CPL General

[toontownman]

It's hard to tell when they know much more than we do about the plans for the teams, league, players etc. 

That attendance figure depends purely on the market and place the team is in, imo. The Rush in Saskatoon are selling out at nearly 15k. If you had told me that many people were interested in Lacrosse I would have laughed you out of the room, in fact I still will because there isn't nearly 15 thousand people interested in Lacrosse. Its the experience of the game they are going to and how its been marketed. Moving over here I was worried about going to a Roughriders game and not really knowing the rules and thought I would get heckled for asking. Didn't take long to realize no-one around me knew the rules or what was going on with the game. The atmosphere is crowd herded and force fed.  I know this is pretty much the opposite of what most people here including myself will want to see but I think that is how most sports work over here. For every football fan there for the on pitch product or drawn in by the potential quality players, there will be at least two or three people there for the social outing. Finding ways to educate the audience will be as much of a challenge as getting them there. There will always be a party crowd willing to give it a go. 

I can absolutely see the places that aren't Toronto, Vancouver, Calgary pulling those numbers very quickly off the bat. Breaking the bigger centres where there is so much more competition will be hard. It unfortunately again comes back to the fan/customer experience of the game and the way it is promoted and seen in each area. Giving people the reason to come out of their arm chair to be there is the biggest challenge.

The CPL board hold more reason to be confident right now, given they hold all the cards and information. The public will soon decide once all the information is presented. 

 

[matty]

30 minutes ago, Complete Homer said:

I think the difference is 4500-5500 has been floated at the point where things are "sustainable," 6000-10000 is probably where they are turning a profit

Clanachan's tour seems to be about finally engaging the media and beginning to build hype. I wouldn't be surprised if the number was a little inflated in the interviews to project a better image for the league without actually changing the attendance expectations that the underlying financials of the league rely on

Sustainable depending on what budgets and initial costs are.

[Gopherbashi]

5 hours ago, mpg_29 said:

Me last week: "I think the numbers being floated around 4500-5500 average attendance are not realistic."

Commissioner: "Hold my beer!" 

https://sports.vice.com/en_ca/article/8xv3k5/let-the-commissioner-of-canadas-new-soccer-league-sell-you-on-it

"Clanachan also realizes the league won't open to giant, sold-out mega-stadiums; he puts attendance estimates in the range of 6,000 to 10,000 a game"

This honestly worries more than a lower estimate, given that it's wildly optimistic.  Makes me wonder what else they're wildly optimistic about.

Most transit plans end up over-estimating transit-oriented growth by about threefold.  Just because there's an official estimate doesn't mean it's a wildly accurate one.

[BringBackTheBlizzard]

5 hours ago, Gopherbashi said:

...This honestly worries more than a lower estimate, given that it's wildly optimistic...

If you are spending well over $1 million on salaries and have no TV deal to drive revenue streams related to corporate sponsorships that probably is about what it takes to break even, if you keep averages ticket price around the same as watching a movie. Tom Fath folding his team rather than participating in a soft launch was a red flag that there was a major issue with the sustainability of the business plan.

 

Edited January 23, 2018 by BringBackTheBlizzard

[BringBackTheBlizzard]

10 hours ago, toontownman said:

...I can absolutely see the places that aren't Toronto, Vancouver, Calgary pulling those numbers very quickly off the bat...

Because this has happened so often before in start up relatively low budget pro soccer leagues in small sub-million metropolitan areas across North America? The issue you are ignoring is that the demographic that is being "crowd herded and force fed" has tended until recently to view soccer as a sport for diving and injury faking wussies that is only played by recent immigrants and not by true Canadians. In Toronto, Vancouver and Montreal you have huge post-WWII immigrant populations that know and love the sport to drive ticket sales and it has been possible to attract 6,000-10,000+ to pro soccer for many decades whenever sufficient money was spent to field a team that could play the sport to a reasonable pro level standard. In Saskatoon and Halifax you don't that have that, so it is completely uncharted territory at this level of start up.

Edited January 23, 2018 by BringBackTheBlizzard

[matty]

50 minutes ago, BringBackTheBlizzard said:

If you are spending well over $1 million on salaries and have no TV deal to drive revenue streams related to corporate sponsorships that probably is about what it takes to break even, if you keep averages ticket price around the same as watching a movie. Tom Fath folding his team rather than participating in a soft launch was a red flag that there was a major issue with the sustainability of the business plan.

