The Toronto Argonauts packed BMO Field for the East Final this past year but squandered their home-field advantage in a shocking 38-17 loss to the Montreal Alouettes. The club’s brass is hopeful their postseason collapse won’t spoil the progress they made off the field in 2023 as attendance spiked, ending a long downward trend.
“The amount of fans that showed up and the atmosphere that they delivered for us in that game, we haven’t had that type of crowd since I’ve been there or in probably 20 years, so [losing] was disappointing. I thought that was an opportunity for us to build with those fans and get them to come back again and, unfortunately, we couldn’t get it done for them. That really stung,” said head coach Ryan Dinwiddie from the league’s recent meetings.
“Hopefully, those folks will look back at what the season looked like — we stubbed our toe at the end, unfortunately, it wasn’t an exciting game for them to watch — but we’re gonna do our best to get back there and try to get those fans back in those seats and continue to grow. I think our attendance will get better and we’ve just gotta continue to focus on winning football games and I think the fans will grow as well.”
The East Final crowd of 26,620 was a 24.8 percent increase from the same game the previous year and the largest of any home game since 2013, including the club’s entire tenure at BMO Field, which started in 2016. Toronto’s regular season attendance grew by 20.5 percent year-over-year in 2023, which was easily the largest improvement in the CFL.
General manager Mike ‘Pinball’ Clemons still has mixed emotions regarding how the season finished. The 59-year-old has been around the Argonauts since the start of his Hall of Fame career as a player in 1989 and was thrilled to see the stadium so full, though the result left him feeling saddened.
“Finishing in first place with a third of the season left was a blessing and a curse,” said Clemons. “The number of fans that came out in that particular game was both a blessing and a curse. You want to have your best effort when you have a crowd like that and it certainly wasn’t our best game but hopefully they will forgive us and return with glee.”
Despite its recent growth, Toronto’s attendance remains by far the lowest in the CFL at 14,311 per game. The emergence of Chad Kelly as a bonafide star has helped spark local interest, particularly given his roots in nearby Buffalo, N.Y. The club’s 16-2 record also buoyed attendance as the Argos tied the CFL’s all-time mark for regular season wins.
Dinwiddie believes the passionate nature of Toronto’s existing fans sometimes goes overlooked. It’s easy to focus on empty seats, though he feels those in attendance provide the club with unwavering support. In his mind, the key to selling more tickets on a more consistent basis is not only winning games but spending more time in the community.
“We have passionate fans and the fans that show up for our games are always loud and they bring a lot of juice. Then we have a lot of fans that don’t have opportunities to go to games, they’ve got all kinds of stuff going on all the time. I’ll run into those folks at lunch or different things and there’s a lot more fans in Toronto than people give us credit for,” said the 43-year-old head coach.
“We’ve gotta get involved in the community, get our players out there to meet some new fans. All it takes is one player to meet a kid and now the kid wants to go to the game. If both his parents are coming, now we’ve got three new fans, so we’re looking forward to that.”
The Argonauts still have a number of key pending free agents, including defensive starters Dewayne Hendrix, Shawn Oakman, Wynton McManis, Adarius Pickett, Robertson Daniel, and Jamal Peters. Whether or not the club is able to keep its defensive core together following Corey Mace’s departure for the Saskatchewan Roughriders remains to be seen — just like the long-term viability of the club’s attendance surge.
