CPL the Future .

[Ozzie_the_parrot]

1 hour ago, phil03 said:

...XII. Make a serious, meaningful, effort to wean yourself from the CSB deal's money as much as possible and send the cash saved to stuff related to the national programs. The game in Canada will live or die by the national teams, essentially...

Agreed with almost all of your points but it would be interesting to find out how much revenue CSB generates off the CMNT split eight ways once the CSA receives its guaranteed $3 million particularly in years when there is no World Cup octagon or final tournament on the go. Doubt it is anything particularly earth shattering.

The angle where the optics are at their worst is not so much the men's side IMO but the way they generate income off the CWNT but don't have a women's pro league running in parallel with the men's side of things. I seriously doubt that's going to be sustainable out to 2038 if the second ten year option gets picked up. Think that's something that needs to be resolved one way or another by the time the 2026 World Cup rolls around.

[Kingston]

On 10/19/2022 at 10:51 PM, gigi riva said:

Hey with a another seson nearing its End  Im just curious what my fellow Voyaguers want to see league look like down the road . to me these next four years are going to be critical . And please guys serious  responses only

What I want and also think is within the realm of optimistic possibility:

1.  See the league contract/move Edmonton and York.  The Edmonton market needs a reboot that would best be accomplished after a break.  York is simply a bad idea.

2.  See very few further franchise failures.  I should add that I don't consider the league having a handful of failures over time to be a disaster.  It would take a miracle to cold-start that many new teams and have all of them work.  But let's limit the number.

3.  See new teams that emulate the Halifax model - have a great stadium (whether existing or purpose built) and a solid marketing plan that presents the team as fully professional all the way.  How many times have we seen people excitedly talk about how rich a particular ownership group is but seen nothing happen with the team?  Yes, the owners need to be able to absorb some initial losses, so they need to be richer than most of us.  But who cares if the owner is a billionaire if they play in a terrible stadium instead of dropping $5 million for something like Halifax has?  Some slightly rich guy who spends on the team is better than Elon Musk just covering payroll.

4.  See increased attendance for the existing teams to the point where they all hit at least 5000.  The quicker, the better so that owners can own the team without supporting losses for basic operations.  (They may want to overspend to grow the brand - great - but they can at least pay the normal bills.)  That way we have a league than can exist beyond the whim of a rich owner.

5.  See enough media attention and fan awareness that rivalry games actually draw noticeably larger crowds that regular games.

6.  See the base salary hit $40 or $50 k so that players can simply be soccer players.

7.  See an ever more fluid pathway of players from the various L1s to the CPL and beyond.  Stop the negative attitude toward working with MLS teams and also continue to develop landing spots for players in Europe.

8.  See Edmonton make a triumphant and rousingly successful return to the league.

That's probably enough for the medium term.

8. 

[Kingston]

14 hours ago, BurndenAce said:

I'd like to see the CPL stop focusing on cities that already have established teams and look towards smaller markets who are starved of professional sports. In Ontario for example, Windsor, London, Kitchener, Guelph, Brantford, St. Catharines, Barrie, Oshawa, Peterborough, Kingston and Sudbury all have the population to be able to support a team, and with very little else going on in the background, could be better markets due to the lack of competition.

 

I think there are actually more cities in Ontario that could feasibly support a team (If memory serves, the number was thirty-five when I last looked at the data), but the culture, money and interest in the league just aren't there yet.

First, welcome to the board.

Second, there are not anywhere close to 35 Ontario markets that could support a CPL team.  But I would be interested in hearing what you think a market needs in order to be able to support a team so that I can see where you got the number 35 from.

[Kent]

8 hours ago, BurndenAce said:

Well the reasons that junior hockey works in those markets are a) the hockey culture in this country, b) the population base is there to support the team and c) there's nothing else going on. I'm sure you could probably find places in Ontario where there aren't OHL teams, but could still support a small football club if the stars align (Newmarket-Aurora, Welland and Cornwall immediately spring to mind).

 

Leaving aside the current stupidity of having private academies operate teams in L10.

Can you elaborate on the part I put in bold above? What is wrong with having private academies operating L1O teams? I assume this means you don't like teams like Sigma being in L1O, but are OK with club teams like Vaughan Azzuri. Is that correct? I'd like to understand the difference in your opinion.

