Canadian Premier league

Discussion in 'Canada' started by mikehurst21, Feb 3, 2016.

  1. MississaugaSG

    MississaugaSG New Member

    Canada
    Jun 21, 2017
    Mississauga, Ontario
    Nat'l Team:
    Canada
    I don't think you're entirely wrong, and it's precisely my job to help change that. Give the people something that's close to home, relatively cheap to attend and build an identity residents can identify with...the untapped potential is enormous.
     
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  2. TOareaFan

    TOareaFan Member+

    Jun 19, 2008
    Greater Toronto Area
    Club:
    Toronto FC
    Nat'l Team:
    Canada
    I did not know it was your job.....so I will wish you well with it.

    First place I would start is trying to figure out why so many have failed in the same endeavour before.
     
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  3. MississaugaSG

    MississaugaSG New Member

    Canada
    Jun 21, 2017
    Mississauga, Ontario
    Nat'l Team:
    Canada
    As the leader of the supporters group, I'm taking it upon myself to try and be a catalyst for change. Certainly not being paid for it.

    I'll tell you exactly why. Identity. The last time a team from here was branded as purely Mississauga was the first IceDogs (OHL). Since then, the team has changed names twice. The team relocated to Niagara (becoming the Niagara IceDogs) while the Toronto St. Michael's Majors became the Mississauga St. Michael's Majors (Mississauga out of convenience rather than by choice since St. Mikes needed a new stadium and were an OHL staple). Then, just a few years later, the team rebranded as the Mississauga Steelheads. A fish. Doesn't exactly inspire people despite the team actually performing quite well. I was there on opening night for the IceDogs. The building was rocking and fans loved it.

    Give the people something that belongs to them, something they can culturally identify with, and they'll back it. I have no doubt about it.
     
  4. Robert Borden

    Robert Borden Member+

    Chelsea
    Canada
    Apr 19, 2017
    Toronto, Ontario
    Nat'l Team:
    Canada
    That's why there's marketing to communicate that to the fans and they will judge on that themselves. I get that the concept of having more than 1 major league for the same sport is a foreign concept to most but fans will get it, especially Millenials who grew up being fans of multiple leagues at the same time thanks to European soccer. MLS and CPL is the same, 2 very different division 1 leagues.

    I concede Boomers and X might share your view, but Millenials? I'm very confident they will.

    Your generation have doubts and I get it. You've seen the fall of the CSL and knew nothing else than US Major league (Except CFL and NHL that became American under "uncle Gary").

    Your generation had the purchasing power and indeed supported major league ahead of local minor leagues. But once my generation gain that purchasing power, look what happened to the Jays and Raptors as shown in the Sportsnet charts. When the Skydome was getting more empty year after years, it filled up once the purchasing power of Millenials started to increase.

    After the fall of the CSL, everyone in Canada thought soccer was never going to fly here. Who made TFC, MTL and VAN jumps to MLS a resounding success? Millenials, because many of the MLS/TFC naysayers were Boomers and Gen X while we were excited to get some of that European action closer to home.

    We grew up at the age of internet and social media being able to see how soccer worked elsewhere and being fans of multiple D1 leagues at the same time. I love Chelsea in EPL, Monaco in Ligue 1, Napoli in Serie A and Atlético in La Liga. All Division 1 leagues but I'm fully aware that the Spanish League is stronger than the French league. The whole MLS vs CPL thing will be the same for us. We know MLS will be stronger in the short to medium term than CPL, but that doesn't mean CPL won't be a top league. For me, our little clash is a generational thing. I get where you're coming from but it's a mistake to project your values and beliefs onto the next generation.

    The timing of CPL is excellent. It seems they have clearly identify their target customers and they are going at it hard.
     
  5. TOareaFan

    TOareaFan Member+

    Jun 19, 2008
    Greater Toronto Area
    Club:
    Toronto FC
    Nat'l Team:
    Canada
    Well, that is an abbreviated history of OHL in Mississauga....and not entirely all encompassing.......but if you think it comes down to just the use of a (local/indigenous) fish as the nickname/logo...you have a challenge ahead of you ;)
     
  6. TOareaFan

    TOareaFan Member+

    Jun 19, 2008
    Greater Toronto Area
    Club:
    Toronto FC
    Nat'l Team:
    Canada
    You should get to know people before you get all condescending with them.....prior to being a Peel resident, I was a resident of a city that has a smaller population than Peel, has 3 >50k soccer stadiums (and I attended one every other week) and 5 senior professional clubs.....but I also understand that North American sports/markets are different than the ones overseas.
     
