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CPL new teams speculation


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I'm not sure that pro-rel is necessary. It would be cool and it would bring us in line with most of the world, but from a player development perspective I think Canada could do fine without it. 

Players have already moved up from league one Ontario with expansion. As we expand into Quebec I think the PLSQ will play a role in providing players.

Future expansion into BC may or may not preceed a future BC league one, but either way we'll see players from that province move into CPL as the league grows.

Eventually, we'll see some players drop out of cpl into the regional levels. 

As long as there's player movement, it's all good, right?

The problem the American's have right now, as I see it, is the gulf in quality between MLS and the USL.

The teams in major league soccer have been adding quality so quickly that most players in usl cannot realistically expect MLS teams to scoop them up. Usl is getting better but MLS expansion teams won't look to usl like cpl team look to league one Ontario. 

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1 hour ago, YEG Round Baller said:

..."What? --Our City's-- soccer team has been kicked out of the league?" Can you imagine the education required for any local market's fanbase, especially the corporate ticket-holders, as well as the sponsors?

Think the bigger issue than that is that the owners are paying a franchise fee that runs into the millions to get in. Given how difficult it is to launch a franchise it will take a long time for this to ever become a significant issue, if ever, so for now it's probably mainly about marketing. 

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1 hour ago, Obinna said:

I'm not sure that pro-rel is necessary. It would be cool and it would bring us in line with most of the world, but from a player development perspective I think Canada could do fine without it. 

Players have already moved up from league one Ontario with expansion. As we expand into Quebec I think the PLSQ will play a role in providing players.

Future expansion into BC may or may not preceed a future BC league one, but either way we'll see players from that province move into CPL as the league grows.

Eventually, we'll see some players drop out of cpl into the regional levels. 

As long as there's player movement, it's all good, right?

The problem the American's have right now, as I see it, is the gulf in quality between MLS and the USL.

The teams in major league soccer have been adding quality so quickly that most players in usl cannot realistically expect MLS teams to scoop them up. Usl is getting better but MLS expansion teams won't look to usl like cpl team look to league one Ontario. 

I have my doubts it won't impact player development. Longer sample via MLS proves otherwise. At the very least, the L1O and other lower league clubs should be comped for players who moved to CPL.

Team wise, no pro/rel means any dead weight clubs can't be easily weeded from the CPL. Again looking at MLS, it appears there is always about 1/3 of the teams have owners who don't care much and/or the fans don't care much. I rather let pro/reg decide rather than seeing the bad optics of the league takeover of a club, one owner owns multiple teams, team relocated or team folded - all things that happen too often in the MLS and CFL (where it is commonly cited as one of the reasons it is a bush league). 

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Can be creative about pro/reg if pro/reg is important to CPL's ultimate goal, and I think it should be.  You don't even have to be especially creative, just look around and steal parts of the pro/reg systems you find in other nations that look like they'd work with our systems.  

I'm sure the formula would be complicated and pro/reg would still be the exception and not the rule for every season but the potential of playing your way into CPL (or out of CPL) at least creates a distinctive impression that CPL has the desire to be a merit based league.        

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Think the key would be that all CanPL clubs would still be branded as such because the lower tier to the competition wouldn't be completely cut off from the end of season championship playoffs, but would be left with something like a single longshot wild card type entrant. Promotion and relegation would then be about having more games against the top teams and much easier end of season playoffs access.

I seriously doubt that the traditional European approach could ever be made to work in Canada or could ever be agreed to by a group of investors who have had to pay some sort of franchise fee. The traditional European approach also really isn't working all that well in Europe because you tend to wind up with two or three perennially dominant clubs in most leagues with interest and enthusiasm slowly being strangled elsewhere, so it's not fully clear to me why so many people following CanPL appear to prefer it to the North American salary cap and draft approach.

Edited by Ozzie_the_parrot
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The real problem of course is always franchise numbers.

We have a 7 team league right now.  I always have a hard time thinking past about 12-16 teams.

For Pro-Rel to work realistically we would need at least 20 teams (12/8 or 10/10).  I just don’t see 20 teams out there.

I can definitely see 3 maybe 4 regional D3 leagues and 12-14 D1 teams.  That would truly be amazing and without a doubt cause the kind of talent flow that would guarantee we stay as a World Cup team every cycle barring a 2018 style US collapse.

Isn’t that the big end goal here?

Edited by baulderdash77
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20 minutes ago, baulderdash77 said:

The real problem of course is always franchise numbers.

We have a 7 team league right now.  I always have a hard time thinking past about 12-16 teams.

For Pro-Rel to work realistically we would need at least 20 teams (12/8 or 10/10).  I just don’t see 20 teams out there.

