IF the Goldeyes ever fold, 5-10 years from now maybe that is what would happen - relocation of the Valour to Shaw Park. There have been some soccer teams in the US that have played in baseball stadiums. Kansas City played some seasons in a 6,000 seat stadium prior to moving to their new stadium a few years back.

Couldn't they just build a new grandstand at the Winnipeg Soccer Complex? It already seats 2000 on one side. Maybe repaint the wood bench seating too?

I thought half the raison d'etre of Valour was to fill dates at IGF? Relocating them won't do that.

2000 fans in a 33,500 seat stadium is killing them off right now

In fairness Valour really wouldn't work anywhere with 2,000 fans. They have been pummeled by a lot of factors beyond their control, along with the fact that they have been a downright lousy team. They got off to a good start and had they been able to keep it up with 6 or 7 thousand fans a game it would have worked out fine. But alas.

Winnipeg Soccer Complex is basically an amateur facility. It's the kind of place where U16 teams play in front of family and friends. Building a pro calibre venue there means starting pretty much from scratch, and I'm not sure there is any real advantage to putting it there as compared to just about anywhere else.

But to jonny24's point, yes, as long as Valour FC is under the Bombers' wing, they will always be at IG Field. Which is fine, they just need to get the attendance numbers back up to where they were in 2019.

Lol why are you getting defensive. :haha:

York have a pretty embarrassing attendance too. My biggest guest would be it's hard to compete with TFC and all of the other pro sports teams in the city -- people have limited money right now, so I'm sure will choose other things over the CPL for their precious and limited money.

I wish the CPL had some games broadcast on national television networks like TSN-- would be very beneficial in gaining more popularity and viewership for the league IMO. Only die hards are going to subscribe to OneSoccer, so you have the potential to increase the casual fan base if a wider audience can watch the games

Probably having the Oilers go far in the playoffs this year drew people's attention away from FC Edmonotn, at least that's one of the impacts I think. Hard to think of soccer when the city has playoff hockey fever.

I'm confused, are the Vancouver Sun and Vancouver Province now the same organization. I just wanted to see the stories about the Lions great home opener and both online papers had the exact same story.

^^^ Yes and for a while I think?

Crowd was 34000. And would have been higher but it was capped due to a staffing shortage

MLS and apple have signed a 10 year $250 million per year tv deal. This will be 9.6 million a year for the 3 Canadian teams i believe the previous mls u.s. tv deal they are currently in pays 90 million per year

People in Quebec are saying this will be the death of the CF Montréal if it means no regular (well cable) TV coverage of their games.

The press release did say quite clearly that games of all three Canadian clubs (and not just Montreal) would have French play-by-play, but no further details were provided.

So it's unclear whether it will be a Montreal-based crew (familiar to Quebec audiences) or some random Apple-MLS broadcast crew based in the US and made up of French (from France) imports.

Note that soccer announcers for TVA Sports or RDS already have a number of French imports among them, though they are based in Montreal and live the pulse of the club and the city day in and day out. It's not the same as having random talking heads based in NYC or LA, even if the latter are speaking in French.

CF Montréal is already fragile, having gone through an almost tragic and largely unnecessary hard re-brand over the past year or two.

MLS imposing a more arm's length media presence on them doesn't come at a very good time.

I seemed to have missed that story at the time (or can't remember) why the name change?

"CF" was deemed more "international" than "L'Impact" which is a North American-style team nickname.

Cf montreal is on very shaky ground i still believe if they moved downtown to molson stadium and helped renovate it they would have much better fan support

The streaming option seems best for a league with a large, loyal following like the NFL. But at least MLS went with a provider that a lot of people already have like Apple, instead of something more obscure like DAZN or OneSoccer, or the really obscure ones like Fubo.

Sometimes I wonder if a league like CPL wouldn't be better off on a cable channel that more people than just absolute diehards could access. I mean, I might watch the odd bit of a game here or there if it was on GameTV or some other random channel, but I'm not ponying up for OneSoccer.

There used to be CPL games on CBC network and streamed as well a few years ago. It's quite amazing what CBC does stream, they stream most of the "amateur" Olympic sports (track, swimming, skiing, gymnastics, volleyball, rugby etc) they also stream the CEBL and everything is archived for future viewing in case you missed it.

^ I always forget about the streaming options on CBC Gem, to be honest. The only thing I'm motivated enough to find and watch (and pay for, in some cases) via streaming is junior hockey. Everything else I care to watch is on TV channels that I already pay for, mainly TSN and SN.

CBC was streaming CHL too :)

Tsn losing these mls tv rights makes them even look weaker. I am not really sure its a partner that has good long term potential with cable cutting i do wonder if the folks at genius sports might urge the CFL to explore new TV partners. I believe tsn was paying the 3 canadian mls teams 4.5 million a year for tv rights

If not Genius, then Tannenbaum for sure will be urging them to. The CFL needs to put their product on the market and see if anyone else wants to bid for it. If they just opt for TSN again, they're going to get more of the same: a low value deal and increasingly poor coverage.