A Reflection Following the Mess with the Panama Game: Of the Dangers of Canadian Soccer Focusing Too much on the CPL

[phil03]

Note: This one touched a lot of aspects of Canadian Soccer so I didn't know where to put it. I chose the Men's national team forum as it is events on that side who lead me to write it but if the mods feel it should go elsewhere please move it!

Warning: Long post, a bit of a rant and some stuff that is based on educated guesses on my side.

Alright, I first apologize in advance as my opinions here might not sit well with many. I hesitated to share them before since I am still one of the new kids on the block but since I think the subject of this one is a big part of the causes of the current mess with the men’s team, I feel it’s a discussion that might be worth having.

I also want to make a key disclaimer before getting going: my favourite club might not be in the CPL, but I think the league is a worthy and worthwhile project that I hope to see succeed and I am watching my local team every week.

With that disclaimer made, I do feel that there is a key issue surrounding that project as we speak: the sense among some that it ought to be seen as basically the supreme priority for Canadian, even at the expense of other facets of the game in the country.

At the very top of this site’s article page there is a plea for the three MLS teams to be essentially forcibly inserted into the CPL. This is even though the finances of those clubs are simply not built for it and that doing so would remove a significant professional avenue for Canadian players, as it would not only remove three MLS teams where Canadians can be domestic players but also remove opportunities currently available through the ‘’homegrown’’ clause, where players having been in MLS academies are automatically considered domestic players. It also ignores the obvious, and frankly overwhelmingly probable, risks coming with these clubs not going quietly and triggering a massive crisis in Canadian Soccer, as between Saputo and Maple Leafs Sports and Entertainment you have plenty of contacts in FIFA and in the Canadian business and political world to try to push back, without even going into potential legal moves…

Now, if this bias was only limited to fans and some medias it would not be that big of a deal but it can be seen in some of the CSA’s recent moves and decision, such as how the berths for the new format of the CONCACAF Champions League are distributed (which I assume the CSA was consulted on the Canadian ones) and the decision to hold the 2020 Voyageurs Cup Final at all.

The impetus in term of distributing the brackets for the CCL should be the success of Canadian Soccer as a whole. Imo there is two empirical metrics to determine this: how well do Canadian teams do in the CCL and how playing there can help players in the men’s national team become better and get transfers to even higher level of plays. In both regards I’d argue that instead of giving it to the regular season champion in the CPL it should have gone to the runner up of the Voyageurs Cup, and that doing so would also have the merit of being fairer since they are, you know, the better them as decided on the pitch. Now, I can imagine someone in the CSA would try to tell me that ‘’but, you see we have so much faith in MLS teams to qualify through the MLS route…’’ to which I would answer ‘’nice try, but I am just not buying this!’’ One slot guaranteed for the CPL to help it grow is fair enough but two is pushing things.

Similarly, there is just no reason for the Voyageurs Cup 2020 to be played. There is no slot in the CCL to be decided nor tournament already partly played to finish there. Moreover, adding it in the schedule can’t help for TFC, as they are struggling to save their season and could have used the extra time off. The only rational explanation for that was to give the CPL a one shot at a multi leagues trophy, the logic of it and the needs of the other team be damned.

However, in the grand scheme of things none of this is super, duper important. An issue, sure, but not a massive one, or so I thought until today and the mess with Panama. This is when some very nice forum members where kind enough to explain to me the deal with Canada Soccer Business, the ‘’Hamilton Mafia’’ as some call them, and how all the rights of our national teams have essentially been signed to them.

My reaction was to be dumbfounded. How could they have done such a thing? It make no sense, the national teams are by far Canadian Soccer’s biggest assets, they are what you can get people behind and they are what you can make the average Canadian care about the easiest. They are how you push forward the game throughout the country and in Canadian culture. They aren’t the only means to do that, sure, but IMO they are the key one. They are everyone’s teams and their future and earnings should never be signed away so casually.

Then I saw the date where the agreement was made and, combined with the CSB’s key role in it, I came up with a potential explanation: it was essentially about propping the CPL financially. By giving them more or less power over the national teams they could basically force it into a package deal with the CPL regarding broadcasting. It was a way to inject national teams money into the CPL without having to actually do so, which would have met with more push backs, and use revenue from national teams as collateral for it. They took everybody's teams and morgaged their future in the service of only part of Canadian Soccer, of only some people's teams.

