In most cities, people feel they have a natural obligation to cheer for their home-town team. Consequently, most professional sports teams will do all that they can to ensure that their fans feel appreciated. After all, if you were the president or CEO of a sports team, you would want to go out of your way to build fan loyalty and show appreciation, wouldn't you? Most would agree, but the executives sitting around the Maple Leaf Sports & Entertainment boardroom table don't.
MLSE's Major League Soccer team, Toronto Football Club - commonly known as TFC - is a young team of just four years of age. However, ticket prices this season were nearly double the ticket prices of year one. Over the last couple years there have been two off-season sporting events that fans could easily do without. First, the Brett Favre annual tear filled retirement press conference followed by the annual Brett Favre tear filled un-retirement press conference. Second, the MLSE off-season announcement of higher TFC ticket prices.
How is it that TFC fans are expected to fork over more cash to see a poor quality team that has no hopes of playing in a playoff game? According to a recent article in the Toronto Star, fans are starting to fall out of love with the TFC. They're starting to feel that they're not appreciated. To quote one disgruntled TFC fan, "...they’re driving us out of the stadium with their ticket-price increases.”
The PR/community relations crew working for TFC certainly have a lot of work to do. Fans are upset, and many current season ticket holders may not renew for the 2011 season unless there are drastic changes. The PR team need to come up with some creative ways in which they can build fan loyalty, and they need to do it quickly.
Great post kyle,
ReplyDeleteIn my opinion i think its just the loyalist of the toronto people.
I think you should check out my post titled "dear belleville, lock you doors, bar your windows". you tweeted about it.