Metro Vancouver CPL Club

[SpursFlu]

It' not my favorite name but I really doubt anyone in the immediate area of the stadium are gonna not support the team because they're called British Columbia. It' not gonna make people flood in from around the province but it may have people from just say Maple Ridge, New West or Abbotsford consider the team where is Surrey would probable be a none starter. 

[Unnamed Trialist]

8 hours ago, ted said:

Are you serious? Do you really have no understanding of how supporters culture works?

Claiming to represent all of BC is simply poor marketing based on the what has been shown to be successful in soccer in North America and elsewhere.

Do you think BC should have only one team in the CanPL 20 years from now? I think BC can support at least two, maybe as many as four teams in the CanPL and I think rivalries between BC teams are healthy and help make the game (and the marketing) stronger.  You should ask a football supporter what "derby" means.

Do you think anyone outside a 90 -120 minutes drive from the home stadium will attend games regularly? Do you think that locals will wholeheartedly support a "local" soccer team that pretends to be something else?

If I lived in Surrey I'd be itching to show those bastards who make jokes that my community is real, that my community is not some low-rent suburb of Vancouver. That kind of base upon which to build a team identity, a successful brand, is far more likely to succeed than pretending to be bigger than the Whitecaps and a team for the whole province.

Ted, your point that authenticity is important is right. But I think you are totally off thinking that BC is not authentic, there is no basis for your argument. It is as authentic as anything out there. BC is totally authentic. And no one single city has the corner on it, so any can legitimately take it. 

The mistake is to not understand that only in a metropolitan area do people not literally living in the main city say they are from there. Someone from Saanich can happily support a team from Victoria without estrangement. Surrey-ites can support a Vancouver team. But the reverse is not so, so you have to alter the philosophy. No one from Langley feels they are from Surrey, it is an impediment. So you have to solve it to ensure a wider fan base.

Anyways, as perfectly well argued on this thread, there are many states in the US with a pro team named after the state, and another after a city in the state. Why do you just ignore that, I don't understand how it can benefit your argument to deny it. There is nothing incompatible with a BCFC and a Victoria United in a CPL.

[Unnamed Trialist]

Sorry, just had to insist, with a few more pro team names in NA:

New Jersey Devils, and the former Nets

New England Patriots, New England Revolution

Minnesota Vikings

Teams named after Florida, Carolina, Arizona, Utah

Saskatchewan Roughriders, BC Lions (shucks it even has a precedent)

[ted]

Nope, you are still making the mistake of ignoring the unique properties and opportunities of "soccer culture" and missing the point of "authenticity" in marketing. You keep bringing up teams from other sports that are not tied to their communities from much bigger leagues. People DO travel from stupid distances to watch NBA, and NFL teams. They are "portable" and "plastic" and have insane TV deals that pay the bills and fuel marketing campaigns.
 

"Buy Local" is an ethos and ingrained in the culture of soccer. I wish I could explain it in a way you would understand and I can only pray that whoever is in charge does.

[Rheo]

So called "soccer culture" and "authenticity" worldwide do not include playoffs and yet they are generally accepted in North America because it is part of the norm for North American "sporting culture" and "authenticity"  There are a merging of these norms to form something unique in this country as I'm sure soccer cultures in other countries have their own unique aspects the don't conform to the general trends.

Just my personal opinion but to outright dismiss teams because they might use a regional name (remember that we don't know for a fact that the Surrey team would definitely go for it) is foolish.

[BuzzAndSting]

14 hours ago, Unnamed Trialist said:

Sorry, just had to insist, with a few more pro team names in NA:

New Jersey Devils, and the former Nets

New England Patriots, New England Revolution

Minnesota Vikings

Teams named after Florida, Carolina, Arizona, Utah

Saskatchewan Roughriders, BC Lions (shucks it even has a precedent)

Golden State Warriors. That’s not even a proper state name, it’s a nickname!

