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Ottawa CPL Club


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On ‎4‎/‎4‎/‎2019 at 8:53 AM, Initial B said:

He was talking mostly to the young players and their parents about what they needed to do to get on the radar of CPL clubs and college coaches. He also talked a bit about their scouting network. It seems that the CPL is developing their own scouting network apart from the Provincial and National associations. I'm think this is a great idea because there are so many players that seem to fall through the cracks of the ID camps. St Anthony is the oldest club in the Ottawa area and located in Little Italy, but there are also a couple of local academies like KNSA and Futuro that are affiliated with them. I estimate there were about 50-60 people with seating for about 120, but the weather was absolute crap so that might be the reason for the relatively low attendance.

I was at this event and was a little shocked at a few things around their scouting and contracting processes.  Obviously these things could be changed/fixed as they go and I hope they rethink some of these things, because it will have an impact going forward on the quality of players in the league.

Anthony also wasn't very forthcoming on a number of points, but this is clearly the league's position (no comment on anything to do with salaries or broadcasting).  To be honest, I left there less optimistic than going in.

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1 hour ago, BringBackTheBlizzard said:

As things stand at the moment there are both positive and negative early signs available depending on what you choose to focus on. When the most likely eighth franchise appears to be Saskatoon, it's also difficult and also arguably unfair to make comparisons with the USL Championship. The market sizes involved if they expand out to 16 or so by 2026 are going be more like the non-MLS B team cities in USL 1, because of the much smaller total national population involved in Canada relative to the United States.

 

27 minutes ago, baulderdash77 said:

I always have a hard time getting my mind to a league with more than 12-15 teams.  After that it always feels like grasping at straws to be honest.  Canada just doesn’t have a big population and the 3 MLS teams take the largest and most lucrative markets.

A Canadian Soccer landscape with 13 CPL teams and 3 MLS teams and some regional development leagues always seems like the best case scenario for me.

I think some people underestimate the potential of some smaller markets and do them a disservice in comparing to the States. Look at Halifax as an example - seems like it's doing great in terms of ticket sales and interest right? What other sports leagues are there in Halifax? The QMJHL, sure, but that's juniors and in the winter. There's the basketball team (also winter schedule, drawing ~2k per game with far more home games), and the lacrosse team (also winter schedule, and the team is new, first game in the fall). So when someone wants to go to a sporting event in the summer, what is there? The Nova Scotia Senior Baseball League? I'm sure that's a high level...

Go even further, take a town of, say, 60k? How about Grand Prairie, Alberta. Highest level sports team? The Grande Prairie Storm of the Alberta Junior Hockey League. So you put a soccer team there, in the highest level in the country? People will support it, because it is *theirs*. They would proudly be able to say that they are in the same league as Edmonton and Calgary, they would be able to take delight in wins against the pricks from Vancouver, Toronto, Montreal, and Ottawa. 

Now you compare with a smaller place in the US and you say it can't work here because it doesn't work there. But I'd argue there's a massive difference - we don't have college sports. I have never seen a single school in Canada get even half the absurd level of school spirit that they have in the States. So when it comes to sports teams competing for entertainment dollars, you have to take the college teams into account. 

I know that a place like Grand Prairie would struggle to support a team enough, because there's more to a league than just ticket revenue, but I don't see why we can't dream of building towards a larger league, maybe with some form of pro/rel to ensure that smaller towns do get a chance to prove themselves.

 

20 minutes ago, MtlMario said:

I still think this topic should be in the USL forum.

Mostly the conversation here is about the potential for the Fury to be in the CPL but regardless, please find me any post of more than 5 pages that has managed to perfectly remain on topic? Also I'm curious as to why you care what arbitrary classification we apply to this completely irrelevant internet debate among a bunch of people with little to no secondhand (let alone firsthand) knowledge of what is actually going on?

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2 hours ago, Viruk42 said:

 

 

 

Mostly the conversation here is about the potential for the Fury to be in the CPL but regardless, please find me any post of more than 5 pages that has managed to perfectly remain on topic? Also I'm curious as to why you care what arbitrary classification we apply to this completely irrelevant internet debate among a bunch of people with little to no secondhand (let alone firsthand) knowledge of what is actually going on?

Sorry I didn't see "Potential" in the topic name. And like you said, what's the difference, these " bunch of people have little to no knowledge of what is going on" anyways.

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3 hours ago, baulderdash77 said:

I always have a hard time getting my mind to a league with more than 12-15 teams...

