I received a reply from the CBC and I thought I'd share it.

Now this doesn't mean squat but at least someone in the CBC is at least considering the proposal.

CBC Audience Services (CBC)
Nov 25, 11:30 EST
Good morning xxxxx,

Thank you for contacting the CBC and for your compliments.

We are thrilled that you enjoyed our coverage of the Vanier Cup and I am more than happy to pass your thoughts along to our production team and crew if you'd like.
I know how much they will appreciate your kind words.

As for your suggestion, I will pass this along to our team for consideration.
You bring up a very good point as the quality of USports is not limited to football.
Hockey and track and field are only two USports which offer a great deal of excitement, so we will definitely consider more sports.

Thank you again, Donald, but if you need anything else, please do not hesitate to let us know.

Have a great week, xxxxx!

Kind regards,

Seamus Keane
CBC Audience Services

It was only a couple hundred... so it was close. Although I'm sure there were some freebies tossed around as well as I heard there were more available seats the day before still.

They better hope the Cats make the finals the year they host, because they're going to be papering the house otherwise.

^ I can see Hamilton doing something similar to Calgary...instead of having temporary bleachers at both ends of the place as shown in the original renderings, maybe they'll just do it at one end and put in temporary suites at the other.

The talk about pairing the Vanier Cup with the Grey Cup made me think that you'd be depriving smaller, good U Sport cities like Saskatoon of hosting the Vanier.

But then I had a look and Saskatoon has only hosted it once. And some other cities that I thought might have hosted at least once (Halifax, London) never have.

So the Vanier Cup was in Toronto at various venues for close to the first 40 years of its existence. Since then it's been mostly hosted in CFL-level cities and Quebec City, which is the closest-thing to a CFL-level city without actually being in the league. Plus Saskatoon one year.

So pairing it with the Grey Cup isn't really cheating anyone out of anything. And least not if you look at how things have traditionally been done.

I already thought it was a decent idea, and now I think it's an even better idea.

Back in my Grey Cup-going days, the Vanier Cup (regardless of the teams) on the Saturday is definitely something my buddies and I would have attended.

As we allow ourselves to drift into the path of those who dislike the CFL and want that narrative out there, let's remember that it was a successful Grey Cup. Please don't feed the you know whats.

^ Yeah, the Vanier Cup was for many years like the Grey Cup - basically a Toronto institution. Which on some levels made sense for the Vanier, as it's way more accessible to U Sports football schools than a place like Winnipeg or Saskatoon.

When will the viewership ratings come out for last nights game? They can't be as dismal as last years 3.1 million viewers.

107th GREY CUP Presented by Shaw Audience Grows 19%

3.9 Million: average viewership

4.6 Million: peak viewership

9.6 Million: overall viewership of some or all of the coverage

More stats, including half-time show numbers and digital streaming (up 77%) here: https://www.bellmedia.ca/the-lede/pr...n-tsn-and-rds/

Very good numbers had it been a closer game the ratings probably would have been better but with two blue collar football markets playing to end 20+ year droughts it meant much better ratings than the Stamps being in the cup every year.

That’s good ... obviously the two cities were highly interested plus it had home field interest in Alberta.

My first thought was that I was expecting a bigger audience, but it was a game between two cities of less than a million people, so there isn't the built-in casual audience bigger cities have (like Toronto two years ago). This is a good number for the league, hopefully they can build on it. The online numbers in particular demonstrate that there is a market for the CFL amongst young cable cutters.

I noticed some more casual fans (people who don't normally watch football but were interested in the Grey Cup because the Bombers were in it) mentioning that they subscribed to TSN's streaming service for the day for something like 5 bucks in order to watch the game.

If you aren't a hardcore fan, being able to get big events on an a la carte basis like that certainly makes cable cutting easier.

I've been doing that for a year now. 5.99 for TSN for a 24hr period.

