The design of CPL is based on not repeating what happened to CSL. Beirne said shaddy and incompetent ownership killed the CSL, not the lack of support for the league or sport. That's the #1 thing that turned things around when Montagliani came out and said that owners would have very deep pockets (billionaires status) willing and able to lose money, not in the short or medium term, but long term to build the league Thorough due diligence on potential owners will be made and only the best will have teams. Those are things CSL never had. Hamilton with Bob Young and Winnipeg with the Blue Bombers is off to an incredible start in that regard. Who else but those 2 are in a better position to sell soccer within their respective markets? We know that Calgary will be owned by the Flames Their job is to keep this up.
The one advantage CPL will have over MLS is that every game will involve 2 Canadian markets, so TV broadcasts won't lose half the matchup to a US broadcaster. Downside, the markets CPL will be in are smaller, so that'll have an impact on their ratings as well. As far as attendance goes, depends on your numbers. 5k is certainly doable given Ottawa's success, but I'm not sure that is sustainable given the minimum salary and salary budget that you've been presenting in this thread. Problem is, it's not just MLS that CPL has to compete with. They'll also be competing with the EPL. Just like there are Canadians that refuse to attend a MLS game because it is inferior to EPL, there will be Canadians that refuse to attend a CPL game because it is inferior to EPL and/or MLS. This will be particularly true for teams in MLS markets.
I am 55....born in the last official year of the boomers....I was still playing competitively when soccer first became the #1 team sport by participation in Canada
I don't disagree with this at all. I, obviously, tend to be on the side of the CPL dreamer. You're right, a ball hasn't been kicked yet. There's only sparse bits of information available about the league, how it's going to work or its current 2 teams. That's precisely why there are likely more dreamers than there are realists. I don't have a problem either way. I think dreaming about small market teams across the country and growing a league from the ground up is something very exciting to the growing soccer community, there's absolutely nothing wrong with it and shouldn't cause any kind of issues of whether the plans are grounded or not. It's a wonderful and new thing for Canadian soccer fans to dream about something other than when our national team will crash out of qualification. It's refreshing. There's no definitive way of answering a probing question until we start kicking some balls. The success or failure depends on how the fans cope with what I'm sure will be a very low quality brand of the sport (at the beginning) and how well the teams are marketed. If it doesn't work, then it doesn't work. At least we as a soccer community can say we tried. These are all my opinions. All I can say is, I hope there is a team in my city and I will do everything I can to make it a success.
They did, extensively and they also looked at what MLS did wrong to avoid the same mistakes. Seems some people like to forget that it almost folded as well
It is always a combination of things that kill any business. If there had been attendance to support the business....the starting net worth of the individual owners would not have been an issue...would it? That's the #1 thing that turned things around when Montagliani came out and said that owners would have very deep pockets (billionaires status) willing and able to lose money, not in the short or medium term, but long term to build the league Thorough due diligence on potential owners will be made and only the best will have teams. [/quote] Only billionaires need apply? Well that is a pretty shallow pool in Canada and would seem to point in the direction that, despite their stadium success yesterday, the Halifax group is a non-starter then.
Perfectly reasonable response.....and far different from the other, concurrent, conversation that just states it will be a success because, well it will be a success.
According to this: Soccer vs. hockey: Who plays what in Canada http://www.macleans.ca/society/the-good-ol-soccer-game/ I seriously doubt more people played soccer than hockey in the 70s, let alone the 60s...but I could be wrong
No one forgets that MLS had early life struggles......what some of us don't get is why a) that matters now in the discussion of it's relative attractiveness to suburban Toronto soccer fans; and b) why the difficulty in establishing that league is seemingly dismissed and we are lectured about how CPL "will" be a success.
All that shows is that since they started graphing that (1998) soccer has always been the number one sport....I played competitively into the early 80's....and I recall the pronouncements by the CSA back then that it was the number 1 sport.