  7. MississaugaSG

    MississaugaSG New Member

    Canada
    Jun 21, 2017
    Mississauga, Ontario
    Nat'l Team:
    Canada
    What you consider a challenge, I consider fun. I'm looking forward to it :)
     
  8. Robert Borden

    Robert Borden Member+

    Chelsea
    Canada
    Apr 19, 2017
    Toronto, Ontario
    Nat'l Team:
    Canada
    What certainty? I said more likely, not for sure.

    We know that many of the TFC supporters you see playing drums and light up smoke are just as excited if not more for the arrival of CPL. So yes, Hardcore fans will still see TFC and/or both.

    Casuals? If they weren't checking out TFC for a variety of reasons (distance, travel, costs etc...) in the past, why would they be more likely to support TFC next year once CPL arrives near where they live? Especially when the distance is shorter, they are cheaper to see and are as available on TV as TFC?

    I'm just saying, CPL going to the fans versus MLS expecting fans to go to them will be interesting to see which philosophy will win in the end.
     
  9. Robert Borden

    Robert Borden Member+

    Chelsea
    Canada
    Apr 19, 2017
    Toronto, Ontario
    Nat'l Team:
    Canada
    I'm using data and stats. If you find them condescending to you, you should complain to whoever gathers those stats
     
  10. crazypete13

    crazypete13 Moderator
    Staff Member

    May 7, 2007
    A walk from BMO
    Club:
    Toronto FC
    FWIW - getting around in any big city anywhere is comparable.

    Mississauga to Toronto is comparable to Bellevue to Seattle - by car at least.
     
  11. TOareaFan

    TOareaFan Member+

    Jun 19, 2008
    Greater Toronto Area
    Club:
    Toronto FC
    Nat'l Team:
    Canada
    No actually you said they "will"....there is no more statement of certainty.

    and you continue to
     
  12. TOareaFan

    TOareaFan Member+

    Jun 19, 2008
    Greater Toronto Area
    Club:
    Toronto FC
    Nat'l Team:
    Canada
    you responded to my doubts with a lecture about how my generation does not get it but millennials will/do....that fits my definition of condescending.
     
  13. crazypete13

    crazypete13 Moderator
    Staff Member

    May 7, 2007
    A walk from BMO
    Club:
    Toronto FC
    Ugh - please don't lump Gen X with Boomers to make this point. If you must use these labels - us Xers tend to identify with Millennials far more than Boomers especially for sports viewership.

    Anywho - if you are only targeting younger cohorts - you are missing all the old school fans that actually remember the rigamarole to watch games in the pre-internet era, and actually trundled off the pub Saturday morning to watch the satellite feed for their fix.

    These people get 'support local football' because they are fans first and foremost, and it's a damn sight easier and cheaper than other options.
     
  14. TOareaFan

    TOareaFan Member+

    Jun 19, 2008
    Greater Toronto Area
    Club:
    Toronto FC
    Nat'l Team:
    Canada
    I just re-read your post (to see if, perhaps, I had mistaken all those paragraphs that started with "your" as directed at me personally and condescending)....the only thing I noticed on the second read was the absolute lack of data and stats.

    Maybe you accidentally deleted them in and edit?
     
  15. Robert Borden

    Robert Borden Member+

    Chelsea
    Canada
    Apr 19, 2017
    Toronto, Ontario
    Nat'l Team:
    Canada
    Forget my lecture then, but facts are facts. Soccer interest in Canada sharply declined under the Boomers, doubled with Gen X and then Millenials.

    Joey Saputo said that 75% of Montreal Impact fans are less than 45 years old with 50% of them being 18-34. MLS saying they will no longer expand in Canada, expecting the whole country to go to them left the door wide open for CPL to go where soccer fans live and work.

    What worked for the 7 NHL Clubs, Raptors or Jays won't work for MLS. Contrarily to the other major leagues, MLS isn't the bigger or the best league on the planet. Thanks to the media, if I want the best, I watch the Champions league and European tournaments and World Cups. In contrast, if I want the best basketball, hockey or baseball on the planet, I have to watch NBA, NHL or MLB. It isn't the case for MLS. That's why I believe a very competitive Mississauga team will draw more than you think.