I do hope that I am wrong about this one but if I am not its not only stupid, as shown by the current mess, and ethically dicey and cowardly, as its essentially a way to make funding decisions without being open about them, but its also immensely unfair to, lets be honest, all but a relatively small fraction of the Canadian soccer communities. Its unfair to the people having an MLS club as their main club, its unfair to the people just tuning in for the National teams, it is unfair for the people following European clubs first but still caring about the state of the game of the country, is unfair for the fans of the women’s game, it is unfair to people first following a CPL club but still caring more about the national teams, it is unfair to all the young boys and girls playing in our Soccer youth system and the adults giving time and energies to make it work for them, and it is unfair to Canadians as a whole as our national teams are a source of prestige and soft power for the country a whole.

Now, once again, please don’t misunderstand me: I think the CPL is great and an important part of our Soccer ecosystem, nothing less but also nothing more. The whole picture shouldn’t be sacrificed in the name of its specific interests and our national teams ought to essentially be the supreme priority unless there is a massively good reason affecting many other aspects of our Soccer ecosystem, simply because they are how you get people into the game on a practical level. Right now, this means finding a way to get out of the contract with the CSB, somehow, and sadly no matter how bad it might be for the CPL. 

For the future we need to learn from this though, and never let one project, no matter how awesome and sympathy-inducing it is, make us loose track of the whole picture.

Edited June 5, 2022 by phil03

[Free kick]

Cant dispute anything about that.   I would add an other big problem.   they have turned over the growth of soccer in the country to a group of people who are owners of CFL teams.   CFL businesses who compete in the same markets as the CPL teams.  

Edited June 6, 2022 by Free kick

[beachesl]

How about this for a reflection- if Costa Rica loses the interconfederation against Austalia/UAE winner, they get to go to Qatar instead of screwed-up Canada? I f Costa Rica wins, Panama gets to go in our place as well? Just reflecting.

[Colonel Green]

8 hours ago, Free kick said:

CFL businesses who compete in the same markets as the CPL teams.  

And? They operate both.

[SpursFlu]

CPL > Turkish 2nd division 

[InglewoodJack]

I think the elephant in the room WRT the CPL is the fact that you can’t host a World Cup if you don’t have a domestic league, and you can’t become a soccer power if you can’t recruit domestically. While I think the CSB deal is awful and I don’t buy the “we didn’t know we’d be this good so quick” BS- you knew about Davies going to Bayern, you knew you had an abundance of youngsters, you should’ve known that there was a solid chance your program would significantly grow in the 8 years between signing that deal and the WC happened. But ultimately, you need a domestic league with teams from across the nation, which is extra difficult for Canada considering that quasi pro-am teams are travelling further distances than champions league teams do, and purely for (largely inconsequential) regular season matches. 
 

if you can’t grow the game at home, there’s no point in hosting the World Cup in general- and without getting into the existential question over whether or not hosting the WC is a good move, I don’t think there was a scenario in which a minuscule soccer association goes from being a minnow to a world class organization without selling a piece of the pie to moneyed interests. I do hope this leads to a complete clean-house of CSA brass- last night’s presser convinced me that the executives are even less competent than we’d thought, and I think they lost the faith of the country last night. Most Canadian soccer fans are fans of an NHL team, an NFL team, or even a prem team, so we all get exposed to how professional organizations work, so to see what our apparent emerging darlings have to deal with at an executive level is even more disappointing to fans.

 

not sure what the solution here is honestly. I’ve argued that the CPL needs benevolent owners who want a team as a plaything- a very minuscule version of what the sovereign funds are doing with prem teams, and just focus on growing a couple clubs to juggernaut stature à la Scotland, and then grow the game from there. Not that that will ever happen, but it’s clear the CSA has completely lost control of soccer in this country. 
 

Anyways, the even bigger elephant in the room is the fact that all this league BS could be solved if MLS grew up and introduced relegation. Worst Canadian team plays CPL chance for an MLS berth. At least it’ll make the league worth something.