If CanPL are serious about pursuing all of the 200,000 population markets and up and were able to do it successfully there genuinely would be scope for over 20 teams a decade or so from now even without going crazy on having multiple teams in and around the three MLS metro area, which could push the number further out towards 30. OSEG might not find the prospect of having St John's, Sherbrooke, Windsor, St Catherines, Saskatoon and Kelowna joining the party particularly enticing and may see the long term vision of the USL Championship as being a clear step up from that and more to their liking in investment terms.

The people close to their front office definitely didn't seem particularly enthused about having lots of former L1O players on team rosters in the league they would be competing in, so my guess would be that they wanted something higher budget and focused on a vision that did not involve massive future expansion to enable future pro/rel. They probably expect it to all go tits up anyway long before it gets to that stage. Given I would love to see a London, Ont team as part of the mix I actually like the stated small market compatible vision and very much hope it works. Halifax is looking good so far, so there are some reasons to be upbeat.

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34 minutes ago, BringBackTheBlizzard said:

If CanPL are serious about pursuing all of the 200,000 population markets and up and were able to do it successfully there genuinely would be scope for over 20 teams a decade or so from now even without going crazy on having multiple teams in and around the three MLS metro area, which could push the number further out towards 30. OSEG might not find the prospect of having St John's, Sherbrooke, Windsor, St Catherines, Saskatoon and Kelowna joining the party particularly enticing and may see the long term vision of the USL Championship as being a clear step up from that and more to their liking in investment terms.

The people close to their front office definitely didn't seem particularly enthused about having lots of former L1O players on team rosters in the league they would be competing in, so my guess would be that they wanted something higher budget and focused on a vision that did not involve massive future expansion to enable future pro/rel. They probably expect it to all go tits up anyway long before it gets to that stage. Given I would love to see a London, Ont team as part of the mix I actually like the stated small market compatible vision and very much hope it works. Halifax is looking good so far, so there are some reasons to be upbeat.

There's a contrast in mentality between CFL/NHL markets vs those that are not. We are already kind of seeing it in the ticket prices.

CPL is going to have to try to accommodate both types of markets if wants to grow to 16 teams.

Edited by mpg_29
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2 hours ago, CDNFootballer said:

So Ottawa Fury have switched to using the opposite main grandstand apparently. Wonder what their announced attendance will be, doesn't look that good on a sunny Saturday afternoon :

I thought I read somewhere that they switched grandstands because of snow. Is that correct? Or is this a season long thing?

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On 4/5/2019 at 4:22 PM, CDNFootballer said:

No, USL is quite restrictive and the league is privately owned by Nurock.

USL teams don't own any part of the league.

Which is part of the reason why the rebirth of the NASL started in the first place. Owners were tired of not having any control, started the Team Owners Association, then eventually broke away to form the NASL.

To assume that Ottawa could just sell their USL franchise rights and start a 'new' team in CPL is too simplistic. USL would have to approve the sale, then they would have to approve the relocation. Same thing happens in the NHL and NFL. Except in those scenarios it is other owners voting. In the USL scenario, it is Nurock deciding. Why would Nurock allow a relocation when they could just sell another expansion team instead?

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I see that there has been a lot of talk about exit fees from USL and from my understanding, when the CSA sanctioned the Fury for the USL I thought one of the conditions on allowing the jump was no exit fees if and when a Canadian league comes around. I'm not sure if that still would be the case, but I could have sworn that was the case.

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Think the no exit fee angle was only ever from Duane Rollins, so could be like the monitor in Miami tweet. On the right track but taken one step too far. They definitely can exit the franchise agreement after providing sufficient notice, but it may not be completely painless financially to do so in terms of the exit fee that would normally apply being completely waived.

I suspect the CONCACAF refusing sanctioning angle may also have been built up into more than it really was and is a non-issue now, because it's not clear how only a USL Championship team can be targeted on that without calling into question the status of the three Canadian MLS teams. 

Edited by BringBackTheBlizzard
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20 hours ago, CDNFootballer said:

So Ottawa Fury have switched to using the opposite main grandstand apparently. Wonder what their announced attendance will be, doesn't look that good on a sunny Saturday afternoon :

 

Ottawa Fury home opener April 2019.jpg

For people assuming the people they can see in the stands in this picture represents 100% of the fans there, that is usually not the case. I didn't see the game so I have no idea what it looked like during the game, but this is clearly either a pre-game or half-time thing going on here. Look at the stands of a TFC game at pre-game, then look again at kick off, then look again half an hour in. There is a drastic change in the numbers of people at each time. So even if this doesn't look like 6500, it's possible there actually were 6500 at the game, or close to it.

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1 hour ago, Kent said:

For people assuming the people they can see in the stands in this picture represents 100% of the fans there, that is usually not the case. I didn't see the game so I have no idea what it looked like during the game, but this is clearly either a pre-game or half-time thing going on here. Look at the stands of a TFC game at pre-game, then look again at kick off, then look again half an hour in. There is a drastic change in the numbers of people at each time. So even if this doesn't look like 6500, it's possible there actually were 6500 at the game, or close to it.