[gigi riva]

8 hours ago, Kingston said:

What I want and also think is within the realm of optimistic possibility:

1.  See the league contract/move Edmonton and York.  The Edmonton market needs a reboot that would best be accomplished after a break.  York is simply a bad idea.

2.  See very few further franchise failures.  I should add that I don't consider the league having a handful of failures over time to be a disaster.  It would take a miracle to cold-start that many new teams and have all of them work.  But let's limit the number.

3.  See new teams that emulate the Halifax model - have a great stadium (whether existing or purpose built) and a solid marketing plan that presents the team as fully professional all the way.  How many times have we seen people excitedly talk about how rich a particular ownership group is but seen nothing happen with the team?  Yes, the owners need to be able to absorb some initial losses, so they need to be richer than most of us.  But who cares if the owner is a billionaire if they play in a terrible stadium instead of dropping $5 million for something like Halifax has?  Some slightly rich guy who spends on the team is better than Elon Musk just covering payroll.

4.  See increased attendance for the existing teams to the point where they all hit at least 5000.  The quicker, the better so that owners can own the team without supporting losses for basic operations.  (They may want to overspend to grow the brand - great - but they can at least pay the normal bills.)  That way we have a league than can exist beyond the whim of a rich owner.

5.  See enough media attention and fan awareness that rivalry games actually draw noticeably larger crowds that regular games.

6.  See the base salary hit $40 or $50 k so that players can simply be soccer players.

7.  See an ever more fluid pathway of players from the various L1s to the CPL and beyond.  Stop the negative attitude toward working with MLS teams and also continue to develop landing spots for players in Europe.

8.  See Edmonton make a triumphant and rousingly successful return to the league.

That's probably enough for the medium term.

8. 

York should be relocated to a London Ont, or KW region

[ATM]

2 hours ago, gigi riva said:

York should be relocated to a London Ont, or KW region

I agree....York will never be able to compete with TFC, Raptors, leafs, Jay's, Marlies, 905 Raptors, Disney Show on Ice......I think everyone can see where I am going with this.  

Any city with no pro teams should be the Goal of the CPL.

[BurndenAce]

10 hours ago, Kingston said:

First, welcome to the board.

Second, there are not anywhere close to 35 Ontario markets that could support a CPL team.  But I would be interested in hearing what you think a market needs in order to be able to support a team so that I can see where you got the number 35 from.

I want to preface everything I say here by noting that this scenario only applies in a perfect world. Obviously, some of the comparisons I am going to make aren't going to work exactly in Canada, especially with the current level of interest for the sport in the country. It's merely food for thought.

I go back and forth over whether not having 5,000 in the stands is a serious problem or not. Obviously I'd like it to be higher than that sometime in the next twenty years, but for now we pull roughly 3,500 per game depending on the market. Even if the league could survive on less than 5k, it's still useful to hit that mark, as it's an approximate comparison to League Two (the fourth tier) in England and what they average. I should note as well that the CPL currently has a higher average attendance than Pre-Covid leagues in Croatia, Ireland, Finland, Serbia, Slovakia, Cyprus and Bulgaria. If we are able to hit 4-4.5k that also puts us ahead of Hungary, Romania and Ukraine as well. We can go back on forth about how well those leagues are run or if they are considered major leagues, but the fact is they have been able to survive without serious issue for the better part of the last century.

Now onto specifics. In my spare time, I've come up with several fantasy scenarios about what football could look like in Canada using three countries as a blueprint - England, as they are the founders of the game and are the most successful financially, France as they have had a steady core of teams for the better part of the last seventy years and the Netherlands, who have a population comparable to Ontario. The vast majority of teams play in cities with over 100k, which should hardly come as a surprise to anyone on this forum. If we ignore the fact that the following cities have wildly varying degrees of footballing culture, then you get the following list in Ontario;

(Before I make this list, I'd like to note I'm not including suburbs of major cities. You could have asked any Torontonian prior to the founding of York United and they would have told you it was doomed to be a failure, for too many reasons to get into now. But the TLDR is that Torontonians are arrogant and would rather support a team from the city than the suburbs, and that the suburbs - in this case Vaughan - don't have a strong enough civic entity that would lead to a desire for a football team, for now at least. I fear the same mistake is being made in Langley, but whatever, that's for BC to figure out. Note that I'm giving special exception to a few suburbs which existed as towns before the massive growth of the GTA in the 50s-70s. The criteria I'm using is "if the American's burnt down Toronto in 1812 and it was never rebuilt, would this place still exist?" Therefore, places like Brampton, Whitby and Newmarket are counted as separate entities, while places like Mississauga, Pickering and Vaughan aren't, despite their population.)

