CPL new teams speculation

[Aird25]

I'm excited to see where this league goes after a few seasons without dealing with the pandemic. I think we'd be in a much healthier place if they we hadn't had to deal with that so earlier on in the league's history. I also hope CSA gets itself in order and the national teams see the light in regards to CSB investments and contributions to Canadian soccer. There are plenty of Canadians with a negative view of the league because of this debacle. I'm not happy to hear about divisions and all the discussion about franchise valuations, but there's plenty of time to change tune on those things and as long as soccer continues to grow in Canada I'll stomach it

Edited December 28, 2023 by Aird25

[SoccMan]

3 hours ago, Ozzie_the_parrot said:

What I wrote was in the context of this:

https://globalnews.ca/news/10191676/cpl-commissioner-soccer-league-teams/

... Noonan says the CPL owners are “probably $125 million in the hole” from developing “an ecosystem for soccer in Canada that didn’t exist.”

That includes expanding the lower-tier League1 framework from 40 teams in 2019 to 162 and creating a women’s interprovincial championship...

If that's the added context to the $125 million number that was missing in the Northern Tribune rehash, it's difficult to read that as anything other than a collective cumulative loss for the CanPL/CSB investors since 2018, which is truly mind boggling, if accurate. No wonder they are not able to run merit-based youth academies similar to the three Canadian MLS clubs, if they are drowning in that much red ink. To generate that size of loss I doubt taking ownership of League Ones was a significant issue. Difficult to see how things could be that bad in the overall "ecosystem", if Onesoccer was set up in exchange for a one-off up front rights fee and was revenue neutral for the league due to a services only approach from Mediapro after that.

This idea that there was no soccer "ecosystem" before they showed up doesn't bear close inspection. Canada continues to have MLS to much the same extent in per capita terms that the United States does, so the notion that they are providing top flight soccer for the first time is bizarre. Ontario, Quebec and BC already had provincial pro-am or amatuer leagues plus in two out of three cases PDL clubs. Even League One Alberta is basically a case of repackaging what was already there in the shape of the AMSL. The CSA was actively blocking any more clubs joining the Fury and FCE at USSF D2 or D3 sanctioning through their sanctioning moratorium but that could have happened if the CSA hadn't been fixated on having a CFL clone national league of their own.

What's supposed to turn things around for CanPL with their current business model still in place? The World Cup co-hosting is probably going to be 10 mainly group stage games in two MLS stadia. If you are somewhere like Winnipeg is that really going to make you want to rush out and watch the Valour so much more than the CMNT games in Qatar did? The modular stadium in Langley has been a bit of a dud so far, so that angle doesn't appear to ensure success. Are they ever likely to be able to put the finances together to do something like the David Beckham signing to legitimize their product in the eyes of at least some eurosnob types?

https://globalnews.ca/news/10191676/cpl-commissioner-soccer-league-teams/

... While Noonan expects his league to continue to have operating losses, the hope is franchise value will go up as it expands “and we get better at what we do in terms of selling sponsorship and selling tickets and media and all those sort of things that make the business go.” ...

If these investors don't start to see their franchise values escalate there will be a limit to their patience in a Fath brothers in Edmonton sort of way. Meanwhile something a lot more downscaled like a souped-up Canadian version of PDL may not be what we really would ideally want but a team like the Thunder Bay Chill can trundle along for over 20 years in a relatively small city and expansion team launches would be a lot more easy to achieve in cities from coast to coast. The first set of investors in CSB do not receive much in the way of an expansion fee if you do it in closer to a genuine independent club manner though... 

The 2026 World Cup yes might help a bit with making this sport a bit bigger than it already is in Canada and even the US . However , I just don’t see the WC 2026 having this transformative effect on either the CPL or even the MLS in the US. CPL attendance will not dramatically increase because of it or MLS tv ratings skyrocketing in the US . It might help but just don’t think it will have that much of a real effect on getting more eyeballs on this sport in both Canada and the US  as some people think .

[narduch]

I'm being optimistic that the fact that Noonan is even talking about Conferences means we are close to having new teams announced 

[Cheeta]

11 hours ago, Shway said:

This is the MLS today.

I have no issue with conferences even if it means some teams play others more. BUT.... I draw the line at teams in a single league not playing eachother at all and awarding a "regular season" winner....MLS today.

100%.  The integrity of the competition, all considerations need to come back to that.

It's almost impossible to have a balanced schedule in any football league in a country the size of Canada with the time we have available to play out that schedule.  I think everyone accepts that.  And throw in cup tournies to-boot?  Ug. 

