CPL General

[shermanator]

Canadians love the idea of a supporter owned club until the time comes to open their wallets.

TSS Rovers tried this, or at least they tried to "sell 49% of the club" to supporters and they managed to raise around $300k in multiple fundraising attempts. Good fundraising scheme, but one time cash injections that will be pissed away in a few years is not sustainable, especially when pissing away large chunks of it to host one-off games that don't move the needle in terms of getting regular butts in seats.

I've always thought that in order to get a proper supporter owned club you'd have to set up a one time "seed money" amount to get a club up and running, followed by a recurring revenue structure where people pay a monthly amount ($25 for example) to cover operating expenses. The number of people who would actually do that is so low that it likely wouldn't fund even a League1 club.

[SpursFlu]

2 hours ago, MtlMario said:

I also been wishing this for years without much success.☹️

Let's get 💯 real here. Canadians are not the most entrepreneurial people. We like to just sit around and wait for soneone else to do something. I would also say Canada is becoming less business friendly by the day. You see foreign people looking to put money in to the game here because on paper it seems like a no brainer but once they get in to the landscape they realize something is just off with this country. Canada s like a super hot girl but..  ill let people fill in the analogy 

I don't think the sky is falling. I just think we make things way more difficult in this country then it needs to be. I'm actually a bit optimistic because I sense Canada is going thru a bit of a shift in mindset. 

Edited April 1 by SpursFlu

[JamboAl]

I hate to say this but putting money into a CPL team or L1 Canada team has to be more about passion than making money because the return on investment is very dubious, in my opinion.  And for a fan owned club to work, you would need hundreds of fans willing to put thousands of dollars into it every year; and then make them buy tickets as well.  

I am part of the fan owned group at Heart of Midlothian FC.  We have over 10,000 people putting in $200-2,000 a year into the club; some way more.  And if I want to see a game, that’ll cost me another £35.  I don’t think that would ever work here.

[SpursFlu]

I actually disagree.. you can buy a CPL team for 7 million. An MLS team for 300 million. I think one takes patience and a little more vision. 7 million to whatever in 10 - 20 years is small potatoes for the usual characters but I think it's less of a sure thing and more of an entrepreneurial endeavor, less of a sure thing but more of a buy low sell high then a place to park your wealth and join the club or be part of the club that's is those big American leagues

Edited April 1 by SpursFlu

[MtlMario]

Have not heard anything from the commish for awhile now. Probably would be a good idea to appear soon.

[Ozzie_the_parrot]

Suspect dealing with Mediapro and the CSA has been keeping him very busy of late. If they hadn't got back onto Onesoccer they were potentially completely screwed because not meeting the agreed upon terms of the various sponsorship deals that are also linked to CSB's management of the CMNT and CWNT in that context could have invalidated them and given sponsors the right to walk away. Volkswagen (or whoever it was) are expecting the crazy old woman spinning the car about commercial to be shown x number of times this summer and their logo to be visible on Halifax shirts in x number of streamed games etc.

Edited April 2 by Ozzie_the_parrot

[Kingston]

3 hours ago, MtlMario said:

Have not heard anything from the commish for awhile now. Probably would be a good idea to appear soon.

Only if he has something to say.  A press conference without a meaningful announcement and where the answers to questions are all in political nonsense speak would be useless.  I'd rather let the teams push their messages in their own markets.

[Watchmen]

5 hours ago, MtlMario said:

Have not heard anything from the commish for awhile now. Probably would be a good idea to appear soon.

It's less than 2 weeks till the start of the season. You'll see him soon enough.

[MtlMario]

15 hours ago, Kingston said:

Only if he has something to say.  

That's what I do not like.🙃

[masster]

Some really good round table discussion on the CPL season in today's episode of OneSoccer today.

Some fun topics and really good storylines to look forward to.

[phil03]

I think super club is definitely overused. IMO the original and true sense of the term is a club with a ridiculous amount of ressources and who has the highest honors of the club game worldwide in mind. We have still a long way to go before any Canadian club, either MLS or CPL, gets there.

What I do think would be a more accurate description of the situation is that ATO is making a bid to gain (or regain depending how you see it) the status Fury had before the CPL: the clear-cut fourth club in the country. A club that isn't at the same level then the three MLS clubs but nonetheless clearly bigger than anyone else north of the American border. To do that and do the three things the Fury didn't do: get trophies, play in CONCACAF and get upsets against MLS/LigaMx clubs

Edited April 5 by phil03

[Aird25]

6 hours ago, phil03 said:

I think super club is definitely overused. IMO the original and true sense of the term is a club with a ridiculous amount of ressources and who has the highest honors of the club game worldwide in mind. We have still a long way to go before any Canadian club, either MLS or CPL, gets there.

