By Greg Urbanoski

Riderville

CFL hits the upright and cancels the 2020 Season

Aug 18, 2020 | 9:11 AM

In a sense the CFL pulling the plug on the 2020 Season mirrors the 2019 Western Final when the Riders were driving at the end of the game and a pass that probably would have been caught for a tying touchdown hit the upright or crossbar – whatever it was the thunk sound it made still haunts my dreams.

Back in April when Rod Pedersen was stroking the flames of fan expectations stating he could not imagine a CFL season, I did some reading and discovered the plans to play football during a pandemic depended on too many moving parts working perfectly and pulling off a season, whether in a bubble or not like Major League Baseball, was probably not feasible.

There was a real belief in magical thinking, stoked by Donald Trump, that Covid-19 would just vanish in warm weather and sports like football could get going and signal all was well. As the shockwaves from the pandemic spread out, from layoffs to stay at home orders to business closures, you can feel and still can the cabin fever as people ran out of things to watch and do and the spread of the virus had a depressing effect on people.

Of all the professional leagues in North America, to date the NBA and NHL with the bubble city concepts seem to have fared the best with adequate testing, but more importantly, the TV money to host essentially a tournament situation.

Major League Baseball with having teams play in their home cities, except for Toronto because the States is a dumpster fire right now for the spread of the virus compared for Canada and nobody wanted to risk players coming in from a Covid hotbed like Florida to play in Toronto and perhaps spread the virus up here like it has down there.

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The CFL by comparison has a business model that depends on gate revenue to survive. The league made a deal with TSN to broadcast all regular season games and some exhibition games, but that cash is not in the same vein as NFL or NBA TV dollars.

So faced with a situation with no fans attending games, the CFL thought about its own bubble city concept and approached the federal government for help. It wasn’t a bad idea, but the way the CFL handled the situation was simply ridiculous.

The CFL approached the federal government with a request for $140 million. CFL Commissioner Randy Ambrosie gave a less than convincing performance as he talked to the federal finance committee, unable to explain where all the money would go and where were the players in all of this.

The ask kept going down to finally a $30 million no interest loan to pull off the season. The feds countered with a low interest loan, but the CFL balked at that. On Monday the plug was pulled on the 2020 season.

So this morning on my final night shift of this stretch, I did some math. Peter King, the dean of US football reporters had wrote about how some NFL teams would allow one fan for every eight seats into stadiums.

So using 33,000 as a rough guide for Dollarama Stadium in Winnipeg, that formula would see 4,125 fans admitted to CFL games. So let’s say those fans paid $100 a ticket so if all the allowed fans would attend would bring in $412,500 per game.

So with nine teams playing a six game season, over 54 games total for the season, assuming you had the maximum 4125 fans paying $100, that would bring in $22,275,000 to the CFL. Not including the playoffs, which would be about seven games, that would bring in another $2.8 million so if the CFL could use that proposed NFL protocol for fans, the league could realize $25 million from gate receipts.

I am not sure exactly how much the TSN TV contract would bring in or whether it would bridge that gap, but the CFL should have been taking notice of the success of the Edmonton Oilers on-line 50-50 draw which brought in about $2.5 million a week. A league wide 50-50 draw would probably draw as well, if not better, with the added benefit that CFL fans not living in Winnipeg or close to it, could support the league or their teams through participating in the on-line 50-50.

So if you use the Oiler 50-50 as a baseline and have it run for eight weeks or so, to cover off against teams getting byes and stretching the season out, that is $20 million more for the league. So leaving out the TSN money, the CFL through its own efforts and perhaps some negotiation with the feds or Manitoba health people, could have come up with a way to make $45 million to mitigate their losses and even pay for having people in the bubble.

Pedersen threw out last week the prospect of Maple Leag Sports and Entertainment perhaps bailing out the league, but that seems refined more now to having MLSE take over the marketing for the league. All kinds of suggestions have been made including having the NFL buy the league and run it as a feeder system or having Dwayne Johnson invest in the league since he was a former Calgary Stampeder and has now bought the XFL in bankruptcy court.

After all these months, I honestly don’t think there was the will for the CFL to play this season, or even use some ingenuity to come up with ways to pay for the season. What will happen now will be carnage, pure and simple.

The Riders expect to lose $10 million this year, wiping out their reserves and putting the team in jeopardy. I expect layoffs in the Rider organization and people will leave not to return. Depending on how this unfolds, the window that the Riders seemed to be at in competing for the Grey Cup may or may not be over.

I find it ironic the Riders gave up their Touchdown Lottery which brought in funds to the club that probably would have been very useful this year. The Riders have put money into their stadium and facilities to be more attractive to free agents, but how that changes now will be really interesting.

