Canadian Soccer Business (CSB)

[Kent]

2 minutes ago, Ally McCoist said:

So first off, let's state the obvious: OneSoccer is going to ne biased on this front since they are a subsidiary of this (shit) CSB deal. I would take everything they say on this matter with a grain of salt.  

Secondly, what people fail to acknowledge is that the reason why this CSB is so bad in hindsight is because there was no future-proofing in the original deal. In other words, there was no clause that mentions "if we get bigger, then our pay should go up x amount". The easiest way to do that is through percentages. This 3 million per year flat fee is awful because, as any amateur knows, money doesn't retain the same value over time especially for 10 years lmao.

We don't even know if CSB has made money off of this yet. For all we know it has gone like this.

2019 - CSB pays Canada Soccer $3 million.

Alternatively, if Canada doesn't have the CSB deal, Canada plays a Nations League qualifying game against French Guiana, 4 games in the Gold Cup, then 4 Nations League games (2 vs Cuba, 2 vs USA... note that the attendance of those games were 10k and 17k, not high profile, so probably not a lot of TV money would have been thrown at the CSA for those games). How much broadcasting money could Canada Soccer have made that year? Let's be really charitable and say $1 million if they didn't have the CSB deal. So Canada Soccer is out $2 million(ish) if they didn't have the CSB deal.

2020 - CSB pays Canada Soccer $3 million.

Alternatively, if Canada doesn't have the CSB deal, Canada has 2 friendlies against Barbados, and one against Iceland, there would be no broadcast money for those games, we would be lucky to find a single camera dodgy stream or get something on facebook or youtube. So Canada Soccer is out $3 million if they didn't have the CSB deal in 2020. Total, down $5 million.

2021 - CSB pays Canada Soccer $3 million.

Alternatively, if Canada doesn't have the CSB deal, Canada has 4 World Cup qualifiers against minnows (Bermuda, Cayman Islands, Aruba, and Suriname), quickly followed by 2 games against Haiti. Then also there is the 2021 Gold Cup. How much broadcast money would Canada get for those games? Let's say the 2021 Gold Cup is similar to the 2019 Gold Cup, and the early WCQ rounds against minnows is similar to the Nations League games in 2019 against USA and Cuba, so let's generously say $1 million again. Now the Oct, comes in. And remember, it's only the 7 home games that Canada Soccer gets to collect money on (which is why the game in the USA was actually on TSN instead of OneSoccer, since they were outbid or something). So 7 games of the Oct, with no meaningful hype around the team yet (that didn't come until after the Panama game, which was their 3rd home game) to make up the remaining $2 million for the year (to get as much as the CSB deal) plus the $3 million from 2020, and the $2 million deficit from 2019. Do you think Canada Soccer would have gotten more than $7 million dollars for those 7 games (plus sponsorships over those years) to make this a bad deal already at this point?

[BradMack]

5 minutes ago, SpecialK said:

If the CSA had a Brain and good people working there, They would have signed an agreement with mediapro. Not use an middle man like CSB. Clearly the value was there. 200 million over 10 years. 

Lol, no. The value was not there, and it still isn't there. Mediapro is losing money on this deal. The CPL plays a massive role in this deal as they attempt to establish an in to the Canadian sports market and needed to create content. 

[SpecialK]

2 minutes ago, BradMack said:

Lol, no. The value was not there, and it still isn't there. Mediapro is losing money on this deal. The CPL plays a massive role in this deal as they attempt to establish an in to the Canadian sports market and needed to create content. 

The CSB is the CPL- they sold the rights- the CSB/CPL is making 20million dollars minus 3 million they pay to the CSA. 

Edited June 6, 2022 by SpecialK

[SpecialK]

Mediapro makes money by selling the rights they own to Rogers and whatever. Plus advertisements- that I am sure the CPL/CSB has agreements with because of sponsors 

[BradMack]

2 minutes ago, Kent said:

We don't even know if CSB has made money off of this yet. For all we know it has gone like this.

