The Voyageurs

[Admin]

58 minutes ago, Obinna said:

I actually remember that now. 

Toronto was, and still is, my favourite MLS team, but I always felt the whining on both sides of that argument was a bit much. Didn't think it would have been enough to push people off the forum, but perhaps I would feel differently if I was from Toronto.

I noticed some of those guys vanished, but I never made the connection, until now. Their feelings must have really been hurt to go and start their own forum. But hey, great for them if they got their own forum out of it in the end. I am sure they have some great dialog about the Canadian national team over there, nice and safe from all the the evil Torontophobia hate speech.

Local supporters groups should have their own forums, and many do or use FB groups or other platforms.

The exodus was not only Toronto people, and not only about complaining. People have kids, move, start new jobs.... ect...

The bigger problem was scaring new people away and the new reliance on apps and social media. 

[dyslexic nam]

The funny part is I see a lot more bullshit posted on the V's FB page than on this site.

[Binky]

The Voyageurs are a fellowship of men and women who share their experience, strength and hope with each other that they may support their common love for Canadian soccer and introduce the beautiful game to others. The only requirement for membership is a desire to cheer for Canada. There are no dues or fees for Voyageurs membership; we are self supporting through our own contributions. The Voyageurs are not allied with any club, league or association; we do not wish to engage in any controversy, and neither endorse nor oppose any causes. Our primary purpose is to support soccer in Canada and help other lovers of the game to do the same.

[Greatest Cockney Rip Off]

23 hours ago, Gian-Luca said:

In the specific case of Toronto getting an MLS team, that isn't all there is to it. Many of the Canada-supporting TFC fans (or those who would come to be fans of TFC) left this forum because they felt that there was a lot of Toronto-bashing from other posters from other parts of the country. Those guys left the forum and have still never come back. They aren't club over country, they were more like "Why bother to put up with Anti-Toronto BS when we could start our own forum?" and so they did. Only a handful of Toronto-area posters from that large group still post today on this forum, but they have still been going to every Canada game in Toronto since they left the forum.

I'm not sure what the case was with Vancouver & Montreal posters (some of the most prominent ones from days gone by also seem to have left the forum once they got an MLS team), but then those two teams wouldn't be accused of causing the death of Canadian soccer the way Toronto was because it was the first MLS team and they had a period of exclusivity which pissed some posters off (even though the period didn't last very long, which was something I believe I predicted back in the day) so the anti-Vancouver & Montreal rhetoric wouldn't have been so strong (nor do they usually get accused of acting like they are the Centre of the Universe anyway).

I have noticed that a couple of prolific posters (Grizzly, Jpg75) don't seem to have migrated over from the previous forum as yet......

I was more speaking about how this forum is viewed by others supporters groups who may have not been part of this forum. If you look at the southsiders or RPB forums, any mentions of the V’s is usually negative, basically describing us as religious zealots only interesting in Canadians playing while their clubs struggles. 

[Obinna]

3 hours ago, admin said:

Local supporters groups should have their own forums, and many do or use FB groups or other platforms.

The exodus was not only Toronto people, and not only about complaining. People have kids, move, start new jobs.... ect...

The bigger problem was scaring new people away and the new reliance on apps and social media. 

Curious to know what you mean by this! Care to elaborate?

[Obinna]

1 minute ago, Greatest Cockney Rip Off said:

I was more speaking about how this forum is viewed by others supporters groups who may have not been part of this forum. If you look at the southsiders or RPB forums, any mentions of the V’s is usually negative, basically describing us as religious zealots only interesting in Canadians playing while their clubs struggles. 

Isn't that just club before country mindset though? That's not going away.

In general, national team supporters will always want what's best for the national team, sometimes even if the club suffers for it.

If you call anyone a zealot for that, you just have different priorities. That should be totally fine. 

[Admin]

1 hour ago, Obinna said:

Curious to know what you mean by this! Care to elaborate?

There is a whole generation that almost refuses to use websites. 

People scoff at the idea of a website. Forums are 'old' tech... yet I still think they are way better than a FB group you just can't convince people of that. 

We have seen this in ticket sales too.  People just want to buy things from an app, even though the benefits of what we do far outweigh that, they can't see it. 

[Stanley]

Very interesting thread.  I joined the voyageurs back in the network54 days, and when they transitioned to the one after that, but have been gone for awhile.  I was wondering why the board moved here.

[apbsmith]

3 hours ago, Binky said:

The Voyageurs are a fellowship of men and women who share their experience, strength and hope with each other that they may support their common love for Canadian soccer and introduce the beautiful game to others. The only requirement for membership is a desire to cheer for Canada. There are no dues or fees for Voyageurs membership; we are self supporting through our own contributions. The Voyageurs are not allied with any club, league or association; we do not wish to engage in any controversy, and neither endorse nor oppose any causes. Our primary purpose is to support soccer in Canada and help other lovers of the game to do the same.

Binky, this might be your all time best post. Well done.

[Binky]

Ah, to be self-supporting and decline outside contributions. No outside concern to tell us what we should or should not do, or else they will withdraw their support.

If the Voyageurs were to be completely self supporting through our own contributions, how much would you put in the hat if it were passed around in an annual pledge drive? Certain bills must be paid to keep this board up and running. What is the enjoyment of this forum worth to you?

$120 per year ($10 per month)?

$60 per year ($5 per month)?