 

Glad to see others share my worry ad confusion over the lack of TV. While I don't share the over all plan concern, due to who is involved, the stated lack of one of the 3 biggest tools to make this work is a red flag and I seriously hope they address it.

[Rheo]

And where is the proof that Fath folded the team rather than take part in a soft launch?  He may of but you're ignoring the fact that the commish said the league decided not to do the soft launch and instead go with a full season.

[mpg_29]

8 minutes ago, Rheo said:

And where is the proof that Fath folded the team rather than take part in a soft launch?  He may of but you're ignoring the fact that the commish said the league decided not to do the soft launch and instead go with a full season.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/edmonton/fc-edmonton-soccer-north-american-soccer-league-1.4418279

A decision by FC Edmonton to shut down its professional soccer operation is the direct result of lack of fans in the stands, team co-owner Tom Fath told CBC News in an interview.

And any hopes that the team might be reborn in a new Canadian league simply can't come true if the financial picture doesn't change.

"We would need 8,000 or 9,000 people to be sustainable, and that's not just bums in the seats. It's the eyeballs," Fath said. "If you've got the people watching, that also captures corporate sponsorship. We've got some great corporate sponsors, but we never captured the heart of corporate Edmonton to the extent we needed to."

 

Fath said he is a big fan of the Canadian Premier League concept, noting that young elite players need to be "playing high-level games in order to transition to playing for our Canadian national team."

But, he said, that can't happen without fundamental changes in fan and corporate support for an Edmonton team.

"For us to look at the Canadian Premier League, we have to be able to see a path towards sustainability and that's to have an increased commitment of attendance and an increased commitment of corporate Edmonton on sponsorship."

[Rheo]

I know the team has folded @mpg_29 , I don't live under a rock but thanks for the quote.

However he stated that the Faths folded the team rather than take part in a 2018 soft launch which the commish has said in the post announcement press that the League while it was a stated option previously, had planned not to do.  It's just the usual picking and choosing of facts and sources to either use or discredit as he seems to fit while also passing off his theories (which I've always maintained might be correct) as facts when they are not.

Edited January 23, 2018 by Rheo

[Complete Homer]

 

[Rheo]

12 minutes ago, Complete Homer said:

 

Oh yeah I forgot that Roy's in the KW area, thanks for the reminder lol

[BringBackTheBlizzard]

8 hours ago, matty said:

Glad to see others share my worry ad confusion over the lack of TV. While I don't share the over all plan concern, due to who is involved, the stated lack of one of the 3 biggest tools to make this work is a red flag and I seriously hope they address it.

We don't know the full details yet of who would be involved in a full eight to ten team launch and how the various owners would respond to seven figure losses every season, if 6000 to 10000 proves to be wildly optimistic. The big problem with the original CSL was that when franchise numbers are tight in terms of being able to maintain eight teams in the league, it doesn't take much to generate an existential crisis, so you wind up being only as strong as your weakest link. If they scaled back their expectations to 2500 to 3500 and tailored their budgets accordingly, I'd be a lot more confident.

Edited January 23, 2018 by BringBackTheBlizzard

[toontownman]

6 hours ago, BringBackTheBlizzard said:

Because this has happened so often before in start up relatively low budget pro soccer leagues in small sub-million metropolitan areas across North America? The issue you are ignoring is that the demographic that is being "crowd herded and force fed" has tended until recently to view soccer as a sport for diving and injury faking wussies that is only played by recent immigrants and not by true Canadians. In Toronto, Vancouver and Montreal you have huge post-WWII immigrant populations that know and love the sport to drive ticket sales and it has been possible to attract 6,000-10,000+ to pro soccer for many decades whenever sufficient money was spent to field a team that could play the sport to a reasonable pro level standard. In Saskatoon and Halifax you don't that have that, so it is completely uncharted territory at this level of start up.

I think you are grasping at paranoia straws as much as I am overly optimistic ones, unless you are saying Lacrosse was held in a much higher view than Soccer and those 15 thousand people had been dreaming of the prospect of live pro lacrosse being a reality in Saskatoon? That is where I didn't ignore "the issue".  

