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What’s the best way to build fan goodwill after 7 consecutive losing seasons?
If you are William Clay Ford and the Detroit Lions, you raise ticket prices.
From today’s Detroit Free Press:
“In order for us to maintain competitiveness in the NFL, we have to do this,” executive vice president Tom Lewand said today.
Uh, I have a question Mr Lewand. When was the last time the Lions were truly competitive? Maybe in 2000? Possibly the mid-90’s? You could rightfully say 1957.
Actually, I have another question for the Lions’ front office. Isn’t there a salary cap in place to guarantee teams have a level playing field? So why say a ticket price increase is needed “to remain competitive?” If the Lions were being truthful, they’d say the increase in ticket prices was needed “in order to gouge an overly faithful fanbase we’ve long taken for granted.”
How arrogantly clueless can the Lions be? If you go by this decision, extremely.
The state of Michigan has the worst economy in the nation. We are losing manufacturing jobs, the lifeblood of this area, by the thousands. Detroit leads the country in unemployment, home foreclosures and any other damn economic measure you can think of. Lions fans are HURTING financially, yet they have the absolute GALL to raise prices after 7 God damn losing seasons?
That’s more than just wrong. It’s despicable.
The Lions already have a fanbase in revolt, on the verge of becoming apathetic. Yet every decision they make, from keeping the worst GM in professional sports history in charge, to raising ticket prices in a time of economic crisis, is essentially spitting in the face of those fans.
This is the quote that really got under my skin…
Asked if the Michigan economy was taken into account, Lewand said: “Absolutely it was taken into account, and we absolutely recognize that.”
Yet you raised ticket prices anyway.
I don’t know how Ford, Millen, Lewand, and the rest of the Lions decision makers sleep at night.
[...] SideLion Report wrote an interesting post today on What’s the best way to build fan goodwill after 7 consecutive losing seasons?Here’s a quick excerptFrom today’s Detroit Free Press: “In order for us to maintain competitiveness in the NFL, we have to do this,”… [...]
February 27th, 2008 at 2:39 pm