Edited June 6, 2022 by InglewoodJack

[Free kick]

59 minutes ago, InglewoodJack said:

I think the elephant in the room WRT the CPL is the fact that you can’t host a World Cup if you don’t have a domestic league, and you can’t become a soccer power if you can’t recruit domestically. While I think the CSB deal is awful and I don’t buy the “we didn’t know we’d be this good so quick” BS- you knew about Davies going to Bayern, you knew you had an abundance of youngsters, you should’ve known that there was a solid chance your program would significantly grow in the 8 years between signing that deal and the WC happened. But ultimately, you need a domestic league with teams from across the nation, which is extra difficult for Canada considering that quasi pro-am teams are travelling further distances than champions league teams do, and purely for (largely inconsequential) regular season matches. 
 

if you can’t grow the game at home, there’s no point in hosting the World Cup in general- and without getting into the existential question over whether or not hosting the WC is a good move, I don’t think there was a scenario in which a minuscule soccer association goes from being a minnow to a world class organization without selling a piece of the pie to moneyed interests. I do hope this leads to a complete clean-house of CSA brass- last night’s presser convinced me that the executives are even less competent than we’d thought, and I think they lost the faith of the country last night. Most Canadian soccer fans are fans of an NHL team, an NFL team, or even a prem team, so we all get exposed to how professional organizations work, so to see what our apparent emerging darlings have to deal with at an executive level is even more disappointing to fans.

 

not sure what the solution here is honestly. I’ve argued that the CPL needs benevolent owners who want a team as a plaything- a very minuscule version of what the sovereign funds are doing with prem teams, and just focus on growing a couple clubs to juggernaut stature à la Scotland, and then grow the game from there. Not that that will ever happen, but it’s clear the CSA has completely lost control of soccer in this country. 
 

Anyways, the even bigger elephant in the room is the fact that all this league BS could be solved if MLS grew up and introduced relegation. Worst Canadian team plays CPL chance for an MLS berth. At least it’ll make the league worth something.

To me the CPL was not setup and created to succeed. As is obvious now.     You are right when you say that "its pretty clear that it exists so that we could host the WC in 2026.   With the current model,  you can safely predict that after 2026 and when the deal expires with CSB, it will very likely fold because it will not be viable.   Its pretty obvious now in the past 12 hours that it was created as a smokescreeen whereby the puppeteer is in the background pocketing their real  earning off of the backs of the national teams and its players under the umbrella called CSB.  

When the league started, i stayed silent here.  I didnt want to rehash what I mentioned over the 20 years of what makes a league successful.   Such as:  You need markets of certain size,  you need a sufficient number of them,  you need markets where there is interest in the game from entertainment business perspective, You need investors who are committed and in it for the long run,  You need proper facilities,  you need quality on the pitch in terms of having product to sell,  and you have to have budget to pay for quality.  And way too many other things to mention here again.  The CPL doesn't really have any of that.  It has some mid sized markets but if we are honest with ourselves, these are AAA or minor pro markets in the bigger context of North America.    Hence, as a CPL club, you don't have earning potential that bigger cities in MLS markets have (for example) and that money that wont accrue to the league nor ultimately accrue to player development.  becasue its just smaller. 

The Deliote report (or was it price waterhouse cant recall) of the early 2000's correctly noted that pro league (with teams only in Canadian cities) for soccer in Canada is not viable.   This makes sense, if you look at our geography, demographics, population distribution and so forth and so forth.   

Edited June 6, 2022 by Free kick

[InglewoodJack]

2 minutes ago, Free kick said:

To me the CPL was not setup and created to succeed. As is obvious now.     You are right when you say that "its pretty clear that it exists so that we could host the WC in 2026.   With the current model,  you can safely predict that after 2026 and when the deal expires with CSB, it will very likely fold because it will not be viable.   Its pretty obvious now in the past 12 hours that it was created as a smokescreeen whereby the puppeteer is in the background pocketing their real  earning off of the backs of the national teams and its players under the umbrella called CSB.  

When the league started, i stayed silent here.  I didnt want to rehash what I mentioned over the 20 years of what makes a league successful.   You need markets of certain size,  you need a sufficient number of them,  you need markets where there is interest in the game from entertainment business perspective, You need investors who are committed and in it for the long run,  You need proper facilities,  you need quality on the pitch in terms of having product to sell,  and you have to have budget to pay for quality.  And way too many other things to mention here again.  The CPL doesn't really have any of that.  It has some mid sized markets but if we are honest with ourselves, these are AAA or minor pro markets.    Hence you don't have earning potential that bigger cities in MLS markets have (for example) and that money that wont accrue to the league nor ultimately accrue to player development.  becasue its just smaller. 

