Q&A: “Our fans deserve Grey Cups” — a year-end conversation with President-CEO Craig Reynolds
In the waning days of 2023, Saskatchewan Roughriders President-CEO Craig Reynolds sat down to discuss various matters pertaining to the Green and White — a common denominator being an emphasis on, and appreciation of, the fans. Here is a complete transcript of Reynolds’ conversation with Riderville.com’s Rob Vanstone:
What is the priority for 2024?
First and foremost, it’s the product on the field. I think we’re all feeling a lot of excitement and optimism with the hiring of Corey Mace as Head Coach and the staff he’s building around him. I think there’s a lot to be excited about there. We’re really excited about Corey and the culture he’s going to build. He comes from a history of winning and that’s what’s most important to all of us around here — making sure we’re getting back to playing winning, entertaining, exciting football in 2024. The product on the field is top-of-mind for us.
What have the past two seasons been like for you?
I feel for our fans. Our fans deserve Grey Cups. They deserve to watch winning football and home wins … and away wins. The most disappointing part for me is when we lose home games. I just sit there and feel for our fans. They’ve made a mass commitment by coming to the game. So many of our fans travel from so far away. They’ve made a huge time commitment and there’s a cost associated with that. I think we do a great job with the game entertainment and making the day an event and making that part of it exciting, but when you don’t win, that memory is just different. We’re kind of in the memory-making business. You contrast the memory and feeling you had after that Labour Day win with the feeling you have after a bad loss and they’re just so different. I feel like we let the fans down when we lose football games. When you don’t make the playoffs, you’re not even giving yourself a chance to win the Grey Cup. The fans deserve more than four Grey Cups here. That’s what we really have to be focused in on.
The Montreal Alouettes just won a Grey Cup — something that was not widely expected heading into the 2023 season. Is that an indication of how quickly things can turn for the better?
Sports is a really unpredictable business. You never know when you’re going to catch lightning in a bottle, like Montreal did. If you remember, it was well-documented. Everybody was picking Montreal to be last in the power rankings. At the end of the year, they’re the only team that’s truly happy, because they won the Grey Cup. The rest of the teams are disappointed. It’s just an unpredictable industry. You can have players at key positions getting hurt. I think Corey said it best: Losing Trevor Harris really set our season on a different trajectory. We were 3-and-1 and driving with Trevor when he got hurt. Then, of course, we could only win three more games the rest of the year. Those things happen. On the flip side, stars emerge or teams come together and gel with a coaching staff. The stars just align and you have success. We’ve seen that in our past, too — 1989 being a prime example. Nobody picked us to win the Grey Cup. Everybody knew we had a good foundation and we were a team that was a little bit on the rise, but I don’t think anybody would have picked us to win the Grey Cup. Certainly, when Edmonton was 16-and-2, nobody was picking us to win the Grey Cup. Football is unpredictable that way. It has a ball that bounces funny sometimes and injuries play a big factor. Depth is a key consideration. Lots of things can go right and lead to success and lots of things can go wrong and you can end up not being where you want to be at the end of the day.
Much has been made of challenges pertaining to attendance. It seems to me, though, that this is not exclusively a Roughriders issue, as much as the team is under the microscope here. Is the example of, say, the Winnipeg Jets something that is taken into consideration when trying to determine why attendance can ebb? Jets games used to be guaranteed sellouts. Now there are walk-up seats available, even when Connor McDavid is in town.
I think it’s a trend in the entertainment industry in general. I think the really massive events, like Taylor Swift concerts, still sell. The pandemic has had a bigger impact than people think. Some consumer habits changed as a result of the pandemic. Perhaps people got used to watching things on TV — and you can see that by our ratings. Television ratings are still strong, so fans are still watching games. I’m sure it’s the same with the other leagues. Ratings are still good and there are still fans who care, but it’s becoming harder and harder to get people to come out to stadiums and arenas. Another after-effect of the pandemic is the cost-of-living challenges we are seeing right now. Those have an impact as well. You’re seeing runaway inflation for a period of time. Groceries cost more. Everything costs more. Interest rates are really high. If you have a variable mortgage or you have to renew your mortgage, the cost of your home has gone up. The reality is that sports and entertainment fall under the category of a discretionary spend. If those funds aren’t what they once were, you’re still going to be a fan, but you’ll maybe make the choice to watch on TV. Or, maybe you used to have season tickets to us or another sports team, but now you’re going to go to a few games versus all the games. I think those are some of the things that we’re seeing — and it’s across the industry.