    As much as you keep hitting the point that CPL won't be better than MLS, everyone knows that MLS is far from being the best either. Beirne set the blueprint on how to have successful clubs and how it's important to relate to the community and fans. If you ask me, CPL is in a way better position to make that argument in Mississauga than TFC
     
  16. Robert Borden

    Robert Borden Member+

    Chelsea
    Canada
    Apr 19, 2017
    Toronto, Ontario
    Nat'l Team:
    Canada
    I stand corrected, sorry. Soccer got a huge boost under Gen X, that is a fact
     
  17. Yoshou

    Yoshou Fan of the CCL Champ

    May 12, 2009
    Seattle
    Club:
    Seattle Sounders
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    While this is certainly fair statement, that doesn't necessarily mean that people in Mississauga will go to CPL games. Soccer fans in many MLS markets seem to prefer the English Premier League over the local product and I'm not sure this will be different for CPL teams.

    The Welsh Premier League is the top division in Wales with the winner getting a bid into the UCL qualifying rounds and three Europa league spots in their qualification rounds. They also get to play in the Welsh Cup, the winner of which qualifies for the Europa League. Yet, Welsh soccer fans prefer the English Premier League.

    Being branded the top division in a country is no guarantee that they will be treated as such.

    Oddly enough, with Seattle's POS transit system, I think I'm uniquely qualified to understand how hard it is to get to the local MLS team's stadium. :)

    Far too early to make this statement.
     
  18. TOareaFan

    TOareaFan Member+

    Jun 19, 2008
    Greater Toronto Area
    Club:
    Toronto FC
    Nat'l Team:
    Canada
    You have a link to support that?

    This may be true.....but I am a "best seat in the house" kinda guy....and the few games I have gone to in Montreal I have experienced the same thing that I experience every week in Toronto.....the seats that actually pay the bills are occupied buy guys that look a lot like me......sure we get the odd younger guy/gal in there when Dad either brings them or can't make it so gave them the tickets.

    Unlike the Impact, TFC has never made overt statements about demographics....likely because all those premium seat buyers that allow them to have a high payroll might take offense to being told they don't matter ;)


    This is exactly why I had initial high hopes for CPL.....I think it is a league that could work if it avoided Van/Mtl/TO and their burbs for the first 5 to 10 years. My doubts over the league grew rapidly when they started making noises about being in all 3 of those markets.

    MLS is still going to be viewed as a superior product to CPL and if a fan's goal is to view the best available to them live.....they will go to Impact, TFC, Whitecaps games....last time I checked, each of them have seats available and better talent than CPL could ever hope to attract.
     
  19. TOareaFan

    TOareaFan Member+

    Jun 19, 2008
    Greater Toronto Area
    Club:
    Toronto FC
    Nat'l Team:
    Canada
    You know what coincided with that?

    The availability of the product.....Vancouver, Toronto, Montreal all had teams in the old NASL that drew reasonably well.....that was at a time when Gen Xers and Millenials were not even glimmers in the eyes of their boomer parents......then there was a long period of time when there was no product for which an expression of interest by fans could be expressed.

    The only product that came along in the meantime was the all Canadian league that, as we know, failed miserably.
     
  20. Yoshou

    Yoshou Fan of the CCL Champ

    May 12, 2009
    Seattle
    Club:
    Seattle Sounders
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    Point of contention here.. While I'm not going to disagree that interest in soccer has jumped in Canada, much of that interest is only in the English Premier League and the Canadian National Teams. Much like the US, many Canadian soccer fans just aren't following local club soccer teams. MLS has been struggling with this issue ever since it was formed and I'm not sure CPL will be able to find the key that unlocks that problem...
     
  21. Robert Borden

    Robert Borden Member+

    Chelsea
    Canada
    Apr 19, 2017
    Toronto, Ontario
    Nat'l Team:
    Canada
    I think CPL biggest challenge will be TV/social media viewership. Attendance actually worries me the less

    Yes but EPL is a top 5 league in the world. Surely you aren't putting MLS in that category, right? If the league next door was La Liga with 3 teams in Canada, oh boy would I have doubts about CPL, but c'mon, it's MLS. You can't even begin to compare Welsh/England and Canada/US
     
  22. Kingston

    Kingston Member+

    Oct 6, 2005
    You've mentioned a generational gap before. While there is a trend toward more soccer interest in younger Canadians, I don't think anyone on the "everything CPL isn't guaranteed to come up roses" side of things is concerned with the ages of the fans.