2019 - CSB pays Canada Soccer $3 million.

Alternatively, if Canada doesn't have the CSB deal, Canada plays a Nations League qualifying game against French Guiana, 4 games in the Gold Cup, then 4 Nations League games (2 vs Cuba, 2 vs USA... note that the attendance of those games were 10k and 17k, not high profile, so probably not a lot of TV money would have been thrown at the CSA for those games). How much broadcasting money could Canada Soccer have made that year? Let's be really charitable and say $1 million if they didn't have the CSB deal. So Canada Soccer is out $2 million(ish) if they didn't have the CSB deal.

2020 - CSB pays Canada Soccer $3 million.

Alternatively, if Canada doesn't have the CSB deal, Canada has 2 friendlies against Barbados, and one against Iceland, there would be no broadcast money for those games, we would be lucky to find a single camera dodgy stream or get something on facebook or youtube. So Canada Soccer is out $3 million if they didn't have the CSB deal in 2020. Total, down $5 million.

2021 - CSB pays Canada Soccer $3 million.

Alternatively, if Canada doesn't have the CSB deal, Canada has 4 World Cup qualifiers against minnows (Bermuda, Cayman Islands, Aruba, and Suriname), quickly followed by 2 games against Haiti. Then also there is the 2021 Gold Cup. How much broadcast money would Canada get for those games? Let's say the 2021 Gold Cup is similar to the 2019 Gold Cup, and the early WCQ rounds against minnows is similar to the Nations League games in 2019 against USA and Cuba, so let's generously say $1 million again. Now the Oct, comes in. And remember, it's only the 7 home games that Canada Soccer gets to collect money on (which is why the game in the USA was actually on TSN instead of OneSoccer, since they were outbid or something). So 7 games of the Oct, with no meaningful hype around the team yet (that didn't come until after the Panama game, which was their 3rd home game) to make up the remaining $2 million for the year (to get as much as the CSB deal) plus the $3 million from 2020, and the $2 million deficit from 2019. Do you think Canada Soccer would have gotten more than $7 million dollars for those 7 games (plus sponsorships over those years) to make this a bad deal already at this point?

This is a decent way to look at the situation, I will add that for the early qualifiers we would actually be losing money broadcasting them, as CSA had to pay TSN and SN to broadcast previously in an effort to get eyeballs on the team, because the cost of production was greater than ad revenue from the games. 

Also, without the CSB deal, you don't have the standard of camps we have and we might still be having a lot of difficulty bringing players in. We might not even make the WC this cycle without the CSB money going into camps and the super high level of professionalism and prep the players have spoken of.

[BradMack]

Just now, SpecialK said:

Mediapro makes money by selling the rights they own to Rogers and whatever. Plus advertisements- that I am sure the CPL/CSB has agreements with because of sponsors 

Do you honestly think Rogers is paying Mediapro such huge amounts of money for the simulcast? 

[Obinna]

20 minutes ago, Ally McCoist said:

So first off, let's state the obvious: OneSoccer is going to be biased on this front since they are a subsidiary of this (shit) CSB deal. I would take everything they say on this matter with a grain of salt (Including Wheeler and any employee of OneSoccer which, yes, also includes 2/3 of the members on the Northern Futbol podcast).  

Secondly, what people fail to acknowledge is that the reason why this CSB is so bad in hindsight is because there was no future-proofing in the original deal. In other words, there was no clause that mentions "if we get bigger, then our pay should go up x amount". The easiest way to do that is through percentages. This 3 million per year flat fee is awful because, as any amateur knows, money and assets don't retain the same value over time especially for 10 years lmao.

This is something I was thinking about this morning so I am glad you brought it up.

There is zero chance our currency is going to retain purchasing power in the next decade, it's going to degrade. And so the purchasing power of that 3M per year flat rate is going to likewise degrade.

Even if you believe current inflation is 8%, that's not 3M dollars of purchasing power, it's more like 2.7M, and so on and so forth for each year that follows.

A percentage would have been superior.

