Canadian Soccer Business (CSB)

[narduch]

Don't expect any scrutiny from the Northern Futbol or Footy Prime guys on this 

[Kadenge]

17 minutes ago, ted said:

FIFA Money

For some bizarre reason, Bontis is claiming that CSB is the reason that they cannot spend the $10M from FIFA for qualifying.

From the article:

That makes a shortfall of $1.85M but there also should have been far fewer expenses to cover for the national teams who were not playing. But fine, let’s take that full number at face value.

Covering the short payment would take 18.5% of the $10M The players want 40% which adds up to 58.5% of the money allocated and therefore the CSA keeps 41.5% of the FIFA money.

We should also keep in mind that CSB will have to make up the short payment at some point or lose the deal entirely

Ownership

There are 8 teams in the CanPL in 2022. Two are owned by “CFL Owners” (Winnipeg and Hamilton). Given that Winnipeg is a community owned team I fail to see how the CSB deal can be described as, “leeching the money from the success of the national teams and funneling it to CFL team owners”.

The Deal

At the time the CSA signed the deal with CSB even the most die-hard fans would admit that qualifying for 2022 was a tough ask. There were so many people here claiming that John Herdman was going to fail utterly that the consensus was 2022 was great goal but 2026 was what mattered.

Yes, Phonzie was doing great things but one star player does not a team make. As it turns out of course, John Herdman built a winning squad that was able to get results even without Phonzie when he was injured.

Could the deal have been better and included performance clauses? You bet.

Bottom line for me is, the CSB is the only reason we have a domestic league and that is a good thing.

I am happy to revive the SACK THE CSA campaign, but I will not support destroying a professional league that we have needed so badly for decades and we will need to build our team into actual contenders.
 

I think we all agree that the CPL is good for future development of soccer in Canada. The question is does 100% of CSB revenue get reinvested in the CPL directly?

[Gian-Luca]

6 minutes ago, ted said:

FIFA Money

For some bizarre reason, Bontis is claiming that CSB is the reason that they cannot spend the $10M from FIFA for qualifying.

 

I had a recollection that this explanation was something to do with the players expecting a ton of cash from WCQ television money to come into the CSA's coffers which could help them to pay the players the 40% after-tax that they wanted, but I may be hazy on that.

It would be interesting to know if the Aussie reported 40% is before or after tax, which is a rather important piece of information left out of the TSN article. And are they also doing pay equity?

[Watchmen]

6 minutes ago, Ivan said:

But the sensationalized article by Westhead still doesn't provide all the details of the agreement.  For example, who gets the qualification bonus money? Does it go straight to the CSA or is it funnelled through to the CSB?  It is true that the CSB, and inherently the CPL, do benefit from the success of the NTs, but seemingly just in the form of easier to acquire sponsorship money.  Again, speculation on my part as I don't know the specifics of the deal. 

I mean, that is a big part of the article too: that the CSA is deliberately hiding details of their agreements.

[Aird25]

Just now, Kadenge said:

The question is does 100% of CSB revenue get reinvested in the CPL directly?

It would be wonderful to see some reporting on how CSB invests revenue. I think that's the main detail lacking from this article. I find it difficult to draw any conclusions before understanding this component of the money trail.

[Kadenge]

6 minutes ago, Aird25 said:

Do we?

At present, yes

[TOcanadafan]

3 minutes ago, Aird25 said:

1. One of the reasons that the investment in the professional game is failing is in part due to traditional media like TSN refusing to cooperate, or outright hindering it's success. TSN may now have a vested interest in the national team deal collapsing so that they can capitalize on recent success.
2. They publish a one sided article on the CSB deal.

1. This is a valid point.  Any opportunity to smash on TSN / Sportsnet for their lack of support, and subtle attempts to keep Canada soccer down should be taken.  But Westhead is accomplished enough that I don’t feel he needs to do the dirty business of Bell Media.

2. His motive is to expose the chaos, incompetence, corruption and secrecy of the CSA, where the CSB might be Exhibit A, but just a part of the overall picture.

[ted]

12 minutes ago, Ivan said:

For example, who gets the qualification bonus money? Does it go straight to the CSA or is it funnelled through to the CSB? 

FIFA pays the money to CSA.

At no point has anyone said that the CSB gets any of that $10M.
 

11 minutes ago, TOcanadafan said:

At present, we know this deal is crap for the CSA. 

We know nothing of the sort. Without the CSB deal which created and supports the CanPL, we would not be co-hosting WC 2026.

I don't see how a guaranteed income stream is a crap deal and given the shortfall, the CSA has some leverage to improve the deal going forward.

[Watchmen]

14 minutes ago, Aird25 said:

Do we?

If the CSA is getting $3m a year and the CIBC deal alone is worth $5m of which the CSB keeps all of it, I'd say that's not ideal for the CSA.

[Aird25]

And now we learn about League 1 Canada's inaugural tournament. I wonder how that happened?

 

[Watchmen]

7 minutes ago, Aird25 said:

It would be wonderful to see some reporting on how CSB invests revenue. I think that's the main detail lacking from this article. I find it difficult to draw any conclusions before understanding this component of the money trail.

A fair comment. It would be nice of either the CSA or CSB to provide more details on how it all works. But so far, neither side has wanted to divulge that.

[TOcanadafan]

3 minutes ago, Aird25 said:

It would be wonderful to see some reporting on how CSB invests revenue. I think that's the main detail lacking from this article. I find it difficult to draw any conclusions before understanding this component of the money trail.

