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MONTREAL�S BACK-TO-THE-FUTURE FOOTBALL TEAM

The Montreal Alouettes Make Their Comeback at the Molson Stadium

The way things are going, Montrealers won't be surprised to see a whole new fashion fad: raccoon coats, hip flasks and varsity sweaters! Football weather's back in town, and football fever has taken hold in a city whose only true love has always been hockey! Suddenly, after a decade of no football, pro football is the hottest ticket in town.

And Montr�al football is real football. None of this enclosed stadium, climate-controlled, computer-game scoreboard, corporate-suite kind of stuff. In Montr�al, the pros play in a little, old stadium clinging to the side of Mount Royal, open to all sorts of weather-and to spectacular panoramas of downtown, too. There's hardly any parking-most fans get there by public transportation! And when you want a hot dog or a beer, you actually have to walk across real dirt-mud, if it's raining-to get them.

Guess what? Everybody loves it. The Molson Stadium is packed for every game. The Alouettes (French for "Larks") play there. And guess what else? In 1999, after only three years of existence, the Alouettes won the Eastern Conference of the Canadian Football League. How's that for fan-friendly!

All sports fans love a great comeback, and few revivals in recent memory can match the once-dead Montr�al Alouettes. The franchise was reborn in 1996, through the combined efforts-and enormous risk-taking-of two men: former CFL commissioner Larry Smith and one-time part owner of the NFL New England Patriots, Robert Wetenhall.

It was a huge gamble. There was a lot going against them. No football team in the city for ten years. Alienated suppliers from the old days of team mismanagement. A virtually non-existent fan base. As well as a league that was itself going through some rocky times. Smith recalls, "There was a lot of cynicism in the marketplace. It was cash-on-delivery for almost everything the first year."

Team President Smith also vividly remembers his first day on the job in February 1997. "There was no furniture, files or telephones. No records, no history, no budget, nothing. I spent six hours making calls on a pay phone, with no light."

In the first year of the new regime, corporate sponsorships ended up totaling only about $250,000. By the 1999 season, the team had ten major sponsors who contribute upwards of $150,000 annually, along with 54 other "partners" who chip in lesser amounts of cash and/or services. Today, sponsors and suppliers are lining up to get in on the action.

Also, in their first season, the new Alouettes played their home games in the vast, billion-dollar Olympic Stadium, where sight lines for football games were terrible. And when about 9,000 people--the average attendance in 1997-- show up for a game in a 56,000-seat stadium, the atmosphere is, well, not terrific.

But suddenly, luck played a role for the team. On a date when the Alouettes were slated to play a divisional playoff game, the stadium had been booked for a rock concert. As an alternative site, the team management opted to play in McGill University's Molson Stadium. The decision raised more than one eyebrow--this old, almost-forgotten facility needed major work--in one crumbling section, a maple tree was sprouting through the seats!

But more that 16,000 fans turned out for the game, and it didn't take a rocket scientist to figure out the team should relocate--permanently. Since then, the Alouettes have spent over $500,000 refurbishing and revitalizing the classic old stadium--and it's become as much of a draw as the team itself.

The upbeat atmosphere of Molson Stadium is probably one reason the average age of Alouettes fans is 34--well below the Canadian Football League average of 45. Another reason is ticket prices. Since over 60 per cent of the Alouettes audience falls within the price-sensitive age group 16-34, the tickets have been priced accessibly--from $10 to $40.

The strategy seems to be paying off. In 1999, the club sold about ten thousand season tickets to individuals and corporations. This year, the total is over 15,000. And that's for seats in a stadium that holds barely 20,000 people!

But what a stadium! First, there's the location. As befits a team named after a bird, it's perched on the wooded slopes of Mount Royal Park, the great natural space in the heart of Montr�al. Fans sitting in the south side stands get a splendid view of "the mountain", which, during the football season, puts on an awesome display of fall foliage. People on the north side overlook all of downtown Montr�al-the higher up the seats the more breathtaking the panorama.

But the Alouettes' stadium is first and foremost a people-friendly place. No matter where you sit, you're close to the action on the field. And because of the intimate size of the stadium, you're instantly part of a group-out for a good time together.

And somehow, you also get a sense of history, continuity, and community within the stadium. Built to human scale before the modern age of intimidatingly vast sports venues, Molson Stadium is named after Montr�al ports legend, Percival Molson, who bequeathed $75,000 to construct it in 1917.

Originally, the stadium sat 7,676. By the early 1960s it had been expanded to approximately its present size and configuration. For various reasons, the stadium experienced a gradual decay during the early 1970s. But in 1975 it got a total facelift in order to be used as a venue during the 1976 Montr�al Olympics.

Another period of limited use and minimal maintenance followed--until that lucky day in 1997 when the Alouettes came home to roost. And now Molson Stadium is as excitingly alive as it was in the "good old days" of its youth!

They're the most unusual skyboxes in professional sports--but they're a big hit for the Montr�al Alouettes. This team's corporate sponsors are sheltered not by the bland hotel-style loges found in most stadiums, but by colorful polyester fabric tents!

These VIP "boxes" are modified portable shelters, customized and silk-screened for particular sponsors. "People love them," says Alouettes Sales and Marketing V.P. Richard Blais. "I could sell fifty of them if I had the space." But there's only room for 23 of these brightly colored tents, arranged along a concrete platform on the top of the stadium's north side. They look like something out of a medieval tournament of knights in armor--which helps explain why they've become the most sought--after spots in town. Each tent technically holds eight people--but there's always more than that inside one!

A modest stadium that feels just right for a football game. A grass roots marketing approach to young, enthusiastic fans. And a winning team, of course. Together, they make the Montr�al Alouettes a model for their league--or any other sports league for that matter. It works. Home games are sold out. Season ticket holders are proliferating. Sponsors are lining up to be part of the team. And the Alouettes' success has affected the fortunes of the whole Canadian Football League. Overall attendance was up over 10 per cent last season. TV ratings soared, too-37 per cent on the English-language sports network and a whopping 94 percent on the French one!

The Alouettes-Montr�al's fabulous football "larks" are soaring again!

Edited by Kerry Cohen

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