CPL new teams speculation

[Mihairokov]

People bringing in funding for lower level clubs is not at all uncommon. It doesn't need to specifically be crypto or bitcoin for it to lead to promotion up the pyramid.

[red card]

4 hours ago, Watchmen said:

Yeah, it came up on The Guardian podcast today. The owners finally stopped meddling.

Edit: I think my main point here is that I don't think crypto is the solution, and it doesn't mean anything if you don't have a quality owner. I mean, spending is apparently out of control in the lower divisions right now with all sorts of owners trying to be "the new Wrexham" and it's not going to work out for almost all of them.

Bedford's owner McCormack did say football is a business where he can make all the right business decisions but it doesn't mean the team will win matches.

He did make right decision in hiring his second manager. He asks what the manager needs for every season and then gives him the budget for the year. He meets with the manager daily but he doesn't meddle with matters on the pitch.

The difference here is the funding structure. Nearly all non-league clubs don't have a treasury to lean on. If his bitcoin outlook comes to fruition, he won't need to go into debt, seek more funding or dilute his stake. Today, he already has money to meet the higher required infrastructure standards for promotions over the next 3 levels. 

[red card]

6 hours ago, Ozzie_the_parrot said:

There's another club from Bedford called Bedford Town that have a much longer history and who still play at a significantly higher level, but maybe they wouldn't have been so easy for bitcoin dude to take over lock, stock and barrel? These sorts of stories seldom end well when the rich dude tires of his new toy. Not good when the entire existence of a club or league depends on the whims of one rich dude or a handful of rich dudes and the operation isn't sustainable without regular cash injections from them. 

McCormack mentioned he first tried to buy Bedford Town. Even though he offered 2x more than the club is worth, they refused to sell. He believes they didn't like that he was going to rebrand the club and didn't understand the bitcoin treasury structure.

If Bedford Town doesn't get promoted this year, both Bedford clubs will be the same league next year.

As mentioned in the just above post, if his bitcoin outlook comes to fruition, he won't need regular cash injections. He also has the bitcoin community backing him from sponsorship to bitcoin funding to buying merchandise and watching the streamed matches. 

He recently held a bitcoin conference in Bedford where all the attendees went to a Bedford match. 

[K Edgar]

PSG interested in a Quebec CanPL team?

[brianjc]

25 minutes ago, K Edgar said:

PSG interested in a Quebec CanPL team?

Would not be all that surprised, if the team were in Quebec City.

[Ozzie_the_parrot]

May just be click bait if they are claiming it is in any way imminent given Brian Noonan said this as recently as two weeks ago:

https://canadiansoccerdaily.com/2024/04/12/exclusive-mark-noonan-talks-canpl-expansion-similarities-to-early-mls/

...“We’re not going to put any specific markers down,” Noonan said. “I think we’ll double the size of the league in ten years. I think any expansion, at this stage, for 2025 is unlikely.

“I’m still bullish about expansion and where we’re ultimately going to end up, but we’ve learned too many hard lessons to expand when you don’t have the right conditions to be successful. And so we’re putting those puzzles together in various communities...

[narduch]

19 hours ago, K Edgar said:

PSG interested in a Quebec CanPL team?

They own about 20% of Braga from Portugal.

Apparently they are looking to invest in multiple clubs around the world now. So this wouldn't be too far a stretch.

Its just a little sad that they can't find any Canadians interested in investing in the league

[fil]

Why doesn't this surprise me? Foreigners see more potential for investment than any Canadians. Their are plenty of rich locals that actually like soccer, unfortunately they prefer to be Euro snobs and would rather dump money across the Atlantic.

 

 

Wow, Québec doesn't even have a team yet and I already hate them! Congratulations, you managed what I thought was impossible.

Edited April 27 by fil

[Ozzie_the_parrot]

Just clickbait apparently:

 

[SoccMan]

You see atmosphere like this in a nice cozy stadium and you think why can’t they put more teams in smaller cities like Halifax? If Halifax can work why not Moncton and they have a stadium already . There are probably 5 or 6 cities like Halifax throughout Canada that can have this type of success off the field. However, keep them in these Halifax small stadiums, yes Hamilton and Ottawa get similar crowds more or less , but there is no comparison with 5 to 6000 people in the big stadiums in Ottawa and Hamilton to 5 to 6000 in Halifax . 