[Unnamed Trialist]

3 hours ago, ted said:

Nope, you are still making the mistake of ignoring the unique properties and opportunities of "soccer culture" and missing the point of "authenticity" in marketing. You keep bringing up teams from other sports that are not tied to their communities from much bigger leagues. People DO travel from stupid distances to watch NBA, and NFL teams. They are "portable" and "plastic" and have insane TV deals that pay the bills and fuel marketing campaigns.
 

"Buy Local" is an ethos and ingrained in the culture of soccer. I wish I could explain it in a way you would understand and I can only pray that whoever is in charge does.

Ted, you are still speaking abstractly not on the basis of facts, at least how I see it. I appreciate the principle, but think it does not hold.

First, no pro team in Canada or the US  can ever be local as they are franchises and have rights over a territory. They get exclusivity, and cannot be infringed upon. There is no pro-releg and another team that is your neighbour can never appear to eat away at your fan base. You are using an incorrect notion, and what is more, you have not given us any examples, so you are arguing irrefutably with no grounding.

There is nothing in marketing that says local is more authentic than cosmopolitan or multicultural or international. You are simply identifying a minor trend, as proven by the fact that 100 mile diets are trendy but people still eat 80% or more outside of their immediate food radius. Local food fads do not annul international markets. Same with craft beer, where it is most prevalent in Canada, in BC, it is like 25% of the market at most. DIY is more a frill of consumption than a nucleus. You can't take the principal of local and expect to have success with it, because you are arguing it is dominant when it is totally minority. 

In a franchise system you will never have the density of teams which forces some to be very much from neighbourhoods, as happens in London, or with Chievo Verona, or Rayo Vallecano, or QPR. So no team can reasonably conceive itself as local and local means nothing in a franchise system. Franchises control swaths of territory and have to appeal to that entire territory. 

In any case, I would like you to name one sports team associated with a neighbourhood in North America. And BTW, Brooklyn is as big as Montreal. South Chicago too (White Sox). It will get you nowhere.

On top of that, we do not have dense neighbourhoods in most Canadian cities able to sustain a pro team based on it, not like in most of the rest of the world where every neighbourhood has a few soccer teams and fields and some manage to push up from lower tiers. We only have what you are talking about in the case of high school sports. In the US they can take it into NCAA, in fact the whole pull of local works in amateur collegiate sport in North America, where folks will come out to watch Alabama vs. Auburn, a true local rivalry in the terms you are speaking of. Even if they have never set foot into a university themselves.

 

Edited December 14, 2017 by Unnamed Trialist

[Complete Homer]

Something to remember is that the naming can't be made in a vacuum for a Surrey team. If they are building their stadium less than an hour from BC Place, they are directly competing with the Whitecaps, full stop

I really do like the idea of hyper-local names, but for the Surrey team to gain traction right beside VWC they have to project "big league" at every chance they get. "BCFC" makes a statement that the team is big enough to be worth the attention of the whole province, not just the immediate area. 

[harrycoyster]

12 minutes ago, Complete Homer said:

Something to remember is that the naming can't be made in a vacuum for a Surrey team. If they are building their stadium less than an hour from BC Place, they are directly competing with the Whitecaps, full stop

I really do like the idea of hyper-local names, but for the Surrey team to gain traction right beside VWC they have to project "big league" at every chance they get. "BCFC" makes a statement that the team is big enough to be worth the attention of the whole province, not just the immediate area. 

The real question is what effect will BCFC have on Surrey/Langley. There is only one soccer team in all of MLS/NASL/USL that draws a significant fanbase from outside their local market, so any conversation about the whole province/how Victoria and Kamloops are included is useless IMO.

Will Surrey/Langley be more or less receptive to a team named BCFC compared to Surrey FC or Fraser Valley FC? I'm not going to claim to know the answer.

[Ansem]

36 minutes ago, Complete Homer said:

Something to remember is that the naming can't be made in a vacuum for a Surrey team. If they are building their stadium less than an hour from BC Place, they are directly competing with the Whitecaps, full stop

I really do like the idea of hyper-local names, but for the Surrey team to gain traction right beside VWC they have to project "big league" at every chance they get. "BCFC" makes a statement that the team is big enough to be worth the attention of the whole province, not just the immediate area. 