What I do think would be a more accurate description of the situation is that ATO is making a bid to gain (or regain depending how you see it) the status Fury had before the CPL: the clear-cut fourth club in the country. A club that isn't at the same level then the three MLS clubs but nonetheless clearly bigger than anyone else north of the American border. To do that and do the three things the Fury didn't do: get trophies, play in CONCACAF and get upsets against MLS/LigaMx clubs

The Fury didn't exactly have a lot of competition back then

[longlugan]

Right now Forge FC is THE fourth club in Canada. Atleti has some work to do to catch up. Winning one CPL title won't be nearly enough. 

[Joe MacCarthy]

 

[yothat2]

On 4/5/2024 at 2:58 AM, Aird25 said:

The Fury didn't exactly have a lot of competition back then

They beat up on fced in can champ too 

[MtlMario]

I do not know about the rest of the country but here in Montreal area we could of started the season at least 3 weeks ago.😊

[narduch]

Latest Northern Football podcast is a CPL preview, including interviews with VFC and Forge managers

Edited April 9 by narduch

[jonovision]

4 hours ago, narduch said:

Latest Northern Football podcast is a CPL preview, including interviews with VFC and Forge managers

Which one?

[narduch]

26 minutes ago, jonovision said:

Which one?

Ghotbi

[red card]

Noonan interviewed on Ottawa's TSN 1200 Corner Kicks show, Station also carry ATO matches.

He say CPL is most stable financially it has ever been. Looking to broaden broadcast distribution. Foundation built is really solid. Now looking to build rest of the house in next 10-15 years.

More expansion would have happened if willing to play in smallish stadiums with stitched in gridiron lines. 16-20 team league in a decade is the goal. Mentioned Quebec City, other areas of GTA, Saskatoon & Regina & want to be back in Edmonton.

CSB is building out Canada's football echo system rather than just being Canada Soccer's commercial rights arm. Build out L1 from 40 teams in 2019 to almost 200. Challenge with Canada Soccer is consistency of leadership as he's on his third GS in 18 months.

Next 2 years are incredibly important for soccer in Canada. Need to get our house in order together. Canada needs to come together. Canada needs to be unified. Canada needs to be aligned. If we're ever to become a soccer country everyone wants us to be.

https://www.tsn.ca/radio/ottawa-1200/cpl-commissioner-mark-noonan-looking-ahead-to-the-new-season-1.2101277

[Ozzie_the_parrot]

8 hours ago, red card said:

...He say CPL is most stable financially it has ever been. Looking to broaden broadcast distribution...

Obvious follow up would have been how is the former the case if the latter means that the original Mediapro deal (that provided $85 million in rights fees over the first ten seasons plus production costs beyond that) signed before the league launched has now effectively ended.

8 hours ago, red card said:

...More expansion would have happened if willing to play in smallish stadiums with stitched in gridiron lines...

Obvious follow up would be asking why only stadia with stitched in gridiron lines necessarily had to be involved in that context. Why not more Wanderers Ground style pop-ups with temporary bleachers given that approach provided the league with its biggest success story to date?

Edited April 11 by Ozzie_the_parrot

[longlugan]

2 hours ago, Ozzie_the_parrot said:

Obvious follow up would have been how is the former the case if the latter means that the original Mediapro deal (that provided $85 million in rights fees over the first ten seasons plus production costs beyond that) signed before the league launched has now effectively ended.

Obvious follow up would be asking why only stadia with stitched in gridiron lines necessarily had to be involved in that context. Why not more Wanderers Ground style pop-ups with temporary bleachers given that approach provided the league with its biggest success story to date?

Obvious follow up would be why are you not the commissioner so that this league can be run like a proper bus league. 

[narduch]

1 hour ago, longlugan said:

Obvious follow up would be why are you not the commissioner so that this league can be run like a proper bus league. 

Must really burn him to have the Commissioner come out with positive vibes

[Kent]

Honestly I thought the same thing about the strength financially. At least a follow up of asking what has improved. I know attendance has improved if you don't count year 1. With the Media Pro deal almost certainly going to be reduced and uncertainty about the stability of the CSB/Canada Soccer deal, it doesn't feel like it could actually be more stable at the moment. There could very well be more sponsorship money, but with the threat of their share of that money getting reduced.

And the part about the stitched in lines makes me wonder what makes him so sure about 2 expansion teams next season and 2 more the following. Do they have stadium solutions for these 4 teams?

[Kingston]

13 hours ago, red card said:

More expansion would have happened if willing to play in smallish stadiums with stitched in gridiron lines. 16-20 team league in a decade is the goal. Mentioned Quebec City, other areas of GTA, Saskatoon & Regina & want to be back in Edmonton.

CSB is building out Canada's football echo system rather than just being Canada Soccer's commercial rights arm. Build out L1 from 40 teams in 2019 to almost 200.

I hope things go well.  This sounds more like a rah-rah speech than anything with details.  Which is, I suppose, part of the commissioner's job.  But this is really just a bunch of aspirational stuff.  The "we want to be a 16-20 teams in a decade" could have been cut and pasted from any time in the league's history.  

I wish that if the Commissioner was going to address the future of the league he'd come prepared with some actual facts and details.  Those of us who follow the league know about Media Pro and stadium issues for expansion teams, so address them rather than hand waving over them.