Is the CFL being held hostage by MLSE?

Right now in Regina the Rider stores are closed until later on in April and if the Covid variants manage to continue their march through the under-40s, even teams like the Riders will find it hard to make money off of on-line store purchases.

Credit to Rod Pedersen who has managed to keep the spotlight on the CFL through his Internet show and who put out the thought that MLSE, who owns the Argos, along with the Leafs, Blue Jays and Raptors, wants to blow up the CFL and have it rearranged to operated like Major League Soccer where all contracts are negotiated with the league and teams share revenues etc, because MLSE feels they cannot make a profit with the Argos as currently configured.

Which is a laugh considering when they took over a few years ago, one of the selling points of MLSE is they would market the Argos, something not done by previous owners. The problem is they never did any marketing to begin with, looking for a way to bring in the NFL into Toronto being their end goal.

So in continuing their belief that MLS is the business model for the CFL, the Argos put forward their goal of adding Global players in an effort to appear to those ethnic communities which are crazy about soccer but could give a tinker’s cuss for the CFL.

Now with Dwayne Johnson and Redbird Investments which bought the XFL looking to hook up with the CFL to provide a feeder league for the NFL, the CFL is hoping to convince the XFL to part with some cash, while MLSE is apparently looking to use the merger with the XFL to raise the franchise value of the Argos but also use them as a lever to bring the NFL into Toronto without having the Argos disappear.

That bit is important because the NFL has always used the CFL as a counterbalance in monopoly arguments. Among major league sports, leagues want to avoid being a monopoly in the eyes of Congress who would legislate changes to allow for competition.

Whether it is a realistic argument the CFL offers an alternative to the NFL professionally is interesting because of the salary differences between the two leagues. If the XFC hitches its wagon to the CFL, that enhances the anti monopoly argument of the NFL where in reality, the combined league now becomes a feeder league because it operates mostly outside of the NFL schedule.

So apparently, six of nine teams did not want to play last season, Toronto among them, probably BC and let’s say Montreal. However, facing a second year of potentially no games, the threat of a merger with the XFL, and the increasing uncertainty of whether or how fans will be allowed into games, there is an appetite on the Prairies to have games played.

There may be less appetite for MLSE who quite frankly don’t care about Canada, except when it comes to tax laws and the ability to overcharge for what they offer. I lived for two years in Cambridge Ontario and while MLSE is touted as some sort of marketing genius organization, they are over rated in my view. Having ownership of the Leafs is like running the Riders these days – it’s a licence to print money and you don’t have to do much except open the doors and hope you own a team in a sport with much healthier TV contracts than what the CFL currently has and can underwrite the rest of their operations.

The longer the CFL waits to comeback, the harder it will be to recapture its small share of the market and even more difficult task of trying to attract younger fans across the demographic maps. So if the plan is to force the CFL to accept the MLSE view of the league as just another MLS, then all MLSE has to do is keep saying it is not interested in playing and the CFL goes another year sliding out of Canadian consciousness.

Commissioner Randy Ambrosie did not get off to a great start in the Covid era by blowing his presentation to a Parliamentary committee asking for help. Now Ambrosie has to be asking himself, can the league have a season without say, Toronto in the fold?

So MLSE is basically holding the CFL hostage until it agrees to accept the MLSE view of the league as a feeder and use access to the XFL potential funding to stay afloat for a while. In the meantime, CFL players you might consider getting older or perhaps on the fringes, are choosing to retire in the midst of the uncertainty.

Quarterback James Franklin was signed by the Riders two years ago as an experienced back up for Cody Fajardo but never took the field and the 29 – year-old announced his retirement to movie on. Or maybe Franklin is playing his cards in anticipation of uh, a spring football league coming up next year?

The signing of Franklin made sense when the Riders were looking to host a Grey Cup in 2020 and needed an experienced back up for Fajardo in case he went down with injury, Franklin was highly thought of as a back up in Edmonton, but when he got his chance as a starter in Toronto, he was underwhelming and probably staked his hopes on a reunion with Jason Maas in Riderville.

There is a difference between potential and realizing one’s potential and it is doubtful Franklin would have turned around his career with a solid showing here. The rest of the Rider quarterbacking is young, and Isaac Harker returns as an experienced back up, and the Riders don’t host the Grey Cup until 2022, if there is a 2022 season.