I'll never accept travel savings as the reasoning behind creating regional alignments.  At least not from any league that doesn't pool and equally share the various franchises travel expences.  And last I checked that type of scheme isn't in place in the CPL. 

Being a necessary evil to alleviate fixture congession?  Of course.  But as your example shows, it can go too far.

Having a balanced schedule isn't the only way to have a fair competition, world wide I think they're uncommon actually.  But it is where you need to start the process.  To my mind anyway.   

  

[Unnamed Trialist]

16 hours ago, Watchmen said:

It's coming from Noonan.

At some point, as numbers grow, the league will adopt East and West divisions to ease travel, he added.

It is just adjusting to a reasonable number of games in a season as a league expands. 

As we are, we play 7 rivals x 4 = 28, which is a bit low but works. If we had one more team, 32 games, single table, it's fine.

Ten teams, 9x4 gives you 36, a bit tough.

With our weather, it is about the limit or beyond it for a single table. That is 8 more fixtures. You'd have to start a few weeks earlier, do a few midweek games, go longer--all that means games with worse weather, midweeks, less fans per game on average. Players are getting paid the "same" for longer seasons and playing 25% more fixtures, does that work?

In some leagues with less teams, like Scotland, Belgium, Switzerland, they do these final playoff rounds, like to decide European spots, or a relegation round for the lower teams. We have the former but not the latter, so since we don't have relegation, that condemns a chunk of the table to sit dormant. 

Conclusion: as long as the CPL makes sure it all evens out, over various years, I am fine with divisions. Not going for years without playing certain rivals, which MLS has stupidly done. 

10 teams, everyone does a home and an away to all rivals, that is 18 total. 

Then a single match vs the 9 rivals, either home or away, 27 in total, 14 home 13 away or vice versa. If one year you get one more home than away, next year it changes. If one year HFX, Kelowna, York and Pacific are away, the following year they are all at home. 

For playoffs, to correct the imbalances, you let head-to-head on designated home and away determine who gets a spot. It's like we used to do Voyageurs Cup, certain games were designated as Cup games in the old USL. Or how they are doing the In-Season this year in the NBA, designate certain games to determine in case of ties on the table. 

[Cheeta]

9 minutes ago, narduch said:

I'm being optimistic that the fact that Noonan is even talking about Conferences means we are close to having new teams announced 

Yeah.  To, or to not?  It's a good problem to find yourself having. 

It's like complaining about moving into a higher tax bracket.  Boo-fuking-hoo.  Stop it.  You're breaking my heart. 

Bit odd though don't you think?  For a league which has collectively gone $125M into the ditch since birth, according to HQ, them sounding all optimistic that 4 franchises will be added to the rolls in short order.  I mean are these people stupid?  Doesn't anyone do their due diligence anymore?  We're only talking about your money here.   

On the one hand you've got the Eddies going belly up and York's owners abandoning ship.   But on the other hand you already have current Canadian owners expanding their league commitment into Vancouver, Spanish footballing giants buying into the league and Mexican investors coming on board.  Plus that 50% expansion target in the next 36 months?

Phehhh.  Without details as to how they arrive at their numbers I look at corporate financial pronouncements the same way I look at someone trying to pass me a $3 bill.        

[fil]

You have to look at CPL like MLS early years. Definitely heard people talking about MLS being a ponzi scheme especially from people who were soccer haters in the sports media. 

There was a point when someone at MLSE saying TFC was the best investment they ever made. When you look at what they paid and what they could sell the franchise for it is hard to argue against that point. It's like a tech stock, your betting on future valuation.

 

[Ozzie_the_parrot]

The problem is that MLS is already in Canada to much the same extent it is in the United States in per capita terms, so how do you try to emulate what happened with TFC when the GTA is already very much taken in pro soccer terms? If they thought Paul Beirne had the expertise necessary to make York 9's launch a huge success because he must have been some sort of marketing guru to sell all those season tickets for TFC they would have to be completely clueless as to what actually happened back in 2006 and 2007 (Beckham cough splutter), but there again people who are part of the CSB collective brain trust appear to have thought they could schedule a CONCACAF Cup game on grass in Calgary in February...

[narduch]

Paul Beirne is a fraud though.

TFC were successful early because Beckham helped spur season ticket sales and the supporter groups made the games fun to go to.

The MLSE guys should get little credit

[Stanley]

20 hours ago, Shway said:

Uhhh this is MLS today. And "travel" isn't a reason. 

No, the reason is there are 928 teams in MLS.

[Watchmen]

16 minutes ago, Stanley said:

No, the reason is there are 928 teams in MLS.