[Kent]

7 minutes ago, SpecialK said:

The CSB is the CPL- they sold rights- the CSB/CPL is making 20million dollars minus 3 million they pay to the CSA. 

People noted the bias from the OneSoccer people on this. The way it manifested itself in that clip was Andi saying 200 million over 10 years. If the league was actually recieving $20 million dollars a year from OneSoccer alone, plus merch, plus sponsorships, plus ticket sales, etc, do you really think the Faths would drop out because they can't afford their team's $750,000ish player salaries (plus whatever other expenses). The $20 million dollars a year is mostly if not completely services, as has been mentioned by others here. It takes money to create a streaming service, and hire people to create content, produce games, pre-game and post-game shows, etc. And likely that $200 million is assuming bigger spending in later years when there are hopefully more teams, so the first few years would probably be less than the $20 million investment per year (with the possible exception of some up front costs, like buying a studio and equipment).

Edited June 6, 2022 by Kent
I meant "noted", not "noticed".

[SpecialK]

Question as of right now is 3 million dollars the value of the mens and womens team for team coverage? So Senior teams and youth teams - is 3 million what they are worth ? 

[BradMack]

4 minutes ago, SpecialK said:

The CSB is the CPL- they sold the rights- the CSB/CPL is making 20million dollars minus 3 million they pay to the CSA. 

Way over simplified again, a large chunk of the 20M is services, and most of the content Mediapro needs is from the CPL. 

[SpecialK]

1 minute ago, BradMack said:

Do you honestly think Rogers is paying Mediapro such huge amounts of money for the simulcast? 

I honestly have no idea. 

[BradMack]

1 minute ago, SpecialK said:

I honestly have no idea. 

The answer is definitely not. 

[SpecialK]

9 minutes ago, BradMack said:

Way over simplified again, a large chunk of the 20M is services, and most of the content Mediapro needs is from the CPL. 

but again the CPL is the CSB - they are one and the same.

CSB gives basically 3 million every year for rights to the national teams and youth teams. 

Edited June 6, 2022 by SpecialK

[SpecialK]

1 minute ago, BradMack said:

The answer is definitely not. 

Do you know the numbers?

[Bison44]

21 minutes ago, Meepmeep said:

Are you saying that if Onesoccer wasn’t around that the CSA would have to pay to put the qualifiers on tv?

Did the CSA pay TSN to show the usa game in Nashville?  Did they pay to have the games shown on sportnet?

 

I think that is exactly the case.  TSN or Sportsnet wouldnt do it on their own, wont spend the money, think the product wont make them any money and need incentive to put them on TV so the fans can see them.  Now that its all smiles and WC here we come, maybe not.  

[narduch]

4 minutes ago, Bison44 said:

I think that is exactly the case.  TSN or Sportsnet wouldnt do it on their own, wont spend the money, think the product wont make them any money and need incentive to put them on TV so the fans can see them.  Now that its all smiles and WC here we come, maybe not.  

I'm 100% convinced that if One Soccer didn't exist we would have watched those 4 early round WCQ from 2021 on a YouTube stream using a single camera.

People really have short memories and don't remember how dire the broadcast situation was in 2018

Edited June 6, 2022 by narduch

[Watchmen]

41 minutes ago, Kent said:

When the CSB deal  was first announced, some people on this board were acting like it will be a money factory like SUM (Soccer United Marketing) is for the USA. The funny thing is, at the time I was thinking that the reason SUM was a money factory is because they were getting money from USA and Mexico national team games, and those are profitable national teams. So I thought this probably won't be effective here because the Canadian national team wasn't worth anything. You weren't going to get big TV deals for games, you weren't going to get big sponsorship money either.

Now some people are acting like obviously the national team was going to be worth lots of money and this was a horrible deal for the national team.

I've said it before, when the CMNT was struggling to the friendly booked - SUM made a profit off the US and Mexico games but also did a lot to organize them. If the relationship is similar, it should have been the CSB working it's ass off to get that friendly organized (and then also benefitting from it). What it looks like to me is that the CSA has been left to organize the friendly but the CSB might be the ones that profit from it (had it actually occurred).