The Deliote report (or was it price waterhouse cant recall) of the early 2000's correctly noted that pro league for soccer in Canada is not viable.   This makes sense, if you look at our geography, demographics, population distribution and so forth and so forth.   

I don't buy that a domestic league in Canada is not viable just for the fact that Canadians like soccer, we tune in for the world cup, we support the NT when they're good, and when something exciting happens in Soccer, people listen. . Not to mention, sure the US has 10 times our population, but cities like Columbus and Nashville draw on par with some of the biggest teams in the world (IIRC Crew outdrew Chelsea last year), so to think that our secondary markets like Halifax, Hamilton, Victoria, so on, are unsustainable for pro sports doesn't really sell me- we should be able to get something out of those cities. I mean, Halifax has never even really been good, yet I think they're averaging like 5,500/game, which is pretty solid for an obscure, upstart soccer league. This also tells me that local fans don't even need a good club to come out and support, they just need a club to exist in their city.

I do think that the idea of having a coast to coast league where every single team plays every other team multiple times a year is unsustainable. Taking HFX as an example, during the 2 weeks starting on June 11th, they're playing an away in Edmonton, then 4 days later it's another away in Calgary, then 5 days later, they're back home against Forge, and 6 days later they're playing Pacific in Victoria. That's two cross country trips, including 5 days spent in Alberta. The Wanderers are probably a League Two quality team, if that, yet they're expected to travel like a Champions League team. To put that in perspective, Victoria is 4,400 KM straight line from Halifax. Madrid and Paris are both roughly 4,800 KMs from Halifax. London and Lisbon are 4,500 KM. This means, it would be the same distance, flight duration, and probably significantly cheaper for HFX to play PSG, Madrid, Chelsea, Benfica at their stadiums than it would be to go play Pacific.

Unless you can find some benevolent owners who are willing to make a money losing CPL team their playthings, I think you need to split the league into different conferences, promote some League 1 Ontario/Premier League QC teams, and have those teams all play together without the insane travel distances. For the teams that are more successful out east like HFX or Atletico Ottawa (at least in the sense that they have excellent backing), I don't think fans will care if the opponent is Forge or if it's that team from Outremont that played in the CCL.

[Kent]

On 6/5/2022 at 6:16 PM, phil03 said:

Similarly, there is just no reason for the Voyageurs Cup 2020 to be played. There is no slot in the CCL to be decided nor tournament already partly played to finish there. Moreover, adding it in the schedule can’t help for TFC, as they are struggling to save their season and could have used the extra time off. The only rational explanation for that was to give the CPL a one shot at a multi leagues trophy, the logic of it and the needs of the other team be damned.

First off, I don't think that game was a bad thing for TFC. But even if it was, you are leaving out the part that the whole reason it wasn't played in 2020 was basically to appease TFC. They didn't want to have the game before going back to the States, and they didn't want to have the game after being eliminated from the playoffs. So it got delayed and to make up for this Forge was allowed to host to draw a crowd.

On 6/5/2022 at 6:16 PM, phil03 said:

At the very top of this site’s article page there is a plea for the three MLS teams to be essentially forcibly inserted into the CPL.

I can agree that this probably isn't for the best at this point. Sometimes I find myself kind of wanting them to come to CPL, but realistically I think they should stay in MLS as long as they want to.

On 6/5/2022 at 6:16 PM, phil03 said:

The impetus in term of distributing the brackets for the CCL should be the success of Canadian Soccer as a whole. Imo there is two empirical metrics to determine this: how well do Canadian teams do in the CCL and how playing there can help players in the men’s national team become better and get transfers to even higher level of plays. In both regards I’d argue that instead of giving it to the regular season champion in the CPL it should have gone to the runner up of the Voyageurs Cup, and that doing so would also have the merit of being fairer since they are, you know, the better them as decided on the pitch. Now, I can imagine someone in the CSA would try to tell me that ‘’but, you see we have so much faith in MLS teams to qualify through the MLS route…’’ to which I would answer ‘’nice try, but I am just not buying this!’’ One slot guaranteed for the CPL to help it grow is fair enough but two is pushing things.