One thing I’ve noticed, too, is that attention spans are changing. Is it tougher to hold an audience for three hours, or even a fraction thereof?
We hear a lot about time constraints from our fans. Everybody’s busy and the time commitments are big. I think that’s another thing that has happened, post-pandemic. People are very selective with their time. We saw that at the end of this year when the team was underperforming. We had a higher-than-normal no-show rate and I think that’s people being selective with their time. It’s a big, industry-wide issue. I think you still need to have a good game-day experience. Winning certainly helps, but it’s not a cure-all, either. If you have winning without a great game-day experience, that impacts things, too. But it’s the same thing if you have a great game-day experience and you’re not winning. It’s a complicated set of factors and some of these trends were emerging before the pandemic.
What type of signs did you notice before the pandemic?
Demographics are changing, but I think the pandemic accelerated it a lot. It’s no secret. I’ve got teenaged kids and it’s harder to get people in their age group interested and engaged in coming to sporting events. A friend of mine from Foam Lake says it’s harder than he would expect to get his grandson to come to games. He’s really committed to making it happen, because he wants to pass on his love of the Riders to his grandson. He does get him here and I saw them at a game, but he talks about how much harder it is to get kids nowadays to come to the games. I think there’s a lot of reasons for that. That, in itself, is another conversation. It’s just a more challenging environment now than it has ever been. I think there was a sense that the pandemic would end and everything would go back to the way it was, but I think there have been some serious changes in consumer trends, and they might be changed for the long haul.
With that in mind, how important is it to not just field a team that is successful in terms of victories, but also one that creates the kind of buzz that Corey Mace ignited simply by signing here?
I think it is important. There’s an energy he brings and that excites a fan base. He’s a good person, first and foremost, and he truly believes what he says. He is who he is. It’s not a show by any stretch. He is that type of person. He cares about where he’s at. He understands the importance of the Riders to this province. He understands the passion of the fans and he wants the performance of the team to match that passion. At the end, it’s a community-owned team. The community wants to feel like they’re part of it and they want to feel like the coach gets how important this is here. I think you saw that from Corey from Day 1. I saw that the moment I met him, on a Sunday night. I thought, “Holy cow. This guy truly gets it. He wants to be here — he wants to be the coach of the Saskatchewan Roughriders — and he really gets this province and he gets how important this is.
How impactful is that mindset overall?
That’s all-important, because I think the grassroots and community initiatives that we have make a huge difference. I think that’s why we’re seeing more families at our games. The family packs took off this year, but I think a lot of that is because of the work we do in the community. Our community focus is on youth and kids and I think that is paying dividends. Growing up, that’s how I became a huge Rider fan — because the Riders came to my school. I had an interaction with the Riders, these incredible professional athletes, who I was able to watch on TV. Then I got to go to the games and that’s how the fandom grows.
Along those lines, how important is the work done by the Saskatchewan Roughrider Foundation?
Our community efforts are focused in on kids and on school visits. Through the Foundation, we’re doing great work with mental health and talking to kids and getting our players in schools and interacting with kids. Whether it’s Rider Reading or the Win with Wellness mental health program or one of the other programs we have in the community, they’re focused on trying to get kids engaged with the Riders and football and wanting to come to games. I think that’s going to pay dividends.
In closing, do you have a message for the fans as we head into 2024?
I’d just like to emphasize how much we appreciate our fans and them sticking with us through two tougher years. They weigh on us here, for sure. We just want to win for our fans. When I met Corey on that Sunday night, he said to me, “These fans deserve Grey Cup championships.” Trevor had a great quote along those lines when he talks about how the product has to match the fans. I read what he said and I thought, “That’s exactly the sentiment. That’s exactly true.” I think that’s why we’re all so disappointed with these last two years, with missing the playoffs and with the way the seasons have gone. So we really appreciate the fans for sticking with us and making the commitment to be here and be part of this. At the end of the day, it’s their team. We’re all stewards of it here. We want it to be successful for the fans.
