CPL General

[top cheese]

A big mistake for this league and MLS for that matter is believing that it can emulate the same type of structure of Europe where there soccer culture is engraved. North America will never have its burnleys or huddlesfield towns at the top flight level. Chareletown or St. John's is not going to rise up and have 20000 seat soccer specific stadiums and sell outs every night. Second division soccer is not going to fly competitively or financially in this country or the usa. If a major Canadian market where to be relegated the club would crumble and likely never return. Its just the way NA sports culture is compared to Europe. CFL has found a niche in the Canadian market its not going to oversell itself.  

Establish a sustainable league of 10-12 markets and the CPL should be proud of itself. Creating a relegation system and putting franchises in towns and cities that  cant support the league would be a big mistake 

[Ansem]

 

[mtlsab]

1 hour ago, Bison44 said:

I think this just stokes the people that are in love with pro/reg, red meat for the base. Its a good story, a best case scenario but not very realistic.  I'm with Baulderdash, I cant see more than 10-14.  Unless they want to water the league down to tiny stadiums, tiny budgets etc.  Even if we do get to 14+ wouldnt it be smarter to split into east west divisions to cut back the travel costs??  That way Halifax isnt travelling to BC 4-5 times a year and you build up your regional rivalries with more games?  

I think there is no way that a D1 would be splitted in 2 conferences. Maybe a D2 but not a D1

[dyslexic nam]

17 hours ago, matty said:

Nice read

fewer than 100k...so Charlottetown? Seems weird he'd leave PEI out when he was listing provinces.Meh

Time to burn this mother fucker to the ground!

[matty]

1 hour ago, mtlsab said:

I think there is no way that a D1 would be splitted in 2 conferences. Maybe a D2 but not a D1

Don't discount the idea of conferences and the money they could save

[Bison44]

9 minutes ago, matty said:

Don't discount the idea of conferences and the money they could save

Call it unbalanced schedules and maybe it will go down better.   

1 hour ago, mtlsab said:

I think there is no way that a D1 would be splitted in 2 conferences. Maybe a D2 but not a D1

Isnt MLS already using a conference based unbalanced schedule??  Not that we should copy them, but they face the same geography problems we do.  

[CDNFootballer]

Realistically the CPL tops out around 12-16 clubs IMHO and the 100k markets are down the road in a CPL2 second division.

[mtlsab]

2 hours ago, CDNFootballer said:

Realistically the CPL tops out around 12-16 clubs IMHO and the 100k markets are down the road in a CPL2 second division.

yeah but the point is that with pro/rel, we can expect some small cities in D1. I know some countries (like France) in the world have some restrictions regarding the city size in some division or when 2 clubs are competing in the same division

[mtlsab]

8 hours ago, mpg_29 said:

so going from 8 teams to 26 in ~7 years...seems reasonable...

What do you think about that:

CPL1 and CPL 2026

D1: 10 teams

D2: 2 conferences of 8 teams each

A league cup for the pro team in CPL1 and CPL2 like in England or France

[mtlsab]

I am also looking for the brazilian league system as some people said it can be a good inspiration for since they've got state championship before national championship and the pro/rel is in their respective state.

Does anyone know more about their system? In the same state (like our provinces), are the team from different divisions competing?

[matty]

@mtlsab i don't think we should compare ourselves to the likes of france, brazil or england. we've got a lot more in common with the us and australia in regards to both geography and sporting culture.

i honestly think by 2026 we might have a 12 team cpl and maybe a 4 league d3 across the country that isn't directly linked to cpl.

[Sébastien]

Two bits of information to complement what little information we have thus far in this article: https://biv.com/article/2018/08/canadian-premier-league-owners-ready-launch?amp&__twitter_impression=true

It says that average salaries are expected to be $40,000 (which is quite lower than the $60k number that has been floating), and Shillington mentions that he hopes the salary cap for players will be under $1 million.

At an average of $40k for a 23 player roster, you have a total of $920k on salaries.

I hope I'm wrong, but I feel that less than $1 million for the cap is detrimentally low.

[Complete Homer]

15 minutes ago, Sébastien said:

Two bits of information to complement what little information we have thus far in this article: https://biv.com/article/2018/08/canadian-premier-league-owners-ready-launch?amp&__twitter_impression=true

It says that average salaries are expected to be $40,000 (which is quite lower than the $60k number that has been floating), and Shillington mentions that he hopes the salary cap for players will be under $1 million.

At an average of $40k for a 23 player roster, you have a total of $920k on salaries.

I hope I'm wrong, but I feel that less than $1 million for the cap is detrimentally low.