The part that annoys me with MLS isn't that they don't play some teams (that's simply the reality of a league that large) but that they play some teams 3 times while playing others 0. Just play everyone in your conference home and away and play as many teams from the other conference as the schedule allows.

[SpursFlu]

I'm curious to know how many games people think a league should play in a season?

The magic number is what? 38

CPL played 28?

[Watchmen]

4 hours ago, Cheeta said:

Bit odd though don't you think?  For a league which has collectively gone $125M into the ditch since birth, according to HQ, them sounding all optimistic that 4 franchises will be added to the rolls in short order.   

I don't think we'll have 4 added in short order. That always sounded incredibly optimistic. The recent article has him mentioning that he's hopeful for 2 in 2025.

But as you noted (though maybe not intentionally), they seem to be struggling to get more Canadian investors. Of the 3 expansion teams, 1 was already an owner (moving in to the market he wanted to be in initially) and 2 more are international, while 2 Canadian owners walked away from their teams.  Will be interesting to see who potential new owners are for the next teams.

[Unnamed Trialist]

1 hour ago, SpursFlu said:

I'm curious to know how many games people think a league should play in a season?

The magic number is what? 38

CPL played 28?

Germany plays 34, 18 teams. Even with the shortened winter break they now do. In principle, that gives them better chances to do well in Europe, as the rosters need not be so deep to handle fixture congestion. Though it does not show in results. Yes, many German teams have big stadiums, so those are two dates not sold for revenue. The B1 teams also start later in the Cup, but that is common in all Cups. 

France also has 18, so same deal. They don't break for winter but could.

Some argue that gives you a higher quality league, and I agree it could be a useful argument. It is even more compelling as I see it for second and third tier, which is why a strong case could be made for Germany B3 to be the best third tier in the world.

Rest of the big leagues have 20, leagues like Portugal, Netherlands, Poland have 18, the latter with one of the largest populations in Europe. The concept, as with MLS, is that you have more of the teams at the top to share in the spoils the top level affords. The case that shows this inclusive model in Europe would be Norway, 5.5 million people, a 16-team league, a team in top flight for every 340,000 inhabitants. 

If Canada were in Europe, in reasonable terms, we'd have population to run an 18-team league. But since our distances are greater, our season shorter, maybe we have to adjust down. 

The ideal CPL set-up: a 14 team league with a single table, 26 games. Make the playoffs longer to compensate the missed home fixture, and the Voyageurs Cup with an extra round as well.

Edited December 28, 2023 by Unnamed Trialist

[Big_M]

at 12 teams with East West divisions

Play each team in your division 4 times for a total of 20 games

Play each team in the other division 2 times for a total of 12 games

32 games total

If its too much you face the other division once for a total of 26 games

[BearcatSA]

8 hours ago, Watchmen said:

I don't think we'll have 4 added in short order. That always sounded incredibly optimistic. The recent article has him mentioning that he's hopeful for 2 in 2025.

But as you noted (though maybe not intentionally), they seem to be struggling to get more Canadian investors. Of the 3 expansion teams, 1 was already an owner (moving in to the market he wanted to be in initially) and 2 more are international, while 2 Canadian owners walked away from their teams.  Will be interesting to see who potential new owners are for the next teams.

I still think of this league as an entrepeneurial start-up, and with that I am always reminded of one of Kevin O'Leary's standard questions on the Dragon's Den:  "Yeah, it's a good idea and I get all that other stuff, but how do I make money?"

Maybe two for '25?  Kelowna is going to need a lot of runway to get a stadium situation figured out for then.  I am going to say 2026 for them so they can try to ride the WC 2026 hype wave.

[Watchmen]

43 minutes ago, BearcatSA said:

I still think of this league as an entrepeneurial start-up, and with that I am always reminded of one of Kevin O'Leary's standard questions on the Dragon's Den:  "Yeah, it's a good idea and I get all that other stuff, but how do I make money?"

Maybe two for '25?  Kelowna is going to need a lot of runway to get a stadium situation figured out for then.  I am going to say 2026 for them so they can try to ride the WC 2026 hype wave.

As we get closer to 2026, I'm sort of curious to see how many potential owners just wait to see what the impact of hosting is on the league.  Would obviously cost them more for a team, but would mitigate the risk (or eliminate it entirely, if things go the other way and they decide not to invest).

[Ozzie_the_parrot]

6 hours ago, BearcatSA said:

I still think of this league as an entrepeneurial start-up, and with that I am always reminded of one of Kevin O'Leary's standard questions on the Dragon's Den:  "Yeah, it's a good idea and I get all that other stuff, but how do I make money?" ...

