Twelve Men and a Rouge
Canadians have been quick to assume that the CFL’s problem is the rulebook. No, it’s the size of the market.
“Canadians are forever taking the national pulse like doctors at a sickbed: the aim is not to see whether the patient will live well but simply whether he will live at all.” –Margaret Atwood, Survival: A Thematic Guide to Canadian Literature
The recent years, especially the two since the onset of the coronavirus pandemic, have not been kind to the Canadian Football League. Other professional sports leagues made it through truncated pandemic seasons, surviving on television revenue even as they played in deserted stadiums. The National Football League played a complete 2020-2021 season, save for its preseason exhibitions. The CFL, on the other hand, canceled its lost the 2020 season altogether, and the shortened 2021 season was sub-par after the layoff. The coming offseason will be a fresh example of Atwood’s maxim, with renewed navel gazing questioning whether the league has any future or is destined to fold.
Through the 2019 season, the CFL appeared stable, if not necessarily thriving. Those who followed the league closely reported on problems that the pandemic would blow open. Much of the league plays in small cities that represent small markets. The Saskatchewan Roughriders are the only professional sports team in the province playing at a national level, and the team holds its own financially under community ownership, with a new stadium in Regina. The teams playing in Montreal, Toronto, and Vancouver, Canada’s three largest markets, all have problems attracting both attendance and media attention, and are the three teams at greatest risk of folding. The league did not play in 2020 after the Canadian government refused the league’s request for a $30 million interest-free loan, which irritated many fans when Ottawa’s total spending on COVID measures reached into the tens of billions of dollars. (Canadian governments simply do not spend on professional sports or stadiums, to the dismay of the fans of teams that have relocated to American cities.)
The CFL’s central problem is its economic fundamentals, that it is a league that operates uniquely within Canada while attempting to complete in a continent-wide market for football. Canada is a small fan market and a small media market. The CFL shares a sport with one of the world’s most efficient marketing behemoths in the National Football League, a league with worldwide appeal and one that many Canadians follow closely via the NFL’s extensive contract to televise its games in Canada. History of alternative football leagues in North America is checkered to begin with. The World Football League in the 1970s, the United States Football League in the 1980s,, the World League of American Football in the 1990s. the Extreme Football League (aka the XFL) and the Alliance of American Football more recently. The American Football League did well but its long-term survival required a merger with the NFL. The CFL has been a special case, the sole survivor. It survived due to the appeal of Canada having its own game with its own rules, and operated in a market where it had both formal (through Canadian law) and informal (the NFL’s gentleman’s agreement not to expand into Canada) protection. Even then, the league has endured four folded Canadian franchises since the early 1980s, and the collapse of its expansion into the United States.
The CFL has tried to market the game domestically, secure an American TV contract, and stream the game worldwide. In 1993, the CFL attempted to expand into seven American cities, but it could not rely on the emotional pull of nationalism and the quirkiness of the rules alienated fans used to another code. American stadiums were not large enough for the Canadian field, and quality of play was not good. The Baltimore Stallions briefly succeeded, winning the only Grey Cup by an American team, but withered when the NFL’s Cleveland Browns relocated and became the Ravens.
The CFL has several major issues today. First is the lack of a good TV contract at home (all games are on a single network that is not free to air) and the league depends on gate receipts for over 50% of revenue, the reverse of most North American sports leagues, for whom gate receipts account for less than 20%. CFL teams face a salary cap lower than star NFL players make on their own, and the lack of long-term contracts means that 60% of players are liable to change teams annually as free agents. Secondly, the league markets itself poorly, with little merchandising and nothing similar to the “Madden” video game to engage young fans. Most fans are in their fifties or older. Thirdly, the CFL struggles in its largest markets, where fans and journalists are used to covering major league teams that play big-name American teams. The owners of Argonauts may well look on with jealousy as the Raptors host the Los Angeles Lakers, knowing their team will never get the chance to fill BMO Field for a game against the Green Bay Packers. There is a suspicion that Maple Leaf Sports Entertainment, the Argos’ owner, would like to move the team into a U.S.-based league, ideally the NFL itself.
The CFL Commissioner, Randy Ambroisie, addressed all of this in the State of the League speech before the 2021 Grey Cup. Legalization of single-game sports betting in Canada will probably be a boon financially, giving the league another revenue stream. The deal with Genius Sports that Ambroisie announced involving sports data will increase the profile of CFL games for betters and could help reach into the holy grail of Las Vegas casino wagering.
However, the Commissioner set off controversy when he also said that the CFL’s rules of play will be up for reconsideration during the off-season, particularly the number of downs teams have to advance the ball ten yards to maintain possession. During the 2021 season, CFL scoring was down, and offenses never found their rhythm after a year and a half away from competitive play. There appears to be a belief among league management that switching to four downs, or to U.S. rules altogether, would make the game appeal to younger fans used to the rule from video games.
Not surprisingly, the question of U.S. rules has dominated attention since the Grey Cup. Before the season, the CFL was in discussions with the newest iteration of the XFL, led by actor, wrestler, and former Calgary Stampeders lineman Dwayne Johnson. There was a talk of a full merger that would have required a single set of presumably American rules. Talks broke off before the CFL’s 2021 season began, but the idea that Canadian rules were the league's problem, instead of other marketing issues, remained.
The other moves the league announced suggest that CFL leadership understands the economic questions facing the league, though it does not seem to have an answer to the problem of the three largest markets. Expansion into the United States does not seem to be the solution. The TV contract with ESPN is stable, and ensures that every game is available to U.S. viewers, but only by streaming, meaning the game does not draw enough viewers to warrant being shown on the main cable channels. Merger with the XFL would end the CFL’s independent existence The CFL should think twice about harmonizing its rules with the NFL. A major part of the appeal to fans is that the game is Canadian, separate from the NFL, with a requirement for a certain number of Canadian players and Canadian rules. The outcome of the 2021 Grey Cup turned on the Hamilton Tiger-Cats conceding a single point, or “rouge,” that forced the game into overtime, where the Blue Bombers won.
Even if the rules of Canadian football remain intact, this discussion is inevitable, since the Canadian reflex is to assume that the CFL’s problems can only stem from the fact that the game us unlike the American counterpart, rather than that it faces the same financial challenges as other sports leagues that need to compete with well-marketed behemoths.
References:
https://www.allegiantgoods.co/blogs/news/cfl-expansion
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https://www.cfl.ca/2021/07/07/statement-cfl-regarding-xfl/
https://www.cfl.ca/2021/08/03/betregal-teams-w-cfl-become-leagues-official-sport-gaming-partner/
https://www.d.umn.edu/cla/faculty/tbacig/cst1030/1030anth/survival.html
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