I would expect the provincial government to float the Riders an interest free loan of say $3 million, the same amount the province was offering to pay to be a CFL hub city. The brand new stadium built without federal Conservative help takes a lot of taxpayer dollars out of Regina and not having a team or a league would make that the biggest white elephant ever.

The Riders have already closed two stores and I imagine you will see staff either take a pay cut or leave to go elsewhere. While everyone is talking about regrouping for 2021, the CFL has to face the fact its business model is broken and predicated on faulty operating assumptions.

So how does the league proceed from here?

The economic impact of Covid-19 is probably more profound than people realize. If you have lost your job or face pay cuts, how likely are you to pay for football tickets? The other factor is a sizeable portion of the Rider fan base who attend games are those who are most at risk of Covid-19 – elderly or people with underlying health problems. Their level of comfort in returning to live football is not going to be good, and hiking ticket prices even further is not going to convince people to come.

So the CFL and the Riders, whether in tandem or separately, may have to look at the Oilers on-line 50-50 model for income. So with half the money going to a lucky winner, and perhaps a portion of the other half going to the club or to amateur football, at least that is income coming in.

Since I work midnight shifts, I can look at other CFL teams websites and see how they price their items compared to the Riders. You can find some great stuff on sites like Hamilton and Montreal (I love the game worn stuff on the Montreal site), and for the most part, the prices are less than what the Riders charge – especially in jerseys.

For about 20 years I have collected Rider jerseys, mostly from locker room sales, and the Riders to me have blown an opportunity to fully develop that market. In January they dumped a bunch of jerseys from the 1990s and early 2000’s on the market and I picked up a Jeff Fairholm away jersey, a Jeremy O’Day jersey and a bunch of others I never would have thought I could have got.

I lucked out in buying a bunch of nameplates and putting them on to the jerseys that I matched to the players. I have been selling a bunch because even though I enjoy collecting and the detective work in finding out about the players who wore the jerseys is a thrill, I don’t need that many jerseys.

So if the Riders actually gave a crap about their history and the opportunities that selling a piece of that history to fans who really care about it, they would have gotten someone to curate their jerseys, get the right name plates and offer them up to the public at reasonable prices.

The last locker room sale or field wear sale since the Riders don’t sell stuff in their locker room anymore, the Riders were initally asking $300 for an Adidas game worn jersey and $600-$700 for a helmet. The jersey prices went down to say $150, but I sell my game worn jerseys for $100 because I remember living in PA and how difficult it is for Rider fans there to get game worn stuff.

The Riders will have to either reduce their prices or offer something that is more value driven than Grey Cup 2020 shirts and hats. But there are still more ways for the CFL to make money outside of gate receipts.

The on-line 50-50 is one way. Another is single game wagering. I could care less about playing VLTs, but if I had a chance to bet single games in the CFL instead of the pack you do on Sports Select, that would interest me. So would fantasy football pools where you select players and get points based on their performances for the week.

The NFL is probably the best professional sports league in the world in how it gets its product in front of as many eyes as possible. Every game is televised and the NFL is even experimenting with games on Facebook and Google to reach those who cut their cable TV cords.

The CFL has a bunch of exhibition games that are not televised because TSN is more concerned with hockey playoffs and makes more money off of them. The CFL could free up those games for other networks, or even put them on Facebook or other on-line media platforms for exposure and perhaps some extra cash.

TSN is to be thanked for what it has done to get the CFL exposure, but I really get pissed off at how the Super Bowl is on CTV main network while the Grey Cup is limited to TSN and if you don’t get TSN, would you know or even care?

TV networks will be looking for content next year and opening it up for other networks to televise games increases the potential cash flow for the CFL. If Ambrosie wants to continue to push his international campaign for the CFL, how about TV contracts in the countries the CFL is getting international players from.

It might not bring in big bucks right away, but we are talking about getting exposure and growing the brand. Every little bit helps. In fact, the CFL could increase its exposure in various communities across Canada by broadcasting games in people’s original languages. So for Canadians who may not have grown up with football, or see the NFL as the only option, consider how they would feel about watching a game in their own language and being introduced to this part of Canada.

The CFL in one sense cannot be blamed for not anticipating something like a Covid-19 pandemic, but it can be blamed for being short-sighted and being tone-deaf to fans and players. The CFL had a chance to be innovative and proactive – it instead relied on asking for a handout without having to account for the money.

Now the league has time to rethink its options and get its ducks in a row for next year. By working on the on-line revenue streams and diversifying its media coverage, it might go some ways to taking the sting out of today.

I was hoping to see an innovative and progressive league meet the challenge this year. What I saw was a bunch of clowns in a clown car, oblivious to their surroundings. I was hoping to be writing about the Riders starting camp or the season, now I am just shaking my head in wonder at how this league hit another crossbar on its way to burying the 2020 season.