[Meepmeep]

7 minutes ago, narduch said:

I'm 100% convinced that if One Soccer didn't exist we would have watched those 4 early round WCQ on a YouTube stream using a single camera 

Perhaps (That said we were able to watch the USA game on TSN) and in my opinion that’s fine as the CSA would have had the ability to cash in on the team’s success as they continued winning. Growing the game.  Capturing the casuals. 
 

At the root it seems the people happy with the CSB deal are the hardcore people that would have wanted to watch the games in the first or second rounds of qualifying.  That’s not growing the game, that’s catering to your current audience. 
Reminds me of Craig Forrest’s gate keeper tweet criticizing Drake for posing for pictures with players after the Panama game.  Or people complaining that it’s harder to get Vs tickets now that’s we are good. It’s counter productive of your goal is growing the game.  Makes sense if you like the status quo. 

Edited June 6, 2022 by Meepmeep

[BradMack]

8 minutes ago, SpecialK said:

Do you know the numbers?

I do not know the exact numbers, but I understand numbers in general. The games are just not worth that much money. I would say they would be extremely lucky to make much more than 300K per game selling to sportsnet. This is based on their draw, and other sports properties in Canada. 

[narduch]

2 minutes ago, Meepmeep said:

Perhaps (That said we were able to watch the USA game on TSN) and in my opinion that’s fine as the CSA would have had the ability to cash in on the team’s success as they continued winning. Growing the game.  Capturing the casuals. 
 

The only reason that happened is TSN usurped One Soccer and outbid them for that one match.

One Soccer only has the rights to Canada's home games. So they lost out on that US away game.

It also means they successfully negotiated with our 6 other Octagonal opponents 

[Kent]

3 minutes ago, Meepmeep said:

Perhaps (That said we were able to watch the USA game on TSN) and in my opinion that’s fine as the CSA would have had the ability to cash in on the team’s success as they continued winning. Growing the game.  Capturing the casuals. 
 

At the root it seems the people happy with the CSB deal are the hardcore people that would have wanted to watch the games in the first or second rounds of qualifying.  That’s not growing the game, that’s catering to your current audience. 
Reminds me of Craig Forrest’s gate keeper tweet criticizing Drake for posing for pictures with players after the Panama game.  Or people complaining that it’s harder to get Vs tickets now that’s we are good. It’s counter productive of your goal is growing the game.  Makes sense if you like the status quo. 

On one hand you are right, it's not growing the game to have a niche streaming service rather than an easily accessible source to watch games.

On the other hand, the national team has undergone it's most growth ever in the 4 years of this CSB deal. If we get more transparency on all the money details (I doubt it) it will be interesting to see if the CSB deal in part helped enable the team to do what it did. Maybe we had a bigger coaching and support staff (seemed like it to me), maybe flights were less cumbersome (direct rather than layovers or weird hours). Maybe there were other investments that helped in the little things to get ready for games. Maybe the little things helped recruit Eustaquio and Ugbo or getting Hutchinson back in the fray.

[BradMack]

3 minutes ago, Kent said:

On one hand you are right, it's not growing the game to have a niche streaming service rather than an easily accessible source to watch games.

On the other hand, the national team has undergone it's most growth ever in the 4 years of this CSB deal. If we get more transparency on all the money details (I doubt it) it will be interesting to see if the CSB deal in part helped enable the team to do what it did. Maybe we had a bigger coaching and support staff (seemed like it to me), maybe flights were less cumbersome (direct rather than layovers or weird hours). Maybe there were other investments that helped in the little things to get ready for games. Maybe the little things helped recruit Eustaquio and Ugbo or getting Hutchinson back in the fray.

This is the case, chartered flights, professional camps, Herdman's prep, etc,  all based on the guarenteed money the CSB deal allowed for that would just not have been there during WCQ. Especially when you consider they didnt make ticket revenue during covid. This whole WCQ campaign could've been very different.