[Ozzie_the_parrot]

...but Rob Friend doesn't understand the negativity surrounding the league when they instead double down with the York United experience and their generously announced 843 last night with Vancouver FC.

Edited April 27 by Ozzie_the_parrot

[SpursFlu]

1 hour ago, SoccMan said:

You see atmosphere like this in a nice cozy stadium and you think why can’t they put more teams in smaller cities like Halifax? If Halifax can work why not Moncton and they have a stadium already . There are probably 5 or 6 cities like Halifax throughout Canada that can have this type of success off the field. However, keep them in these Halifax small stadiums, yes Hamilton and Ottawa get similar crowds more or less , but there is no comparison with 5 to 6000 people in the big stadiums in Ottawa and Hamilton to 5 to 6000 in Halifax . 

I agree with this. I'm not saying not put teams in larger cities but I think the medium markets are the way to go. As an example I was reading Prince George got a Junior football team and they're averaging 5k a game. All these smaller towns are dying for things to do in the Summer and probably easier to build a facility. The key is a reasonable airport 

Edited April 27 by SpursFlu

[phil03]

2 hours ago, SoccMan said:

You see atmosphere like this in a nice cozy stadium and you think why can’t they put more teams in smaller cities like Halifax? If Halifax can work why not Moncton and they have a stadium already . There are probably 5 or 6 cities like Halifax throughout Canada that can have this type of success off the field. However, keep them in these Halifax small stadiums, yes Hamilton and Ottawa get similar crowds more or less , but there is no comparison with 5 to 6000 people in the big stadiums in Ottawa and Hamilton to 5 to 6000 in Halifax . 

Probably a bit of an unpopular hot take but I do think there are a few factors a play here:

I. There does seem to be a bit of a ''We are D1 god damnit!'' thinking in the league sometimes... A sense that they ought to make certain moves, like building and maintaining a presence in the MLS markets and pushing for their own soccer specific stadiums before expansion (our own temples, as Noonan put it) to fit what they think a true first D1 should be like. It definitely played a role in some of their decision making regarding York United, such as building them a stadium and arguably doing more to keep them going then FC Edmonton, and it might very well play a role against other smaller markets, even if selling them to the community and filling a CPL stadium might be far easier there...

II. Similarly to the point above, and probably also playing a role in their determination to keep York around, there does seem to be a bit of what I call the ''Coyotes syndrome'' at play here: an over importance given to the size of a market and therefore the potential number of fans that lead other factors in a club's viability to not be sufficiently taken into account when considering a potential home for a club.

III. Where you can find investors. This is the one place where I am actually willing to give some benefit of the doubt to the league: you do need to find people to invest in a market to get a club there and a lot of investors are from the three biggest cities and aren't interested in investing elsewhere. Altough Rob Friend investing in Pacific does show the league can at least potentially nudge them in other directions...

IV. A lack of motivation to wean themselves off CSB money. While the league did state that they want to get themselves in place where they can return that money asap, and there is no reason to believe they aren't sincere, doing so doesn't seem to be a powerful enough motivator to convince them to overlooking considerations under I. and II. by trying to repeat the Wanderers play book elsewhere.

[Watchmen]

3 hours ago, SoccMan said:

You see atmosphere like this in a nice cozy stadium and you think why can’t they put more teams in smaller cities like Halifax? If Halifax can work why not Moncton and they have a stadium already . There are probably 5 or 6 cities like Halifax throughout Canada that can have this type of success off the field. However, keep them in these Halifax small stadiums, yes Hamilton and Ottawa get similar crowds more or less , but there is no comparison with 5 to 6000 people in the big stadiums in Ottawa and Hamilton to 5 to 6000 in Halifax . 

I'm guessing because smaller cities aren't interested in building stadiums, while the owners don't seem to be interested in paying for stadiums (for the most part).

[SoccMan]

1 hour ago, SpursFlu said:

I agree with this. I'm not saying not put teams in larger cities but I think the medium markets are the way to go. As an example I was reading Prince George got a Junior football team and they're averaging 5k a game. All these smaller towns are dying for things to do in the Summer and probably easier to build a facility. The key is a reasonable airport 

That’s crazy 5,000 for Junior Football pretty impressive. Is it equivalent to Major Junior A hockey in terms of age of the players ?

