Edmonton Elks Thread

[MoontoScott]

Large Majorities Dislike Political Correctness - The Atlantic

The pendulum inevitably starts to swing back the other way--as it always does in history. Fatigue is starting to set in for most people.

 

[Gunnersaurus Rex]

Most people don't go to events because of the name, come on, man. They go because of the product and pricing. There isn't going to be some explosion of new fans because they dumped the Eskimos brand.

I agree that the name doesn't necessarily drive attendance. But it can turn people on or off. A new name will allow the team better marketing and promotional options, which is part of the whole package that can drive attendance.

 

[Drivesaitl]

Well, Cleveland is dropping the Indians name so....

I agree that for sports franchises to be successful, they need the on field and off field product to be good. The EE Football team has a lot of ground to make up in this regard. Hopefully a new name can help attract a new generation of fans.

And to your point, how do you have people coming to you when the name of your franchise is a contentious as it was. Which is what was happening as sponsors were leaving your brand.

Seems like they should drop the Cleveland name as well while they're at it. Rebrand everything.

Cleveland is the country's 5th worst city to live in, study says | wkyc.com

Much worse to worry about in Cleveland than the name of a sports team.

edit. Nobody got the Cleveland joke. sigh. heh

 

[joestevens29]

Well, Cleveland is dropping the Indians name so....

I agree that for sports franchises to be successful, they need the on field and off field product to be good. The EE Football team has a lot of ground to make up in this regard. Hopefully a new name can help attract a new generation of fans.

And to your point, how do you have people coming to you when the name of your franchise is a contentious as it was. Which is what was happening as sponsors were leaving your brand.

You get fans in the stands and sponsors will come.

 

[Drivesaitl]

The pendulum inevitably starts to swing back the other way--as it always does in history. Fatigue is starting to set in for most people.

Been saying this to a lot of people here, and its a wave you ride out, and things get better at somepoint. I believe very much in what you just wrote. So much of what occurs in history, or generationally, decade to decade is pendulum swings. One of the valuable experiences of age is being able to witness first hand how such changes occur. I mean beatniks and hippies became ardent capitalists. they became the man.

But like you mentioned earlier theres still too much cost now for the silent majorities to speak out too much, albeit I try all I can. I'm semiretired, and thus dangerous. I can speak out more now and theres less to cancel...

 

[Stoneman89]

I agree that the name doesn't necessarily drive attendance. But it can turn people on or off. A new name will allow the team better marketing and promotional options, which is part of the whole package that can drive attendance.

And how do you know the new name might turn off another group of people? And maybe a larger one than the original, if you're going by that premise. They'll need to do some pretty nifty marketing to make up for the 2 million plus it cost them to change the name. In the CFL, that could take 5 years or more. Let's hope they survive that long.

 

[Stoneman89]

The pendulum inevitably starts to swing back the other way--as it always does in history. Fatigue is starting to set in for most people.

True, but unfortunately a lot of damage will already have been done. Washington and Lincoln, for instance, may very well be erased from American history and culture by the time that occurs. But apparently there are some people that feel any kind of change is good, and if you don't like it, you're not hip like a few kids and the SJW's that influence them.
San Francisco to remove names of Washington and Lincoln from schools

San Francisco to remove names of Washington and Lincoln from schools

 

[Gunnersaurus Rex]

And how do you know the new name might turn off another group of people? And maybe a larger one than the original, if you're going by that premise. They'll need to do some pretty nifty marketing to make up for the 2 million plus it cost them to change the name. In the CFL, that could take 5 years or more. Let's hope they survive that long.

I suppose there is that possibility but I would think that the number of people who are boycotting because of the name change are fewer than those would might be attracted to the new name. And long term, a new name is more marketable and I think has a greater opportunity for growth. I suspect that in 5 or 10 years from now, when we all look back, I think it was as a positive that the name changed.

As for making up the cost to change, it'll pay for itself in 2-3 years. My family of 4 for example will all be buying new jerseys, new hats, tshirt, hoodies, etc. We'll likely drop around $1,000 once the new stuff comes out. The amount of new merch sold will be staggering. It won't take long to recover the cost of the change.

Just look at the NHL and all the jersey changes. There is big money in it. Esks merch have been very stagnant recently. This will be a big cash influx for the team.

 

[Stoneman89]

I suppose there is that possibility but I would think that the number of people who are boycotting because of the name change are fewer than those would might be attracted to the new name. And long term, a new name is more marketable and I think has a greater opportunity for growth. I suspect that in 5 or 10 years from now, when we all look back, I think it was as a positive that the name changed.

