In the early years of the Ottawa Redblacks, Ottawa Sports and Entertainment Group CEO Mark Goudie used to connect with fans on X, formerly known as Twitter. “I was able to develop relationships with our fans and have one-on-one conversations with them. (I was) providing interesting behind-the-scenes access to stuff, but also solving problems. If […]
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In the early years of the Ottawa Redblacks, Ottawa Sports and Entertainment Group CEO Mark Goudie used to connect with fans on X, formerly known as Twitter.
“I was able to develop relationships with our fans and have one-on-one conversations with them. (I was) providing interesting behind-the-scenes access to stuff, but also solving problems. If somebody had a cold hot dog and they tweeted at me, I’d go and find a warm hot dog and bring it to them and I loved that,” he told OBJ on Thursday.
These days, it seems Goudie has a larger problem to solve: getting the Redblacks back on track as a successful sports team.
Despite a hot run from 2015 to 2018, where the team regularly placed at the top of the East Division and won the Grey Cup in 2016, Ottawa’s football club has hit a rough patch in recent years. Since 2019, the team has placed near or at the bottom of the division.
Last week, Goudie took to LinkedIn to connect with Redblacks fans, present and future.
“I just had a desire to talk to people in Ottawa,” he told OBJ. “I sent an email to my email list, about 800 people, and I wanted to be able to speak to those I missed, so I chose LinkedIn. What I hoped it did was remind people that the Redblacks are important to the city.”
Starting this season, the Redblacks are in rebuild mode, Goudie said, both on and off the field.
“The thing we’re most proud of is the fan experience at TD Place, which has always been awesome. What hasn’t kept up over the last couple of years is the quality of our team and the football on the field, so that’s the big thing we’re changing this season,” he said.
In the off-season, the Redblacks have made changes on and off the field, including hiring Ryan Dinwiddie as head coach and general manager. Dinwiddie won one Grey Cup as assistant coach of the Calgary Stampeders in 2018, and two Grey Cups as head coach of the Toronto Argonauts in 2022 and 2024.
“It’s a new vibe, a new energy and a new way of seeing things. It starts with the foundation that Shawn Burke, our vice-president of football operations, has built. Then, quality attracts quality,” Goudie said.
“The message we want to send to Ottawa football fans is that we’re back, we’re going to make this work and we’re going to make you proud of us. We leave it to (the coaches). They’re the experts. You hire the right people and you let them do their jobs,” he told OBJ.
However, there isn’t any “pixie dust or magic wand” that can turn the team around.
“This is going to be the growth of the team over the next five or six years. I think what we need to build back, with our football fans in particular, is credibility and trust. There’s an emotional attachment to your hometown sports team and we’ve let people down. We need to show them that we’re building back stronger,” he said.
And the single biggest metric of success for the Redblacks by the end of this season? “Bums in seats,” Goudie said.
“We’re hosting nine ‘parties’ a year and we want as many people to come and participate. That’s the only metric that really matters. If people give a crap about your product and they’re choosing to invest their time in it, then you must be doing something right, both on and off the field. That’s the only thing we’ll care about for the next couple of years,” he explained.
Though football fans’ budgets may be tighter, Goudie said CFL football continues to be an affordable entertainment option and the Redblacks are making a push to add value to the fan experience this season.
“We have tickets starting at $25, so it’s an affordable night out. We’ve got our value menu starting, with items at $5, so you can choose your experience in terms of how you want to celebrate with us, from ticket prices to concessions to the free street party before the game and free tailgate inside the stadium.”
Each home game this season will have its own theme.
“We’re making sure we have a kick-ass fan experience when you come to a Redblacks game. This Saturday’s game against Edmonton is our opening night, so we’ll have a firework show after the game. We’ve got a special menu … We’ve got a legacy game on July 31st, which will be celebrating the 10th anniversary of our Grey Cup win, the 50th anniversary of the last Ottawa Roughriders Grey Cup win and 150 years of football in Ottawa. We’ll have a whole bunch of alumni from the Redblacks and Rough Riders for that game,” Goudie said.
With every Redblacks game ticket, fans get complimentary use of public transportation from OC Transpo and STO, he added, a “unique program that’s taken for granted in Ottawa” that costs the team close to $1 million.
For Redblacks fans looking for transportation to away games, Goudie said the team has brought back its “RNation Takes Flight” program, which takes fans on chartered flights to away games, puts them up in the team’s hotel and gives them access to the sidelines and players, in partnership with Canadian North.
Goudie said the program “knocked it out of the park in terms of popularity” last year and is expected to sell out again this year.
“It started on a happenstance basis back in the olden days. If we had a couple of seats on the charter, we’d ask one of our partners if they wanted to go. Last year, we said, ‘Let’s make a block of seats available and see if anybody’s interested in joining us on the road.’ It was just overwhelming. We could have used two planes to bring all the people that were interested. This year, it’s more of an intentional program.”
The program is geared toward die-hard Redblacks fans, but Goudie said he’s seen interest from local businesspeople looking to entertain clients in a new way.
The Redblacks will continue to look for ways to attract more local businesses as fans and partners, he added.
“I think the corporate community in Ottawa is one that I’m not sure if we’ve done a wonderful job reaching out to and bringing close to us. But I am proud that all of our founding sponsors from 2014 are still with us. It shows that we’re a good partner but, over the next couple of years, we’ll be trying to figure out ways to reach out to the business community to make them aware of the role TD Place and the Redblacks can play in their corporate hospitality, advertising and promotion,” he said.
One way the Redblacks are starting to reach out to local businesses is through “premium business experiences,” or corporate suites and club seats.
“From a B2B perspective, we’ve got this cool thing that happened with our Otto’s Club and club seats. Typically, you would separate suites and club seats … but at TD Place, they’re combined into one area. It’s become a really cool space where suite-holders and club seat-holders hang out. It becomes like a super networking place,” he said.
“I’d love for people to be in their suite or seat watching the game 100 per cent of the time, but what we find is that, before the game, people linger because they’ve met someone or they’re doing business. At halftime, they take their time getting back to their seat for the same reasons,” he explained.
Goudie added that TD Stadium also has loges that may be geared toward small and medium-sized businesses that may not need a full suite. When the Lansdowne 2.0 project is complete with renewed north-side stands and an event centre overlooking the football field, Goudie said the “premium business experience” will be amplified.
Last year, OSEG hosted a couple of industry-specific events that brought Ottawa business leaders together for networking and a good night at the gridiron. Goudie said the events allowed Lansdowne Park and the Redblacks to tell their story to audiences that may not have typically attended a game.
“The makeup of the Redblacks fanbase goes from kids to die-hard fans that paint their faces for the games to now women in tech that thought this might be a good night out and everybody in-between. We want to keep exposing more Canadians to football and the Redblacks,” he said, adding the team is interested in hosting similar events this season.
Goudie said he’s confident there will always be interest in live entertainment.
“Right now, where people's lives are so embedded in AI and their computer, I think live events are going to continue to be a more important part of people's lives — getting out and experiencing something that isn't scripted, something real, and that there's emotion attached to it. I think that's going to be really important for people and that's what we do.”
