During a news conference, Edmonton Elks CEO Ian Murray claimed that his fans are too old and too white for the new community they want to foster.
Murray’s comments were in response to a question regarding what went wrong during the season and engagement, which the team has struggled to maintain after a terrible season, culminating with a huge loss and the firing of the team president, general manager, and head coach.
NEW:
Edmonton Elks fire President and CEO Chris Presson, General Manager and Vice President of Football Operations Brock Sunderland and Head Coach Jaime Elizondo.
Allan Watt is Interim Chief Operating Officer, while Wally Buono will help in search for new GM.#yeg #elks #cfl pic.twitter.com/gmbIbJaT1H
— Courtney Theriault (@cspotweet) November 22, 2021
However, he says the team’s problems were prevalent long before the era of COVID and even goes so far as to blame the race of his fans for their lack of engagement with an ever more “multicultural” team.
“I think this, in fact — some of the disengagement with the community’s probably a decade or so old. You know, it’s been a gradual issue. You know, we’re not into the schools as much as we were in the old days,” Murray explained.
“We’re not engaging as aggressively with the multicultural community. Our demographics are brutal. They’re old. They’re, you know, disproportionately male and white,” he continued with open contempt for his team’s fans, “even though that isn’t representative of our community.”
"Our demographics are brutal- they're old, they're disproportionately male and white."
Edmonton Elks CEO Ian Murray discussing what might be behind the disconnect between the team and the community – and how they hope to rectify that. pic.twitter.com/pQMoSXsaMn
— Courtney Theriault (@cspotweet) November 22, 2021
“So, I’d say that the problem is not recent in its structural nature,” he explained, almost slipping in the Marxist catchphrase of systemic racism. “Like, we [a] have structural, sort of long-term trend that is problematic.”
“In the near term, we just did a bunch of stuff that antagonized our core fans.”
He goes on to say that in the short term, they want to retain their “too old” and “too white” fans, but in the long term, they want to expand their fan base, likely only to those who do not fall into the white demographic.