There are few non-CFL cities where the U Sports football stadium is suitable to host the Vanier. Griffiths in Saskatoon wasn't really suitable either, but they got a significant corporate donation to upgrade the field, dressing rooms and washrooms and add enough temporary stands to put a bit over 12,000 in for the first time they hosted. Presumably for them to host next year it would only involve adding temporary seats, and the stadium already has been expanded a bit since then as well.

I would love to see London do something with TD Stadium here. It can be expanded enough (it was built to host the Canada Summer Games in 2001 and I think they put in enough temp seats to being it to almost 20k from it's regular 8000). But really it's a cold boring place, the seating area sucks, with about 100 chairs, a couple thousand benches with backs and the rest are regular aluminum benches, and attendance never justifies a larger seating capacity. Plus, as I said above, Tim Horton's Field is less than 90 minutes away (7 of the 11 OUA football teams are within that radius of it, London being the furthest), so it really makes sense to just use it in Southern Ontario. I could see Ottawa hosting it soon as well, given the success of the Panda game and at least both teams are now competitive. If not sooner, then I would say for sure when the Ottawa next hosts the Grey Cup.

Moncton could host as well, and for sure Halifax if they get their stadium done. It will just come down to the competitiveness of the teams in the Atlantic I think. Saint Mary's used to be like Laval, they had an amazing 15 year run, but it's been a long time since they or any other Atlantic team made it to the Vanier.

^ Ottawa would make a good Vanier Cup location because in addition to the city's competitive teams and reasonably good support for them, it's also very convenient to a good number of other schools in Quebec and Ontario.

Ottawa also has a bit of a mini version of the classic Edmonton mindset when it comes to getting behind events taking place in the city.

There is less of the "ewww it's not big time enough for us so we can't be bothered" attitude like you have in some other places.

To put yesterday's numbers into context:

2013 Grey Cup - 4.5M - Saskatchewan & Hamilton - in Regina
2014 Grey Cup - 4.1M - Calgary & Hamilton - in Vancouver
2015 Grey Cup - 4.3M - Edmonton & Ottawa - in Winnipeg
2016 Grey Cup - 3.9M - Calgary & Ottawa - in Toronto
2017 Grey Cup - 4.3M - Calgary & Toronto - in Ottawa
2018 Grey Cup - 3.1M - Calgary & Ottawa - in Edmonton
2019 Grey Cup - 3.9M - Winnipeg & Hamilton - in Calgary

2019 notables:
2019 NBA Finals - Game 6 - Warriors & Raptors - 7.7M
2019 NBA Finals - Game 5 - Warriors & Raptors - 6.4M
Super Bowl LIII - 4.34M (CTV only)
2019 Stanley Cup Finals - Game 7 - St. Louis & Boston - 4.15M
2019 World Junior Hockey Championships - Quarterfinals - Canada/Finland - 4.0M
2019 Grey Cup - Winnipeg & Hamilton - 3.90M
2019 Stanley Cup Playoffs - Round 1 - Boston & Toronto - 3.72M
2019 US Open Women's Final - Andreescu v Williams - 3.40M

^ Pretty damn impressive considering that unlike most of those events, the Grey Cup is not available on free TV and therefore has a more limited pool of potential viewers. To pull in that many viewers when you're available on a cable channel demonstrates the value of the league to Bell Media. No surprise they re-upped for more money.

Piecing together some info from various articles over the years:

RDS or TVA Sports ratings

Grey Cup with Alouettes playing: 1.25 to 1.5 million

Grey Cup without Alouettes: 250,000

Typical Super Bowl: 800,000-1 million

Alouettes regular season game: 250-300,000

Alouettes playoff game: 400,000-500,000

Montreal Canadiens regular season game: 750,000-1 million

Montreal Impact regular season game: 150,000-200,000

Montreal Impact "big game" (ie Champions League final): 500,000

CFL's tv ratings are very healthy and stable the main issue is filling stadiums. Teams gotta be quick to adjust like the eskimos are and have special deals to get kids in the stadium. I know BMO is switching to a party deck this year where the steel temp bleachers will be removed in the endzone. BC lions might be wise to change their seating configuration at BC place tarp the endzone seats on both the lower and upper deck and sell seats just facing the field of play on both lower and upper deck as it gives fans a much better view of the field and were always more popular with Lions fans then the endzone seats are.