Webstreaming was supposed to be the big innovation that would stop them from being $125 million in the hole at the end of the fifth season. If more soccer people had been involved with launching CanPL the history of ITV digital and the EFL in England or Setanta Sports and the SPL in Scotland might have been examined carefully for possible parallels.

To paraphrase Graeme Souness where the latter scenario was concerned Airdrie vs St Johnstone on a rainy Tuesday night in Airdrie is still Airdrie vs St Johnstone on a rainy Tuesday night in Airdrie no matter how you package it.

Speciality channels carried by whatever innovative new medium is the latest fad only tend to work well when you have an entertainment product that a lot of viewers actually do desperately want to watch rather than something that even most people in Airdrie and Perth are going to be indifferent about. Compare and contrast with the likely uptake from mainstream soccer fans in Canada to Valour vs Pacific in a league with a $1 million salary cap when there are so many other possibities also readily available nowadays...

15 hours ago, Watchmen said:

I don't think we'll have 4 added in short order. That always sounded incredibly optimistic. The recent article has him mentioning that he's hopeful for 2 in 2025.

But as you noted (though maybe not intentionally), they seem to be struggling to get more Canadian investors. Of the 3 expansion teams, 1 was already an owner (moving in to the market he wanted to be in initially) and 2 more are international, while 2 Canadian owners walked away from their teams.  Will be interesting to see who potential new owners are for the next teams.

You could add John Pugh and OSEG as Canadian investors who walked away as they were supposed to provide the eighth club in 2019. We were supposed to be up to 16 or so by now according to David Clanachan's rhetoric as the league was launching. Like Clanachan, Brian Noonan is probably on a sales commission for every succesful expansion team sale so anyone taking what he says literally as a guide to what is about to unfold is gullible in the extreme.

Two new teams are always likely to be arriving in 202n+2 at around this time of year according to the sales pitch. The location in Langley was known to be prepped and ready to go as far back as the end of the 2019 season, so anything that's happening on an 18 month sort of timeline would likely already have to be somewhat visible. The one stadium location at Prairieland in Saskatoon we knew was in the pipeline now appears to not be happening now. The provisional franchise awarded in Windsor doesn't even appear to rate a mention in interviews any more. Those were the ones that should have been happening around now or for the 2025 season.

My guess would be that they'll have to be able to demonstrate a definite transformative uptick post-2026 before they are likely to be able to find many takers ready to come up with a new stadium and pay the rumoured high seven figure expansion fee. Right now it's the possibility of that post-2026 transformation unfolding and the sunk cost fallacy that are keeping things trundling along on their current trajectory. By 2027, the first ten years of the CSB deal and the contract with Mediapro will be drawing to a close and there will be decisions to be made as to whether to activate the second ten years that the CSA are reported to be on the hook for.

Edited December 29, 2023 by Ozzie_the_parrot

[BigBadBorto]

I'm really shocked by the $125m in the whole quote from Noonan.  With 5 seasons in, that works out to $3.1m loss per team per year!   This doesn't seem like a great investment for anyone.  Why would he publicly mention this?  Or is it possibly (hopefully) a misquote where he meant the total expenditures to date rather than losses 

Just running quick numbers, if a team like Halifax sells 6,000 tickets per game at an avg price of $30 per ticket for 14 home games, you get to $2.5m!  Of all the teams, you would think Halifax is making some money.  What about teams selling 3k per game..

I'm thinking he is misquoted - otherwise this league is not at all viable at this level of losses..

Edited December 29, 2023 by BigBadBorto

[An Observer]

19 minutes ago, BigBadBorto said:

I'm really shocked by the $125m in the whole quote from Noonan.  With 5 seasons in, that works out to $3.1m loss per team per year!   This doesn't seem like a great investment for anyone.  Why would he publicly mention this?  Or is it possibly (hopefully) a misquote where he meant the total expenditures to date rather than losses 

Just running quick numbers, if a team like Halifax sells 6,000 tickets per game at an avg price of $30 per ticket for 14 home games, you get to $2.5m!  Of all the teams, you would think Halifax is making some money.  What about teams selling 3k per game..

I'm thinking he is misquoted - otherwise this league is not at all viable at this level of losses..

I suspect he is taking operating losses and adding infrastructure spend on facilities on top of it.  Halifax, Vancouver, Calgary, and Victoria had to make large outlays for their stadiums and I suspect that even Hamilton, Winnipeg, and Ottawa probably needed some initial investments in their facilities.  York in the first year had stands on the opposite side to the grandstand.  Perhaps you take $25m in operating losses and add in $100m for facilities whether build or upgrade, whether paid for by the owners or otherwise.  And then I suspect those would be liberal numbers anyway.

