Lionbackers.com

David wrote:

footballtom wrote:From listing to the post game show all the callers are over 60 years old .

How can you tell that they're all over 60, did you screen them first? There were a solid 8-9 callers in the 2 and 1/2 hour post-game show last night. Pretty impressive for a Wednesday game against an Eastern opponent (and - news flash - post-game phone boards tend to skew older in any sport, BTW). Now, if only 1 person called in, you'd probably be complaining about that.

footballtom wrote:2. right now the Lions are a forth rate team in this city by anyone under 30 years old { even the Vancouver Canadians get more young people at there games that the lions do }

Do you even go to the games? If so, I am sure you'd notice plenty of young fans at the games. This is the same myth that "everyone is from the Fraser Valley." Yes, typically there are older fans in the better seats, but a wide range of ages everywhere else. No shortage of kids either.

And the Vancouver Canadians draw 5,000 people to their games. Total. You can't be serious with that comment.

DH

I would say that every single person that joins us in Section 246 during Lions games is at least 300 yrs old. And they all speak with a Popkum accent.

In defence of footballtom's Canadians comment, the Cs have managed to sell out 35,36 home games this season at 6000 fans per game.

Yes, that pales in comparison to 22000 for the Lions. But honestly, who knows anything about the Northwest league or any of the players? They have no TV coverage and relatively minimal newspaper/radio coverage. Yet the Canadians pack fans in due to a cheap ticket, and a great atmosphere. Those are fans choosing to watch the Canadians over the Lions.

There's a lesson to be learned there for the Lions.

Get fans in. Make the experience great. The Lions aren't listening.

Other CFL teams which have lower priced (or in the case of CGY free) kids tickets in sections for every game
http://www.esks.com/brickleys-knothole-corner/
http://www.stampeders.com/family-fun/
http://www.bluebombers.com/stadium-information/

The Lions haven't announced any plans yet for expanding the one-game experiment of the home opener, but I agree with others in this thread who have said this is the way to try to get a future generation of fans going to the games. It is even more important in this market than the above 3 cities.

BC 1988 wrote:Other CFL teams which have lower priced (or in the case of CGY free) kids tickets in sections for every game
http://www.esks.com/brickleys-knothole-corner/
http://www.stampeders.com/family-fun/
http://www.bluebombers.com/stadium-information/

The Lions haven't announced any plans yet for expanding the one-game experiment of the home opener, but I agree with others in this thread who have said this is the way to try to get a future generation of fans going to the games. It is even more important in this market than the above 3 cities.

When you give away or discount tickets you risk evoking the ire of season ticket holders and other who may have paid full price. However if the focus of the give away is kids or kids and their parents, then I don't think others get too upset at all.

LakeLions wrote:In defence of footballtom's Canadians comment, the Cs have managed to sell out 35,36 home games this season at 6000 fans per game.

Yes, that pales in comparison to 22000 for the Lions. But honestly, who knows anything about the Northwest league or any of the players? They have no TV coverage and relatively minimal newspaper/radio coverage. Yet the Canadians pack fans in due to a cheap ticket, and a great atmosphere. Those are fans choosing to watch the Canadians over the Lions.

There's a lesson to be learned there for the Lions.

Get fans in. Make the experience great. The Lions aren't listening.

The Canadians don't bother with advertising in sports sections or follow the conventional thinking in regards to marketing a sports franchise. They target making it a family experience, not a sporting experience. And their advertising is concentrated where they believe moms read because the female heads of households make the decision as to how the family entertainment budget is spent. Generally speaking...

DanoT wrote:When you give away or discount tickets you risk evoking the ire of season ticket holders and other who may have paid full price.

If something gets repeated often enough, it often becomes fact. Yet I have never read any proof that discounting tickets will erode the season ticket base.

I think most Lions season ticket holders own their seats between the 30s, have held their seats for a number of years, and enjoy not only the perks they get for being season ticket subscribers, but the camaraderie with those around them, and would be largely unaffected by discounted seats. The discounts/freebies are likely to be in the end zones or near the goal line anyway.

In fact, I would LIKE them to offer discounted seats. A fuller stadium provides more energy and would add to my in-game experience. Sure, some STHs might gripe, that's what we do here. But even if hypothetically, your renewal rate goes from 90% to 85%, the potential to GROW the ticket base by exposing more people to the in-game experience would be worth it IMHO.


DH

David wrote:

DanoT wrote:When you give away or discount tickets you risk evoking the ire of season ticket holders and other who may have paid full price.

If something gets repeated often enough, it often becomes fact. Yet I have never read any proof that discounting tickets will erode the season ticket base.

I think most Lions season ticket holders own their seats between the 30s, have held their seats for a number of years, and enjoy not only the perks they get for being season ticket subscribers, but the camaraderie with those around them, and would be largely unaffected by discounted seats. The discounts/freebies are likely to be in the end zones or near the goal line anyway.

