^ In some respects taking over a "distressed goods" team could be harder than an expansion startup because the well is already poisoned, so to speak. I almost wonder if it might make more sense for the CPL to exit Edmonton for a few years and try again later once everything is firmly in place, rather than a desperation move to keep the lights on for the existing franchise.

2030 Olympics

Quebec or Ingenious Nations in BC

That's quite the pickle for Trudeau. OoO ... A truly Canadian Olympic split between Quebec and BC!


(since this is SSP .... I know the province of BC has decided not to financial support a games in 2030)

Hopefully they don't bid at all. Between IOC corruption and the amount of money that gets dumped into the Olympics I don't Canada to even start paying the fees to put a bid in. We have much bigger issues going on in our country that could benefit from the money instead of this.

Speaking of TV ratings the BC Lions and Calgary Stampeders over the weekend outgrew every single other TV show in the country including the NFL, Leafs, Raptors at over 750000.

https://3downnation.com/2022/11/09/2...-to-last-year/

2022 CFL Semi-Final Sunday TV ratings down 27 percent compared to last year

There was lots of competition for the Canadian Football League on television during its Semi-Final Sunday this past weekend.

The three-down league started playoffs on the same day as the NFL was playing the majority of its Week 9 schedule, while the Toronto Maple Leafs and Toronto Raptors were both in action.

Canadian quarterback Nathan Rourke led his Lions to a decisive West Division Semi-Final win at BC Place to record the day’s No. 1-rated sports broadcast. Rourke completed 22-of-30 passes (73 percent) for 321 yards with two touchdowns to headline a 30-16 decision over Calgary. Rourke drew more attention on TV than any NFL game, plus he beat out the Leafs and Raps.

The 1 p.m. eastern time NFL games across CTV brought in an average audience of 545,900, while the 4 p.m. ET matchups netted 455,900. Puck drop for the Maple Leafs’ 3-1 victory against the Carolina Hurricanes was at 5 p.m. ET on TSN and drew an average audience of 512,000. The Raptors’ 111-97 loss in Chicago started at 6 p.m. ET with 310,700 viewers watching across Sportsnet’s national channels and Sportsnet One.

Sunday Night Football needed overtime in Kansas City to decide a winner between the Titans and Chiefs with the home side prevailing 20-17. Patrick Mahomes produced 509 yards of total offence as 368,000 watched on TSN and 285,600 on CTV2, with 653,600 onlookers in total.

Thursday Night Football featured the undefeated Philadelphia Eagles beating the Houston Texans, improving to 8-0 with 513,100 viewers on TSN and CTV2. Monday Night Football featuring Lamar Jackson and his Baltimore Ravens defeating New Orleans 27-13 drew an audience of 443,700 on TSN.

Semi-Final Sunday TV ratings 2022:

Hamilton at Montreal — 516,200
Calgary at B.C. — 753,500

Average: 634,850

2021

Montreal at Hamilton — 684,000
Calgary at Saskatchewan — 1,061,000

Average: 872,500

2019

Edmonton at Montreal — 626,900 (RDS 405,000)
Winnipeg at Calgary — 1,100,800 (RDS 75,000)

Average: 863,850

2018

B.C. at Hamilton — 697,800
Winnipeg at Saskatchewan — 1,280,000

Average: 988,900

2017

Saskatchewan at Ottawa — 975,000
Edmonton at Winnipeg — 1,128,000

Average: 1,051,500

Does the 2022 numbers include RDS? If not that average I assume would be much higher

Those TV numbers for the CFL are disappointing.

In 2022, the east semi-final drew 110,000 less viewers than 2019 - 516,000 before RDS compared to 626,000 before RDS.

The west semi-final drew a whopping 450,000 less viewers than 2019 - 753,000 vs. 1.1 million.

The overall numbers for the regular season have also declined from 2019 (the last pre-covid season).

Combined with the lowest attendance in the past 50 years and it hasn't exactly been a banner season for the league.

Personally I would like to see Ambrosie go i have found cfl 2.0 to be a complete money drain and time waster that has generated zero additional interest in the game from New Canadians which was the target audience. The handing over of everything to TSN since 2007 has made the game presentation and promotion extremely stale and poor. The league needs another Marc Cohon as commish as league was in much better health under his leadership and he understood who to cater to to draw the average cfl fan in to watch the product.