[CDNFootballer]

Actually it wasn't 5000 for the Prince George Football team, but an 1800 average over only 5 games :

https://www.princegeorgepost.com/sports/local-sports/prince-george-kodiaks-masich-stadium-upgrade

CPL, as Canada's D1 league, needs to be in the major media markets primarily in order to have a higher growth potential long term. They realize this and even with growing pains that they will have, think there goal is to be to Canada what the USA's MLS is for them. Like MLS, it will have growing pains and take a couple of decades to grow but they will get there eventually imo.

Halifax works, but doesn't mean Moncton or another small market will. The league can fill out with these type of markets when major markets are brought in and the league is more established unless a perfect scenario arises in a rare case.

 

 

[phil03]

45 minutes ago, CDNFootballer said:

Actually it wasn't 5000 for the Prince George Football team, but an 1800 average over only 5 games :

https://www.princegeorgepost.com/sports/local-sports/prince-george-kodiaks-masich-stadium-upgrade

CPL, as Canada's D1 league, needs to be in the major media markets primarily in order to have a higher growth potential long term. They realize this and even with growing pains that they will have, think there goal is to be to Canada what the USA's MLS is for them. Like MLS, it will have growing pains and take a couple of decades to grow but they will get there eventually imo.

Halifax works, but doesn't mean Moncton or another small market will. The league can fill out with these type of markets when major markets are brought in and the league is more established unless a perfect scenario arises in a rare case.

 

 

You are correct that Moncton is not guaranteed to work, as no market is. All we can do is look at what has worked and what hasn't as well as the circumstances of each market to try to determine the ods of a market doing well. And when we do that there is two clear reality that arrise:

I. Halifax works.

II. York United and VFC are the two lowest attendence in the league. Moreover, the CPL has spent a ton of resources and energy on the former, only for the home opener (I think?) of the first year of the new ownership group that was to change everything got an above 1k attendence, the kind of stats only Edmonton FC in its death throes got.

So based on this would it not make a hell of a lot more sense to do the precise opposite of what you are saying and seek to repeat the league's success story elsewhere, to establish the league and make it sustainable and THEN to seek the long term potential growth? I am not advocating to move York or VFC (altough I'll admit my patience is wearing thin for the former) but at some point we just need to learn from our own experience as to what work and what does not...

On top of arguably being the best way to take the financial cloud away from the league's head and to have more success stories to sell to investors it has also the benefit of allowing the league to make good on its promise to return the CSB deal money to the national programs as soon as they can, which would have two important benefits for the league:

a. It would remove the bad press surrounding the league from croping up every now and then, which I'd argue would make the league significantly more interesting to investment.

b. When the USMNT was successful the MLS benefited, as it increased interest for American Soccer which was naturally directed to it, and IMO the same is true for the CMNT, or at least it would be as soon as labour disputes and money issues around the CSB deal are no longer there.

Edited April 28 by phil03

[SpursFlu]

2 hours ago, SoccMan said:

That’s crazy 5,000 for Junior Football pretty impressive. Is it equivalent to Major Junior A hockey in terms of age of the players ?

Yah its actually pretty popular out west. All the kids with crap grades or even a lot of 20 somethings. Not totally sure of the age thing. Pacific share their stadium with a Junior football team

[Ozzie_the_parrot]

15 hours ago, phil03 said:

Probably a bit of an unpopular hot take but I do think there are a few factors a play here:

I. There does seem to be a bit of a ''We are D1 god damnit!'' thinking in the league sometimes...

Don't think there was any need to add the sometimes.

The Mark Noonan hire showed how fixated they still are with the concept of supplanting rather than complementing MLS in the Canadian "soccer ecosystem". Think that was very much a case of magical thinking though. Just because Mark Noonan was around when MLS turned the corner doesn't mean having him around in a CanPL context will result in massively escalating franchise values and expansion fees for them as well. Confusing correlation with causation is a trap a lot of people fall into and there must have been a reason why his career path led to Accra in Ghana.