So other than the influx of money, what does the XFL have to offer the CFL? In its second season, the XFL gave away its broadcast rights and hoped the exposure would help grow its product. Covid kicked in and the XFL again went under.

While the potential ownership may have four to six billion dollars, whether that would be spent all in football is another question. What the MLSE move to merge does do is point out the broken governance model of the CFL.

The CFL has consistently shot itself in the foot by not working together as a league, having adequate revenue sharing, no marketing plan except maybe run Davis Braley’s blueprint of renewing season tickets to a dwindling base. Now with Covid and its variants, if the league opens up the gates to fans, it will have to take in account public health regulations which will vary from province to province and that raises the questions of who gets in?

If teams will allow a portion of season ticket holders with their vaccination cards, does it select those people through a lottery? If public health authorities only allow for portions of stadiums to be opened, does it have an alternating row system where those with vaccines can sit, or perhaps are restricted from going all over the stadium?

The problem is the uncertainty of what will happen with the virus is now doing battle with those who think the pandemic is completely bogus and governments are trying to kill off sports for whatever nefarious reason if you read some whiny right wing sports commentators.

They like to point to stadiums south of the border and state if people are allowed there, then what about here, forgetting that each jurisdiction is responding to their own unique circumstances.

If wearing masks had never been taken over as a misguided symbol of human rights, that would have done a long way in tamping down the pandemic and saving lives. So it can be argued the fewer people that get vaccinated, the more likely restrictions in whatever form last longer.

While CFL fans debate whether or not they would be willing to see a new league move to four downs, or reduced Canadian content, all this does is frame the debate in a context that avoids answering the question of how did the CFL get to this point?

Probably a result of the league not working together, being too complacent, and content to rely on a demographic that is aging and not being replaced as they die off or move on. While the community owned teams in Edmonton, Winnipeg and Saskatchewan do a good job of getting out into the community, when you get to BC, Calgary, Toronto etc, it seems that finding a way to getting into the community is pretty much dead on arrival.

Which brings me to my observation that MLSE is not quite the marketing geniuses they profess themselves to be. One would think that two years or so of owning the Argos would have allowed MLSE time to come up with marketing strategies better than aligning themselves with uh, Drake or The Rock.

MLSE is all image, no substance, other than maxing out what they can gouge from the wallets of the people who have no other option than take in their events if they so chose. Throw in the fact that MLSE considers the only market they need to satisfy is southern Ontario and well, what Rider fans, or Bomber fans want (to see CFL football) is not important to them.

Is there the possibility the CFL would play 2021 without Toronto? This is possible if it is just Toronto refusing to play and there is no federal funding. It would be fascinating to see how the league would handle this and how it would be received.

Either way you slice it, the CFL is not deserving of their fans. Whether it is the obvious cash grab of the fans shelling out $400 for putting their names on the base of the Grey Cup to offering fans a free jersey if they take part in in having their money in the teams account for season tickets although it is possible there are no games before fans this year.

While the talk about how the merger may take place and perhaps more importantly, what is in it for the CFL, it is welcome from the perspective of giving some space to the league.

The league, which has relied on the passion of its fans, may find that passion tempered if the league shows no real sign of learning from its experience and relying on habit to bring its declining fan base back.

The idea of a merger with the XFL follows a familiar pattern for MLSE. Give people something shiny to focus on and maybe they will overlook the $25 beer and $40 hot dog they will pay for the privilege of seeing if there is anything more to the game other than the distractions.

A majority of CFL teams may want to play, but with MLSE seeming to call the shots, the league may not want to risk rocking the boat with MLSE because if they decide to walk away from the Argos, who would pick them up in this economy?

So MLSE can hang tough, secure in knowing their demands will be met because in the lack of any substantial options, there is no other option for the CFL but to play along in the hopes of playing something someday. Kind of a classic definition of a hostage situation.

This is the genius of MLSE, they are not broke underestimating the intelligence of the southern Ontario sports fan. Whether the rest of Canada will swallow what MLSE is trying to sell is another matter altogether.

by Greg Urbanoski

Is the CFL being held hostage by MLSE?

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