The 3 MLS teams already get automatic participation in the "Leagues Cup" which is basically a tournament MLS and Liga MX are trying to have replace Champions League, without those pesky Central American, Caribbean, or CPL teams involved. So all told, the 3 Canadian MLS teams get to play in a Champions League-like tournament, and are competing for 9 CCL spots. MLS Cup Champions, MLS Supporters Shield, MLS Conference regular season champions, MLS next 2 best in Supporters Shield standings, Leagues Cup top 3 spots, and the Voyageurs Cup Champion. CPL teams are competing for 3 spots, the 2 CPL only spots, and the Voyageurs Cup champions.

22 hours ago, InglewoodJack said:

I think the elephant in the room WRT the CPL is the fact that you can’t host a World Cup if you don’t have a domestic league, and you can’t become a soccer power if you can’t recruit domestically. While I think the CSB deal is awful and I don’t buy the “we didn’t know we’d be this good so quick” BS- you knew about Davies going to Bayern, you knew you had an abundance of youngsters, you should’ve known that there was a solid chance your program would significantly grow in the 8 years between signing that deal and the WC happened.

As I've mentioned in another thread, the CSB deal doesn't include broadcast rights for the 2022 or 2026 World Cup, and if we get an automatic spot in the 2026 World Cup we won't have high stakes World Cup Qualifiers for 2026 to broadcast either. So on the broadcasting front we are talking about Nations League games, Gold Cup, and Friendlies (if we ever get to play any). I suspect even if those games end up on Sportsnet or TSN we won't see the same viewing numbers we saw for World Cup Qualifying, unless maybe we make a Gold Cup final, or have a friendly against a glamour team like Brazil, Argentina, England, Italy, Germany, Portugal, etc.

As for the point about the abundance of youngsters coming up and we should have known. First of all, we all assumed Davies was going to be loaned out by Bayern. A lot of us thought Ballou Tabla (who was going to Barcelona's second team) would be better than Davies, and now he is playing for Atletico Ottawa. Secondly, let's look at our U-20 World Cup Qualifying results for a window into all that potential star power we had coming up through the ranks in 2018.

Based on the youth coming up the ranks we had a better shot at the 1998 through 2014 World Cups than we did 2022.

On 6/5/2022 at 6:16 PM, phil03 said:

Then I saw the date where the agreement was made and, combined with the CSB’s key role in it, I came up with a potential explanation: it was essentially about propping the CPL financially. By giving them more or less power over the national teams they could basically force it into a package deal with the CPL regarding broadcasting. It was a way to inject national teams money into the CPL without having to actually do so, which would have met with more push backs, and use revenue from national teams as collateral for it. They took everybody's teams and morgaged their future in the service of only part of Canadian Soccer, of only some people's teams.

No. The Canadian National team was not a money maker. The broadcast rights had 0 value. Like, literally 0 value. The CPL broadcast rights had 0 value. They bundled them together to try to come up with some semblance of value. Together OneSoccer could use them as a cohesive vision and have a decent amount of content to stand on it's own 2 feet, and hopefully, someday, turn a profit (I am sure that day hasn't arrived yet, despite this supposed super valuable asset they have). If the Canadian Championship, or CONCACAF Champions League, or the Gold Cup, or Nations League, or early World Cup Qualifiers, or CPL games, if any of these were valuable assets on their own, TSN or Sportsnet would have paid up and got the rights to them before OneSoccer even existed. But they didn't care about these competitions though because they didn't draw enough viewers for the expense of producing the content. There were no bidding wars.

[narduch]

6 minutes ago, Kent said:

First off, I don't think that game was a bad thing for TFC. But even if it was, you are leaving out the part that the whole reason it wasn't played in 2020 was basically to appease TFC. They didn't want to have the game before going back to the States, and they didn't want to have the game after being eliminated from the playoffs. So it got delayed and to make up for this Forge was allowed to host to draw a crowd.

I can agree that this probably isn't for the best at this point. Sometimes I find myself kind of wanting them to come to CPL, but realistically I think they should stay in MLS as long as they want to.

The 3 MLS teams already get automatic participation in the "Leagues Cup" which is basically a tournament MLS and Liga MX are trying to have replace Champions League, without those pesky Central American, Caribbean, or CPL teams involved. So all told, the 3 Canadian MLS teams get to play in a Champions League-like tournament, and are competing for 9 CCL spots. MLS Cup Champions, MLS Supporters Shield, MLS Conference regular season champions, MLS next 2 best in Supporters Shield standings, Leagues Cup top 3 spots, and the Voyageurs Cup Champion. CPL teams are competing for 3 spots, the 2 CPL only spots, and the Voyageurs Cup champions.