Note that I'm using the population of the city proper, not the metro area

1. Toronto - 2.8m (Or 1m in the old city of Toronto. Not dividing it any further, as (speaking from experience as a Torontonian) none of the former boroughs (except perhaps Scarborough) have a strong enough identity to host a football team.)
2. Brampton - 650k
3. Hamilton - 570k
4. London - 420k
5. Ottawa - 360k (In the old city pre-amalgamation. If you want to do the entire former county of Carleton which now encompasses Ottawa, including places like Kanata and Nepean, be my guest, 1m.)
6. Kitchener - 260k
7. Windsor - 230k
8. Oshawa - 175k
9. Barrie - 150k
10. Guelph - 140k
11. Whitby - 140k
12. St. Catharines - 140k
13. Kingston - 130k
14. Milton - 125k
15. Brantford - 105k

Now, that could be where we stop, and to be honest, that's probably about how far the League will go as well. However it's worth noting that in all three leagues I listed above, teams coming from cities with less than 100k can also succeed, although usually not as common as the larger cities for obvious reasons. A few examples include;

• Burnley (England - 87k) - Comfortably in and out of the Premier League for the past decade, founding football league member
• West Brom (England - 78k) - Were in the Premier League in during most of the last decade.
• Accrington, Morecambe, Forest Green and Fleetwood (All England) - All competing currently in the third tier of English football despite having populations of 35k, 34k, 32k and 25k respectively.
• RC Lens (France - 31k) - The team I support in France, historically a team in Ligue 1 throughout most of its history
• Fortuna Sittard and Volendam (Netherlands - 37k, 22k) - Two teams that have been in and out of the Dutch first division over the past few years

Its worth noting that these are exceptions to the rule. In a league with teams in Victoria, Calgary, Windsor, Saskatoon, Halifax, Quebec, Ottawa etc, most of these teams will never be hugely successful stories (in fact, I expect that over the next hundred years only a few will even be founded). Neverthless, they all still have the potential to support a team (even more so as most of these cities don't even have OHL teams.)

1. Thunder Bay - 95k
2. Sudbury - 92k (In the city proper, not including Greater Sudbury)
3. Niagara Falls - 88k
4. Newmarket - 87k
5. Galt - 84k (Up to 140k if we are considering the entire Cambridge area, although I'm still a fan of separating the cities)
6. Peterborough - 83k
7. Sarnia - 72k
8. Sault Ste. Marie - 64k
9. Belleville - 55k
10. Welland - 52k
11. North Bay - 51k
12. Bowmanville - 48k
13. Cornwall - 47k
14. Woodstock - 46k
15. Chatham - 45k
16. Georgetown - 44k
17. St. Thomas - 42k
18. Bradford - 38k
19. Stouffville - 36k
20. Orangeville - 34k
21. Orillia - 33k
22. Stratford - 32k

(If you disagree with my earlier estimation about suburbs not being able to support a football team, than by all means, add any combination of Mississauga, Markham, Vaughan, Oakville, Richmond Hill, Burlington, Kanata, Nepean, Ajax, Waterloo, Pickering and Aurora to the above list.)

Now obviously, the CPL is not going to be hosting matches between Stratford Town FC and Chatham Town FC anytime soon. This is more a sort of guide for the types of teams I expect to eventually fill up the lower divisions (if we get that far). My point is, that on a traditional European model, there is nothing stopping Ontario from having teams in all of the above cities. And that's without mentioning the ability for Toronto, Hamilton and Ottawa to host more than one team (which is a separate rant I'll spare you all from.)

 

If you need any clarification, I'd be happy to expand upon the above. Criticism most welcome.

