CPL General

[GuillermoDelQuarto]

Is anyone else getting a little concerned by the lack of new announcements?

Should we be hearing something by now?

or is it still a little early?

[gator]

Some interesting points made by Scott Mitchell of the Tiger Cats as he was a guest on local radio this morning commenting on theTim Horton Field lease which I posted about in the stadium thread: 6 or 8 teams are ready to go in the fall of 2018, 10 to 12 groups are presently pursuing franchises, facilities are an issue for some right now, the league plans on being in every major Canadian city by 2020!

[Ansem]

15 minutes ago, GuillermoDelQuarto said:

Is anyone else getting a little concerned by the lack of new announcements?

Should we be hearing something by now?

or is it still a little early?

Still within 60-90 days. August seems more likely to get official news

[Kent]

32 minutes ago, gator said:

Some interesting points made by Scott Mitchell of the Tiger Cats as he was a guest on local radio this morning commenting on theTim Horton Field lease which I posted about in the stadium thread: 6 or 8 teams are ready to go in the fall of 2018, 10 to 12 groups are presently pursuing franchises, facilities are an issue for some right now, the league plans on being in every major Canadian city by 2020!

Maybe it wasn't clear in the interview, but do you know if the 10 to 12 groups includes the 6 or 8 that are ready to go? I would assume so but thought I'd double check.

[gator]

14 minutes ago, Kent said:

Maybe it wasn't clear in the interview, but do you know if the 10 to 12 groups includes the 6 or 8 that are ready to go? I would assume so but thought I'd double check.

I think so, you can find it on CHML 900 site, Bill Kelly Show after 10 am!

[Complete Homer]

1 hour ago, GuillermoDelQuarto said:

Is anyone else getting a little concerned by the lack of new announcements?

Should we be hearing something by now?

or is it still a little early?

It's been like 3 weeks since the announcement, I am not concerned at all

If 4 months goes by and we don't hear who's in and who's out, then I'll be concerned

[CDNFootballer]

7 hours ago, Complete Homer said:

It's been like 3 weeks since the announcement, I am not concerned at all

If 4 months goes by and we don't hear who's in and who's out, then I'll be concerned

They are likely going to finalize the 6-8 CanPL clubs for 2018 so they can be included in a league launch presscon which I'd expect around July-Aug.

[rob.notenboom]

6 hours ago, CDNFootballer said:

They are likely going to finalize the 6-8 CanPL clubs for 2018 so they can be included in a league launch presscon which I'd expect around July-Aug.

The only thing with July/Aug is that announcements have difficulty getting traction during the summer. If there isn't something by Canada Day then I'd not expect to hear until September. 

[Greatest Cockney Rip Off]

On 2 June 2017 at 0:21 AM, harrycoyster said:

Pro/rel can't exist in a hard-capped league. Maybe with a MLB-style soft cap, but I don't think that works in the context of the CPL.

Why can't it work? Rugby League has a hard cap and pro / rel and it works fine. 

[harrycoyster]

1 hour ago, Greatest Cockney Rip Off said:

Why can't it work? Rugby League has a hard cap and pro / rel and it works fine. 

I can't speak to that because I know nothing about rugby, but in every sports league there are teams that pull a disproportionate amount of attention. The Yankees in MLB, Seattle in MLS, and Cowboys in the NFL for example. The examples in world soccer are obvious (Bayern, Barca/Real, PSG, etc).

Leagues make an overwhelming amount of their money from rights sales (shirt rights, TV rights, sponsorships, and the like). The "big" teams are crucial to these deals. The NFL sells the TV rights to their two 16 team conferences separately. In the last deal they made the NFC rights got sold for a staggering $100 million more than the AFC. Why? The Cowboys and Packers are the two biggest draws in the league. MLS revenue saw a huge spike after Seattle joined the league, and it was estimated at the time that the Sounders and Galaxy were worth more than the rest of the league combined in terms of rights sales.

Having your "big" team on equal ground with the rest of the league is very dangerous to league revenue. World soccer gets around this by not having a cap (among other things like disproportionately allocating TV money to the biggest teams) and still many of the TV contracts in world football contain relegation clauses that lower the worth of the contract if certain teams get relegated. IIRC the Serie A had to rewrite its contract with Mediaset after the 2006 relegation of Juventus.