As I've mentioned in another thread, the CSB deal doesn't include broadcast rights for the 2022 or 2026 World Cup, and if we get an automatic spot in the 2026 World Cup we won't have high stakes World Cup Qualifiers for 2026 to broadcast either. So on the broadcasting front we are talking about Nations League games, Gold Cup, and Friendlies (if we ever get to play any). I suspect even if those games end up on Sportsnet or TSN we won't see the same viewing numbers we saw for World Cup Qualifying, unless maybe we make a Gold Cup final, or have a friendly against a glamour team like Brazil, Argentina, England, Italy, Germany, Portugal, etc.

As for the point about the abundance of youngsters coming up and we should have known. First of all, we all assumed Davies was going to be loaned out by Bayern. A lot of us thought Ballou Tabla (who was going to Barcelona's second team) would be better than Davies, and now he is playing for Atletico Ottawa. Secondly, let's look at our U-20 World Cup Qualifying results for a window into all that potential star power we had coming up through the ranks in 2018.

Based on the youth coming up the ranks we had a better shot at the 1998 through 2014 World Cups than we did 2022.

No. The Canadian National team was not a money maker. The broadcast rights had 0 value. Like, literally 0 value. The CPL broadcast rights had 0 value. They bundled them together to try to come up with some semblance of value. Together OneSoccer could use them as a cohesive vision and have a decent amount of content to stand on it's own 2 feet, and hopefully, someday, turn a profit (I am sure that day hasn't arrived yet, despite this supposed super valuable asset they have). If the Canadian Championship, or CONCACAF Champions League, or the Gold Cup, or Nations League, or early World Cup Qualifiers, or CPL games, if any of these were valuable assets on their own, TSN or Sportsnet would have paid up and got the rights to them before OneSoccer even existed. But they didn't care about these competitions though because they didn't draw enough viewers for the expense of producing the content. There were no bidding wars.

Remember in 2019 when fans had to beg TSN to show Forge's Concacaf League run. 

After that they stopped even bidding on those rights

[yellowsweatygorilla]

21 hours ago, InglewoodJack said:

I think you need to split the league into different conferences, promote some League 1 Ontario/Premier League QC teams, and have those teams all play together without the insane travel distances. For the teams that are more successful out east like HFX or Atletico Ottawa (at least in the sense that they have excellent backing), I don't think fans will care if the opponent is Forge or if it's that team from Outremont that played in the CCL.

This is why I am pretty gungho about the League1 Canada plans. I am also worried that CanPL won't be able to sustain itself after the 2026 honeypot is gone, but if League1 Canada is properly built up, it'll ensure that even if CanPL folds there will be a decent landing pad for the individual CanPL clubs. I get the plan for Electric City is to move the CanPL, but them, along with Guelph and Barrie (and FC London historically) have demonstrated that you can draw crowds that should be able to sustain a professional setup in a lower cost regionalized league. Some of the League1 BC clubs have also been promising in the crowds they've attracted (Altitude FC being the big one).

To be clear, ultimately, I would still hope for CanPL to sustain itself, but it'd be good to have an alternative ready so that we don't just lose the 8 or more professional clubs and the just under 200 professional footballer jobs overnight if it does fail.

[Kent]

1 hour ago, narduch said:

Remember in 2019 when fans had to beg TSN to show Forge's Concacaf League run. 

After that they stopped even bidding on those rights

Yeah, I almost mentioned that in my comment. I think the only reason why TSN had the rights to the CONCACAF League was because it was bundled in with the Champions League.

[InglewoodJack]

1 hour ago, yellowsweatygorilla said:

This is why I am pretty gungho about the League1 Canada plans. I am also worried that CanPL won't be able to sustain itself after the 2026 honeypot is gone, but if League1 Canada is properly built up, it'll ensure that even if CanPL folds there will be a decent landing pad for the individual CanPL clubs. I get the plan for Electric City is to move the CanPL, but them, along with Guelph and Barrie (and FC London historically) have demonstrated that you can draw crowds that should be able to sustain a professional setup in a lower cost regionalized league. Some of the League1 BC clubs have also been promising in the crowds they've attracted (Altitude FC being the big one).

To be clear, ultimately, I would still hope for CanPL to sustain itself, but it'd be good to have an alternative ready so that we don't just lose the 8 or more professional clubs and the just under 200 professional footballer jobs overnight if it does fail.