As for making up the cost to change, it'll pay for itself in 2-3 years. My family of 4 for example will all be buying new jerseys, new hats, tshirt, hoodies, etc. We'll likely drop around $1,000 once the new stuff comes out. The amount of new merch sold will be staggering. It won't take long to recover the cost of the change.

Just look at the NHL and all the jersey changes. There is big money in it. Esks merch have been very stagnant recently. This will be a big cash influx for the team.

Good for you and your family to wholeheartedly support the new team. But to think there are tensof thousands of others out there that will do the same is rather naive and wishful thinking.
As for the NHL and their 2nd and 3rd jerseys, these are not team name changes, and are much easier to promote.

 

[Gunnersaurus Rex]

Good for you and your family to wholeheartedly support the new team. But to think there are tensof thousands of others out there that will do the same is rather naive and wishful thinking.
As for the NHL and their 2nd and 3rd jerseys, these are not team name changes, and are much easier to promote.

We'll see.
I read recently the EEFC averaged about 4,000 jerseys sales per year. And that's with the jersey barely changing every year.
How many times that number would it be if majority of fans wanted a new jersey? 10,000? 15,000? 20,000? more? Plus add in all the new hats, tshirts, sweathsirts, jackets, hoodies, etc.
It will be a big number.

 

[K1984]

Interesting point. I wonder how many of the younger Eskimo fans are pleased with the name change?

What younger fans?

Only people cheerleading the change are people that don't give a rip. Everyone that cares thinks its ridiculous.

 

[K1984]

Well, Cleveland is dropping the Indians name so....

I agree that for sports franchises to be successful, they need the on field and off field product to be good. The EE Football team has a lot of ground to make up in this regard. Hopefully a new name can help attract a new generation of fans.

And to your point, how do you have people coming to you when the name of your franchise is a contentious as it was. Which is what was happening as sponsors were leaving your brand.

It really wasn't contentious. A very loud, very small minority made a big deal about it when the opportunity struck and people that can't think for themselves jumped on board to show the world how tolerant they are (cough Matthew Iwanyk).

That was it. Was never an issue otherwise.

 

[K1984]

I suppose there is that possibility but I would think that the number of people who are boycotting because of the name change are fewer than those would might be attracted to the new name. And long term, a new name is more marketable and I think has a greater opportunity for growth. I suspect that in 5 or 10 years from now, when we all look back, I think it was as a positive that the name changed.

As for making up the cost to change, it'll pay for itself in 2-3 years. My family of 4 for example will all be buying new jerseys, new hats, tshirt, hoodies, etc. We'll likely drop around $1,000 once the new stuff comes out. The amount of new merch sold will be staggering. It won't take long to recover the cost of the change.

Just look at the NHL and all the jersey changes. There is big money in it. Esks merch have been very stagnant recently. This will be a big cash influx for the team.

I have had seasons tickets for my whole life and was at one point easily considered to be a hardcore fan that would spend into the thousands annually on Eskimo stuff.

I consider the name change a panic decision and a slap in the face to people that care about the team. Now I won't spend a nickel at the games other than tickets (if I even choose to continue with that). The way the whole thing was handled was embarrassing and they lost my money because of it. I promise you I'm not the only one.

The Eskimos hardcore fan demographic is old, white, blue collar and not fond of political correctness. The fanbase isn't old because young people were offended by the name (a laughable assumption), it's because younger people consider the product second rate when they compare it to the polished product of the NHL or NFL. Now the Eskimos have pissed off their bread and butter fanbase with this nonsense while young people are still not going to show up for the reasons I just described.

It's going to be an absolute failure and I'm honestly looking forward to watching it happen.

 

[Drivesaitl]

I have had seasons tickets for my whole life and was at one point easily considered to be a hardcore fan that would spend into the thousands annually on Eskimo stuff.

I consider the name change a panic decision and a slap in the face to people that care about the team. Now I won't spend a nickel at the games other than tickets (if I even choose to continue with that). The way the whole thing was handled was embarrassing and they lost my money because of it. I promise you I'm not the only one.

The Eskimos hardcore fan demographic is old, white, blue collar and not fond of political correctness. The fanbase isn't old because young people were offended by the name (a laughable assumption), it's because younger people consider the product second rate when they compare it to the polished product of the NHL or NFL. Now the Eskimos have pissed off their bread and butter fanbase with this nonsense while young people are still not going to show up for the reasons I just described.

It's going to be an absolute failure and I'm honestly looking forward to watching it happen.

While I don't necessarily wish failure I do wish that the rebrand is such a resounding failure that it forces the org to rethink their decision. Much like the Capital Ex renaming disaster. Albeit in that case Northlands was too stubborn and stupid not to just rename the fair Klondike Days. Why mess with it. Agree with all your posts on the subject.