I can only base opinion on Saskatchewan and you might be completely correct about the other smaller centres across Canada. However, I don't think you can wave off the effect of a putting high level sports team in an place that hasn't had one though. It creates excitement, pulls the community together and creates pride in the area regardless of if you like the sport or not (case in point the Rush). The province here likes sports and Saskatoon in particular has been craving a top level sports team and something to call their own long before I moved here ten years ago. I do like the mystique of the "True Canadian" though. While I fully believe they exist in droves luckily they are increasing the minority,  as you say "until recently". Luckily while respecting the past we look to the future.

In the past 6 years the Saskatoon population has grown by over 50 thousand and over 20 thousand of them are immigrants, over 50k immigrants across the province in that time. That number is still increasing rapidly, beyond that nearly 15% of the population in Saskatoon is a second generation immigrant and like most communities in Canada over the past 20 years soccer has been the biggest inner city sport and number one participation sport for kids 5-14 by a big margin. "True Canadian" kids have grown up playing it who are having "True Canadian" kids playing by viewing figures are also watching it at home, not least thanks to the exposure and rising popularity of the EPL and now MLS. I see it in kids in rural schools, this isn't limited to large centres. The clubs in these smaller centres will also potentially be far more impactful for the growth of the Canadian game than the bigger centres. These kids will potentially have not only local players to look up to and be inspired by in their own communities, not on tv or hours drive away but a potentially achievable local pathway for players that simply wasn't there before to take advantage of the insane amount of kids playing the sport.  

Canada and especially Saskatchewan is a completely different place to 10 years ago let alone 30 year ago. Pulling in crowds to start won't be an issue in my opinion, sustaining it will be. That comes down to the fans experience with whats happening on and off the pitch and the community outreach each club engages in. Whether it is in Saskatoon or Regina the good thing is the ownership have done it before with a much less watched and played sport. 

 

[Rheo]

Two of my favourite quotes on here in a long time in back to back posts

11 minutes ago, BringBackTheBlizzard said:

If they scaled back their expectations to 2500 to 3500 and tailored their budgets accordingly, I'd be a lot more confident.

 

5 minutes ago, toontownman said:

I think you are grasping at paranoia straws as much as I am overly optimistic ones

 

[BringBackTheBlizzard]

Just now, toontownman said:

...Canada and especially Saskatchewan is a completely different place to 10 years ago let alone 30 year ago...

Think that is overstating things just a tad. There is less of an anti-soccer vibe than there was 30 years ago, but it's still not up there with hockey, curling, Tim Horton's and Stompin' Tom Connors in terms of being accepted as being at the core of what it means to be Canadian.

[Alex D]

I don't think you can scale it down to where 3,000 per match works. At that budget you won't be able to provide the level of quality of profesionalism that would make 3,000 people actually show up. You're still bleeding money but with a crappier league. 

It's got to be go big or go home. My fingers are optimistically crossed. 

[Kent]

19 minutes ago, Alex D said:

I don't think you can scale it down to where 3,000 per match works. At that budget you won't be able to provide the level of quality of profesionalism that would make 3,000 people actually show up. You're still bleeding money but with a crappier league. 

It's got to be go big or go home. My fingers are optimistically crossed. 

This is what I was thinking when I read BBTB's scaled back comment. It's a balancing act. Obviously if you go spending tens of millions of dollars per team per year you won't be able to sustain that. And if you have a shoestring budget nobody is going to care (see L1O, which we can all agree is important, but doesn't exactly bring in thousands of fans to games). You've got to have the right mix of spending enough to get a crowd, but not overspending.

I don't know what that balance is, but I sure hope they get it right!

[Complete Homer]

I'm in my mid 20s. I had to explain to a group of friends who Stompin Tom Connors was. None of them were recent immigrants or kids of immigrants. 

I think this is where we see the value of anecdotes is questionable, especially for a country as large and diverse as Canada. 

Edited January 23, 2018 by Complete Homer

[toontownman]

7 minutes ago, BringBackTheBlizzard said:

Think that is overstating things just a tad. There is less of an anti-soccer vibe than there was 30 years ago, but it's still not up there with hockey, curling, Tim Horton's and Stompin' Tom Connors in terms of being accepted as being at the core of what it means to be Canadian.

To whom and whom that cares? The participation numbers over the past two decades show a different story.  That is in spite of not having a pathway to grow the game even more that the CPL should fill. When you think Canadian stereotypes Soccer isn't one of them neither is Golf, McDonald's or drinking wine and a billion other things that are and have been embedded into everyday Canadian routines with the same amount of participation and appreciation. 