Imagine having a CPL team in Hamilton which draws 5k more fans a game than the rest of the league and regularly has the highest TV numbers. Now imagine them getting relegated due to a few bad signings. That wouldn't just be bad for the team, that devastates the whole league's bottomline. In fact, pro/rel with a salary cap would likely negatively influence the league's rights sales potential even before a big team got relegated.

Edited June 3, 2017 by harrycoyster

[GuillermoDelQuarto]

as much as I'm glad they've made their intention of pro/rel known - it's very much a "cross that bridge when/if we get there"

either way, we're gonna have more than enough time to talk about how it would best be done.

I saw something recently about parachute funds as teams go down.  Makes some sense to me.

[GuillermoDelQuarto]

5 minutes ago, dsqpr said:

I am a fan of the promotion/relegation system for all the obvious reasons. But if Canada ever had enough teams for two divisions I would prefer East and West, each with a fully interlocking schedule, with the two champions playing off for the title.

My reason is simply geography; this would significantly reduce travel costs and therefore make more money available for the player budget.

East and West teams would play against each other in the Voyageurs Cup, but not in the league (except the final).

yea, that does make quite a bit of sense.  At the end of the day whatever allows for the most pro teams in the country is really what is best.  If we can get some of those teams around the 75-150k population teams in there I would be more than happy with your setup

[gator]

Here's the link to the interview with Scott Mitchell about the CPL and specifically about the THF lease deal: audio-vault-chml It's  on June 2nd AT 10AM!

Edited June 4, 2017 by gator

[Macksam]

12 hours ago, dsqpr said:

I am a fan of the promotion/relegation system for all the obvious reasons. But if Canada ever had enough teams for two divisions I would prefer East and West, each with a fully interlocking schedule, with the two champions playing off for the title.

My reason is simply geography; this would significantly reduce travel costs and therefore make more money available for the player budget.

East and West teams would play against each other in the Voyageurs Cup, but not in the league (except the final).

Long term I think this league would be Ontario heavy so maybe the conferences could be Ontario and Rest of Canada? Subsidize the travel costs ofcourse.

[yellowsweatygorilla]

4 minutes ago, Macksam said:

Long term I think this league would be Ontario heavy so maybe the conferences could be Ontario and Rest of Canada? Subsidize the travel costs ofcourse.

I am not sure putting Halifax in with Victoria is a good idea though. Ideally, I think we have West, Ontario, East (Quebec + Maritime) ... though it doesn't look like we'll get enough teams in East. I'd throw in Ottawa and hope there is two teams from Quebec.. unless someone is interested in Kingston or Moncton joins.

[Macksam]

12 hours ago, gator said:

Here's the link to the interview with Scott Mitchell about the CPL and specifically about the THF lease deal: audio-vault-chml It's  on June 2nd AT 10AM!

Starts at 9:00 minutes and ends at 24:30. Here are my notes:

- Deadline was last May. Tiger-Cats submitted their letter to City Hall (Administration) and heard nothing back so they assumed everything was fine.

- Scott is being very political you could say and blaming the whole thing on "miscommunication" between them and the city. I commend him because I probably wouldn't bit my tongue and call those mofos out.

- FIFA promoters from South America have come to view THF, and they love the facility. They want to bring international matches to THF.

- Hamilton's to be named soccer team is looking at doing an annual summer tournament to bring in world class competition around the globe. Great idea IMO.

- Scott brushed on the lawsuit as a listener wrote in asking about how that could be motivating this, but Scott didn't want to dwell on that. He said it would be unfortunate if that was the case but he wouldn't be surprised.

- League has nothing to do with the CFL. CPL is its own entity.

- The talks they've had with municipalities around the country have been positive. They're more open to building 6000-10000 seat stadiums not just for the pro team, but for community use.

- Wants CPL to be completely intertwined with the minor soccer communities within the cities they operate.

- Host adds his opinion at the end suggesting the city is just hurt they never got invited to the press conference for the when the league was announced. He thinks they wanted another 15 minutes of fame. However, now that's over with, they should get over themselves work with the Tiger- Cats for the betterment of this whole thing.