I will say that I personally disagree with the use of "BC" when Victoria and maybe a Burnaby team could exist down the road. Let's not forget that if we ever see a D2 league, Kelowna & Richmond wold be prime candidates. My personal thought was that Surrey should focus on solidifying their Surrey - Fraser Valley ahead of going after the whole province.

Then objectively, I must admit that it's a smart strategy if for the foreseeable future its only Victoria & Surrey. Victoria would most likely focus on getting Vancouver Island behind them while Surrey - BC would try to get the province outside of Vancouver to identify with them until the demand grows for more team. Change of names are always possible (Phoenix Coyotes renaming "Arizona Coyotes")

Maybe when the Vancouver Whitecaps joined MLS, they should have renamed themselves British Columbia Whitecaps...Surrey just beat them to it. 

19 minutes ago, harrycoyster said:

The real question is what effect will BCFC have on Surrey/Langley. Will Surrey/Langley be more or less receptive to a team named BCFC compared to Surrey FC or Fraser Valley FC? I'm not going to claim to know the answer.

Can't be negative so the risk is small or nil. Also, anyone hating on Vancouver will have a team to rally behind. (Most states, provinces biggest cities are usually hated by the rest, so giving them a team to channel that hate is far from being dumb)

22 minutes ago, harrycoyster said:

There is only one soccer team in all of MLS/NASL/USL that draws a significant fanbase from outside their local market, so any conversation about the whole province/how Victoria and Kamloops are included is useless IMO.

How much of an exaggeration is the word significant? TV viewership doesn't reflect that and my experience from Montreal is that the team barely draw outside Montreal Island. It's very city limits centric except during playoffs. 

[Complete Homer]

17 minutes ago, harrycoyster said:

The real question is what effect will BCFC have on Surrey/Langley. There is only one soccer team in all of MLS/NASL/USL that draws a significant fanbase from outside their local market, so any conversation about the whole province/how Victoria and Kamloops are included is useless IMO.

Will Surrey/Langley be more or less receptive to a team named BCFC compared to Surrey FC or Fraser Valley FC? I'm not going to claim to know the answer.

That's the thing...presumably BCFC would be looking primarily to Surrey to fill the stadium, but it's not just about the population they are trying to draw on. Doing things the ensure that the team screams "major league", like being called BCFC and building your own venue, makes it more likely that the local population will actually go out and support the team

I'm sort of thinking about Regina vs Toronto for CFL. Sure the Roughriders draw on population outside of Regina, but the perception that the Roughriders are major league while Torontonians don't perceive the Argos as major league seems to be a greater driver of attendance than the population base alone. Obviously there are other factors, especially local alternatives for sports, but I honestly think local perception of the league's level will have a greater influence on attendance than the raw population size.

All of this is from the perspective of a non-local of course, I don't claim to know much about the market itself

[harrycoyster]

19 minutes ago, Ansem said:

How much of an exaggeration is the word significant? TV viewership doesn't reflect that and my experience from Montreal is that the team barely draw outside Montreal Island. It's very city limits centric except during playoffs. 

I think we are making the same point. Soccer teams are incredibly stadium-area centric in North America, even when a team is named something like "New England" or "Minnesota" they aren't drawing from that market; the support dies out within a 40km ring around the stadium.

[Ansem]

28 minutes ago, Complete Homer said:

That's the thing...presumably BCFC would be looking primarily to Surrey to fill the stadium, but it's not just about the population they are trying to draw on. Doing things the ensure that the team screams "major league", like being called BCFC and building your own venue, makes it more likely that the local population will actually go out and support the team

I'm sort of thinking about Regina vs Toronto for CFL. Sure the Roughriders draw on population outside of Regina, but the perception that the Roughriders are major league while Torontonians don't perceive the Argos as major league seems to be a greater driver of attendance than the population base alone. Obviously there are other factors, especially local alternatives for sports, but I honestly think local perception of the league's level will have a greater influence on attendance than the raw population size.