$24 per year ($2 per month)?

$12 per year ($1 per month)?

[Admin]

4 hours ago, Binky said:

Ah, to be self-supporting and decline outside contributions. No outside concern to tell us what we should or should not do, or else they will withdraw their support.

If the Voyageurs were to be completely self supporting through our own contributions, how much would you put in the hat if it were passed around in an annual pledge drive? Certain bills must be paid to keep this board up and running. What is the enjoyment of this forum worth to you?

There are two things that need to be separated here.  The Forum and The Voyageurs. 

wrt to being independent, The Voyageurs are not, and likely never will be.  For their primary function, putting people into seats in the supporters section, The Voyageurs are 100% dependent on Canada Soccer.  It's the way it is.  So the question is, how do you finance it. 

wrt to the Forum, as an independent entity from The Voyageurs, how do you finance that.

The separation makes this easier.  Asking people to fund the forum is straight forward. Everyone has equal access with the same utility on the table from anywhere on the planet.   It is a level playing field. The forum can survive on its own merits. This is not the case with The Voyageurs. The Voyageurs have to be set up so it can't fail financially, and will endure no matter what going forward. 

Asking for paid membership in The Voyageurs seems obvious, but it isn't.  There is no level playing field.  Even people in the two major cities that get games, Vancouver and Toronto see fit to endlessly snipe at one another like fighting over the last crumbs of bread on a plate.  The financing can't be dependent on the vagaries of where a game lands.  This is to say nothing of why someone in Saskatoon should pay the same amount as someone in Toronto.  If the major continuous expense of the Voyageurs is the forum, why should people that don't use it subsidize it, which at any given game is the overwhelming majority. 

Not sure if I explained this very clearly. It make sense in my head, but so do a lot of other really weird things. 

[Obinna]

9 minutes ago, admin said:

There are two things that need to be separated here.  The Forum and The Voyageurs. 

wrt to being independent, The Voyageurs are not, and likely never will be.  For their primary function, putting people into seats in the supporters section, The Voyageurs are 100% dependent on Canada Soccer.  It's the way it is.  So the question is, how do you finance it. 

wrt to the Forum, as an independent entity from The Voyageurs, how do you finance that.

The separation makes this easier.  Asking people to fund the forum is straight forward. Everyone has equal access with the same utility on the table from anywhere on the planet.   It is a level playing field. The forum can survive on its own merits. This is not the case with The Voyageurs. The Voyageurs have to be set up so it can't fail financially, and will endure no matter what going forward. 

Asking for paid membership in The Voyageurs seems obvious, but it isn't.  There is no level playing field.  Even people in the two major cities that get games, Vancouver and Toronto see fit to endlessly snipe at one another like fighting over the last crumbs of bread on a plate.  The financing can't be dependent on the vagaries of where a game lands.  This is to say nothing of why someone in Saskatoon should pay the same amount as someone in Toronto.  If the major continuous expense of the Voyageurs is the forum, why should people that don't use it subsidize it, which at any given game is the overwhelming majority. 

Not sure if I explained this very clearly. It make sense in my head, but so do a lot of other really weird things. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

That makes complete sense to me. I'll admit I am not in the habit of thinking of the forum and the Voyageurs separately. But it makes sense to do so when you consider the logistics at play.

Question: Since the Voyageurs (not the forum) are completely dependent on the CSA, shouldn't they provide some funding? Do they provide any funding to us?

[Admin]

1 minute ago, Obinna said:

That makes complete sense to me. I'll admit I am not in the habit of thinking of the forum and the Voyageurs separately. But it makes sense to do so when you consider the logistics at play.

Question: Since the Voyageurs (not the forum) are completely dependent on the CSA, shouldn't they provide some funding? Do they provide any funding to us?

No, they don't.  

It is considerably simpler to run a club SG.  Everyone knows what they are going to get, a defined season and you all live in the same city.  You can order a number scarves that matches your membership ect... It is really low risk for someone to take on.  In contrast, our scarf orders take up to five years to get rid of, and cost around $6000 up front.  

Money from ticket sales was also a problem. Often the price on the ticket did not reflect what we paid.  It would say $14, but our cost was $18.50.  After pay pal fees we were left with about 65 cents.  People would always think The Voyageurs were making $6 a ticket, and there was no convincing them otherwise.  We couldn't really make money off of the ticket sales as early on there were scalping laws in place but all of that seems moot now in light of how corrupt ticket sales really are.

We finally have two official games, a non profit and good base ticket price for the NL games.  We are set to make a few dollars off of each ticket.  But the universe sort of decided to say fuck you.  Pay Pal put the whole account under review after a decade of zero problems and our team decided to commit seppuku against Haiti.  Ticket sales have dropped to zero. 

Everything costs more. Our first dedicated server was $89 a month.  It was the most expensive monthly thing I had ever paid for...lol.  It looks like nothing now. The problem there was maintaining it.  Patching the os, updating the software ect...  we kept getting hacked.  Since moving to the maintained cloud based system we can scale to the traffic and it is secure.  But... the trade off is cost. 

The long and short is that we had a system that cost more, the more people were involved.  Obviously a stupid situation. The ancillary benefits you think you might accrue with having a 1000 people logged in buying tickets ect... never materialized.  People didn't buy anything, join the forum, or help grow the community online at all.  It just bounced the user count of the cloud computing into the stratosphere.