Nice to have a more direct quote from an owner on this, sounds like it's still being decided. Given the smaller market I could see Shillington advocating for the lower end of that 40-60k range they seem to be giving the journos (Kloke in the GTA, on the other hand, was given a rough 2 million dollar figure)

Still, I'd be happy if year 1 was 1 million as the cap. It's enough that every player is a true professional, which is still a huge step forward 

[matty]

56 minutes ago, Sébastien said:

Two bits of information to complement what little information we have thus far in this article: https://biv.com/article/2018/08/canadian-premier-league-owners-ready-launch?amp&__twitter_impression=true

It says that average salaries are expected to be $40,000 (which is quite lower than the $60k number that has been floating), and Shillington mentions that he hopes the salary cap for players will be under $1 million.

At an average of $40k for a 23 player roster, you have a total of $920k on salaries.

I hope I'm wrong, but I feel that less than $1 million for the cap is detrimentally low.

Kind of a return to an early mentioned $1-1.5m range. Not a shock but again mixed numbers. I've always felt most guys will be making under $40k but do see a starting XI making decent pay. We'll have to wait and see.

[BuzzAndSting]

So Business in Vancouver article states the 8th team will be announced “later this month.”

[shamrock]

Yeah I've always thought salaries would be equal or below USL level. Which is wise to start with, the teams need to be sustainable.

[Complete Homer]

Just now, shamrock said:

Yeah I've always thought salaries would be equal or below USL level. Which is wise to start with, the teams need to be sustainable.

USL guidelines are 200,000 to 400,000 per team. Obviously a couple gunning for MLS reach past that but a 1 million CAD cap would still be a step up from USL

[shamrock]

Where did you get that? Honest question. That would be less than 10.000, seems unlikely. 

[Complete Homer]

31 minutes ago, shamrock said:

Where did you get that? Honest question. That would be less than 10.000, seems unlikely. 

Internal league documents got leaked a while back. Granted, I think it was 2016, so some progress has been made. Based on later published figures I would guess that most are <500,000 USD

I wrote a blog on the topic, citations are in the links. The league doesn't publish any salaries officially, but some agents/teams have given ballparks. Basically 2000 USD/month for top players, as low as 500/month for fringe players, and players are not paid in the six month offseason. Based on that CPL players earning 40,000 CAD are still way ahead

http://www.northernstartingeleven.com/stacking-up-early-predictions-of-the-canadian-premier-leagues-on-field-quality/

I tend to be of the opinion that people chronically overestimate USL based on the couple teams (ex. Cincinnati) that are making big splashes in a bid to get into MLS

Edited August 11, 2018 by Complete Homer

[shamrock]

31 minutes ago, Complete Homer said:

Internal league documents got leaked a while back. Granted, I think it was 2016, so some progress has been made. Based on later published figures I would guess that most are <500,000 USD

 

That would make more sense. Fair point. 

Still we have to see how the CPL salaries pan out in reality. 

[Complete Homer]

32 minutes ago, shamrock said:

Still we have to see how the CPL salaries pan out in reality. 

Yup, Shillington's phrasing certainly indicates it's still an ongoing conversation 

Wouldn't be surprised if guys like Young and Baldassarra want a little more wiggle room (aligning with the 1.5M to 2M figures coming out of the Spec and The Athletic) vs some of the smaller owners

[BringBackTheBlizzard]

7 hours ago, matty said:

Kind of a return to an early mentioned $1-1.5m range. Not a shock but again mixed numbers. I've always felt most guys will be making under $40k but do see a starting XI making decent pay. We'll have to wait and see.

$900k for players and maybe $150k for coaching staff probably results in an overall budget of $2 million or so and a need for about 6000 fans to make the numbers work on an average ticket price of $25, which fits other things we have been hearing. Suspect different people have been quoting different things when asked about budgets. On a $900k playing salary cap it only takes three $100k salaries for a very significant portion of the roster to be on close to mimimum wage and Kraft dinner sort of territory, so will be interesting to see if they have something like the DP rule to allow them to splurge a bit on marquee players.

[mpg_29]

I like a lot of things mentioned in that article. Significant interest from traditional and non-traditional broadcasters, tickets prices around $20, the Victoria owner wanting to see a salary cap below $1million.

All good signs imo.

[Ansem]

1 hour ago, mpg_29 said:

I like a lot of things mentioned in that article. Significant interest from traditional and non-traditional broadcasters, tickets prices around $20, the Victoria owner wanting to see a salary cap below $1million.

All good signs imo.

The thing is that I think there should definately be a max salary cap for the league. However, its counter-productive in my opinion that an owner that's unwilling to spend above 1M drag everyone one else to his level.

I'd prefer $2-2.5M and Pacific would be free to attempt to build a good roster by spending half. The more power to them if they pull it off but I dont like that approach. 

Put a maximum on it sure, but as an owner, if you can only afford $1.2M, stick to that.

Edited August 11, 2018 by Ansem

[shamrock]

There's every reason to keep salaries low. It's going to be the same (Canadian) players, even if you pay them more. It will increase in time anyway, no reason to start high.