[Aird25]

23 hours ago, BearcatSA said:

On 12/28/2023 at 1:41 PM, Watchmen said:

Expand  

I still think of this league as an entrepeneurial start-up, and with that I am always reminded of one of Kevin O'Leary's standard questions on the Dragon's Den:  "Yeah, it's a good idea and I get all that other stuff, but how do I make money?"

Tax write-offs. Like most sports teams

[Aird25]

6 hours ago, An Observer said:

I suspect he is taking operating losses and adding infrastructure spend on facilities on top of it.  Halifax, Vancouver, Calgary, and Victoria had to make large outlays for their stadiums and I suspect that even Hamilton, Winnipeg, and Ottawa probably needed some initial investments in their facilities.  York in the first year had stands on the opposite side to the grandstand.  Perhaps you take $25m in operating losses and add in $100m for facilities whether build or upgrade, whether paid for by the owners or otherwise.  And then I suspect those would be liberal numbers anyway.

Pacific spent like 10 million on training facilities and a 5-aside pitch as well. I think the city fronted most of the cost for the stadium though.

The big concern with CSB recently was that they were siphoning millions from the national teams for profit. This figure on losses is likely just an alternative view. Without details people can paint whatever picture they want. 

Edited December 30, 2023 by Aird25

[Ozzie_the_parrot]

15 hours ago, BigBadBorto said:

I'm really shocked by the $125m in the whole quote from Noonan.  With 5 seasons in, that works out to $3.1m loss per team per year!   This doesn't seem like a great investment for anyone.  Why would he publicly mention this?  Or is it possibly (hopefully) a misquote where he meant the total expenditures to date rather than losses ...

I went back and forth on this as well after I initially saw it but it's difficult to see any other possible meaning than a cumulative total loss across the whole "ecosystem" once you see the wider context provided by the Canadian Press story that Northern Tribune rehashed. The mentioning it publicly part definitely looks completely jarring when it forms part of a sales pitch for expansion.

The only explanation I can come up with is that it provides the ability to draw a parallel with where MLS was at when the meeting Brian Noonan would have been part of initially decided to pull the plug on the entire league rather than just the Mutiny and Fusion. From what I remember he claims to have even drafted the press release that was going to announce that. The obvious problem though is that unlike MLS, CanPL have MLS as a direct competitor in markets with over a third of Canada's overall population and don't have a vast reservoir of large untapped metropolitan markets still left to expand into beyond that in a Canadian context. Even with 30 teams on board by 2025, MLS still doesn't have teams in Detroit, Phoenix, Tampa, Baltimore, San Antonio, Las Vegas, Pittsburgh, Sacramento, Cleveland and Indianapolis that all have significantly larger populations than Edmonton, Ottawa and Calgary.

The largest fiscal black hole up to now has likely been York United so the three Mexican brothers look a lot more like their Ken Horowitz coming on board to try to prop up the failing initial economic model rather than the obvious necessary step to achieve fiscal stabilization, which would have been to fold or relocate that team. The biggest success story has been Halifax, but instead of finding another midsized market to try to emulate that with their version of the soccer specific stadium trend that fueled MLS expansion, they doubled down on competing directly with MLS with Vancouver FC. In order to successfully turn the corner they will first have to learn some lessons from what has gone wrong up to now. There aren't many signs of that happening.

Edited December 30, 2023 by Ozzie_the_parrot

[Mihairokov]

I have no doubt that the CPL is in some kind of hole after five years but we need to keep in mind that sports commissioners/owners are more likely to say their teams are struggling than not - governments are less incentivized to support leagues or operations which are doing well. "We're making loads of money" is not how you get government support for things like stadiums, infrastructure upgrades, etc.

I would take anything Noonan says with a grain of salt, especially if it's regarding league finances or well-being. He's in a position where he needs to deflect the negative PR around CSB vis-a-vis the Canadian NTs.

I was under the impression that CPL investors were expected to lose money for the first ten years prior to a global pandemic occurring.

Edited December 30, 2023 by Mihairokov

[Watchmen]

17 hours ago, An Observer said:

I suspect he is taking operating losses and adding infrastructure spend on facilities on top of it.  Halifax, Vancouver, Calgary, and Victoria had to make large outlays for their stadiums and I suspect that even Hamilton, Winnipeg, and Ottawa probably needed some initial investments in their facilities.  York in the first year had stands on the opposite side to the grandstand.  Perhaps you take $25m in operating losses and add in $100m for facilities whether build or upgrade, whether paid for by the owners or otherwise.  And then I suspect those would be liberal numbers anyway.

I would not anticipate the losses to include any stadiums/upgrades paid for by the cities.  Those aren't losses on the CPL's books.