    Without presuming to speak for everyone on my side of the discussion, it is the overly optimistic assumptions on the pro-CPL side that make me wonder. When I see charts with 30 teams in multi-division pro-rel leagues for a CPL that hasn't kicked a ball yet, it makes me wonder about how firmly grounded the plans are. When probing questions are asked, the answer very often turns out to be some variation of "Canadians will support it" or "local people will support it" or "Beirne says". Those aren't answers, those are hopes.

    There also seem to be a lot of assumptions being paraded as facts. Fans will change previous patterns in the GTA and start supporting lower quality teams in large numbers. The CPL champions will get a CCL spot. Cities of 200 000 are going to going to draw 7000 to a new soccer league when they don't even draw that much for long established hockey leagues. Because the CPL will be classified as D1 it will attract lots of fans, regardless of the actual level of play. Multiple teams in one metro will work.

    I want the CPL to succeed. I just think it might be more realistic to consider scenarios where every single thing that is tried doesn't end in a resounding success. For example, instead of figuring out how to do pro/rel when the league hits 16 teams, what do we do in year four when three of the original eight teams are only drawing 2500 fans per game? How does the league respond if they put teams in Mississauga, Vaughan, and Toronto proper only to find out the fans in the GTA actually do prefer TFC? What if budgets a quarter the size of MLS produce a level of play that may be better than the USL/NASL but still pales compared to MLS live or Eurosoccer on TV in the eyes of fans? It's unlikely that the CPL will hit only home runs. Just a thought.
     
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  23. TOareaFan

    TOareaFan Member+

    Jun 19, 2008
    Greater Toronto Area
    Club:
    Toronto FC
    Nat'l Team:
    Canada
    Unfair that I can only rep this once.

    No one wants to see CPL fail....but hopefully someone at the league reads this post.
     
  24. crazypete13

    crazypete13 Moderator
    Staff Member

    May 7, 2007
    A walk from BMO
    Club:
    Toronto FC
    I'd be shocked if the CSA/CPL haven't done due diligence on why the CSL failed as part of all this.

    The reality is, soccer has been popular here for over a century - some leagues/products are better than others at capitalizing on that.
     
  25. Robert Borden

    Robert Borden Member+

    Chelsea
    Canada
    Apr 19, 2017
    Toronto, Ontario
    Nat'l Team:
    Canada
    And participation. More Canadians play soccer than even hockey.

    @TOareaFan Something that never happened under the Boomers ;)

    I used to be a TFC fan up until last year. I just can't relate to them. Canadians are too scarce on that team, worst in Montreal to actively care anymore. This was made painfully obvious when TFC played Montreal in last year Eastern Finals where no more than 3 Canadians at a time were on the pitch. Then you dig about why is that and the whole thing turns you off. CBC and many media wrote about the lack of Canadian content in MLS. TFC being a horrible organization for all those years didn't help matters.

    As for Montreal, people are starting to question why there aren't more Quebecker and Canadians on that team. I'm from Quebec and when Bernier was constantly benched, it created an uproar among the fans and media. Why Tabla, Bernier or Jackson-Hamel aren't the faces of the team is a mystery to me a a marketing mistake of epic proportion. Hardcore fans love Montreal Impact but the rest of the province don't care one bit about them, not even the suburb. Can't relate to it. I don't know Vancouver enough to have an opinion on the matter but i'm hearing similar echoes although they are easily the most "Canadian" of the 3.

    As for MLS clubs, setting shop in the suburbs and targeting soccer moms instead of urbanites was a mistake and a blueprint on how not to start a league. MLS learned from it and you can see it with each expansion coming into the league. Revolution should be in Boston and called Boston. It's a missed opportunity for a rivalry with Montreal (the majority have no clue it's in Boston)

    Chicago should have the team on each side of the river, it's big enough for that, not in the suburb. MLS will only get better in the US, to their credit, they've learned from past and current mistakes. They just need to figure the TV part.

    Nothing's ever for sure in life but by looking at how TFC was the blueprint on how to have a proper expansion and how to relate to the fans, it's reasonable to be optimistic. Beirne was TFC's first employee and now he's CPL first employee.

    A lot of analysis on what killed the CSL and what didn't work in MLS gave them a map of what not to do. Anything similar to how TFC was build up for each new CPL clubs will be a step in the right direction.

    Believe that in the Voyageurs forums, we've dissected every aspects of this league to death and many optimists fan were initially the biggest pessimists about it. We have enough details to be optimistic about it.

    Sure, we're divided on teams thriving in the big 3, however, it completely absurd to insinuate that the GTA (over 6M people) can't support more than 1 team.
     

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