This is part of why the article was written in the first place.  If everything was clean and transparent, we’d all have moved on.  At this point,  Bontis and CSB are actively trying to hide these details, by dodging requests from media and player reps.  Seems kind of fishy. 

[ted]

5 minutes ago, Watchmen said:

If the CSA is getting $3m a year and the CIBC deal alone is worth $5m of which the CSB keeps all of it, I'd say that's not ideal for the CSA.

You do understand that the CSA knew it was giving up potential revenue in order to get the CanPL off the ground?

That revenue is being used to keep the CanPL afloat until it can establish itself. It is the same model that MLS used to get through the first decade to eventual long-term success.

[Watchmen]

6 minutes ago, ted said:

We know nothing of the sort. Without the CSB deal which created and supports the CanPL, we would not be co-hosting WC 2026.

We can discuss if money earmarked for the CSA earned by the national team is best distributed through a private company to support a national league, and it's a fair discussion. I would say that the league is probably not why Canada gets to host World Cup games - the deal to host was already well underway, and I suspect that FIFA would count "MLS in Canada" as the league if it suited their purposes.

[Gian-Luca]

4 minutes ago, Aird25 said:

And now we learn about League 1 Canada's inaugural tournament. I wonder how that happened?

 

Nice to see Dino Rossi's name again, hadn't heard it in a while. CBC (or rather One Soccer) also had an interview with Breagha Carr-Harris before the Canada-Costa Rica match last night, which I missed the beginning of, so not sure if hinted in any way about this announcement coming in the interview.

 

[ted]

1 minute ago, Watchmen said:

I would say that the league is probably not why Canada gets to host World Cup games - the deal to host was already well underway, and I suspect that FIFA would count "MLS in Canada" as the league if it suited their purposes.

Nope, you don't get to re-write history. The CSA specifically made creating a national league part of their bid long before the actual application was put in to FIFA.

 

[Watchmen]

2 minutes ago, ted said:

You do understand that the CSA knew it was giving up potential revenue in order to get the CanPL off the ground?

That revenue is being used to keep the CanPL afloat until it can establish itself. It is the same model that MLS used to get through the first decade to eventual long-term success.

Yup. But you can understand why the CMNT players might not be as understanding, right? Money that should be helping them directly is instead going to a private organization's investment. They're indirectly supporting an investment that they won't recoup anything from.

[Watchmen]

2 minutes ago, ted said:

Nope, you don't get to re-write history. The CSA specifically made creating a national league part of their bid long before the actual application was put in to FIFA.

 

Qatar put in their bid that they'd host in the summer in outdoor air conditioned stadiums. FIFA changes their rules when it suits them.

[Ruud]

1 hour ago, Dominic94 said:

These can’t be under stated, the CSB on the CIBC deal alone is laughing….. I know the deal say at least 3-4 million a year…. But like what’s the maximum ? How can it be more ? What are the criteria for this ?

I think the fact that the deal itself wasn’t ratified by all board members is something that can be used to terminate the deal.

CSB are laughing…. And now we have answers as to why we have no youth camps etc. 
 

Also let’s not forget that Nike and others have signed new deals with the CSA that goes straight to the CSB… they literally signed away everything that would help us grow.

At the very least, one would think that a % of new deals could go to CSB thereby creating incentives for both parties to work to solicit new deals.  As it stands does CSA even care about signing new sponsors ?  Sounds like it only really earns new money from ticket sales !

[TOcanadafan]

16 minutes ago, ted said:

Without the CSB deal which created and supports the CanPL, we would not be co-hosting WC 2026.
 

This is completely false.  We were awarded the co-host rights before the CSB deal.  And the CPL launch had already been announced.

[SpursFlu]

21 minutes ago, Aird25 said:

And now we learn about League 1 Canada's inaugural tournament. I wonder how that happened?

 

Greedy old businessmen that's how. What's worse, I bet they're all white

What kind of evil lives amongst us?

Edited July 12, 2022 by SpursFlu

[Ruud]

19 minutes ago, Watchmen said:

A fair comment. It would be nice of either the CSA or CSB to provide more details on how it all works. But so far, neither side has wanted to divulge that.

And likely really hard or impossible to know for sure given how these teams are structured and revenues  spread across multiple short and long term liabilities.   At what point for example can new revenue just be allocated to Executives through bonuses? 

[SF]

The real issue here is that the CSA seems to have entered the (very material) CSB deal without the full consent of it's Board of Directors.  That wouldn't necessarily void the deal - the CSA will have officers who can legally bind the organization, but it does scream governance malpractice and, potentially, some kind of breach of fiduciary duty.

It's hard to know what to make of a news article, but if I were a CSA director and all of this was true, I would be very nervous.  To say nothing of the fact that former directors are speaking on the record about the governance issues.  You don't see that every day (for good reason).

[mpg_29]

There seems to be a lot revisionist history on here considering the history on the MNT.

Essentially one year of success out of decades of poor results and poor financials. Basically had to pay to get on TV. And a deal signed 4-5 years to get a domestic league off the grounds is "terrible".

Almost every single argument that surrounded the MNT for ages was the establishment of a domestic professional league. Every one. 

Short term thinking. I wonder what the feelings about prize money and the CSA, CSB and CPL will be if Canada gets walloped in Qatar? My guess is the sympathy will swing back to the more foundational aspects of the game in this country of which the CPL is a part of now.

[dyslexic nam]

13 minutes ago, SpursFlu said:

Greedy old businessmen that's how. What's worse, I bet they're all white

What kind of evil lives amongst us?

Have you ever noticed that you never actually contribute anything positive to conversations on this site?