Fixing the Argos
By now it seems that everyone has a take on how to fix the Toronto Argonauts attendance difficulties. It doesn’t take long to find take after take after take (after take after take…) on what’s wrong and how, maybe, to fix it.
Since the team moved to BMO Field to enter into the world’s most awkward ground share (it’s what happens when you put two fan bases with massive chips on their shoulders and mostly conflicting world views in conflict with each other) the sympathy of TFC fans has been close to zero. The soccer crowd wants the Argos out. Period.
As someone with a strong (gridiron) football (for the rest of this article I will be using football to refer to the sport with quarterbacks, soccer as the sport with keepers) background in my past I’ve always been stuck in an especially challenging position. I wrote extensively on the soccer perspective during the fight to keep the team out of BMO Field and I stand by my words from then.
However, I also appreciate the CFL in a way that not all of my readers do. So I always tried to consider the football perspective while stressing the soccer concerns.
Simply put BMO Field is and always was a bad fit for the Argos. This isn’t a new position. I wrote the following in 2015,
BMO isn’t Molson Stadium and Toronto in 2015 isn’t Montreal in 1999. This romantic notion that the Argos are going to move in and suddenly become the in thing to do in the city isn’t based on anything more than hope.
BMO isn’t intimate (30,000 seats), not really that easy to get to, cold and the Argos will still get the shaft on dates.
More importantly, as tenants at BMO, the Argos will not have any additional revenue streams beyond ticket sales. Unless the team is selling out every game — and, again, what evidence is there that they will? What real evidence? — they will still lose money. Probably a lot of it.
I fully understand how impossible what I’m about to write seems, but it truly is the only thing that can truly provide the Argos with any type of long-term stability.
You need your own stadium.
I still maintain that. The Argos will never thrive so long as they are sharing facilities (at least if with indifferent partners) and the team’s current ownership (Larry Tanenbaum and Bell, which, notably, isn’t MLSE no matter how much CFL fans hint, imply and hope it to be so) has the money to build it.
Really. They may not have the will, but they do have the coin.
They may also have a willing and interested partner in the Toronto Wolfpack.
The Wolfpack have been remarkably successful in 2017, playing rugby league, a sport few Canadians knew much about, to engaged, young, fun-loving fans at Lamport Stadium. They’ve been packing the place all year despite winning games in a walkover most weeks. Long term this team is looking to advance to the Rugby League SuperLeague and when they do so they’ll likely need to play in a larger stadium.
Probably one that sits about 20,000. FieldTurf would be fine. CFL site lines just about perfect for them too.
They would like to be playing in a stadium that is about the same size and with the same feel as Percival Molson Memorial Stadium in Montreal — the very place that was held up as the model the Argos should be chasing after for close to a decade.
So, to re-cap, you have a successful Toronto team that is potentially going to be looking for a new home (or to upgrade their existing one) in the near future that plays a sport that is a near perfect fit with the CFL and is currently drawing the exact type of young, Liberty Village living fans the Argos lust after…
Far be it for the soccer guy to play match-maker here, but for God’s sake swipe right guys.
It may seem insane to be talking about leaving BMO Field already, but it’s clearly not working. It’s too big and no amount of hired marching bands, DJs and half-assed tailgates is going to fix it.
But a partnership with a team that is like-minded and already successful finding the audience you’re after?
Make it happen — for the benefit of the Argos fans that remain and for the CFL.
