Anthony Partipilo can trace his fascination with Rider Nation back to 2007.
Partipilo was the Toronto Blue Jays’ managing director of merchandising when the Saskatchewan Roughriders visited Toronto for that year’s Grey Cup game against the Winnipeg Blue Bombers.
Not surprisingly, huge numbers of Roughriders fans made the trip to support their team and, in Partipilo’s words, “dominated the city when they came in.”
“I remember the fans invading Toronto,” he continues. “We were amazed at how they were green from head to toe. They had stuff on their heads and on their faces. Guys with no shirts on were painted green.
“It was a side of fandom that I had never witnessed before. In 2007, not many fans were wearing Blue Jays jerseys. To see Rider fans so engaged with their team was awesome.”
Fast forward to 2018 and Partipilo is now part of Rider Nation; he’s entering his first CFL season as the Roughriders’ chief brand officer.
“My goals and ambitions are to continue to raise the bar for this organization,” says Partipilo, who was born and raised in the Greater Toronto Area.
“I believe it’s on a very solid foundation. It has a lot of highly intelligent, capable and passionate people who work here. It has an incredibly strong, solid fan base. All of that bodes well for the solid foundation you want to build for a team that would have national resonance and international respect.
“I want to show the world this team.”
Partipilo got his start in the retail world with RadioShack Canada, directing the marketing efforts of 750 stores across the country, developing the company’s retail strategy and growing the RadioShack brand.
Over his 11 years with the Canadian company — a span during which he was promoted four times — RadioShack became the country’s leading retailer of consumer wireless products. With its brand revitalized, the company later would be sold and now is known as The Source Canada.
In early 2004, Partipilo was hired by the Blue Jays to build a new brand and retail strategy for their merchandising business. He had been recommended for the job because he had proven marketing and retail experience on a national scale.
His path to Major League Baseball was a result of his passion for and ability to make innovative changes in business, not to mention his love of sports.
“I want to show the world this team.”
He had played soccer and hockey as a kid — “Bobby Orr was my hero,” Partipilo says with a chuckle, recalling his days wearing No. 4 and playing defence for a minor hockey team in Scarborough — and he was a diehard fan of the Blue Jays.
He vividly remembers celebrating the team’s World Series win in 1992, when he joined thousands of fans on Yonge Street after Toronto beat the Atlanta Braves to clinch the title.
Joining the Jays organization, then, was a perfect fit for him.
“I saw how I could be involved in sports, something that I really enjoyed and loved, from the position of being the provider of that for other people,” Partipilo says. “I enjoyed watching the reactions of fans and I got a tremendous amount of pleasure from that …
“I’ve seen a lot of games and I’m still fascinated by the fans — watching them come to the ballpark, the rituals they go through, the kids getting their faces painted. I love reading the names on the backs of kids’ jerseys to see who their favourite players are.”
When he started with the Jays, Partipilo’s expertise was in innovation and technology. Sports teams at the time weren’t adept at using technology to help themselves, instead focusing on those who knew the ins and outs of the sport.
”There was this belief that somehow you sold tickets within an hour or hour-and-a-half drive of the stadium and geographically that was the single-most important marketing zone for you to focus on,” he recalls.
“There was not a sense of a brand that could connect with people outside that zone. There was not a sense that anyone outside that zone was of primary importance or that anyone who was not invested in the sport was worth investing in.”
He set to work changing that mindset within the organization, launching a new retail brand, an online shop, a store in Toronto’s Eaton Centre and the largest team store in Canada inside Rogers Centre. Blue Jays merchandise sales increased more than tenfold and the team went from 30th among MLB teams in merchandise to the top three.
In November of 2009, Partipilo was promoted to vice-president of marketing and merchandising. In November of 2012, he helped rebrand the team with new logos and uniforms and set in motion programs that allowed the Jays to record huge growth in their attendance figures.
On his watch, Jays home games attracted not only diehard baseball fans but also those who wanted to be entertained — not to mention people who just wanted to be connected to the community.
“Live sports engage people emotionally not only in the moment, but create memories that people relive over and over and over again throughout their lives,” Partipilo says. “They constantly refer to, ‘I remember when I was there and such and such happened.’ It makes the canvas of their lives a lot richer.
“There’s a whole basket of reasons why people are connected by sport and why they love live sports as opposed to sitting at home and watching on TV. You have first-hand knowledge of what happened because you were there. That game is not going to be played again. There’s no script. It’s going to be different every single time.”
Partipilo left the Jays in November of 2016 and was hired by the Roughriders in April. He calls them “the gold standard for CFL teams” — and then refers to them as “Canada’s team.”
That’s ironic, because that title was attached to the Blue Jays during his tenure.
“We very much wanted to be Canada’s team,” he says. “That was our goal, our objective, and it wasn’t until after a couple of post-season appearances where we felt that we had lived up to that moniker. Coming to Saskatchewan and knowing the impact that this team has on the rest of the country, I feel that if there is one team that merits the high prestige of the term ‘Canada’s team,’ it’s this one.
“Being responsible for a brand that has such an awesome reputation and legacy like this team has, I couldn’t think of anything more compelling for somebody who loves sports and who loves working for and helping to run a sports franchise. This was too big an opportunity to pass up and I feel incredibly fortunate to have been given it.”