I like the League1 plans, I think closer integration between third division and CPL is crucial to sustainability, and I think going a step further and introducing relegation would make for better opportunities for soccer to grow in the cities that want it. I don't know what Altitude draws, I found an article that said that Rivers FC drew 700 at home for their match against Altitude, but if those teams are getting 7-800, they're not far off from where FC Edmonton's numbers are- what does attendance look like after a season where the club earns promotion to the CPL? Then, teams who are financially unsustainable and can't draw will naturally be relegated to League1 where costs will be lower and they can afford to maintain operations.

 

I even think of the soccer landscape in Montreal where we have an MLS team and 3 PLQS teams, two of which are in tightly knit neighbourhoods with very little else to do in terms of entertainment. I'm curious to see how a better funded team in Outremont or St. Laurent would do. I'd love a quick 15 minute bike ride to Outremont to buy cheap tickets to catch a game against a CPL team. Hell, AS St. Laurent had Ismael Kone until last september, so highlighting some players that actually have MLS and beyond potential for a local neighbourhood team is super attractive, IMO. If we can get to a place where there's like 20 CPL teams- the 8 we have now, and 4 from each League1 division with each division's champion getting promoted and bottom 3 clubs get relegated, you're getting more teams, less travel, more important matches, and it lays the ground work for a more extensive national cup tournament, which based on the noise around Forge's 2020 near victory, is something that canadian soccer fans seem to really want.

[Ruud]

On 6/6/2022 at 2:14 AM, Free kick said:

Cant dispute anything about that.   I would add an other big problem.   they have turned over the growth of soccer in the country to a group of people who are owners of CFL teams.   CFL businesses who compete in the same markets as the CPL teams.  

Which are owned by CFL owners out of curiosity?

[yellowsweatygorilla]

1 hour ago, InglewoodJack said:

I like the League1 plans, I think closer integration between third division and CPL is crucial to sustainability, and I think going a step further and introducing relegation would make for better opportunities for soccer to grow in the cities that want it. I don't know what Altitude draws, I found an article that said that Rivers FC drew 700 at home for their match against Altitude, but if those teams are getting 7-800, they're not far off from where FC Edmonton's numbers are- what does attendance look like after a season where the club earns promotion to the CPL?

Some of the L1O teams I mentioned are drawing 1000-2000.

[InglewoodJack]

6 minutes ago, yellowsweatygorilla said:

Some of the L1O teams I mentioned are drawing 1000-2000.

There you go. Even if you factor in a 10-15% bump from playing in a higher quality league, and you factor in whatever bump you get whenever you face MLS teams, that sounds a lot more sustainable than praying to god every single one of these 8 teams actually draws fans or else the league folds.

[gigi riva]

The CPL is vital to the growth of Soccer in Canada . It is still a very new league , MLS  had to struggle for years  till now 

[gigi riva]

Could we see a CPL / MLS partnership down the road ?

[Bison44]

1 minute ago, gigi riva said:

Could we see a CPL / MLS partnership down the road ?

I can hear the Parrots singing!!!  

[Ozzie_the_parrot]

On 6/6/2022 at 7:03 PM, InglewoodJack said:

...I do think that the idea of having a coast to coast league where every single team plays every other team multiple times a year is unsustainable. Taking HFX as an example, during the 2 weeks starting on June 11th, they're playing an away in Edmonton, then 4 days later it's another away in Calgary, then 5 days later, they're back home against Forge, and 6 days later they're playing Pacific in Victoria. That's two cross country trips, including 5 days spent in Alberta. The Wanderers are probably a League Two quality team, if that, yet they're expected to travel like a Champions League team. To put that in perspective, Victoria is 4,400 KM straight line from Halifax. Madrid and Paris are both roughly 4,800 KMs from Halifax. London and Lisbon are 4,500 KM. This means, it would be the same distance, flight duration, and probably significantly cheaper for HFX to play PSG, Madrid, Chelsea, Benfica at their stadiums than it would be to go play Pacific...

Soccer has never come to terms with Canada's geography the way hockey did with the CHL and has repeatedly tried to apply a European home and away national league model that worked well in much smaller countries where train or bus travel on the day of the game could get you to most away games in a context where it simply hasn't been possible to draw the crowds needed to cover the expenses related to regular air travel.

