The other "MLS"

Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment: First place in condos; last place in soccer. Which "MLS" does our ownership care more about? Where are their priorities and expertise?

Terrible timing on that retweet. It IS just a guy helping out a colleague but it's completely tone deaf and yes, I choose to follow his feed, but that's exactly the sort of mixed messaging that makes taking shots at the organization that owns TFC so easy. The club you help run is announcing changes to their on field leadership structure and you're helping to sell condos? Condos with the initials MLS in them?

Fuck right off.

Edit: Our man doubles down:

This post has been edited by BHTC Mike on May 14 2012, 04:55 PM

Are you just looking for things to complain about now?

No.

Believe it or not I look for reasons to cheer for this team. I'll stick up for them when people are being completely unfair.

This felt like a backhand. It really pissed me off for reasons that might not be completely reasonable but speak to one of the major problems with our ownership. I didn't want to "hate" MLSE and didn't go looking to but this is the sort of money grubbing tackiness that shatters the illusion that I'm cheering for anything other than a well executed sports marketing venture.

I'm probably the last person who would defend MLSE. They operate as a business first and a sports management company second.

They are willing to drop the cash on their teams, without a doubt, no one can argue against that. But that seems to be it. You can't buy championships in leagues that have salary caps and that's why I think MLSE has actually gotten it RIGHT in regards to their handling of TFC (at least this time around).

MLSE's investment in quality youth programs is going to pay huge dividends for this club in the future. I may be 10,000 KM's away and thus more detached from the situtation, but I believe that for the first time in MLSE's history there is a stable long term program in place for one of its teams.

With that stability comes wins (eventually), with those wins comes more fans, and with more fans comes the opportunity for MLSE to milk it dry. And that's what I am worried about.

This post has been edited by davidcfs on May 15 2012, 12:24 AM

SO all this fuss is about a Retweet from Beirne?

I really dont think this is a big deal. Maybe some TFC fans are looking at housing options in Toronto, and maybe they would appreciate the heads up?

MLSE has multiple business ventures, you have to expect them to cross promote their products. Pretty much every sports team in the world does it. I cant think of one that doesnt.

It's not a big deal. That's the point.

It's a small insignificant little retweet not a carefully crafted new marketing campaign only rolled out after extensive focus grouping, surveys, high level oversight, and review by expensive consulting firms. To me, that's why it's actually more revealing.

Paul Beirne is intimately associated with the day to day operations of TFC. He's been one of the faces of the organization since essentially day one particularly on the supporters relations side. His Twitter account is a personal account but is followed by a significant number of TFC fans because he regularly uses it to break stories related to the team there faster than anywhere else. He's well within his rights to use his account to help out a colleague and cross promote a product of the company he works for.

What this felt like though is that I bought a product from a store that was defective and, when returning it, instead of apologizing and looking to replace it they tried to sell me something else to fix the problem. Selling condos to the people who follow TFC on the same day the club is announcing another management shuffle is, to repeat, tacky and tone deaf.

Messaging matters. This was the wrong message ("we've got other great products you can buy from us") on the wrong day ("TFC management shake-up, again").

This post has been edited by BHTC Mike on May 15 2012, 06:52 AM

You said it yourself, Paul's account is a personal one and he tweets about all sorts of things. It is a decidedly non-corporate account and aside from retweeting the official statement I think it would have been unbecoming to weigh in, in any way, on a public forum like twitter.

I think you're being a little heavy handed with the criticism on this one.

????

He twitters all sorts of personal stuff.

You've lost the plot. No wonder we seldom see him contributing here any more with such comments.

This post has been edited by nfitz on May 15 2012, 07:58 AM

????

He twitters all sorts of personal stuff.

You've lost the plot. No wonder we seldom see him contributing here any more with such comments.

Agreed 100%. It's the man's personal twitter account, he can tweet whatever the hell he wants. And he does. Dogs, weather, just like real people.

Paranoia of Celtic-level delusion on offer here. :blink: :unsure:

Yeah, have to agree with the last 2 posts here. That's a kind of associative reach more befitting of the spittle-flecked MLSE ravers than you.