I can definitely see 3 maybe 4 regional D3 leagues and 12-14 D1 teams.  That would truly be amazing and without a doubt cause the kind of talent flow that would guarantee we stay as a World Cup team every cycle barring a 2018 style US collapse.

Isn’t that the big end goal here?

Original 7 plus Ottawa, Mississauga, Brampton, Surrey, Moncton, St Johns, Laval, Oshawa/Pickering, Sask, Regina, London, Quebec City, Windsor? Oakville? 

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23 minutes ago, baulderdash77 said:

The real problem of course is always franchise numbers.

We have a 7 team league right now.  I always have a hard time thinking past about 12-16 teams.

For Pro-Rel to work realistically we would need at least 20 teams (12/8 or 10/10).  I just don’t see 20 teams out there.

I can definitely see 3 maybe 4 regional D3 leagues and 12-14 D1 teams.  That would truly be amazing and without a doubt cause the kind of talent flow that would guarantee we stay as a World Cup team every cycle barring a 2018 style US collapse.

Isn’t that the big end goal here?

I'd like to think that by the time we get to 12-16 teams, we may start to see some more viable options start to pop up. As has been seen with Halifax, if done right, a smaller city can certainly drum up the support. Obviously a lot of things have to be done right, and I think the supporters there had a lot to do with it, but I could see smaller cities in closer proximity to multiple clubs do well in the future, especially if travelling support is more common

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If 200k is the minimum market size 20 is doable eventually even with no further use of the outer suburbs of the three MLS markets, e.g Pacific, Kelowna, Edmonton, Calgary, Regina, Saskatoon, Winnipeg, Windsor, London, K/W, Niagara, Hamilton, York 9, Barrie, Ottawa, Quebec City, Sherbrooke, St John's, Moncton or Saint John, Halifax.

With further use of outer suburb type communities, if they can figure out how to make something like York 9 work, you can get to well over 20. Think Paul Beirne and David Clanachan are saying the right things in interviews on target markets, if they are really serious about it, but it's way off into the future, if ever.

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20 minutes ago, Ozzie_the_parrot said:

If 200k is the minimum market size 20 is doable eventually even with no further use of the outer suburbs of the three MLS markets, e.g Pacific, Kelowna, Edmonton, Calgary, Regina, Saskatoon, Winnipeg, Windsor, London, K/W, Niagara, Hamilton, York 9, Barrie, Ottawa, Quebec City, Sherbrooke, St John's, Moncton or Saint John, Halifax.

Sherbrooke has indicated they are NOT looking at CPL :

https://northerntribune.ca/le-mistral-de-sherbrooke-cpl/

As well for the proposed Australian Second Division, they will likely be looking for teams that will cover geographic areas with populations of 250 000 or more.

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6 hours ago, Mikmacdo said:

Original 7 plus Ottawa, Mississauga, Brampton, Surrey, Moncton, St Johns, Laval, Oshawa/Pickering, Sask, Regina, London, Quebec City, Windsor? Oakville? 

I am skeptical about Saskatchewan supporting 2 teams. Let's see how 1 goes first before we jump the gun.

There's just over 1 million residing in that province, with Regina and Saskatoon both smaller than Halifax - which is already a small market.

Nova Scotia (Atlantic Canada, actually) has no notable summertime pro franchise, which is why (in part) the Wanderers are popular. Regina on the other hand already has the CFL, so whether that city has thirst for more pro sports remains to be seen.

Additionally, Saskatchewan is football country. 

 

Edited by Obinna
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We are projecting out 20 years into the future, because expansion won't happen quickly. If anybody had posted 20 years ago on the old network54 Voyageurs board that a Halifax team would be able to draw over 6000 in paid attendance per game in their own downtown stadium they probably would have been held for psychiatric assessment.

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Sure bud whatever. I'm pretty much the only person on here who isn't from Saskatchewan that posts about the Saskatoon Summer Soccer Series. That might say something about who is most enthused on here by the vision of the future Paul Beirne has been outlining from time to time in podcasts.

Avoiding the trap of trying to compete directly against MLS by keeping the player budgets relatively low and much lower than most people on here wanted has opened up many possibilities for them on expansion and that could eventually definitely include Regina.

If Taylor Field hadn't been bulldozed Regina rather than Saskatoon could easily have been the focus of Joe Belan's plans for a Saskatchewan team. It's noteworthy also that David Clanachan recently mentioned there being two rather than one group interested in Saskatchewan.