Coupled with all the negativity that gets heaped on the CFL (poor pay, old white guy fans, decrepit stadiums, irrelevant to a diverse Canada) that none of the other leagues have to deal with its a credit to the people who watch the games.

Source: https://pattitherivercityrenegade.wordpress.com/

Randy Ambrosie, the commish of Rouge Football, was in total blow-smoke-up-their-butts mode during Grey Cup week, calling the CFL “the world’s largest global football league” and telling interrogators that he’s “super optimistic” about the markets in the Republic of Tranna and Vancouver. Here are some numbers that he’s “super optimistic” about:

https://pattitherivercityrenegade.fi...dance-2019.jpg

^ It doesn't matter, you still aren't getting a NFL team :haha:

Un huh :)

That's quite the news source you used above, I particularly enjoy the masthead. Journalism at it's finest, old time reporting, Matthew Halton, Ed Murrow, J Frank Willis, Patti Dawn Swansson LOL

https://i.imgur.com/9IbWNHf.jpg

^ I'm actually impressed by that source. Patti Dawn Swansson was for years the main sports columnist at the Winnipeg Sun before leaving the biz and moving west. She writes for fun in her blog, so obviously no more quotes from the locker room and that type of original content, but still a good read although unfortunately she said she's going on hiatus after the Grey Cup.

No one is a better writer than Paul Friesen!

Friesen stirs the pot but he's good to read. Patti Dawn may be better known to old timers as Pat Doyle.

I can't remember off the top of my head, who was the coach, that was only there for a year? and Joe Mack was GM IIRC. Friesen was still going after him a year after he was gone. My God he was brutal, maybe he has grown since then. Remember that Youtube video about the stadium delay, even Hitler didn't like Friesen. :)

• Video Link

You're probably thinking of Mike Kelly, who was head coach and GM in 2009.

It's funny, I had pretty positive memories of Kelly from his OC days in Winnipeg in the early 90s. But when he came back as HC he was a pretty prickly guy who would get into it with fans and the media. He ended up in some domestic incident during the off season and once his mug shot from the US hit the papers in Winnipeg that was it, he got axed even though the team was 7-11 and would get a hell of a lot worse without him.

I remember it was a pretty big media circus in town when it happened...

http://www.bluebastard.ca/wp-content...ly-Mugshot.jpg
The most infamous mug shot in Winnipeg sports history

That's the guy, Friesen just wouldn't let it go, kinda like Bruce Dowbiggin's Don Cherry vendetta.

What is a commissioner supposed to say, we had a downturn in attendance, and Toronto is too good for the CFL, so fuck it?

Why do you revel in something Uniquely Canadian "Failing"? Whats next, cheer for the failure of Universal Healthcare or CPP. the maybe the US will assimilate Toronto and you can be happy

Hammer, nail, head! Good one, and so true.

I think for a bunch of people, somebody wearing a CFL team jersey stole their lunch money in kindergarten and it has so scarred them that they are triggered every time the CFL is mentioned.

CEBL and CBC agreed to an extension of their partnership this week.

https://www.cbc.ca/sports/basketball...deal-1.5374202

What is CEBL ha ha? Didn't know Canada even had a basketball league, Never heard of it do these players even get paid?

We actually have two, the CEBL (which is Western Canada/Ontario) and the NBLC (which is mostly centred in the Maritimes).

This is great news. I hope to try and follow it more closely this time around. Good to have more sports cancon be accessible.

It would be nice to see a single national league emerge. When it's fragmented it's too easy to ignore... if the CPL was three different regional leagues it wouldn't get any press. I think that was partly the issue with women's pro hockey.

It will emerge eventually just by CEBL being a stronger structure than NBLC. IN an ideal world CEBL picks up a couple of the NBLC markets and calls it a day - otherwise there's no real incentive for the two to merge from CEBL's perspective.