 

[bellagiobob]

I suppose there is that possibility but I would think that the number of people who are boycotting because of the name change are fewer than those would might be attracted to the new name. And long term, a new name is more marketable and I think has a greater opportunity for growth. I suspect that in 5 or 10 years from now, when we all look back, I think it was as a positive that the name changed.

As for making up the cost to change, it'll pay for itself in 2-3 years. My family of 4 for example will all be buying new jerseys, new hats, tshirt, hoodies, etc. We'll likely drop around $1,000 once the new stuff comes out. The amount of new merch sold will be staggering. It won't take long to recover the cost of the change.

Just look at the NHL and all the jersey changes. There is big money in it. Esks merch have been very stagnant recently. This will be a big cash influx for the team.

I consider myself to be a big football fan, and have a lot of friends who are the same, many of them STH’s. Can honestly say you’re the first person that is a football fan that I’ve heard say they believe the name change will bring in more people than they will lose from changing it. Guess we’ll wait and see how it turns out this fall.

 

[K1984]

While I don't necessarily wish failure I do wish that the rebrand is such a resounding failure that it forces the org to rethink their decision. Much like the Capital Ex renaming disaster. Albeit in that case Northlands was too stubborn and stupid not to just rename the fair Klondike Days. Why mess with it. Agree with all your posts on the subject.

When I'm talking about failure what you said is what I mean. Don't want bankruptcy or anything like that, but am hoping for a drastic drop in business that forces them to admit that the way this was handled is dumb and becomes an example of what not to do for other franchises when the mob chooses to jump on them.

 

[oilers'72]

Short question. Have you ever spotted an Eagle in Edmonton? I honestly haven't. I know they exist, but not common here. Bald Eagle is especially rare in Edmonton.

Empire was a crappy name. At least that was avoided.

I thought the list of 7 names was so ridiculous almost on purpose to make the couple of options seem better in comparison.

Respect fanbase? Have you seen the half time entertainment anytime over the last 10yrs? They don't even know who their fanbase is. They don't cater to it, that stopped a long time ago,

Years ago they had one dumb halftime musical act, can't remember the name, they figured it was a draw and were selling tickets for a postgame concert for 10bucks. Trouble is nobody bought any. By end of game and people leaving they were trying to give tickets away to the postgame performance so that there would be somebody around for the band to play to. Saddest thing I saw. We stayed around just out of curiosity to see what kind of crowd they managed to get. Wouldn't have been 50 people. I think 10 of them were homeless people they found around the stadium.

The optics of the name change occurring under the wing of an airlifted in CEO from Oklahoma is pretty disgusting. Enough that I still presume I'll stay away for awhile even if another season even occurs. I think the league might stitch a season together but will need major bankrolling from TV contract just to stay somewhat afloat. Bad news for the league is the Eskimos can't play league financial savior anymore.

Lastly Football is decreasingly a big sell in this market. Multiculturally newer Canadians seem to naturally take to Hockey, but this is not the case with football, and especially with the CFL. Its a dead duck league. Only question is when.

There are a few here, but I've never seen any.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/edmonton/edmonton-bald-eagle-waste-management-nesting-1.4649585

 

[Stoneman89]

We'll see.
I read recently the EEFC averaged about 4,000 jerseys sales per year. And that's with the jersey barely changing every year.
How many times that number would it be if majority of fans wanted a new jersey? 10,000? 15,000? 20,000? more? Plus add in all the new hats, tshirts, sweathsirts, jackets, hoodies, etc.
It will be a big number.

Maybe my memory isn't very good, but I honestly can't remember seeing any of your posts during a football season, or before or after our games. Hopefully, you're just not one of those that comes on here to spout about the social injustice of the name and then disappear after that. I expect to see you fully engaged on here when and if we start playing again. We'll see indeed.

 

[oilers'72]

How do you market "Eskimos"? Other than the history of the name and tradition, that's it.
What marketing can you do? What cool (no pun intended) logo and graphics can you promote? You can still appeal to fans with the history of the team and past championships as that's all still there, but now have a new angle to approach things from.

Here's a couple of more that I doubt will disappear.

ESKIMO - energy savings using semantic knowledge of inconsequential memory occupancy for DRAM subsystem

"Dynamic random access memory (DRAM) is used as the bulk of the main memory in most computing systems and its energy and power consumption has become a first-class design consideration for modern systems. We propose ESKIMO, a scheme where when the program or operating systems memory manager allocates or frees up a memory region, this information is used by the architecture to optimize the working of the DRAM system, particularly to save energy and power. In this work we attempt to have the architecture work hand in hand with information about allocated and freed space provided by the program. We discuss multiple ways to use this information to reduce the energy and power consumption of the memory and present results of this optimization. We evaluate the energy and power benefits of our technique using a publicly available, hardware-validated, DRAM simulator, DRAMsim. Our current studies show very promising results with energy savings on average of 39%."