Hopefully Victor Montagliani didn't go too crazy getting his pet hobbyhorse off the ground just as he was leaving to be CONCACAF prez. Definitely would be good to have some transparency on what exactly he signed off on with Bob Young and Scott Mitchell where future national team revenues were concerned. It's difficult to justify linking the two the way Nick Bontis was trying to in the recent press conference when not even one CanPL player could crack the 60 man preliminary roster for the Gold Cup last summer.

[Aroundtheworld]

I agree with most of what has been said above and will just add that they way the CSB deal is structured is it not only is a shitty deal for the CSA but that it also takes away any incentive and responsibility for the CSA to grow the game.

In the current deal, the CSA does not benefit from any of the upside. They get their $3 Million a year to happily run beach soccer and futsal programs without any incentive to take the game to the next level in the country.

The only parties that really have an incentive to grow the game is Mediapro (who signed a $20 M per year deal with CSB) and to a lesser extend CSB (who stand to earn more money from increased sponsor interest and possibly increased CPL popularity). For the governing body to have no financial incentive to grow the sport it governs is seriously messed up.

[Bison44]

15 minutes ago, Aroundtheworld said:

I agree with most of what has been said above and will just add that they way the CSB deal is structured is it not only is a shitty deal for the CSA but that it also takes away any incentive and responsibility for the CSA to grow the game.

In the current deal, the CSA does not benefit from any of the upside. They get their $3 Million a year to happily run beach soccer and futsal programs without any incentive to take the game to the next level in the country.

The only parties that really have an incentive to grow the game is Mediapro (who signed a $20 M per year deal with CSB) and to a lesser extend CSB (who stand to earn more money from increased sponsor interest and possibly increased CPL popularity). For the governing body to have no financial incentive to grow the sport it governs is seriously messed up.

You must know a lot more about this CSB than I do.  Doesnt CSA make money off of friendlies, ticket sales??  Does CSB get the player fees now too??  When a new sponsor gets signed doesnt the CSA get any of that money??  If you know so much about this deal, please share, because I would like to know.  

[Aroundtheworld]

1 hour ago, Bison44 said:

You must know a lot more about this CSB than I do.  Doesnt CSA make money off of friendlies, ticket sales??  Does CSB get the player fees now too??  When a new sponsor gets signed doesnt the CSA get any of that money??  If you know so much about this deal, please share, because I would like to know.  

I know that CSB is a group of the CPL owners. I don't know much about the deal they signed with the CSA and that is part of the problem. I am going off of what has been published in the media and so far it looks like a rotten deal. I believe the CSA received a flat $3M per year for selling the media and sponsorship rights with no part of any upside revenues. I haven't seen anything about CSB getting a chunk of player fees or the World Cup windfall.

That said, that might be in the deal. The problem is we don't know and that's why need transparency.

[Free kick]

1 hour ago, Bison44 said:

You must know a lot more about this CSB than I do.  Doesnt CSA make money off of friendlies, ticket sales??  Does CSB get the player fees now too??  When a new sponsor gets signed doesnt the CSA get any of that money??  If you know so much about this deal, please share, because I would like to know.  

Do we know that they do ?  We dont know what they get and what they dont get.  Do they get all the profits for kit/jersey sales?    What does a marketing agreement entail?  We should have right to know that.  
 

Edited June 7, 2022 by Free kick

[Bison44]

It really burns me to see these stories from guys who have never written a story about CDN soccer in their life suddenly jump on this because their is blood in the water.  Labor dispute, possible corruption, inequality among the sexes etc etc.  Where were these geniuses years ago when this was signed??  I missed them writing stories about all the possible other ways for the CSA to market/grow the game and get steady income to run a decent top to bottom mens and womens program.  

1 minute ago, Free kick said:

Do we know that they do ?  We dont know what they get and what they dont get.  Do they get all the profits for kit/jersey sales?    What does a marketing agreement entail?  We should have right to know that.  
 

Thats the whole point.  When guys are saying this deal is structured all wrong, it takes away incentive from CSA to grow the game and they gave away too much blaH BLAH.  They are talking out of their asses.  They dont know, i dont know and neither do the reporters.  What I can see is this week that the players want a bigger chunk of the FIFA WC bonus (still not sure how much or what was offered) and CSA doesnt want to give that much or wants to split it differently.  I guess now they'll have to open the books and we can all find out.  Now the CSA could screw up a wet dream, so nothing will surprise me