MLS always had a genuine shot at emulating what the original NASL and MISL had been doing in terms of popularity in the 1970s and 80s once they finally addressed some of the stadium related issues that had helped to sink the NASL along with not having a salary to prevent unsustainable wage inflation spirals. The rational basis for believing that CanPL can ever operate at a genuine D1 level when there are already as many MLS franchises in Canada per capita as there are in the United States is what exactly? $125 million in the hole and counting when they could be exploring what they could do to emulate Halifax in other mid-sized markets where junior hockey does well in the winter months rather than tilting at windmills where MLS is concerned.

Edited April 28 by Ozzie_the_parrot

[narduch]

Ironic that even Easton himself commented on how relying on MLS alone was not good enough for player development. 

But Ozzie won't touch that one because it goes against his narrative. 

Saying that 3 MLS teams is enough because it's the same as what the US has per capita is just another way of saying you don't know what you're talking about or how soccer works.

[Ozzie_the_parrot]

^^^this post says more about this guy's English language comprehension skills than anything else. It boggles the mind how anyone could derive "3 MLS teams is enough" from "exploring what they could do to emulate Halifax in other mid-sized markets where junior hockey does well in the winter months rather than tilting at windmills where MLS is concerned".

[narduch]

1 minute ago, Ozzie_the_parrot said:

^^^this post says more about this guy's English language comprehension skills than anything else. It boggles the mind how anyone could derive "3 MLS teams is enough" from "exploring what they could do to emulate Halifax in other mid-sized markets where junior hockey does well in the winter months rather than tilting at windmills where MLS is concerned".

Keep up with the insults because deep down inside you must really know you are wrong

[DoyleG]

15 hours ago, SpursFlu said:

Yah its actually pretty popular out west. All the kids with crap grades or even a lot of 20 somethings. Not totally sure of the age thing. Pacific share their stadium with a Junior football team

You can do better than marching out old tropes.

Come On.

[SpursFlu]

12 minutes ago, DoyleG said:

You can do better than marching out old tropes.

Come On.

What are you talking about? Where I grew up all the kids who weren't going to college or didn't have the grades for SFU or UBC played for the Surrey Rams. Many were friends. Not sure whays up now but since the Douglas College, Kwantlen College BCITs of the world dont have football programs im assuming not much has changed. How is this an old trope? 

Edited Sunday at 04:52 PM by SpursFlu

[Colonel Green]

22 hours ago, SoccMan said:

You see atmosphere like this in a nice cozy stadium and you think why can’t they put more teams in smaller cities like Halifax? If Halifax can work why not Moncton and they have a stadium already . There are probably 5 or 6 cities like Halifax throughout Canada that can have this type of success off the field. However, keep them in these Halifax small stadiums, yes Hamilton and Ottawa get similar crowds more or less , but there is no comparison with 5 to 6000 people in the big stadiums in Ottawa and Hamilton to 5 to 6000 in Halifax . 

For people bringing up Moncton as a comparable for Halifax, it's really not. Moncton is approximately one-third the size of Halifax and doesn't have nearly the same corporate/economic muscle. New Brunswick in general is an issue for pro sports because its total population is theoretically large enough for a team but it doesn't have one big city at the center of everything, it has three geographically disparate small ones.

Canada has fifteen metro areas with a population above 300,000 (eighteen above 200,000):

1. Toronto [MLS/CPL]
2. Montreal [MLS]
3. Vancouver [MLS/CPL]
4. Calgary [CPL]
5. Edmonton
6. Ottawa-Gatineau [CPL]
7. Winnipeg [CPL]
8. Quebec City
9. Hamilton [CPL]
10. Kitchener
11. London
12. Victoria [CPL]
13. Halifax [CPL]
14. Oshawa
15. Windsor

Saskatchewan's two major cities are #16 and 18, in the 220-260 range. Kelowna, which is also frequently discussed, is #20 at around 180,000.

To me, while you should obviously be willing to listen to any investor groups that are seriously interested, the cities in the top 15 that don't have a team are where the league should be focusing your energy. Botching the Edmonton team situation, in particular, was such a debacle. The continued inability to get anything going in Quebec City is also rather discouraging when you consider both its size and the lack of competition; it's the most underserved sports market in the whole country.