If Canadian enough was a factor such a huge amount of parents wouldn't be letting their kids or themselves take part or watch. I feel like "The True Canadian" is going to snowshoe up at games in a maple leaf lycra suit and come take people away if they don't drink Molson and eat prairie oysters as a pre-match ritual. "Is that bacon smoked?... your'e outta here!" "Fries without curds and gravy? ..your'e out of here!" Anyone that plays or loves soccer in this country doesn't care if a minority thinks it doesn't make them Canadian there wouldn't be so many people doing it otherwise, granted lots of us adults play under the cover of darkness these days. 

Regardless how could something not invented in Canada or extrinsically linked to the environmental and basic history be considered part of being Canadian, what ever that is assumed to be. Leave that worrying to your grand kids, great grand kids they might be able to start considering that more fairly. 

 

[toontownman]

9 minutes ago, Complete Homer said:

I'm in my mid 20s. I had to explain to a group of friends who Stompin Tom Connors was. None of them were recent immigrants or kids of immigrants. 

I think this is where we see the value of anecdotes is questionable, especially for a country as large and diverse as Canada. 

A lot of my kids didn't know who Michael Jackson was, let alone Bowie, Elvis or Chas n Dave.

[dyslexic nam]

1 minute ago, Complete Homer said:

I'm in my mid 20s. I had to explain to a group of friends who Stompin Tom Connors was. None of them were recent immigrants or kids of immigrants. 

I think this is where we see the value of anecdotes is questionable, especially for a country as large and diverse as Canada. 

Even the "hockey jock" archetype is now more complex.  Sure, some of those guys still look at soccer as a sport for pussies and divers, but lots of those guys also now play footy and are fans or the game.  The reality is that times have changed, the popularity of soccer has grown immensely (both as viewer and participant), and that growth is only getting stronger in the youth demographic - who will quickly grow into a key group of supporters.  That is why I never place a lot of weight behind comparisons to what happened 30+ years ago.  Attitudes and demographics have both changed a lot since then.

43 minutes ago, Alex D said:

I don't think you can scale it down to where 3,000 per match works. At that budget you won't be able to provide the level of quality of profesionalism that would make 3,000 people actually show up. You're still bleeding money but with a crappier league. 

It's got to be go big or go home. My fingers are optimistically crossed. 

I also agree with this, strongly.  At some point, the reduced budgets would lead to an on-field product that people simply won't buy into.  We take the family to NBL games in part because of the experience (and for something to do), but it is also about the adults getting to watch a still reasonably high level of athleticism.  Despite all the claims about the supremacy of supporter culture (which is absolutely important) I have always maintained that the sporting product itself is at the core.  And for people who are now exposed to all levels of footy, you can't expect a pro league to be sustained on a foundation of sport that isn't much different than the local university team.

[mpg_29]

23 minutes ago, Alex D said:

I don't think you can scale it down to where 3,000 per match works. At that budget you won't be able to provide the level of quality of profesionalism that would make 3,000 people actually show up. You're still bleeding money but with a crappier league. 

It's got to be go big or go home. My fingers are optimistically crossed. 

Lets first see how restrictive foreign player limits are. Lets not act like this is a full meritocracy to begin with when it comes to player quality.  Which is part of the reason I'm arguing against these salary budgets. 

[matty]

2 hours ago, BringBackTheBlizzard said:

We don't know the full details yet of who would be involved in a full eight to ten team launch and how the various owners would respond to seven figure losses every season, if 6000 to 10000 proves to be wildly optimistic. The big problem with the original CSL was that when franchise numbers are tight in terms of being able to maintain eight teams in the league, it doesn't take much to generate an existential crisis, so you wind up being only as strong as your weakest link. If they scaled back their expectations to 2500 to 3500 and tailored their budgets accordingly, I'd be a lot more confident.

While we don't know everyone, we do know half a dozen~ figures and each one is highly knowledgeable and the confirmed owners are extremely wealthy. I fully think think they could pull of some incredible regional marketing and drive ticket sales. The issue remains the lack of TV however cause it not only drives dollars but also can increase butts in seats.

Edited January 23, 2018 by matty

[lazlo_80]

It's amazing how if there's a lack of news for about a week or so this thread goes completely back to the same back and forth time and time again.

[toontownman]

You know the score lazlo we are kicking tires, we will turn on each other until the CPL announce more information. Then we can turn on them before ultimately reverting back to type. Way of the world.