All of this is from the perspective of a non-local of course, I don't claim to know much about the market itself

Stadium attendance target : Surrey - Fraser Valley

TV viewership target : British Columbia 

[harrycoyster]

2 minutes ago, Ansem said:

Stadium attendance target : Surrey - Fraser Valley

TV viewership target : British Columbia 

I'm sure that Friend & co. know enough about the BC TV market to run his operation expecting absolutely nothing in terms of TV viewership.

[Ansem]

14 minutes ago, harrycoyster said:

I think we are making the same point. Soccer teams are incredibly stadium-area centric in North America, even when a team is named something like "New England" or "Minnesota" they aren't drawing from that market; the support dies out within a 40km ring around the stadium.

I think that's why CPL wants to bring more clubs to more communities. If what you say is true, then applying North American/franchise model to Canada soccer wise isn't the wise choice.

Bringing more clubs to more cities willing to support a club is the best way to get more eyes on TV.

With MLS refusing to expand in Canada, they practically doomed the 3 cities to be locally supported almost exclusively TV wise except playoffs.

CPL's ceiling is higher TV wise as more Canadians will have a reason to watch the product. Of course this is assuming the marketing is done right and the quality and overall presentation of the league is good

Edited December 14, 2017 by Ansem

[Ansem]

8 minutes ago, harrycoyster said:

I'm sure that Friend & co. know enough about the BC TV market to run his operation expecting absolutely nothing in terms of TV viewership.

Who knows? Maybe not short term but long term could work. Victoria and Surrey will attract a lot of curiosity.

Also, I recommend that you stop implying that the whole province identifies itself with Vancouver. Couldn't be further from the truth in regards to Montreal vs the rest of Quebec.

When the Nordiques were around, the rest of the province was way more behind Quebec City than the Habs. Perhaps it's the Caps that knows that hence their displeased regarding CPL. The more team you put in Western Canada, the more eyes you take away from them and the more you limit their ability to penetrate other markets.

Edited December 14, 2017 by Ansem

[harrycoyster]

3 minutes ago, Ansem said:

Who knows? Maybe not short term but long term could work. Victoria and Surrey will attract a lot of curious 

The only way you are getting Victorians to watch BCFC games is if you lead in with Seahawks games and hide their TV remotes.  

[Ansem]

1 minute ago, harrycoyster said:

The only way you are getting Victorians to watch BCFC games is if you lead in with Seahawks games and hide their TV remotes.  

But they will if their own team faces them 

[ted]

7 hours ago, Rheo said:

Just my personal opinion but to outright dismiss teams because they might use a regional name (remember that we don't know for a fact that the Surrey team would definitely go for it) is foolish.

I'm offering opinion based on the track record of professional soccer as played and marketed in North America for the last twenty years.

Is it, "foolish" to believe that the CanPL is a highly-speculative proposal that can ill-afford marketing blunders out of the gate? I think not. They could have sugar-daddies like Phil Anshutz lined up who will be willing to back half the league for years while bleeding money, but I somehow doubt it. They can ill afford to make dumb moves in either Toronto or Vancouver.

For my part, I will attend just as many BCFC games any other name they use so it makes no difference. When I do finally get to an away game with Victoria Whatever I will be just as happy to mock the plastic nature of that name as whatever else they choose.

 

5 hours ago, Unnamed Trialist said:

Ted, you are still speaking abstractly not on the basis of facts, at least how I see it. I appreciate the principle, but think it does not hold.

Nope, I am speaking practically on the basis of the rise, near fall and rise of MLS  (and pro soccer in general) since 1996.

What does not hold is to keep using examples you are using. University hand-egg in the United States? Really!?

 

 

[Unnamed Trialist]

56 minutes ago, ted said:

What does not hold is to keep using examples you are using. University hand-egg in the United States? Really!?