Yeah, this was almost 20 minutes before kick-off. Being there, it definitely felt like 6,500 was pretty accurate.

 

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If the fury were joining the CPL in 2020, wouldn't they already would have to notify the USL - 1 year in advance? Maybe they did but just hasn't been revealed and won't be until the end of the season

Either way Canada Soccer/Concacaf told them already they can't no longer play in an American League after this season 

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1 hour ago, Blackjack15 said:

If the fury were joining the CPL in 2020, wouldn't they already would have to notify the USL - 1 year in advance? Maybe they did but just hasn't been revealed and won't be until the end of the season

Either way Canada Soccer/Concacaf told them already they can't no longer play in an American League after this season 

The notice was shorten to 6 months. They have until the end of the USL season to notify the league of their intent to leave for CPL

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2 hours ago, Blackjack15 said:

...Either way Canada Soccer/Concacaf told them already they can't no longer play in an American League after this season 

Can you point me to a url where they did that? All that was said as far as I am aware was that their sanctioning is for one year which is the standard operating procedure on this.

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On 4/6/2019 at 5:21 AM, BringBackTheBlizzard said:

...Victoria and York 9 are still question marks that become increasingly large...

I think our biggest problem here in Victoria is that we don't have a stadium yet and will not until right up to KO on the 28th. In fact the club has been saying for a while that they may still have some seats to install after opening day.

Combine that with a team and league that has never kicked a ball in anger and the caution is understandable. Until the team and the league is fully operational we will, IMO continue to see reluctance to invest on the part of the casual fan.

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On 4/6/2019 at 8:21 AM, BringBackTheBlizzard said:

Judging by what you see on Ticketmaster on single ticket seat availability, things are going well in Halifax, Hamilton and Edmonton, but Winnipeg, Calgary, Victoria and York 9 are still question marks that become increasingly large in that order, so for anybody looking at it rationally rather than with unconditional blind faith, it's still too early to draw firm conclusions on whether CanPL is likely to hang in there on the medium to long term. Season ticket renewal rates will be pivotal even in the cities that have done well in that context for year one.

As things stand at the moment there are both positive and negative early signs available depending on what you choose to focus on. When the most likely eighth franchise appears to be Saskatoon, it's also difficult and also arguably unfair to make comparisons with the USL Championship. The market sizes involved if they expand out to 16 or so by 2026 are going be more like the non-MLS B team cities in USL 1, because of the much smaller total national population involved in Canada relative to the United States.

To me, this makes an argument for Pro-Rel. The sooner the CPL can split off an 8-team First Division (CPL Elite?)with teams who have the financial means for multiple cross-country road trips, the better. I think it's imperative that the First Division stabilize as quickly as possible. Then the Second Division (CPL Championship?) would become the more fluid entry level with less travelling and easier for new clubs to jump into, expanding and contracting as the fortunes of clubs turn.

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12 minutes ago, Initial B said:

To me, this makes an argument for Pro-Rel. The sooner the CPL can split off an 8-team First Division (CPL Elite?)with teams who have the financial means for multiple cross-country road trips, the better. I think it's imperative that the First Division stabilize as quickly as possible. Then the Second Division (CPL Championship?) would become the more fluid entry level with less travelling and easier for new clubs to jump into, expanding and contracting as the fortunes of clubs turn.

That is why a regional second division makes so much sense to me.  Reduce their costs by keeping most or all games within a (relatively) close distance, while leaving CPL D1 for those teams  that can compete at that level and have the financial wherewithal to accommodate the higher cost of competing at that level. 

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On 4/7/2019 at 3:34 PM, Kent said:

For people assuming the people they can see in the stands in this picture represents 100% of the fans there, that is usually not the case. I didn't see the game so I have no idea what it looked like during the game, but this is clearly either a pre-game or half-time thing going on here. Look at the stands of a TFC game at pre-game, then look again at kick off, then look again half an hour in. There is a drastic change in the numbers of people at each time. So even if this doesn't look like 6500, it's possible there actually were 6500 at the game, or close to it.

As Sebastien stated this was  before the game and before the teams even came out on the field, not sure what the capacity is in the North Stand, i would think about 14,000, so 6543 fans in attendance .would look like the place is half empty, unfortunately the seating was switched a week before the game from the south side to the north side due to the south side being still jammed with ice and snow. as you can see in the picture people were sitting all over the place due to it being general admission but as the game started the gaps from the bottom up were filled in and looked quite impressive from the south side.

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