Ballpark, and in regards to Halifax, not sure it's public who's backing the bid financially. I don't think they own the team. From their website: Sports & Entertainment Atlantic Sports & Entertainment Atlantic provides strategic, professional solutions in the event, sport and entertainment industry. We partner with government, the private sector and amateur sport organizations to imagine and produce memorable experiences that connect our community and deliver outstanding value. Are we short of very rich Canadians? http://www.canadianbusiness.com/lis...t-people/100-richest-canadians-complete-list/
Youth participation is a horrible metric to determine how popular the professional version of that sport will be. Youth soccer has been either #1 or #2 in the US for as long as I can remember, but, for the most part, that hasn't translated into the professional sport being popular. It certainly hasn't translated into the local league being popular. While youth participation among millennials and GenZ are up, it's because Boomers and GenX are putting them into those programs... If MLS is learning from it's mistakes, it's certainly doing it oddly.. Real Salt Lake is in a suburb of Salt Lake City, San Jose's stadium move isn't anywhere near San Jose's downtown core (It literally moved to the other side of a railroad track from its previous location), Sporting Kansas City's new stadium is in a suburb of Kansas City, KS on the opposite side of KC, KS from KC, MO, the Union are in a suburb of Philadelphia, Minnesota United's new stadium is going to be in a suburb of Minneapolis. The problem with MLS teams attendance has less to do with the location of the teams and far more to do with the quality of the front office. Teams that have good attendance tend to have a good front office, those that have an inferior front office have poor attendance...
It could have been...my playing days were mid 70s to mid 80s.....sometime in that period the CSA pronounced soccer the most popular sport.....my fading old boomer memory does not let me remember exactly when they did that.....you pronounced that soccer being more popular (from a participation point of view) than hockey did not happen during boomer years.
You'd have fun in the Voyageurs with our resident naysayer, he's way more pessimistic than you are The difficulty of establishing a league is not dismissed at all. I know it will be hard. My biggest concern is TV contract. The league claims that travel costs and only 5-7k allows them to break even...ok. So outside of sponsorship and being very conservative on other expenses, TV revenues should allow you to "break even". But from inside info on the matter, I'm pessimistic. Some TV broadcasters are too greedy, some are interested and one broadcaster I deemed vital for the league won't be broadcasting it as they are trying to get out of the sport business entirely. That for me is a concern, a big one. In term of attendance, the bar is set very low and I get it, so I'm not concerned about their ability to hit their targets. If they don't, bigger markets will compensate. Bob Young was asked directly if it will be a single entity league, so was Beirne and it seems that the league won't be single entity but hints points to heavy sharing of revenues. I like the model so far from what was said but if you can't translate that in viewership, which in terms gets you more sponsors, it will get very costly. I get now why only very deep pocket owners will be accepted otherwise, this would just be CSL 2.0 or NASL. They seem adamant on spending on talent...so yeah, losing money for at least a decade is an understatement. So no, I see the challenges. I'm worried about the big 3 cities, not their suburbs. No one cares about Montreal Impact outside of Montreal Island, so Laval and Longueuil would be hard but could work. The sheer size of the GTA tells me multiple clubs can work but at the right place. I don't like hearing about Vaughan so soon. I don't like hearing Brampton either. Same for Abbotsford and I'm relieved that Surrey could be Fraser Valley's team. So no need to mistake my optimism with me living in fantasy. If you want I can start nitpicking on things that could go wrong and mistakes the league could do.
take that list of 92 billionaires and parse through it.......look for "families" and you will shorten the list (because if a family of 5 has a net worth of $1B then you really have 5 people who have net worths of $200MM each)....then look at each of what is left and you will shorten your list of potential billionaire CPL owners considerably....some own teams you plan to compete with and (and this shocks many sports fans) some billionaires have zero interest in sports.
