The CFL is seen as standing in the way of the holy grail of an NFL team in Toronto. So I can sorta understand a bit some people in the GTA encouraging the demise of the CFL.

It makes no sense though for people in other CFL cities as no CFL means no pro football for them.

Likely for Toronto too TBQH.

^ Yes again, the GTA would have to bow to the altar of that mighty metropolis of... Buffalo :)

In a scenario where the CFL doesn't exist (god forbid), the NFL would have to seriously look at not only Toronto, but Montreal and Vancouver as well. Montreal is a big market. Using U.S. MSA measuring standards, Montreal is a 5 million + city, and Olympic Stadium is suitable for the NFL. Vancouver is 3 million (using U.S. standards). Plus Vancouver would have western Canada to draw from, let alone BC. BC PLace is a great venue, and if seating capacity is an issue, since the CFL field is so much bigger, you could add seating by excavating at field level and bring seating capacity to 60 000.

I'm not rooting for the demise of the CFL but I'm not a huge CFL fan and would love to see an NFL team here.

The billionaire owners (new NFL teams can't be owned by corporations) and the proximity of Toronto to Buffalo would be significant handicaps to the NFL in Canada.

I think Skydome might be a bit too small for an optimal NFL stadium, while Olympic Stadium in Montreal likely would not pass muster for anything other than a temporary venue. That would mean new venues which go for $800m-$1 billion US.

The headwinds against the NFL in Canada would be pretty strong. Not impossible, but strong.

There will never be NFL teams in Montreal or Vancouver and the stadiums are still too small and not really conducive to expansion. Even though capacities are decreasing you need the high end seats and for those markets (and Toronto) new stadiums.

You're looking at maybe two billion, stadium and purchase price. Very few have that kind of money to throw in and have to wait 20 years for a return. The teams making the real big money in the NFL are the ones that have been around since the beginning and not the new kids on the block who have just bought in.

Also most pro sports are contracting, many metrics are down, viewership, attendance. I wouldn't hold my breath, to the NFL, Toronto would be like an expansion to San Antonio.

While I think all three cities would support NFL teams if they got them, actually getting one is a longshot due to shaky football support for both CFL and occasional NFL games. Not sure the NFL is big on leaps of faith.

They ain't. Bills in Toronto killed the dream of some.

Forbes' NFL values places only Buffalo, Detroit, Cincinnati and Cleveland as sub-$2billion, and not by a lot. Even if the NFL was looking at expanding, they would set a fee of at least $2b (USD). I don't see a long list of rich Canadians spending that, not to mention the stadium (as mentioned)

At this point there is no way that the CFL is realistically an obstacle to the NFL coming to Toronto.

Sure they are, the NFL doesn't want the CFL to die. They are token competition that helps them avoid anti trust issues for one reason. If the NFL wanted to be in Toronto they have had ample time and opportunity to do so and have chosen not to, for whatever reason.

Major sports leagues have been exempted from anti-trust legislation.

The NFL could put a team in Toronto and easily prop up the Argos. It wouldn't take that much to ensure that the team doesn't die.

There are several reasons why the NFL is unlikely to do that, but I would not say that the Argonauts are one of the major reasons as to why.

And having to wait 20 years for a return. Who knows where pro sports will be in 20 years. They could be playing to "studio audiences" of 20k and be airing on multi platforms or maybe salaries will fall with lesser TV revenues because that gravy train will likely slow.

Yes, I know and the CFL used to be seen as an aid in that.

Don't get me wrong about Toronto and its relationship to the NFL as I don't think it matters one way or another, but historically, for whatever reason, the NFL has wanted a strong CFL. They loaned the league money to save it 30? years back, they could have killed it off or let it die had they chosen to, but they did the opposite.

In the case of Toronto, I don't see why the NFL would be interested in any competition at all then. Why bother propping up a competing team, other than maybe the optics against killing it? Benign neglect seems to be the best option for the NFL vis-a-vis the CFL in Toronto.

I could see the NFL supporting the CFL as a 'grassroots' league in other parts of the country.

At one time that was an issue, I just don't know if some of those owners want to divvy up any more of the pie, there were some pretty dicy times in LA as well. Sports are changing, on many levels.

Im a big NFL fan. I also have no interest in a team here in Toronto. Football is best viewed on tv. One of the biggest reasons a team in Toronto is irrelevant.

Another reason is that unlike the nba and basketball, football and the nfl has been established and popular for so long. Most fans have their allegiance to teams. Tough to win over new fans to a new team.