It's the only example you can really use to prove your argument, the only authentic "local" in North American sports with broad success. Maybe along with a bit of Junior Hockey in Canada.

Anyways, Ted, noone on this board knows better than you the times optimistic ventures for  a Canadian league have been stymied by mediocrity, so I get your concern this time round. I for one, deep down, feel there is about a 70% chance the CPL will not come to fruition because the mediocrity permeates everything we know so far about it, from top to bottom. 

[Rocket Robin]

What about league marketing of visiting teams? 

I'll ask you BC guys, what game would you come out to watch in your stadium?   How about your granny?

Home schedule:        (dates are not real but team names are right out of League 1 Ontario) 

June 20th      Sigma FC

June 27th      North Toronto Nitros

One of them is inside the city limits and one is from Mississauga.  Wouldn't someone who doesn't know anything about the visitors go to the June 27th game because it has a familiar name?  Oooh  Toronto that EVIL city.   I want to go Daddy!  

At USL games it's not difficult to kid the casual fans that Bethlehem Steel FC is from the Holy Land. 

In Toronto any team that has the word 'Montreal' in it will attract more fans than a name of a Montreal suburb until such time as you know something about the team.  The new tiddlywinks league.  Ooh Montreal I've got to go. 

That team named the Jets beat us in the playoffs last year.  They wore electric boots, and mohair suits, you know I read it in a magazine!    

[Gopherbashi]

1 hour ago, Rocket Robin said:

What about league marketing of visiting teams? 

I'll ask you BC guys, what game would you come out to watch in your stadium?   How about your granny?

Home schedule:        (dates are not real but team names are right out of League 1 Ontario) 

June 20th      Sigma FC

June 27th      North Toronto Nitros

One of them is inside the city limits and one is from Mississauga.  Wouldn't someone who doesn't know anything about the visitors go to the June 27th game because it has a familiar name?  Oooh  Toronto that EVIL city.   I want to go Daddy!  

At USL games it's not difficult to kid the casual fans that Bethlehem Steel FC is from the Holy Land. 

In Toronto any team that has the word 'Montreal' in it will attract more fans than a name of a Montreal suburb until such time as you know something about the team.  The new tiddlywinks league.  Ooh Montreal I've got to go. 

That team named the Jets beat us in the playoffs last year.  They wore electric boots, and mohair suits, you know I read it in a magazine!    

Completely nitpicking here, but I'd see Sigma in a heartbeat.  Sigma's certainly got some name recognition in its own right and has a fair amount of quality behind them.

Might be a fairer comparison with something like Masters & Ottawa South United

[Ansem]

 @ thinking so small

Edited December 15, 2017 by Ansem

[ted]

On 12/14/2017 at 8:42 PM, Rocket Robin said:

What about league marketing of visiting teams? 

I'll ask you BC guys, what game would you come out to watch in your stadium? 

Yep, that's why the name should be "Vancouver" if you really want to take on the Whitecaps and represent the larger region. I'll be happy to sing songs mocking a "Vancouver" team playing in Surrey or Burnaby or wherever, but it will be more of an "in" joke among fans. I lived in North York for one year as a kid when it was "Canada's Fourth Largest City" and I never thought of it as anything more than a suburban part of Toronto.

If I was the CanPL group in question I'd try and get the rights to a historic name associated with the city.

[A_Gagne]

I think the use of "BCFC" demonstrates a positive differentiation from the Caps, and also demonstrates that they are trying to position themselves as a peer competitor to the Caps, whereas if they had taken a more local focused name, it would indicate smaller ambitions.

That being said the full name British Columbia Football Club doesn't exactly roll off the tongue, and BC is a very diverse and even polarized place (culturally), so naming the team after the province doesn't exactly project a clear team image for people to wrap their heads around. As such, for brand recognition purposes, I feel they're probably going to have to add a nickname to their official club team.

E.g. BC Sea-Wolves FC (completely pulled that out of my ass)

I bet this is the plan, but until they've decided on the nickname, they might as well trademark BCFC, so as to protect their rights to the shorter version.