Resist the urge man, don't become one. I don't know that there's a way back.

Yeah, and it's mostly inane and I don't care.

Paul Beirne is perceived as the top guy on the business operations side of TFC and, more than anyone else, has been the one consistent public face of that part of the organization. He is a salesman and brand ambassador. On the day that TFC announced another management change that tacitly acknowledges that things haven't been working (again) he decided to retweet an ad to buy more (really expensive!) stuff from his employers. That was so dissonant from the message I wanted coming out of TFC yesterday it struck me as insulting. The fact that an executive in an MLS club in last place with 0 points is tweeting about the great (other) "MLS" condos is employers offer added a level of ironic absurdity and resonance to the whole thing. It contributes to the perception that they don't care about the same things we do.

Honestly, I was past the anger in a couple seconds and before I could even start posting here. I'm well into the analysis of why I had that reaction at this point. "Fuck right off" was a flourish and "what the fuck?" would have been more appropriate. I probably should have just engaged Paul directly on Twitter but I'd already tweeted something at him and - you won't believe this but whatever - didn't want to be a dick because I was already calling him out on his tweet immediately before that was a sales pitch too. It was the sequence of tweets that contributed to my reaction.

Again, the point is the dissonance. On a day where, like a lot of TFC supporters, I was following my Twitter feed to get the latest news and opinions on a change that could have significant medium to long term implications for the club Paul couldn't refrain from helping making a sales pitch. A sales pitch for a specific part of the organization that owns TFC that makes a lot of people question where their priorities are and if they're interested in anything other than maximum ROI where ever they can get it. Saying "he's just doing his job" isn't an excuse. My argument is that he's not doing his job when he's reinforcing the perception that this is a company that just exists to sell you stuff independent of sports success. It's the sort of thing that makes me question if we have any actual soccer people interested in soccer success in our management. It's the sort of thing that makes it possible to understand why they thought they could raise prices in 2010 in the face of seething fan anger while failing to communicate the changes to their clientele in a timely fashion.

Sometimes this organization needs to be told publicly and loudly that they're fucking things up. Is a random little retweet an issue to go to the barricades over? No, of course not and I'm not suggesting that. Mountains and mole hills and all that. But, to me, it does give a window into the culture that informs our management and provides one little data point (and jibe) for the next time they DO really deserve to be called out.

Gary and Carl,

I was gonna post another paragraph to the above that dealt with specifically what you're referencing - there was even a "hi Gary! ;) ; sandy vag" bit - but decided not to go there. It's probably something better expressed in person. Tone is lost to easily on the interwebs!

But you're talking about a technology that encourages 140-character, up-to-the-second proto-thoughts completely decontextualized from the one before or after. It's a retarded (in the dictionary sense), eternal-present, method of (non)communication that encourages as much self-reflection as a kid with ADD. and that's inherent in the medium regardless of who is using it.

So I agree with you insofar as the cognitive dissonance in the line of tweet-thoughts being uncomfortable-making. But I guess I see that as a window into the culture of Twitter and don't lay all of that baggage at the feet of Beirne or MLSE.

This post has been edited by herthabsc on May 15 2012, 10:17 AM

Too shay.

There's a reason I still like sticking to board posts more than tweets. Sadly too many of our regulars have gone pro or disappeared! Fridays just haven't been the same since.

Edit: But let me add: "up to the second" "decontextualized" "eternal present" "proto-thoughts" without "self-reflection" might be as good a window into the unfiltered soul as we can get. I'm no expert but how does a Rorschach blot test or word association analysis work?

As I said, most of Beirne's tweets are completely inane. That's fine (and appropriate to the form). But on a day where most everyone else associated with the team's half formed proto-thoughts were of concern for the future of the team on the field his brain still went "hard sell"! Revealing?

This post has been edited by BHTC Mike on May 15 2012, 10:22 AM

Fair enough. I figure we've argued enough in person that you know where I'm coming from with it, but I agree around loss of tone.