There's a report out that Netflix wants to buy a sports league and put it on their platform.

https://frontofficesports.com/netfli...eagues-rights/

That would do a lot for exposure if they considered the CFL. But there'd be so many logistical things that would have to be done for that to work. The teams who are community owned and the teams that are privately owned would all have to agree to give up ownership I imagine.

Not sure how that would all work. Just speculation on my part.

Its tough to gage value of each team. Saskatchewan and Winnipeg are probably worth 150 to 200 million a pop. Hamilton edmonton Ottawa and Calgary probably around 50 million a pop. Bc 15 million and montreal and Toronto probably only 5 million. I am not sure Netflix wants just a domestic Canadian league though as that would be a harder sell as a draw for international subscriptions

Conceptually, I don’t understand the concept of a streaming service that would own a sports league.

Either one ends up with type of sports/team-specific streams (already done), or just a TV sports network that captures a large slice of various sports.

I suppose it comes down to them figuring out what is more profitable... buying rights to an existing league, or spending the money on setting up (or buying) their own league.

No question the NFL or NBA would pull in more money than the Netflix Football League or Netflix Basketball League, but as we all know, the rights to established leagues cost a fortune. So this alternative approach could make sense.

I wonder if something like basketball is a much surer bet for Netflix. Smaller rosters, ample supply of players including "undiscovered" pros from overseas, loads of venues that are easy to dress up for TV (as compared to an empty football stadium), as well as an audience that probably skews a bit younger and may be more receptive to something like that.

I have a hard time imagining the CFL going along with this any more readily than they went for the XFL proposition to buy the CFL 20-odd years ago. I know the Canadian mentality is to sell quickly to the first American to come along with a fat wallet, but maybe it makes sense to resist that temptation.

I'm going to try to get a question in during the Q&A between the fans and Ambrosie during Grey Cup. Basically it'll be: There has been declining interest in the league ever since TSN took over, so what is your path to recovery because nothing you've tried has worked yet.

I still stand by the idea that improving the product on the field is one of the most important aspects of improving popularity, more so than marketing gimmicks. People won't spend if they don't feel they're getting their money/time's worth in terms of quality.

However, whenever I suggest this I get shit on for "hating the CFL"

I wonder what TSN's stance is on the way things are with respect to the CFL? They bought in when the CFL was riding pretty high, at a time when attendance and viewership was way up and there was a general resurgence of interest in the league. It feels like it kind of peaked about 10-12 years ago.

You would think they'd have a vested interest in maintaining that interest considering the money they're paying. But CFL coverage on TSN is starting to feel like NLL or wrestling, which gets their couple hours of live action of week but no other coverage to speak of.

I will say, things have improved over the past few seasons in the sense that games are moving faster and not subject to as many interminable coach's challenges. That's one area of improvement, although those improvements have basically brought the game back to where it was a decade or so ago.

Yup, that's been a huge improvement. I remember the days when coaches would constantly challenge pass interference, in hopes that a player that it may be called on someone, even uninvolved in the play and on the other side of the field, to try to get a free first down.

I know people say "don't make the league like the NFL!", but I also think they should adopt a similar play clock. Having to wait for the refs to start the play clock actually 1) slows down the game (I'll try and find it, but the average amount of time between plays ends up being less in the NFL) and 2) inhibits teams from utilizing a true hurry up offence

Considering these games are on cable and cable/satellite subscribers tend to be older, this is not a good sign for the long-term for the league.

I was at the west semi-final game, it was a large crowd and there were people younger than me there, but the vast majority were 50+.

I wouldn't be opposed to that.

To me, the game is perfectly fine between the snaps. It's the downtime in between that could be improved.

I wrote an extensive idea about finding a way to make "hurry up" offense the default, I think back in 2020 when the league was deciding whether to play or not.

The problem with changing things is that half the people want it to be more unique (I'm in this camp), half the people the people want it be more like the NFL, and half the people won't accept any change at all. Yes that's 3 halves... that how difficult it is to get anyone on the same page.

Has anyone hear how betting has improved the CFL, if at all? How much revenue has it generated?… I know the CFL was a big pusher for it.