[BurndenAce]

6 hours ago, Kent said:

Can you elaborate on the part I put in bold above? What is wrong with having private academies operating L1O teams? I assume this means you don't like teams like Sigma being in L1O, but are OK with club teams like Vaughan Azzuri. Is that correct? I'd like to understand the difference in your opinion.

I'm not against private academies in all cases, but I'd much rather they identify with some sort of community (such as Dortmund's investment in Waterloo.) In League One Ontario, I'd single out Master's Futbol, North Toronto Nitros, ProStars and Sigma as they key culprits, as well as TFC's stranglehold over Windsor and London. If they're going to stick around, I'd rather they find a way to represent their local towns better, as it would be much more welcoming for Bramptonians to identiy with, say, Brampton Town FC than ProStars, a private academy. Minor nitpick, I know, but it just makes the league seem more amateur and harder to connect with than it could be.

[Stoppage Time]

Really interesting look by BurndenAce.   Brampton is a youth soccer hot bed and London does not, as far as I know, have a Pro team. Could York United move to one of those cities? Ideally, York gets settled in a new location, Edmonton gets new ownership and a deal with the city to fix up Clarke stadium, and Somebody like Alex Bunbury can create a franchise in PQ to get that bilingual flavour to the league.

[SoccMan]

5 hours ago, Stoppage Time said:

Really interesting look by BurndenAce.   Brampton is a youth soccer hot bed and London does not, as far as I know, have a Pro team. Could York United move to one of those cities? Ideally, York gets settled in a new location, Edmonton gets new ownership and a deal with the city to fix up Clarke stadium, and Somebody like Alex Bunbury can create a franchise in PQ to get that bilingual flavour to the league.

I don’t think York is going anywhere anytime soon. The owner is a legitimate rich guy who loves the game . I think he is going to keep giving it a go and probably wants to have this team going into 2026. Moreover, I don’t think this Woodbine thing is dead from what I’m hearing.  Like I said the owners have money and whatever they may be losing is not really a big deal to them . The only place they want to be is in the Toronto .

[SoccMan]

14 hours ago, BurndenAce said:

I'm not against private academies in all cases, but I'd much rather they identify with some sort of community (such as Dortmund's investment in Waterloo.) In League One Ontario, I'd single out Master's Futbol, North Toronto Nitros, ProStars and Sigma as they key culprits, as well as TFC's stranglehold over Windsor and London. If they're going to stick around, I'd rather they find a way to represent their local towns better, as it would be much more welcoming for Bramptonians to identiy with, say, Brampton Town FC than ProStars, a private academy. Minor nitpick, I know, but it just makes the league seem more amateur and harder to connect with than it could be.

Totally agree these Academies should take the name of the area they represent in these leagues at the very least have something in the name that most people would identify the team to the area.

[rydermike]

5 hours ago, SoccMan said:

Totally agree these Academies should take the name of the area they represent in these leagues at the very least have something in the name that most people would identify the team to the area.

So, they should pull a L1BC naming structure?

[Watchmen]

39 minutes ago, rydermike said:

So, they should pull a L1BC naming structure?

The L1BC naming structure is awful.

[Haligonian#1]

On 10/22/2022 at 1:44 PM, Stoppage Time said:

Really interesting look by BurndenAce.   Brampton is a youth soccer hot bed and London does not, as far as I know, have a Pro team. Could York United move to one of those cities? Ideally, York gets settled in a new location, Edmonton gets new ownership and a deal with the city to fix up Clarke stadium, and Somebody like Alex Bunbury can create a franchise in PQ to get that bilingual flavour to the league.

Why do people keep mentioning Alex Bunbury? Yes, he might have a dream to start a CPL Team in Quebec. But does he have the financial capacity to do it? Doubtful. I think the CPL will eventually have two teams in Quebec, but I would be surprised if Alex Bunbury was involved in either one.

[gigi riva]

Hey guys thanks for all the input in this thread  that I started som far .  Also I am glad to see if the rumours are true  over 10000 for the final in Ottawa 

[Kingston]

On 10/21/2022 at 10:23 PM, gigi riva said:

York should be relocated to a London Ont, or KW region

Both of these would be good options if they were done correctly.  The biggest issue would be the stadium.