The issue with women's hockey was, and will continue to be, that there is very little corporate support on the whole, although this has potential to change. The leagues were split fairly evenly between Canada and the US, and once the Chinese money migrated out of the Canadian league it simply couldn't function on its own finances. Having just one North American women's league will likely be the way things go, as you've mentioned, but it will need the support of the NHL if it's going to last long-term.

Basketball in Canada, on the other hand, can survive on its own financial merits with the correct combination of leadership, support, and determination. The CEBL is off to a very good start on that behalf, although it's interesting to see them take a slightly different direction to CPL wrt media partnerships and video production/licensing. CPL has the benefit of the heft of the sport of soccer, which is great for them; and that's something the CEBL can't quite build yet. The idea of the leagues is similar, though, with single entity providing the centralization and base needed for sport development in Canada.

Blue Bombers are on pace to sell the most Grey Cup merchandise in CFL history.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manit...dise-1.5381838

Couple that with 800,000 more viewers for this year's Grey Cup CFL you should give a huge thank you to Manitoba and Bomber fans across Canada. To beat Rider fan merch sales is incredible!

With the Bombers Grey Cup win and the new Rapid Transit line to IG Field opening this spring I think the Bombers should draw 3000-5000 more fans per game this upcoming season.

'We're not competitors': Edmonton pro sports teams partner up with 4-game pass

"EDMONTON -- The Edmonton Eskimos, FC Edmonton, Stingers and Prospects are teaming up in 2020.

For $79, Edmonton sports fans will be able to go to one pre-season or regular season game for each of the four teams.

Officials from all four teams expressed excitement about the partnership and stressed they have never been competitors.

"I think there's an opportunity for us to work together than there is to be a competitor in any sense," said Stingers President Brett Fraser.

"We're partners. The better those three teams do, the better we do," said Eskimos President and CEO Chris Presson."

https://edmonton.ctvnews.ca/we-re-no...pass-1.4711891

That is amazing and something MLSE and the Argos need to do ASAP!

^ Would never work in Toronto. People on the prairies tend to root for all the home teams... for whatever reason, Toronto's fans are a lot more tribal.

MLSE already does a number of promotions for Argos tickets, the most obvious being the agreement with the CNE. MLSE has no incentive to do this for any of its teams because they're all under pretty high demand (except for the Argos). It's a different case in Edmonton where all of the participating teams need to improve their crowds.

I think Leaf fans might have some closet argo fans if the argos could win consistently in the regular season which they have not done since the Damon Allen years.

Not Leafs fans that pay face value for tickets. That's a crowd that likes status. I respect other cities that value the sport itself.

American ratings for Grey Cup:

"Sixers games are averaging a 3.7 rating on NBC Sports Philadelphia (+19%), on pace to rank as the network’s highest on record (dating back to 2008). … Last Friday’s Iowa-Nebraska college football game drew 1.43 million viewers on BTN, its second-largest audience of the season. … The Grambling-Southern Bayou Classic pulled 206,000 viewers on NBCSN, down 13% from last year (236K) but up 6% from 2017 (194K). … The Club América-Tigres Liga MX quarterfinal averaged 1.8 million viewers on Univision and TUDN, the best for a quarterfinal in three years. … The November 24 Grey Cup had a 0.1 rating and 109,000 on ESPN2."

https://www.sportsmediawatch.com/201...hl-sixers-btn/

Emphasis added mine.

^ Thanks for that.

Obviously not a major TV attraction down south, but still not too bad considering that a NHL game on another cable channel (NBCSN) averaged 313,000 viewers last season, and that's usually with two (but sometimes only one) US markets involved in each game.

I am often surprised at how low TV ratings for certain things are in the U.S. Though I realize there is lots of competition down there for sports on TV.

But still, that Bayou Classic is something I am familiar with (don't ask why) and the ratings for something that's as hyped as it is aren't any better than a regular season Alouettes game on RDS.

This is for something that packs the Superdome, and that people travel hundreds of km to attend, spending the weekend in New Orleans and filling most of the city's hotels.