When you've got people watching a bunch of Koreans (pardon my generalization) playing video games and that is considered sport the whole future of sports as entertainment is up for review.

As I said earlier, pro sports in a 20k "TV studio"

I don't think it's competition. I think it's because:
1) The CFL has offered the only other legitimate pro opportunity for US college players, who may establish careers there and possibly find their NFL dream via that route.
2) There have been many in coaching and management who've "made their bones" in Canada and done well in NFL cities.

NFL doesn't and shouldn't care about competition.

Agreed. A team in Toronto (or anywhere in Canada) is a nice-to-have thing, but it's really not all that important. The NFL has always been big in Canada, but it's been growing an even larger audience over the last 5 years. The trend for sports in general is to make the events more intimate as people are finding reasons to stay home and watch games. I always said when it comes to sporting events the best seat in the house is a seat in my own house.

With that said, the NFL is trying to grow the game outside the US - and is definitely looking at Canada as a potential location for a team at some point. The Raptors success and its very diverse fanbase have raised some more curiosity about Toronto and Canada in general. A stadium is a big road-block for Toronto that doesn't seem to be getting cleared any time soon.

However, Vancouver is an interesting option. They have a stadium that has a decent amount of seating - and the NFL looks to be relaxing their capacity requirements as they're seeing some teams that always have empty seats even when they were doing well (ie. Cincinnati). Vancouver's NFL fanbase continues to grow and the city has a decent amount of diversity - even if it leans more on Asian diversity.
I wouldn't be surprised if Vancouver got an NFL team within the next 10 years.

What evidence are we seeing that the NFL is relaxing capacity? The 2 latest stadiums and the 2 under construction are all 65,000 plus, and other than the new LA stadium, are as big or bigger as the ones they replaced or are replacing. I can't see BC Place, at 54,000 seats and 50 suites, generating enough revenue for an NFL team, and I can't see the government or a private individual forking out over a billion dollars for 9 or 10 home dates and competing with BC Place. And I think they would have the same issue as Toronto does as far as infringing on the turf of an existing nearby team.

I doubt the NFL would ever come to Canada. I just don't see the demand for that type of large scale sporting event anywhere in Canada. If the Jays can only bring in 20K a few years out from making the playoffs, what hope would a NFL team have in a down year?

Diversity is certainly helping the NBA in Toronto. But football is a different story. Football is more or less in a situation similar to baseball and hockey, it is one of North America’s traditional sports and immigrants usually tend to pay less attention to them.

Hooboy! The things that are said here with regards to an NFL Team....

-there was potential ownership from Toronto that wanted to purchase a team but they were outbid for the Bills a few years back by Pegula. $1.4 billion I believe.

-even if you could dig down and expand the lower bowl at BC Place which is debatable you would be able to fit a few thousand extra seats if you are lucky - below the minimum capacity for NFL Stadiums at 60,000. Note: NFL rejected Oakland's proposal for a 50,000 seat stadium. Also, there is not enough room at the suite level for 120 - 150 suites - usually an NFL requirement. Lastly there are not enough club seats - 1500 or so in BC Place. An NFL Stadium usually has a separate club level with 8-10,000 seats. There is no space between the lower and upper bowl at BC Place for this. It is an inherently flawed stadium for the NFL.

-Olympic Stadium is in no way a potential NFl Stadium. You would be looking at a potential $1 billion renovation of the stadium to bring it up to par and given what you have to work with I don't think that is possible. The lower bowl would have to be completely destroyed and rebuilt to bring people closer to the sidelines...similar to what they did at Dolphin Stadium a few years ago. There are basically no suites at Olympic Stadium so the middle level would have to be turned into 150 or so suites. As with BC Place you run into the problem of a lack of space for a club level too.

- Rogers Centre - forget it. It's a multi-sport facility that renovations will not completely hide. It's a baseball stadium now anyways. Even if cheap Rogers was willing to splurge $600 - $700 million for a new outdoor stadium, and the hotel was replaced with endzone seating, capacity would be under 60,000. There isn't room for more than a few thousand seats there. Then there is the issue of too many suites and club seats in the end zone - something the NFL would not accept. It is an inherent flaw with Skydome.

Now that I think about it, the seats at Skydome are very cramped so they would have to expand seat width by an inch or two, meaning a few thousand more seats would be lost. Moot point, as it and the other 2 big Canadian stadiums would not be acceptable under NFL guidelines. For the record, the NFL rejected an outdoor $800 million stadium proposal for St. Louis before they moved to LA.