[prairiecanuck]

20 minutes ago, SpecialK said:

but again the CPL is the CSB - they are one and the same.

CSB gives basically 3 million every year for rights to the national teams and youth teams. 

This basically comes down to the owners of the Canadian Premier league coming to the CSA in 2018.  They knew packaging their product with the national teams they could get 20 mil a year for 10 years from Media Pro.  They have 128 matches per year.   Team Canada played 4 times in 2018.  8 times in 2019.  Had they not qualified for the Octo CSB would have been on the hook for a min of 3 mil guaranteed for the CSA every year.   I would like to know if there are escalators and the CSA actually received more than 3 mil in 2021 and 2022 for additional games.

The bottom line is CSA was paying cable giants to get their games broadcast.   Craig Forrest said on the Podcast with Sharman today that there were no dollars for the national teams.  Bell, Rogers were offering nothing.   The CSB guaranteed revenue to the CSA.  They utilize the revenue packaged with the national teams and Canadian Championship to build a domestic league.  Kids have places to play, academies to attend.  People across Canada are being exposed to more professional soccer.  I don't follow the CPL like some of you do, but I'm guessing there are lots of young kids.  A handful of these 17-20 year old kids may progress to the MLS or other leagues.

If anyone at the CSA had a crystal ball in 2018 they may have done things differently.  The reality is TSN and Rogers were offering nothing.

Like I said, I'm not sure if the CSA is only getting 3 mil.  I've heard a guarantee of at least 3 mil.  Maybe they are getting 4 or 5 this year.  The other 15 to 17 mil is not being pocketed by rich business people.  It is being invested in the CPL.  The CPL plays 128 games a year to earn that money.   The owners of this league are not making much if any money even with that revenue and are growing the sport.   

The CFL makes about 500K per broadcast and the Grey Cup is one of the most watched sporting events in Canada every year having brought in over 5 million average viewers in some years.  

It's not like TSN or Rogers would be offering much more than that 500K per broadcast even now during the current economic reality.

The deal struck by CBS and Media pro several years ago were bets that paid off, when no else was willing to roll the dice.  As far as the CSA goes and deal that Montagliani negotiated back then.  Was it sheer incompetence and an awful deal.  I don't think it's fair to say that given the landscape and appetite to broadcast games at that time and the goals of growing the game in the country.   Can we question the length of the deal or that it could have been a better deal.  Well sure.  It doesn't fall under the category of incompetence for me though.

Scheduling Iran.  The CSA should own that one and people should probably resign over that one. 

[Meepmeep]

30 minutes ago, Kent said:

On the other hand, the national team has undergone it's most growth ever in the 4 years of this CSB deal. If we get more transparency on all the money details (I doubt it) it will be interesting to see if the CSB deal in part helped enable the team to do what it did. Maybe we had a bigger coaching and support staff (seemed like it to me), maybe flights were less cumbersome (direct rather than layovers or weird hours). Maybe there were other investments that helped in the little things to get ready for games. Maybe the little things helped recruit Eustaquio and Ugbo or getting Hutchinson back in the fray.

I agree on the impact of the “support” functions during qualifying. I also agree that the logistics involve a significant cost. 
I think where we diverge is the notion that it was CSBs guaranteed money or no money at all.  

[ag futbol]

18 minutes ago, BradMack said:

This is the case, chartered flights, professional camps, Herdman's prep, etc,  all based on the guarenteed money the CSB deal allowed for that would just not have been there during WCQ. Especially when you consider they didnt make ticket revenue during covid. This whole WCQ campaign could've been very different.

Stepping back, the real questions are:

1. Are the terms of the contract fair?

2. Pointedly, is the length of the contract sensible?

3. Did the CSA have other alternatives? 
 

For question 1, it’s hard to say (because we only have the fuzziest of details).

Question 2, looks a tad dicey. 10 years might be fair, with the logical trade off being get up front revenue now and benefit of the World Cup boom later. The rumoured extension to 20 years however, sounds horrific.

Question 3… again, tough to tell.