6 minutes ago, yellowsweatygorilla said:

I am not sure putting Halifax in with Victoria is a good idea though. Ideally, I think we have West, Ontario, East (Quebec + Maritime) ... though it doesn't look like we'll get enough teams in East. I'd throw in Ottawa and hope there is two teams from Quebec.. unless someone is interested in Kingston or Moncton joins.

That would probably work better.

[Nathanael Martin]

Grand River Union's Home Opener and official Launch Party for our canPL drive. Includes a Q&A from Barry (nothing particularly juicy-really what we already know: we need a stadium!)

http://grandriverunion.ca/2017/06/04/we-marched-we-sang-we-celebrated-grus-cpl-campaign-has-officially-begun/

Thanks @admin for coming and doing a speech on support across the country.

[ted]

On 2017-06-01 at 10:09 AM, Nathanael Martin said:

Canadians love playoffs, they love that any team can win the season in any given year in our leagues...

Except with a league champion and a cup winner you get the kind of excitement a knock-out tournament brings and we don't need playoffs. Simply schedule the cup semis and final for the two weeks after the regular season ends and people can get into the excitement of "post-season" play.

[-Hammer-]

I'm less inclined towards playoffs, more inclined towards two regional divisions and the winners of the divisions play in a 2 leg final. Especially when the league is starting. One of the biggest complaints people have about the CFL is the fact that you have 9 teams and more then half (6) make the playoffs.

Edited June 5, 2017 by -Hammer-

[GuillermoDelQuarto]

8 minutes ago, -Hammer- said:

I'm less inclined towards playoffs, more inclined towards two regional divisions and the winners of the divisions play in a 2 leg final. Especially when the league is starting. One of the biggest complaints people have about the CFL is the fact that you have 9 teams and more then half (6) make the playoffs.

yea, I can't stand this about NHL as well, although it does serve a purpose(more accessible to the casual fan)

if we do opt for regional, the benefit of this is I feel like it would make it easier to get smaller market teams in - assuming we weighted the schedule regionally, which I would assume would be the point of this.  I've said it before, but I only see the need for making one big cross country road trip per season and the rest of your away games being within division.  But it does kind of depend on which teams we end up having how realistic this is.

[Ansem]

On ‎2017‎-‎06‎-‎04 at 11:29 AM, yellowsweatygorilla said:

I am not sure putting Halifax in with Victoria is a good idea though. Ideally, I think we have West, Ontario, East (Quebec + Maritime) ... though it doesn't look like we'll get enough teams in East. I'd throw in Ottawa and hope there is two teams from Quebec.. unless someone is interested in Kingston or Moncton joins.

If you look at the schedules from the CFL with 9 teams, even if you split the league in 2 conferences, teams pretty much play each other more often then we think.

http://www.tsn.ca/cfl/schedule

 

As you can see, it's a bit all over the place regardless of conferences.

 

CPL will most likely be the same, however, with the league wanting to reach 16 teams, it's safe to assume that most of those teams would be within the Quebec-Windsor Corridor

• most densely populated and heavily industrialized region of Canada, contains over half of the country's population with 18 Million
• Air travel? Under 2h hours with 1 stop anywhere in the corridor
• Trains? Under 4h30 hours Windsor-Toronto (High speed train planned that could cut that number by half)/ Toronto-Montreal-Ottawa is under 5 hours and Montreal-Quebec City is under 4 hours. With Via Rail planning dedicated corridors (HFR) "High Frequency Rail", you could shed at least 1 hour between Toronto-Ottawa-Montreal and their are plans to speed up Montreal-Quebec City. By the way, Via Rail has plans to give commuter train service to Halifax Metro area (Google it)
• Anything within the GTA would be buses as the trips would be so short.

One could argue that more teams would actually make it easier on the scheduling and overall costs assuming all 16 teams are stable. The Quebec-Windsor corridor would heavily compensate the high cost of flying west and going to the Maritimes. Let's not forget that teams from the West or Maritimes visiting teams in the corridor would most likely tour that corridor before going back or farther away.