Given the cost of recent builds, a new domed stadium in Canada that seats 65,000 would likely cost $1.2 - $1.6 billion and that is probably if you started construction almost immediately. An expansion team would likely be $2 billion US so you would be looking at close to $4 billion Canadian to get an NFL team up and running here.

Vancouver is not an attractive market given it is not all that big, far from a sure bet and is in Canada. There are safer bets in similarly sized american cities with a proven football culture - Austin and San Antonio.
Montreal with its fickly fanbase for anything other than the Canadiens would not be particularly attractive either. The language issue is something an they would not be willing to look past...for MLB sure, not the NFL though.
Toronto...well we saw the response for NFL regular season games. Underwhelming. The NFL probably has some legitimate questions as to whether the market would support a team and provide ownership with the necessary capital ($500 million or more in PSLs) to privately fund a new stadium.

If the NFL were to expand, the best candidates are likely Mexico City (over 20 million with a huge upper income base) and San Antonio (mid-sized city but with a huge appetite for football that would likely allow for a public-private partnership of a new stadium).

Yeah why would the NFL give a shit about diversity ?

NFL isn't a play on the market but of the quality of ownership. Toronto's NFL fantasy lived as long as Ted Rogers who was of the right qualifications to be an NFL owner. Remember that the NFL does not allow ownership groups, only sole individuals (even Ted ran into a grey area because of the interworking of Rogers and his personal fortune intermingling with NFL expansion prospects). Outside of Ted it has been quiet as there are few Canadians whom are wealthy enough and into spots that the NFL would find suitable. It's not like the Weston's are in a rush to buy a sports franchise, many of Canadian wealthy types wouldn't ever rush to join the NFL club.

Many have said that Canada's NFL aspirations went away with Ted's passing as he was the money behind the group that wanted the NFL in Toronto since the 90s.

NFL in Toronto will likely happen down the road as the NFL is thirsty and desperate for growth. Also, I don't think thier London experiment will work long term and they will eventually reluctantly settle on Toronto and Mexico City as thier only out of country expansions.

The irony is the the NFL has the most limited prospects for growth and expansion going forward of all the professional sports leagues.

Someone call the Irvings so we can get the New Brunswick Battalion.

NFL is Toronto is unlikely to work because the stadium will have to be nearly 100% privately funded. Perhaps they will get some money from the city or land for free, the province and feds are unlikely to give them anything if you think about the far-reaching ramifications for other pro teams. The owners would require $500 million or more in PSLs from prospective season ticket holders to make a billion plus dollar stadium viable and there are simply not enough people in Toronto who are have the wealth AND the passion for American football to pay $50,000 or more for a seat license.

The only thing standing in the way of the NFL in Toronto is a stadium.

Bell just bought into an eSports organization this past week:

https://overactive-media-group.prezl...ic-partnership

Any sort of competition can be viewed as sport, IMO, whether it's contact sports or darts or eSports or figure skating or Scrabble. Anything pitting people against other people is sport IMO. They're all vying for similar market share.

If you build it, they will come.

I don’t think so though. The NFL is driven by tv viewership, which has already captured the market in Canada. The gain in NFL interest throughout the country would be minuscule. Like the Raptors, no matter how much the media likes to play the story that they are Canada’s team, throughout the season, the main viewership comes from the Toronto area, not the ROC. Likewise, if the NFL were to come to Toronto, the NFL fan base in Canada will still either just continue to follow their own favourite teams already, or just watch simply for fantasy football purposes. Therefore, the only thing the NFL has to gain if coming to Canada would be an extra 70k fans watching in a stadium 8 times a year. There will likely never be a chance for Toronto to host the Super Bowl, as they are mostly held in the southern US due to weather, aside from NY Giants/Jets hosting a couple years back. It would be really hard to justify building a $1.5 billion stadium entirely with private capital for 8 games a year.

I think someone already stated that it would make more sense for the NFL to tap the Mexican market, and have a team in Mexico City, a place with 20 million people and a stadium that already seats over 100k people.

That’s my take anyway.

I find this most bizarre... watching people play video games, viewed as a 'sport'. I have the same view over watching people play poker on a sports channel. I just don't get it.

If you want to add another level to it there is a sizable community for competitive nfl video games. People watching other people play football with a controller.

I can understand some of the other competitive games that are pretty popular. Just like sports you're watching someone do something that you could never pull off yourself without the thousands of hours that go into perfecting specific skills. The difference for me personally is if I'm already sitting at home I'd rather just play the game myself instead of watching someone stream it.

So posting on Skyscraper Forum is a sport then? Sign me up to a contract please!;)

I don't even think I can conceivably count in my head the number of Bay Street companies that would stumble over themselves to even have the chance to buy suites at a Toronto NFL stadium. There's more to revenue generation in today's sports environment than simply TV.