In London, Western Alumni Stadium (seats 8000) would be a good option.  In KW, University Stadium would work well as it seats 6000 and is right by the LRT.  These two choices would require the CPL to relent on its reported ban on using university facilities.  If the league didn't then having a successful team would require the owners to build their own suitable stadium.  I'm not sure where those would go in either city.

If York moved, rather than adding new teams, it would avoid having half the league in Ontario.  (If that would be considered a problem.)

[Ozzie_the_parrot]

26 minutes ago, Kingston said:

...In London, Western Alumni Stadium (seats 8000) would be a good option...

Unfortunately, it wouldn't. It was deliberately designed to be unsuitable for pro soccer in terms of how the field dimensions fit into the running track in a York 9 season one sort of way despite the efforts of the late Jim Kernaghan of the Free Press to highlight the issue. UWO only cared about their gridiron team at the time. Soccer was very much an afterthought. Probably still is.

From what I remember CanPL looked at University Stadium in K/W before the league launched and concluded it wasn't suitable. There has been talk that they don't want to use U-sports stadia and that's been a stumbling block where Quebec expansion is concerned.

There was a group that wanted a K/W team at launch but finding a suitable stadium was the stumbling block. There was said to be a parcel of land they were after for a Halifax style pop-up that was owned by a local school board (?) but that didn't happen either, unfortunately.

[Kingston]

Well, like I said, the biggest issue with either of those markets would be the stadium.

[Ansem]

On 10/21/2022 at 10:23 PM, gigi riva said:

York should be relocated to a London Ont, or KW region

Why? They are relocating at Woodbine 

[narduch]

Just now, Ansem said:

Why? They are relocating at Woodbine 

Is that happening though?

[K Edgar]

6 hours ago, Kingston said:

These two choices would require the CPL to relent on its reported ban on using university facilities.

I don't understand this "ban" -- Valour's stadium is on the U of Manitoba and York play at university too (I believe).  So what is the "ban"?  Obviously there are exceptions...

[narduch]

There is no ban on University stadiums.

There is a ban on Canadian football lines on the pitch 

[SthMelbRed]

3 hours ago, K Edgar said:

I don't understand this "ban" -- Valour's stadium is on the U of Manitoba and York play at university too (I believe).  So what is the "ban"?  Obviously there are exceptions...

Are you telling me that he's disingenuously misrepresented facts to fit his own moronic narrative? I don't believe you!

[Ozzie_the_parrot]

10 hours ago, Kingston said:

Well, like I said, the biggest issue with either of those markets would be the stadium.

CanPL did reportedly look at London as a possibility around the time that the league was launching. FC London's owner proposed in the Free Press that a parking lot diagonally opposite the London Hydro building on Horton Street on the other side of the tracks from where the Knights have their arena and baseball's Labatt Park is located would be a suitable location for a Langford style municipal stadium at some future point. That didn't really get anywhere and a guy on Reddit has claimed that there is an issue with the land being contaminated.

The ethnic social club fields that FC London have used in PDL and L1O are too small to accomodate the 5000+ capacity that CanPL wants so nothing is likely to happen in London any time soon. So now PDL or USLD1 is off limits in sanctioning terms a glorified Toronto amateur league in the shape of L1O is all that's on offer beyond WOSL premier. I'm a bit out of the loop these days but most soccer people in London have tended to tune that sort of setup out completely and stick to what they are involved with in participation terms locally and what's available on cable or via the internet from overseas to get their soccer fix.

Edited October 28, 2022 by Ozzie_the_parrot

[Ozzie_the_parrot]

9 hours ago, K Edgar said:

I don't understand this "ban" -- Valour's stadium is on the U of Manitoba and York play at university too (I believe)...

It revolves around the optics of being a D1. Think it should be obvious why that's not an issue in the Valour's case given it's a CFL stadium first and foremost. York Lions was only supposed to be a temporary stopgap until a new 12,000 seat soccer specific stadium was built out in the boonies past Vaughan. Think that's where the CSA still wants their National Training Centre to be built using 2026 hosting related money but York United now prefer a move to Woodbine and appear to be angling for the same funding for that which may be a problem.