Edited by Ozzie_the_parrot
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^  Exactly.  If the plan is to get a bunch of teams together at a certain operating budget and then allow that pack to naturally sort itself out over a few years into a 1st and 2nd division I think that's being a bit wishful.  Probably the right way to go about it but not with MLS in Canada.  Country is too big and too small at the same time.  The critical mass to support such a venture has been lost to MLS.

There are going to be monied owners in this league and larger markets who are not going to suffer being constrained in the name of parity forever. I don't think you're going to need to add a heck of a lot to what ever the salary cap is before many of the target expansion markets are no longer reasonably in play. 

But don't take me wrong.  I think there's going to be lots of expansion over the next few years but I also think there is going to be inflation in the team operating budgets AT LEAST as quickly.

Guess the next best thing is to set up regional D3 divisions (and probably long over due with or without CPL) so they're on the right track there.  Don't know if the CPL has the resources to properly do that on a national scale.  Not in a way they'd envision it all coming off if they could have their perfect world.  

Just typing out loud..

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Perhaps worth bearing in mind that there doesn't appear to be a particularly strong correlation at the moment between attendance and market size. York 9, Edmonton and Calgary should be leading the way on crowds if that were the case, but clearly aren't. My guess would be that the owners will not be keen on boosting the salary budgets to any huge extent unless or until they are turning sizable profits, so any change from what we see at the moment is likely to be a gradual one.

Eventually, if they are going to have two divisions as is often stated by both Paul Beirne and David Clanachan, the way to do it and keep everything reasonably stable would probably be to have a salary cap that most of the top tier clubs could afford to spend while turning a small profit, that would leave most of the second tier somewhat underspending given they would probably also have a smaller share on league revenues but not drastically so with a floor spend on players always having to be met to maintain professional standards. They have plenty of time to figure that one out. 

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Market size doesn't necessarily dictate a team's success either. I don't know why we are so preoccupied by this. In the EPL (albeit, a much more established league, but a structure that we can attempt to emulate in 100 years) there are regional teams, teams in towns and villages, and cities with multiple teams. Barrier to entry seems low - start from the bottom, play and grow as you see fit. If you can do something that grabs the attendance, great, that will help you grow. If not, fine, you may be content being D5 forever but at least the dream is always there. 

As the league grows, more investment interest will come. Why would we rule our rural teams that represent a collective population of 90,000 or something over a 100 km radius? So what? It's not a city, but if in 20 years someone wants to try and start a small club there in a 3000 person stadium why wouldn't we let them see what they can build and try to climb our ranks? Why can't we have our own Burnley - or hell, looking at lower leagues, a Forest Green Rovers? 

In the early days population will likely dictate who we get. But long term? I'm all for smaller areas or regions going for it if they can meet minimum standards for the lower divisions (once they exist).

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23 hours ago, Copes said:

Market size doesn't necessarily dictate a team's success either. I don't know why we are so preoccupied by this. In the EPL (albeit, a much more established league, but a structure that we can attempt to emulate in 100 years) there are regional teams, teams in towns and villages, and cities with multiple teams. Barrier to entry seems low - start from the bottom, play and grow as you see fit. If you can do something that grabs the attendance, great, that will help you grow. If not, fine, you may be content being D5 forever but at least the dream is always there. 

As the league grows, more investment interest will come. Why would we rule our rural teams that represent a collective population of 90,000 or something over a 100 km radius? So what? It's not a city, but if in 20 years someone wants to try and start a small club there in a 3000 person stadium why wouldn't we let them see what they can build and try to climb our ranks? Why can't we have our own Burnley - or hell, looking at lower leagues, a Forest Green Rovers? 

In the early days population will likely dictate who we get. But long term? I'm all for smaller areas or regions going for it if they can meet minimum standards for the lower divisions (once they exist).

Agreed. This is why I dislike these constant posts based on looking at demographics, only. It is very elementary.

Population is only partially meaningful for the success of a club, and as you say, for CPL, you really do not need to do more than get 4-5000 out. So sure, in a town of 90,000 it could be tight, but not altogether undoable. 

The most important factor is the overall mood you create. That involves a nice stadium or game-day atmosphere. A niche where you fit into city or regional pride. A well-run business, as with any business that seeks success. Customer service. And then, hopefully, you fit into a larger narrative. Over time, you build a legacy. 

You have to have owners who are not dolts, and can hire competent soccer people, especially coach and GM. 

If you are in a smaller market and expect less income, or have owners with less resources relatively speaking, you try to achieve success with less. Cavalry, this season, is likely amongst the teams with lower budgets. 

We are mistaken to think that the CPL has to grow in function of Canadian demographics, and I wish folks would just stop with these hypothetical posts about population cores and the like, it is silly. Just one soccer enthusiastic wealthy person or group can mitigate most demographic drawbacks, within reason. 

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