It's no different than me sitting on a couch watching a bunch of people running around in circles. It's not really that much of a stretch of the imagination.

For years it's been a fantasy of mine to try and find a way to get paid to post on here...

Winnipeg Attendance on Canada Day

Valour FC 6,678
Winnipeg Goldeyes 5,212

Well, there was Detroit a couple times, Indy, and Minneapolis a couple times (most recently a couple years ago). I would guess Toronto would build a dome as well for the NFL, so they would have has much of a chance as any other northern indoor stadium.

On the subject of a Toronto stadium, I do recall some "sports radio" talk a couple years ago of the Jays moving to a new ballpark, the Rogers Centre being extensively gutted and getting more than 60,000 seats in there. The idea was dropping the floor down, removing the rounded 100 level seats and squaring it off with a lot more seats due to the NFL field being quite a bit smaller than the CFL field it currently accommodates. Might have also involved removing the hotel, but I'm not sure if it was also stated that the seats that could be added there wouldn't be high dollar enough for less than a dozen games a year to counter the revenue the hotel actually makes year round, not to mention the revenue the hotel would generate during games itself. Obviously, these weren't architects talking so who knows how doable it could be. But even if it took 500-700 million to renovate, and the similar amount for a new ballpark, that's the same as a new NFL indoor stadium, and the Jays would be in a new ballpark too. If only they could find a piece of land right near there to build for the Jays. And I think "what to do with Rogers Centre" is a main holdback for the Jays building new.

And a sucker willing to put up 2 billion and wait 20 years to get something back on it, in an ever changing future sport climate.

I don't think ROI really comes in to the thinking that many of these new owners put in to buying an NFL team. If they have the resources and the desire to be part of a very limited club, then they go for it.

When was the last time the value of an NFL team decreased? :hmmm:

I hardly consider being the owner of an NFL franchise a sucker but to each their own. As an example, the Pegulas bought the Bills in 2014 for $1.4B and the team is currently valued (by Forbes) $200M higher than their purchasing price - and that's in the smallest market in the US and the lowest valued team in the NFL.

Still love the story of Trump stating in 1984 that he could've bought the Cowboys for 50M but that it's already established and would just be a lateral investment. Meanwhile the Cowboys are now worth 5B. Yep, only 100x increase in value - nothing to see here. :haha:

Aren't you always the one who posts things like mainstream North American sports are dying, via millenials/immigrants/headshots/excuses de jour and that soccer is taking over. A lot can change in 20 years.

Disregarding the rules for who can own a team in the NFL, when Rogers was in the mix there were a lot of beancounters at MLSE who didn't think it was all too great an idea. Source: Prime Time Sports

Those were probably still Teachers Pension Fund bean counters.

I've said many times before on here that the NFL if it came to Toronto would be a huge success, but one of the handicaps that a Toronto team would have is that the owner would probably have to build the stadium themselves.

I believe most of the NFL's clubs play in stadiums that haven't been paid by the teams or their owners.

This document outlines the funding breakdown of NFL stadiums:

https://cbsminnesota.files.wordpress...ry-12-2-11.pdf

Notably:

• MetLife (Giants & Jets) was 100% private;
• Lincoln in Philly was 2/3rds private;
• Gillette in Foxboro was 80% private;
• Ford in Detroit was 75% private;
• FedEx in Washington was 72% private; and,
• Cowboys Stadium in Arlington was 63% private.

Rest were majority public funds. A lot of teams seem to fall in the 30%-40% support for their stadiums.

Not included in that list is the new $1B stadium in Minnesota which was 50/50 split private/public and the new stadium in Atlanta which was also split 50/50.

via q12, CPL attendance at the end of the spring season:

Figures are more or less to be expected. Crowds should increase as we move into July and August. MLS/USL/NASL crowds are always consistently higher in the late summer compared to the early summer, so there should be a bump on most of these for the fall season. HFX are playing at or very near to capacity.

Canadian streaming service OneSoccer, home of CPL, Canadian Championship, and the CMNT/CWNT, have recently acquired the Canadian broadcast rights for both the Chinese Super League/Chinese FA Cup and Mexico's LIGAMX.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/D-pGOBtXUAAeYvv.jpg

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/D_NVVTzWwAcTkOf.jpg

Last week's CFL ratings, worrisome trend that outside of Bomber and Rider games ratings are getting really weak:

https://3downnation.com/2019/07/11/s...he-cfl-season/