In fact, I would LIKE them to offer discounted seats. A fuller stadium provides more energy and would add to my in-game experience. Sure, some STHs might gripe, that's what we do here. But even if hypothetically, your renewal rate goes from 90% to 85%, the potential to GROW the ticket base by exposing more people to the in-game experience would be worth it IMHO.


DH

I am pretty sure that the Lions also feel that discounting or giveaways erode the perceived value to casual customers and as such it cheapens the product making it difficult to generate interest or excitment in something that isn't worth much...just sayin not really agreeing.

David wrote:I think most Lions season ticket holders own their seats between the 30s, have held their seats for a number of years, and enjoy not only the perks they get for being season ticket subscribers, but the camaraderie with those around them, and would be largely unaffected by discounted seats. The discounts/freebies are likely to be in the end zones or nearly the goal line anyway.

The same holds true for those of us who have season tickets in the end zones. In the lower rows of the end zone where I sit, almost all seats have been held by season ticket holders for 15 or 20 years. We get great value for our seats at $32 per game, plus an unsurpassed up-close view of the play and great camaraderie with those around us. We buy and sell unused tickets from each other for $20 or $30 each because that's the market price, even though the Lions charge double that price to casual fans at the gate. If other season ticketholders don't want my unused tickets and I'm lucky enough to find a scalper willing to buy them, I get $10 or $15 per seat. I'd love for the Lions to sell discounted tickets to fill up unsold seats higher up in the end zone. I don't think that would hurt season ticketholder value. In fact it could create more demand for my tickets in future.

I see the Lions ticket department lost another staff member last week. Not sure what is going on there. Skulsky was on with Tom Mayenknecht on Saturday and said tickets are starting to move for the Montreal game. That's hard to tell looking at the current seat availability.

We will hear some of the same old excuses: Eastern team, Friday night traffic. Bottom line it's a 7-3 team playing its one and only home game over a 42 day stretch. There's been nearly a month to sell this game and the next one isn't until Oct. 1. Should be at least 24,000 in the stands.

How an organization that is 7-3 and playing exciting football can't be bothered to promote their first home game in 42 days is mind boggling. Pathetic effort. Looking at ticketmaster shows another small crowd this Friday against Montreal. How about a back to school promotion ? Too much effort ? Starting to think that the sales budget/staff has been cut way back. Sound familiar ? Feels like another Toronto Argos (until this year- thank goodness !)

J5V wrote:How an organization that is 7-3 and playing exciting football can't be bothered to promote their first home game in 42 days is mind boggling. Pathetic effort. Looking at ticketmaster shows another small crowd this Friday against Montreal. How about a back to school promotion ? Too much effort ? Starting to think that the sales budget/staff has been cut way back. Sound familiar ? Feels like another Toronto Argos (until this year- thank goodness !)

This is a joke .

Uggh. I just looked at the map and it will easily be our smallest crowd of the season. Post Labour Day, with an exciting team that's 7-3. I just don't get it.

Sure, we can blame the front office's inability to create a buzz for this team in the marketplace, and a crap schedule that seemingly has them playing a home game once a month, but ultimately this team deserves far better support from the fan base than has been shown thus far this year. Shameful.


DH

David wrote:Uggh. I just looked at the map and it will easily be our smallest crowd of the season. Post Labour Day, with an exciting team that's 7-3. I just don't get it.

Sure, we can blame the front office's inability to create a buzz for this team in the marketplace, and a crap schedule that seemingly has them playing a home game once a month, but ultimately this team deserves far better support from the fan base than has been show thus far this year. Shameful.


DH

It's sure debunking the idea that all the team has to do is win to bring the fans back. Pro sports has never been tougher to sell in this expensive multicultural city. Just ask the Whitecaps who have worked like hell with tarping and marketing strategies yet are still losing $3 million a year according to a Forbes article this week .

Lions a victim of purrfect storm? 3-year decline on the field, the Seahawks' surge grabbing the casual fan's football attention, all games now on high def and questionable ticket pricing? Probably. Casual fans have got use to just staying at home and watching games, even when the team is winning and is exciting again. That's the Lions greatest obstacle now.

I am beginning to think we won't see more than 24,000 at BC Place this season.

And heres the new Province sports editor/writer who doesn't like the CFL and apparently doesn't even know who the Lions starting QB is!! Seriously? WTF

http://theprovince.com/sports/morning-s ... um=twitter

P.S. Hey troll named footballTom....do you have an English accent and call football gridiron? Yea, thought so.

This habit of sports journalists comparing football leagues and concluding the NFL is best, CFL is not real football, yada yada yada ad nauseum is IMO a symptom of being a poor writer and having little of any substance to share or expand upon or simply being incredibly lazy. Nothing more. Other writers have been there, done that and it really is just boring at this point.

I attempted to read the article above and it was a rather disjointed piece....it came across like a stream of unconsciousness.