It sure has been an adventure. As all of our enthusiastic Tiger-Cats fans across the country can attest, this year marks the end of our learning and rebuilding phase and the beginning of our contending chapter.
I’ve often told a story from the day I invested in the Tiger-Cats when a reporter cornered my wife, Nancy. Nancy grew up in a small town south of Montreal and the reporter asked her what she thought of her husband getting involved with the Ticats. Her response was, “it’s great Bob chose to get involved with a CFL team – he just chose the wrong one.” Our record against Montreal since then makes her quip look somewhat prophetic.
We’ve achieved many milestones since that day. We’ve become leaders in in-stadium entertainment as well as online sports entertainment. So much so that other CFL teams, and now teams from other leagues, are coming to Hamilton to learn how to put on exciting live events and to learn how to promote those events on the Internet.
On the topic of the Internet, here’s why I’ve been so excited about Ticats.ca ever since I became involved with the team: With only 29,600 seats in Ivor Wynne, but with at least a half million Ticat fans spread across the globe, we needed some way to connect the 470,000+ fans we cannot fit into our stadium to our teams and our games, every game.
The Internet is the solution. So we have built one of the best sports website content businesses in North America within the Ticats sister organization, MRX.ca. We now run websites for teams and leagues across North America, as well as most of the websites for the teams in the CFL, along with CFL.ca itself. You can now get your daily fix at Ticats.ca or at CFL.ca. But stay tuned, your online football experience, with innovations such as mobile content and web game broadcasts, will continue to improve rapidly over the next couple of seasons.
The other solution is to come up with things of great value for our die-hard Ticats fans like you. We’ve added value to the great seats in the best stadium for watching CFL football by offering services such as season seat payment plans and innovative ticket exchange programs. We now also offer the broadest range of branded merchandise at the best prices of any team in the league, thanks to our partners at H2.
All we have to do is give you a reason to hurry and lock in your season seats, a reason to log onto Ticats.ca, and a reason to proudly wear your Tiger-Cat branded hats, jerseys, shirts, and all the rest. That is where this talented football organization comes in. Bob O’Billovich has done a great job in recruiting, signing, and trading for players that have made tremendous positive impacts on the field.
Who cares about GMs, you say? Well the GM is the guy who assembles the most talented team possible. There is an old football adage that says, “great players make great coaches.” Bob, with his mantra of “better is better,” is finding us great players. But make no mistake – we also intend to have the best coaching staff in the CFL, and we believe we have done that with Head Coach Marcel Bellefeuille, Offensive Coordinator Mike Gibson, and Defensive Coordinator/Assistant Head Coach Greg Marshall.
We have a young team and a fast team. But not (yet) an experienced team. We’ve outplayed several opponents this year only to have them steal the victory from us. This is a symptom of a team who has not played together much. Despite the bad breaks, we are well on our way to second place in the East and who knows what will happen in the playoffs! Better yet — we do know what will happen next year and the year after as this team gains more experience and confidence.
I’m excited about this team. I’m excited to be a Tiger-Cat football fan. And I’m excited that you’ll be joining us to continue this adventure. Together we will take this Tiger-Cat football club back to the place we expect them to be – routinely contending for the Grey Cup every year. Montreal may be the class of the CFL today, but we are well on our way to refuting Nancy’s funny quip. We cannot do this without you – thank you for your support of Tiger-Cat football!
Cheers,
Bob
