach Stan Butler. (The Battalion did have a very respectable official attendance of 3,975 last Sunday, when they, ahem, lost 3-2 to the Belleville Bulls and Kingston-born Mike Murphy in a matchup of first-place clubs.) It has been touched on here, first by the bald guy in in November and by the other bald guy -- face the facts, Sagert -- in in January.

Sapurji is challenging this notion that junior hockey teams should only concentrate on the core audience of middle-class white parents and their hockey-playing daughters and sons, since those with roots in non-HPNs (hockey-playing nations) cannot be won over:

"Sorry, but that argument is lazy. If anyone is to blame it's the marketing people who either can't think outside the box, or have neither the desire nor the funds to reach out to said community.

"My Indian grandmother, who had never seen snow before moving to Europe in the late 60s, was a die-hard Montreal Canadiens fan. I'd find her watching Habs games all the time (mostly on French CBC) and I remember asking her why she watched them, since she didn't speak French and it was clear she had no clue what going on.

"She said she liked the Habs because they were fast and because they were 'fair'-- which I guess meant they weren't always penalty box. If my 70-year-old Parsi gran can fall in love with hockey, anyone can.

" ... In order for people to buy your product, they first have to know that product exists. Take out ads in the magazines and newspapers geared towards the South Asian community. Buy an ad during one of the 1,000 Indian TV shows on cable. Make an effort.

" ... Newcomers to Canada want to fit in. Kids in a new country want to be just like their Canadian friends.

"That's how I started going to OHL games, back when the Marlies played out of Maple Leaf Gardens. At that time you could go to Becker's and get coupons for discounted tickets. All my friends went, so I went. And I loved it. Hook the kids and you'll have fans for life.

"Next year when JK Gill and the Sudbury Wolves come to Brampton hold 'Bollywood or Bhangra Night in Brampton.' Invite local vendors to sell samosa and pakoras (if they're allowed), invite the local South Asian community, play Panjabi MC during the stoppages and get ex-OHLer and current Vancouver Canucks scout Harkie Singh to drop the puck for the ceremonial faceoff."

Sapurji is bang on (and, so much the better, her post referenced a 2007 Toronto Star article that our own Neil Acharya wrote about NHLer Manny Malhotra, whose dad is Indian). The Battalion have never been marketed properly. It's a huge market; ask Rupert Murdoch what reaching out to the Indian market has done for the English Premier League.

It's shortsighted not to make any effort to reach out to a visible minority group which has dollars to spend. (Part of the reason the Blue Jays were the first MLB team to draw four million fans was that they were very ahead of the curve when it came to appealing directly to female fans; Stephen Brunt noted in one of his books that the Jays, back in the '70s, even considered a marketing campaign aimed at the gay community, which many teams even today wouldn't do on a bet.)

At least these questions are starting to get asked by some journalists with a good-sized platform.
Of course, another suggestion for getting more fans out to OHL games in the GTA is to have play out of Maple Leaf Gardens again, like Eugene Melnyk wanted to do years ago with the now Mississauga St. Michael's Maors, but that's another post.

Related:
Bring Bollywood to Battalion (Sunaya Sapurji, Loose Pucks)
NHL play-by-play in Punjabi scores big time; Hockey Night in Canada experiment so successful it's likely to be expanded (Raveena Aulakh, Toronto Star, Feb. 16)

Now the AFL's dead...

As Neate mentioned this morning, the Arena Football League finally got around to suspending their 2009 season [AFL press release] late last night. Sounds like someone finally whacked it to stop the protests. For those keeping track, this came five days after Los Angeles Avengers owner Casey Wasserman told Sam Farmer of the Los Angeles Times last Wednesday that the owners were going to call the season off, prompting this analysis post from myself. That night, though, the league's owners voted to keep going for a season. Apparently, the owners held another conference call Sunday night and voted [The Associated Press, via Yahoo!] to shut the season down then.

You have to wonder what changed in those four days. It's hard to think that it was that much. The economic mess didn't change drastically, and there wasn't a lot of news on the football front in other leagues that would have made a difference. It also doesn't seem to have been changes on the player relations front, as this move is apparently still subject to union approval [AP, via The Globe and Mail. What seems more likely is that Wednesday's move was a snap decision not necessarily to keep the league up and running but to further explore the possibililty of playing in 2009. That's logical; as I previously wrote, taking a season off makes it tougher to come back, especially in this economic climate. Thus, it's understandable that they wanted to preserve the possibility of playing for as long as possible (in fact, the Globe story says there's still a chance of an abbreviated 2009 season; that doesn't seem too likely though, as most of the players are probably going to look for work elsewhere).

This still doesn't look good on the AFL, though. Essentially, the same group of people voted twice on the subject within four days. The first vote was unanimously in favour of not suspending play; the second one doesn't seem to have been unanimous, but a majority of owners voted in favour of suspending play. This leaves an appearance of amateurism, and it certainly leads to poor perception in the media; you can bet that the LA Times, Yahoo! and the vast number of other news outlets that ran with the original cancellation story only to pull it when the league's denial came out aren't too happy about this reversal because it makes them look bad. Editors from coast-to-coast are probably cursing the league, and those memories will have an impact on coverage if and when the league resumes play.

