An Added Burden

Virtually all of the major sports that Canadian cities offer have a hard time recruiting athletes to play; the one exception to this is hockey (I’m not counting the CFL). The Toronto Raptors and the Toronto Blue Jays, Canada’s lone “major league” basketball and baseball teams respectively, suffer, because players forego the opportunity to play in Toronto, making it harder for Toronto sports GM’s and ownership groups to put forth talent worth cheering for. Putting a marketing spin on things, let’s investigate ways to lure players to play in Toronto.

It comes with no surprise that the act of managers trying to sign players is a form of personal selling, but may managers include “consumer promotion” elements, which are referred to as incentives in sports, to players as a value added bonus to signing in Canada? You bet! Teams, often include performance incentives in contracts to motivate players to play well. Also, to motivate players to sign, they may also include shares in team ownership, buy players new cars/watches, or focus advertisements on them.

In a way, teams and managers of Toronto sports teams need to be able to mimic the effects of a pull strategy to entice players to play in Toronto. On top of that, managers and teams must be able to not only grab the attention of the player, but to make the player want to play in Toronto, and then try to seal the deal (signing the contract—nothing’s official until that piece of paper has been signed!). Careful, if managers don’t know that the player is right for their organization, and then plan their contact with, and contract offer to the player, they may never get to the closing and follow up stages!

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Jose Bautista is the latest player to sign with the Toronto Blue Jays, after having a monster season last year. Last but not least, and I know this has nothing to do with my blog post, but THE BLUE JAYS SEASON OPENER IS TOMORROW! YESSSS!!! FINALLY!

-Faiz