Eskimo is a brand of Nordic yarn.

Nordic Yarn Imports | Garnstudio | Eskimo
DROPS Eskimo

And women's boots.

ESKIMO

Eskimo is the perfect boot for the busy woman. Part of Pajar Canada's Heritage collection, this classic ankle high boot is sure to turn some heads this winter. Its front zipper closure ensures the perfect fitting as well as easy access to the boot. Like all our Heritage footwear collection, these come with our famous removable sheepskin insoles giving your feet the comfort they deserve. Handcrafted in Montreal and 100% waterproof.

I'm sure there's more out there and people will react by naming items "Eskimo".

 

[Gunnersaurus Rex]

Maybe my memory isn't very good, but I honestly can't remember seeing any of your posts during a football season, or before or after our games. Hopefully, you're just not one of those that comes on here to spout about the social injustice of the name and then disappear after that. I expect to see you fully engaged on here when and if we start playing again. We'll see indeed.

I typically post on esksfans.com. For me that's more of a true fan site as opposed to this which seems like more Oiler fans and part time football fans.

 

[Darkwinter]

Been a season ticket holder for longer than I like to admit. I will never spend another penny on this sad sack of a team and league. Let the pc culture go to the games so they can have a love fest and they can have their snowflake rallies for halftime entertainment .F*** ***Edmonton and the CFL

 

[bellagiobob]

I typically post on esksfans.com. For me that's more of a true fan site as opposed to this which seems like more Oiler fans and part time football fans.

The group of guys that post on this thread and the NFL thread are hard core football fans. Small in numbers, but very knowledgeable. Curious why if you don’t consider this a true fan site, with part time football fans, that you would all of a sudden make a flurry of posts.

 

[rboomercat90]

Here's a couple of more that I doubt will disappear.

ESKIMO - energy savings using semantic knowledge of inconsequential memory occupancy for DRAM subsystem

"Dynamic random access memory (DRAM) is used as the bulk of the main memory in most computing systems and its energy and power consumption has become a first-class design consideration for modern systems. We propose ESKIMO, a scheme where when the program or operating systems memory manager allocates or frees up a memory region, this information is used by the architecture to optimize the working of the DRAM system, particularly to save energy and power. In this work we attempt to have the architecture work hand in hand with information about allocated and freed space provided by the program. We discuss multiple ways to use this information to reduce the energy and power consumption of the memory and present results of this optimization. We evaluate the energy and power benefits of our technique using a publicly available, hardware-validated, DRAM simulator, DRAMsim. Our current studies show very promising results with energy savings on average of 39%."

Eskimo is a brand of Nordic yarn.

Nordic Yarn Imports | Garnstudio | Eskimo
DROPS Eskimo

And women's boots.

ESKIMO

Eskimo is the perfect boot for the busy woman. Part of Pajar Canada's Heritage collection, this classic ankle high boot is sure to turn some heads this winter. Its front zipper closure ensures the perfect fitting as well as easy access to the boot. Like all our Heritage footwear collection, these come with our famous removable sheepskin insoles giving your feet the comfort they deserve. Handcrafted in Montreal and 100% waterproof.

I'm sure there's more out there and people will react by naming items "Eskimo".

I’d sure love to hear the opinions of our current do-gooder about these companies and where we are with righting this unconscionable injustice.

 

[Gunnersaurus Rex]

The group of guys that post on this thread and the NFL thread are hard core football fans. Small in numbers, but very knowledgeable. Curious why if you don’t consider this a true fan site, with part time football fans, that you would all of a sudden make a flurry of posts.

I'm sure there are many knowledgeable football fans on here. However, it seems like most of the posts regarding the EEFC specifically, focus predominantly on the negative. More centered around what the CFL and the EEFC aren't, or what they used to be. That's a fine and valid discussion to have, but it seems like it's the only conversation.
For more detailed discussion regarding the team, I just prefer esksfans.

 

[Drivesaitl]

I typically post on esksfans.com. For me that's more of a true fan site as opposed to this which seems like more Oiler fans and part time football fans.

I wonder if you out your same PC opinions on Eskfans saying that the name is toxic and such, unmarketable, on a board named after the Eskimos. .

seems unlikely and your opinion would be viewed with even more circumspection over there.

Seems like the only "fans" on "Esksfans" that purportedly like the change are only posting primarily on that one topic.