There is much debate online about the reasons behind Toronto FC's success off the pitch. Arguably, the season was a disaster. Injuries ravaged the club, the Andy Welsh experiment failed and during the most important stretch of the season the team gained unsavory possession of the longest streak of minutes played without scoring goal.
For a city consumed with 'what have you done for me lately' syndrome it is a great wonder why TFC has so far been a success.
Toronto, the hotbed of hockey it supposedly is, at least that is what the media wants you to think, cannot support a decent Marlies AHL club and could not support OHL teams. The OHL has since departed our company while the AHL club struggles with very low attendance. You would have thought that with the ACC filled with corporate barons that the average hockey fans would flock to these other franchises, but that has not been the case.
Furthermore, previous to TFC, soccer in Canada was essentially given zero positive coverage in the media and larger media figures constantly put down the beautiful game as un-Canadian. While a diaspora of people from countries which generally enjoy the game exists in Toronto, but whether would it catch on with mainstream society was something MLSE would have had to thought over.
Therefore, when presented with the question of whether Toronto could support an MLS franchise and lead the league with fan support, not many people would said it would fly. When you combine the fact that the CSA is a national embarrassment that could not organize itself out of dumpster, that the Toronto media is so hockey centric it took the Raptors ages to get more fair share of airtime, how would TFC get it done?
The answer is very simple. The disenfranchised sports fan.
I disagree that Toronto and Canada is ready for a soccer outburst just yet, although the tide is turning. This can be evidenced by the lack of support at the Canada v. Costa Rica friendly or continual lack of off season TFC coverage. Nonetheless, I believe the CMNT vs the Ticos friendly was the best embarrassment for Canadian soccer because it has brought notice that Canadians won't stand for sub par national team management any longer. But the groundswell is not large enough yet and thus I believe the bubble is not fully ready to pop.
What truly made TFC work as opposed to the friendly at the same venue was that Toronto suffered from not having a place where your rowdy sports fan to be him/herself. The ACC on some nights is as noisy as a morgue. From the purples you can almost hear Maurice cuss underneath his breath. The Skydome is as fan friendly as your grandmother past midnight on Wednesdays.
What makes TFC unique is that Toronto now has an old school, loud, proud, drinking venue for people to get their obnoxious fan on.
From the beer tent to the bunker you can hear the sports fan chanting their hearts out, swilling beer like it was Maple Leaf Gardens and the days of 'GO Leafs GO' from yesteryear, a time when the sports fan, not corporate baron or nuclear family reigned supreme.
BMO field became the new mecca, a temple of loud, a place fueled by vintage Toronto overpriced beer and a place where it is not frowned upon to stand out of your seat for the whole duration. It is a place where seat cushions aren't needed, where the occasional profanity won't get you ejected and losing your voice is a badge of honour because you belted your lungs out for 90+ minutes.
Thanks to the efforts of the Red Patch Boys and U-sector who brought together enough soccer enthusiasts to lay the groundwork of the successful off pitch TFC season, the sports fan saw on television and heard from word of mouth how crazy BMO was.
Ironically, the work of the RPB and U-sector was first made noticeable in due because of the lack of goals. I would like to cite the first home game against Kansas City where the chant of 'all we are signing, is give us a goal' first perked the interests of the people who knew little about the game. Then after Danny Dichio's immortal goal and the downpour of seat cushions, the avalanche of sportsfandom had begun.
Furthermore, early on with the old guard of the media trying to shut TFC out it was in fact the old guard that was chanted down by the numbers of fans who showed up in droves, demanded television air time, wrote to their newspapers about poor coverage and proved constantly they were going to support the team. TFC attendance rivaled if not surpassed the numbers of the other major sports teams. Almost 20,000 each game is as good as the Leafs as well as Raptors and only capacity limits them below the Argos or Jays.
Why did it not work for the CSA? There are a lot of reasons, but most of it has to do with fan distribution.
Canadian fans during the CMNT vs Ticos match were shoved in the South end, which is good. But the sports fan and the soccer mom were put side by side, which is bad. From section 116 onwards, it was soccer moms who desperately frown upon sportsfandom, praying their little boy/girl wont turn out to be a beer swilling loud mouth. Alone I would say this is a major no-no.
To add to the above, when you add some Costa Rica fans amidst the Canadian supporters, when Canadians are frowned upon cheering against other people in our section because of our 'diversity' only amplifies anger over that other the other team fans are able to cheer at us in our own section AND get prime time seats at midfield... To conclude on this point, the problem that the overall seating arrangement was overpriced on top of already being poorly marketed was only made worse by the facts mentioned above.
To be honest, I believe the list continues, but I think those are the main points behind the CMNT failure in September. Do not look to the WCQ's for any improvement if CSA is true to their history.
To end my digression and wrap up the overall point of this blog post, TFC did a great job at managing the sports fan at TFC events. While there have been incidents of security problems, overall MLSE gets a good rating for what they have done with the franchise. They identified there was no place for nutty people who want to wear only their team colours and belt their lungs out between beers to go.
I hope the CSA will see this and capitalize on it. But I doubt it. Canadian soccer needs the sports fan to get behind them. Years of promoting world diversity and the family at the games has failed, not only miserably, but embarrassingly. I also do not see a silver lining at the moment. The CSA accepting the equation of sports fan + sports fan venture = publicity is as likely as the Canada winning any World Cup involving soccer any time soon. Canadian soccer needs the publicity of a crazy atmosphere and the publicity attached to it good or bad.
TFC captured a market, the CSA is unlikely to do the same.
