In case you haven’t heard, there’s been a fairly significant construction project going on downtown. It’s already cost taxpayers in the neighborhood of $560 million, and it’s still leaking not a week before it makes it’s national television debut on TSN, hosting the surging B.C. Lions playing the Edmonton Eskimos in a key CFL West division match-up. Oh, it also looks like an upside-down pillbug.
Oh, about that television debut. According to Lions beat writer Lowell Ulrich, you’re not going to see it if you don’t buy tickets. That’s right, it’s a regional blackout. The Lions organization is considering canceling standard definition broadcasts of the big game in order to sell more tickets and fill up the 54,500 seat stadium. As it stands, 34,000 tickets have been sold.
But is this a good idea? Sure, simple economic principles dictate that restricting the supply of one thing (in this case, viewership of the game) will cause the customer’s willingness to pay to rise (for example, buying tickets and parking and food and beer and whatever else comes with the in-arena experience), but is this the best thing for the B.C. Lions brand? In professional sports, on-field or on-ice success is the main driver of customer value and loyalty, and as the Canucks have shown with a five-year season ticket waiting list, fans support winning teams. The Lions haven’t been doing an awful lot of winning in recent years, and attendance has suffered because of it. Also, the Lions are in the unfortunate situation of being in a hyper-competitive environment, directly occupied by the Canucks and Whitecaps and indirectly by many others (movies, T.V., clubs, etc.).
The bottom line is that blacking out a big game probably won’t have the desired effect on ticket sales. There are enough alternatives for the customer looking for entertainment to simply turn away if the game isn’t televised. Instead, just air the game and make a market offering to the casual fan. I mean, who wouldn’t be sold if they saw things like this:
