News Article: Quebec City, Andlauer and the Sparticat Fiasco

Michael Andlauer and Cyril Leeder should focus on rebuilding the team's brand within this community, not pandering to former Nordiques fans.
I don’t know if you are aware but you can rebuild the brand locally while doing outreach to Gatineau and try to expand the brand.
 
No that would be wrong again,
Initially I was correcting your CTV Ottawa owning the rights, now that we’ve got past that.

Sportsnet shows National games, about 1/3 of schedule.

TSN shows regional games, about 2/3 of schedule,

Sportsnet does not have any Senators regional games,
and haven’t for 11 years now.
RDS has rights for 40 regional french games, and Sportsnet actual has rights to some french language games as well (news to me but these might be via their app only?), but I'm not sure if that's national or not, it might only be available in areas not covered by RDS or possibly only the games RDS doesn't cover.

Chabot was saying he was surprised to learn 80 games are now available in french, which apparently wasn't the case when he was a kid. I think that's how you go after the kids of anything but the Habs ex-Nordique fans,
 
yes, it boggles the mind to understand such a reaction to an owner saying "I can't wait to play some regular season games here. I hope we can make it happen"

if they had stuck to no big splashy new conference (why do that for an exhibition game in 6 months) and not talked about regular season games, I don't think any of this discussion is happening.

interesting that LA managed to get a few million to do their games their last year. We got nada - as in didn't even try. Pretty generous really.

There was some 'underestimating' indeed. That's actually a good thing.
What’s the big deal with a couple home games, as I said before, I’ll take Quebec City over Sweden.
 
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Who are you?

I was a Habs fan as a kid because every Saturday night they were on. That stuck with me up until about midway through the 3rd season with the Sens when I fully cheered for them. They were my 2 favourite teams. If Quebec gets to see or all of our games and we win a championship there will be a generation of fans there that will bleed red, white and black. The Bills are that here for many people because they grew up only seeing the Buffalo/Rochester feeds.

It’s not 1994 anymore. People have easy access to games and highlights nowadays. No matter where you live, you can be an Oilers, or Canucks, or Golden Knights, or whatever fan. It’ll only become easier as rights shift from traditional networks to Netflix, Amazon, etc.

Sens games have been available to Quebec City kids on TSN for a while. There’s no hotbed of fans there. There never will be.
 
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That Quebec and the Maritimes are our broadcast area must add to the franchise value. When i was a kid, regions would get exclusive access to one team. In the new digital age, im not sure how valuable that exclusivity is anymore or even if its possible. It must require new ways of reaching out to new fans.

Its a fair point to debate about whether such a move is warranted. They must have assigned risk to that possibility. At least that doesnt seem to be coming from a place of insecurity. But attempting to strengthen TV ratings and broadcast rights in our broadcast area doesnt really seem unusual. Welcome Québec fans, come on over.
 
And I ask that you not pretend to be smarter than the self made billionnaire who thinks it makes good business sense because nobody here is.
Oh? Eugene Melnyk was a self-made billionaire too. How did his smart ideas turn out?

Overdrive spent a segment dunking on the Sens. Paraphrasing Jeff O’Neill:

“I just spent two weeks in Ottawa for the world juniors. They have great hockey fans who’ve stuck with that team through some dark times. Finally they have a team in the playoff chase that they can rally around, and some bozo in the front office decides that nows a good time to announce that they’ll be playing games in Quebec City and dress their mascot in a Nordiques jersey.”

Sums it up pretty well.

Hayes kept hammering at Andlauer saying that this will be something that happens for regular season games, too.
 
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- I'm all for pre-season games in Quebec City;
- I'm not a fan of home games played outside of Ottawa, but given the choice between Stockholm and Quebec City, I imagine it would be less disruptive to have them in Quebec City;
- I don't think trying to expand the fan base in Quebec City is going to be successful;
- I think there are more obvious markets to target first, those that are geographically closer. This includes Gatineau (it seems that they are already focusing on them a lot more since MA bought the team; that's great!), Belleville, but also Kingston, etc. It's much cheaper for someone in Kingston to drive to Ottawa and watch an NHL game than go to Toronto. How much of that market are Leaf fans vs Sens fans? I don't know the answer, but we should be able to convert a lot of NHL fans there purely due to the practical aspects.
- Another opportunity to expand the fanbase is with specific players. For example, when Ziba played here, they could have marketed him to the Iranian community, not only in Ottawa but all across the NHL. Huge potential market, not just for the Senators but for the NHL in general, for a large North-American community that otherwise probably wouldn't follow the NHL much. See the effect Ichiro or Ohtani had/have on their respective MLB markets.
 
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I don’t know if you are aware but you can rebuild the brand locally while doing outreach to Gatineau and try to expand the brand.

Every initiative has a tradeoff. The Sens have some time off, are finally in a playoff race and have the fans who’ve stuck with them through years of shit excited.

They decided that this was the perfect time to leave the community that supports them and pander to Quebec City.

Next fall, instead of hosting open practices for the people of Ottawa to gear up for the season, they’ll be doing it for Quebec City.

Let’s be clear. Quebec City residents aren’t going to go to these games to cheer on the team from Ottawa. They’ll go to these games to try and convince the league that they should get their own team… and just maybe, the one that Andlauer owns would be a good fit.
 
Oh? Eugene Melnyk was a self-made billionaire too. How did his smart ideas turn out?

Overdrive spent a segment dunking on the Sens. Paraphrasing Jeff O’Neill:

“I just spent two weeks in Ottawa for the world juniors. They have great hockey fans who’ve stuck with that team through some dark times. Finally they have a team in the playoff chase that they can rally around, and some bozo in the front office decides that nows a good time to announce that they’ll be playing games in Quebec City and dress their mascot in a Nordiques jersey.”

Sums it up pretty well.

Hayes kept hammering at Andlauer saying that this will be something that happens for regular season games, too.
They also clowned fans that went over the top in their small town insecure response
 
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Every initiative has a tradeoff. The Sens have some time off, are finally in a playoff race and have the fans who’ve stuck with them through years of shit excited.

They decided that this was the perfect time to leave the community that supports them and pander to Quebec City.

Next fall, instead of hosting open practices for the people of Ottawa to gear up for the season, they’ll be doing it for Quebec City.

Let’s be clear. Quebec City residents aren’t going to go to these games to cheer on the team from Ottawa. They’ll go to these games to try and convince the league that they should get their own team… and just maybe, the one that Andlauer owns would be a good fit.
lol. Quebec City is literally not even top 6 of potential markets.

Houston
Atlanta
Portland
Kansas City
Southern Ontario
Phoenix
 
They also clowned fans that went over the top in their small town insecure response

This is a small market team in a small city that no one outside of Ottawa cares about or will care about. It is what it is. There’s no “growing the brand”. If that’s Andlauers strategy he’s not the smart guy he portrays himself to be. Someone needs to tell him these aren’t the Canadiens.

Embrace what we are. Invest in our community. Don’t pander to others.
 
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It will be interesting to see what the crowd looks like for the pre-season game against the Canadiens. There is an assumption that everybody in Quebec City hates the Canadiens, but I can't see that being the case for fans under the age of 25 or 30.

If you were born in QC in 1995, whether you get into hockey at the age of 5, 10, 15, whatever - the team has already been gone for a significant period culturally.

To put it into perspective, if you Senators relocated back in the late 90s or early 00s, would you expect a 20-30 year old who loves hockey to not cheer for the Maple Leafs or Canadiens because there was a team in Ottawa before that person was cognizant of the sport?

I don't understand the logic about this being in our territory giving us a chance to reach out, because I am fairly certain they get Canadiens games just like we get them in Ottawa. There was a deal made to share territorial rights. This is something people should ask Andlauer, Mendes, and Leeder to elaborate on - because it makes no sense as a business plan.


Unless that agreement is no longer valid, or unless the agreement only included specific areas of the territory.

The big issue people have with this is that it doesn't pass the smell test. Their justification for the partnership makes no sense, and their execution of it is even worse. It's as if they wanted this to blow up the way it did, coincidentally at the same time as they are negotiating to build an arena. It's like they have come up with this flimsy justification so that they can have their cake and eat it too, plausible deniability about their business engagements with a group notorious for seeking an NHL team as to not hurt local perception, but also bring the possibility of relocation into the minds of their stakeholders to put pressure on the city.
That’s just your opinion, although most would disagree with, but everyone gets an opinion.

The sharing of regions is an excellent agreement for both teams and fans.
 
This is a small market team in a small city that no one outside of Ottawa cares about or will care about. It is what it is. There’s no “growing the brand”. If that’s Andlauers strategy he’s not the smart guy he portrays himself to be. Someone needs to tell him these aren’t the Canadiens.
You’ve been programmed to think like that.
 
You’ve been programmed to think like that.

No I’m not deluded. I wouldn’t suggest the Charlotte Hornets try to “grow their brand” beyond their own city either. It’d never work.

New York, Boston, Chicago, Toronto.

Ottawa is not like that.
 
It’s not 1994 anymore. People have easy access to games and highlights nowadays. No matter where you live, you can be an Oilers, or Canucks, or Golden Knights, or whatever fan. It’ll only become easier as rights shift from traditional networks to Netflix, Amazon, etc.

Sens games have been available to Quebec City kids on TSN for a while. There’s no hotbed of fans there. There never will be.
You’re just making half of what you say up, and have shown nothing yet to back it up with, other than feelings so far.
 
You’re just making half of what you say up, and have shown nothing yet to back it up with, other than feelings so far.

No there’s a reason why the Ottawa Senators and Winnipeg Jets get the least coverage of all Canadian teams.

They’re the smallest markets, with the smallest fanbases, and there’s no “unattached hockey fan” regions that they can realistically attack and win in.

There’s no play here other than putting pressure on the city and/or NCC to bend over in the arena deal. It’s straight out of the Gary Bettman playbook (see Calgary and Edmonton) and it’s no surprise that Andlauer is using it as he’s been involved in this league a long time.

It’s already backfiring on him though.
 
You don’t think Charlotte has gone into Raleigh and Columbia ? Get serious

Raleigh and Columbia are much much closer to Charlotte than Quebec City is to Ottawa.

I don’t think the Hornets are going into Nashville Tennessee to grow their brand.

What a sad POV. It literally cost nothing to try and gain a foothold but for some reason you are losing your mind.

It costs games that could have been held in Ottawa for local fans who actually cheer for the team.

Being so concerned with the “size” of the fanbase, on your part, is bizarre. Who cares if the Habs have more fans in more places?

People are so very concerned about the owners pocketbook that they’re willing to see their team play games outside of their own city.
 
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Raleigh and Columbia are much much closer to Charlotte than Quebec City is to Ottawa.

I don’t think the Hornets are going into Nashville Tennessee to grow their brand.
Raleigh is in the region they broadcast in, Tennesse isn’t,
Just like Ottawa and Quebec City.
 

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