The implications are interesting. In the short term,, we'll likely see an influx of talent to the CFL. The scope of that influx is up for debate, but there will certainly be a lot of football players looking for a job this year, and CFL executives like Jim Popp have commented publicly that there are Arena Football players who would be very interesting to CFL teams.

We might also see more broadcasts of CFL games in the U.S. The AFL was broadcast on ESPN2 [ESPN.com] every Monday, and the CFL has a pre-existing deal with ESPN to have some of their games regularly webcast on ESPN 360. There will be Americans looking for football to watch in May and June, and it could be a logical move for ESPN to show some CFL games in the old AFL slot on ESPN2.

In the long term, we'll likely see either the AFL return or another new league like the USFL take its place. There's too much interest in football in the U.S. for there not to be another pro league of some kind, especially if it's focused on spring games. The AFL also has a lot of big names and big money backing it. It will be tough either for the AFL to come back or a new league to start in the current economic state of affairs, though, as they would be very much an alternative, fringe league. The big leagues in the U.S. are struggling to some degree, as shown by the recent job cuts, but it's been shown before by various economists that there's still a considerable demand for sports during a recession. However, that demand is usually more for mainstream sports, which makes sense. People have to prioritize their spending, and it's easier to rationalize giving something else up to buy tickets for an event if you're a passionate fan of the team or the league involved. Thus, these tickets are sometimes regarded as more essential. For leagues such as the AFL, the NHL and even MLS, though, a good deal of their fans don't necessarily put that sport first, and thus they may find it hard to justify spending the cash for tickets to those games.

Some quotes from the AFL press release to wrap things up:

- Jon Bon Jovi, co-owner of the defending champion Philadelphia Soul:
"We, the owners of the Arena Football League, realize we have the most fan-friendly, affordable and accessible sport anywhere. These are trying economic times. The revamping will ensure that the AFL continues to provide value to its fans and not only survives but thrives in the years to come."

- Jerry Jones, owner of the Dallas Desperados (and some other Dallas team):
"Our involvement with the Arena Football League was always geared toward promoting football on a year-round basis. Our experience with the Desperados has accomplished those goals and has been very positive. As we move forward we will explore all of the options that are available in regard to the future of the AFL and the Desperados."

- Arthur Blank, owner of the Georgia Force (and the Atlanta Falcons):
"As a four-year owner of the Georgia Force, I have enjoyed our affiliation with Arena Football. In addition, our club is very proud of its leadership position in the league in many areas on and off the field. We want that to continue for our fans, so we support the decision to focus our energies on securing the long-term success of the Arena Football League."

- John Elway, co-owner and CEO of the Colorado Crush:
"Although it is disappointing to suspend the 2009 season, the Arena Football League and its owners feel it is essential to reevaluate the current business model to ensure the livelihood of the AFL in the future."

That's what the league should have done to survive: put out more releases with comments from those kind of names!

ADDvertising the Game: Sports gimmicks n' such

So it was announced just this past Thursday that David Stern has approved an idea to allow for the 2010 NBA All Star game to be played outdoors at the new Dallas Cowboys Stadium. The prior festivities - skills challenge, rookie vs. sophmore game - will be played indoors at the American Airlines Center, home of the Dallas Mavericks.

And thus the never-ending reinvention of North American sport continues - some of the ideas good, others completely unnecessary, at least in this writers opinion. With Winter Classics a regular event in the NHL, the NFL hosting regular season games in London, England also becoming common, and the NBA taking it outdoors in a tennis court this preseason it seems the gimmicks never end. Even though the XFL disbanded and the MLS moved away from that god awful breakaway penalty shot format, the big players in North American sport still seem to have a need to distract the fans as much as possible to keep them interested.

My question is has the level of play dried up that much? Or are we now just so quick to lose interest thanks to our on demand world we live in that we need new spectacles constantly set before us or else we're going elsewhere? Are we not entertained?? It's almost worth questioning if we're progressing to that point where the intro sequence to BASEketball, or those old Bud Light Commercials (Sumo High Diving, Full Contact Golf), will soon become a reality. Leagues change rules, add instant replay, increase/decrease the size of their equipment, they do so many things purely based around the response of the fans that it may not be unreasonable to suggest some huge amendment really isn't too far off.

Personally I feel that seating 100,000 for an all star game is a bit absurd, it works for hockey but you're also covering more of the field with a hockey rink. Placing the court at midfield they're barely going to be able to cover the star - I know people WILL still buy the tickets, but being stuck in the nosebleeds for that one is not something I'd be too interested in personally! But I guess some will revel in the fact that they were one of 100,000 there, watching the All Star game thru their binoculars.

For now guess it's just worth the wait to see if the inevitable happens and they decide to host a soccer game on a cruise ship, while watching any other new developments that may come along the way to keep us sports nuts happy and content.