I see, I thought newer expansion were doing it right. All those teams being downtown would have hit an homerun
Who said all the owners would be Canadians? We know of at least 2 being foreigners with one of them being a huge surprise. Only thing I can say is that one of them owns multiple major sports franchise and but his city will never have an MLS franchise. He showed interest in the city of Toronto for CPL
I'm okay with single table, but there is still going to be a need for playoffs because the only way you'll get a balanced 28-game schedule is with 8 or 15 clubs. Other than those two numbers and the schedule becomes unbalanced and clubs could complain that they had a harder schedule and are better than the table winner. I think 10 years is the hump the league will have to get over in order to be considered stable and if they can reach 12 clubs, that would be a critical mass when the health of the league wouldn't feel threatened if clubs were to leave or join. I don't see pro/rel being implemented until they have at least 20 teams, the CPL will break into conferences first. Now pardon me while I go and cheer on TFC tonight.
Are you sure CPL will be getting paid for their TV broadcast? MLS had to pay to get their games broadcast initially and the other US leagues are either still paying and/or are paying for production costs. Of course, since this is a CSA operation and CPL teams are forming a SUM like marketing company, we could see CPL games bundled with Canadian national team broadcasts.
I view myself as pragmatic....and, as I said, was initially optimistic about this league....but nowhere near your level of optimistic. The two bolded part of your statement above are, I suggest, oxymoronic in nature. In what world is attendance targets of 5 - 7k "very low"? There is a very big difference between having deep pockets and being willing to put your hands in them too often. In my social circle there are a few rich guys......a couple of them very rich....and one of them hyper rich. The hyper rich guy asked me recently why I always pay for meals when we get together....my answer was "If I don't we can't leave the restaurant....they like someone to pay at the end of the meal". Firstly, what evidence do you have that no one in Laval cares about Impact and, secondly, what evidence do you have that they would care about a CPL club instead. Other than being a resident of Mississauga (I think you said that)....why would you be so optimistic about that city of 721,5999 (census 2016) that grew by a total of 1.1% in the last five years but don't like hearing about Brampton....a city of 593,638 that grew by 13.3% over the same 5 years? One city with a growth rate roughly 1/5 of the national average and one with nearly 3X the national average growth rate. Particularly since Brampton has the lowest average age of any large municipality in Canada (ie. a lot more of those millennials that you tell me make the CPL work).
Depending which route CSA/CPL heads, there's no guaranteed their 1st TV contract gets them much initially. I can't disclose the name of the broadcasters but some want total exclusivity, others are interested but too small to generate the revenue needed on it's own. There's interest from outside broadcasters to buy CPL but domestically, it ain't looking good so far...
Honestly, I have no interest in changing how you think about the CPL....I just wish you would make a better effort at not presenting your statements of unbridled optimism as fait accompli
Again, it's not the location that determines how successful a team will be. In MLS the #1 indicator is whether they are an expansion team or not (Of the original clubs only LAG is above the league average with the remaining 9 being among the 13 below average teams) and how good of an FO they have (with the exception of TFC which seems remarkably resilient to an incompetent FO).
Either of us could be right or wrong in the end. It isn't low on it's own but they are saying "break even" for me that's low in regards to how much it will costs to run those teams. Granted they said the league won't be dependant on ticket sales but still... it's hard to wrap my head around how much money owners will be dumping each years to sustain that...hence my worry about the TV deal. That's actually from Montagliani himself. Owners will be doing both (have deep pockets and willing to do it long term). The announcement of the league was delayed numerous time as Victor said as long as it wasn't in writing and owners didn't sign anything, no announcements would be made. So far, Montagliani gave no one a reason to doubt him Joey Saputo himself said it during a Journal de Montreal interview. He acknowledge that he needs to do better to connect with the rest of the province starting with Montreal Metro. He admitted that Impact was completely absent. Then he said he had yet to break even since joining MLS and hoped to do that within 5 years. I have little reason to doubt the man and media in the area agrees as well...even Garber said as much. Regarding Brampton, as I said, it's just me but Mississauga is bigger and have infrastructure and urbanism plans that will make it even more attractive. That's just me thought. Nothing scientific about it.