 

CFL Travel Costs

https://cfldb.ca/faq/teams/#how-do-cfl-teams-travel

• Travel costs for franchises will be in the $700,000+ range. This is based on the Edmonton Eskimos 2016 financial statements showing Away game costs of $753,995 (12 games, two to Calgary) in 2016 and $713,000 (11 games, including Grey Cup, two to Calgary) in 2015. It is assumed this includes flights and hotels and possibly also meals and player per diems.

Safe to assume that it would be cheaper (way cheaper ?) for CPL by travelling with less players and less equipment.

 

My point is that CPL could works as single table league, I see no evidence why it couldn't work. Contrarily to the US where the population is all over the place, half of Canada lives in the Quebec-Windsor corridor.

Edited June 5, 2017 by Ansem

[yellowsweatygorilla]

1 minute ago, Ansem said:

If you look at the schedules from the CFL with 9 teams, even if you split the league in 2 conferences, teams pretty much play each other more often then we think.

http://www.tsn.ca/cfl/schedule

 

As you can see, it's a bit all over the place regardless of conferences.

 

CPL will most likely be the same, however, with the league wanting to reach 16 teams, it's safe to assume that half of those teams would be within the Quebec-Windsor Corridor

• most densely populated and heavily industrialized region of Canada, contains over half of the country's population with 18 Million
• Air travel? Under 2h hours with 1 stop anywhere in the corridor
• Trains? Under 4h30 hours Windsor-Toronto (High speed train planned that could cut that number by half)/ Toronto-Montreal-Ottawa is under 5 hours and Montreal-Quebec City is under 4 hours. With Via Rail planning dedicated corridors (HFR) "High Frequency Rail", you could shed at least 1 hour between Toronto-Ottawa-Montreal and their are plans to speed up Montreal-Quebec City. By the way, Via Rail has plans to give commuter train service to Halifax Metro area (Google it)
• Anything within the GTA would be buses as the trips would be so short.

One could argue that more teams would actually make it easier on the scheduling and overall costs assuming all 16 teams are stable. The Quebec-Windsor corridor would heavily compensate the high cost of flying west and going to the Maritimes. Let's not forget that teams from the West or Maritimes visiting teams in the corridor would most likely tour that corridor before going back or farther away.

 

CFL Travel Costs

https://cfldb.ca/faq/teams/#how-do-cfl-teams-travel

• Travel costs for franchises will be in the $700,000+ range. This is based on the Edmonton Eskimos 2016 financial statements showing Away game costs of $753,995 (12 games, two to Calgary) in 2016 and $713,000 (11 games, including Grey Cup, two to Calgary) in 2015. It is assumed this includes flights and hotels and possibly also meals and player per diems.

Safe to assume that it would be cheaper (way cheaper ?) for CPL by travelling with less players and less equipment.

 

My point is that CPL could works as single table work, I see no evidence why it couldn't work. Contrarily to the US where the population is all over the place, half of Canada lives in the Quebec-Windsor corridor.

Just wondering, how much more expensive are travel costs between Victoria and say Saskatoon than Victoria and Halifax?

[DigzTFC]

My guess is that travel will be around $500,000 per year.  CFL teams cost $700,000 with 62-65 seats per game for a CFL roster.  With CPL, it will probably be 30 people with roster, coaches, therapists etc.   I'd also assume more soccer games in a CPL season than a CFL season.

[Ansem]

5 minutes ago, yellowsweatygorilla said:

Just wondering, how much more expensive are travel costs between Victoria and say Saskatoon than Victoria and Halifax?

It's cheaper the more in advance you book the flights so let's take the first Saturday in August,

According to Google Flight for August 5th to August 6

Victoria-Saskatoon = $426 (direct)

Victoria-Halifax = $782 (1 stop)

[-Hammer-]

42 minutes ago, DigzTFC said:

My guess is that travel will be around $500,000 per year.  CFL teams cost $700,000 with 62-65 seats per game for a CFL roster.  With CPL, it will probably be 30 people with roster, coaches, therapists etc.   I'd also assume more soccer games in a CPL season than a CFL season.

Yeah, but each team only play 5-10 games which require flights. Would that be the case for the CPL?

Sure, less due to volume, but potentially more depending on number of trips.

Edited June 5, 2017 by -Hammer-