Canadian sports fans love sports, But only if it's the highest level possible, and preferably attached to a US-based league.
This is mostly a Toronto thing. And even then a lot of it is a visability issue, the CFL is invisible in Toronto, I ran into people going to an argos game once in my life. Otherwise never saw a sign the team existed.
That narrative of the "best in the world" is pretty easy to prove entirely false in a moments thought.
NCAA is way below NFL talent levels, the CFL is a serious step up.
The fact the CFL exists at all when football is 4th behind basketball/soccer/hockey tells you a lot of how hungry Canadians are for a league.
MLS is a minor league, the top MLS team would be at best on continual threat of being relegated out of the EPL. This argument that people wouldn't watch a 2nd league is just unfounded.
Add to that we see all over Europe that people are passionate about their local club even when they can't compete against the "top talent" in Europe in soccer.
Toronto and Vancouver, especially, are mostly front-runner cities. Everyone loves to look down their nose at the CFL, for example
A massive part of that especially in Vancouver is down to problems with branding.
The CFL got trapped in a mindset thinking it was in direct competition with the NFL. This was actually true 40-50 years ago. Newer owners I think are starting to figure out that it is a horrible branding. To me the CFL is clearly division 1 football. It's Canada's first division. It's far more comparable to division 1 football in almost every way. I think if the CFL was smart they'd be playing up that angle, where real football fans love both the NFL and their division 1 teams in the area regardless of whether or not it's NCAA or Canada's first division.
It makes a lot more sense if you compare our CHL with NCAA hockey.
. Of course the best athletes are in the NFL. But the CFL is a great product. CFL games are a ton of fun, both live and on TV.
As someone who was agnostic on which league to follow, in fact I was tipping towards the NFL, I gotta say personally CFL is way way better. For me it's an offseason sport, so that gives the CFL a huge boost. But the 3 downs/rules etc/ scrambling quarter backs etc makes it far far more entertaining. Also I prefer 9 teams to 32. I don't get the appeal of massive leagues.
But in Toronto and Vancouver, the clubs have a difficulty getting 20,000 people in the building, because they think they're too good for a Canadian-only league.
Toronto absolutely, but I think in Vancouver and Montreal's case it's largely a branding issue. I think in Montreal the association with Anglo-American culture made it a turn off. And I think in Vancouver the narrative of it being a rural white guy things is getting smashed by a new diverse fresh faced owner.
CFL has been in a tail spin for 3 decades. Now all of a sudden there's true ownership stability the most stable the league has ever been.
I would guess that a Canadian pro hockey league would have the same problem. It's not the highest level, so most cities would turn up their nose.
You don't need everyone, you need a proportion of the population.
You'll get way higher market penetration in smaller markets as those are the people most starved for local content.
Keeping in mind London which is the shinning example of what could be, it's pretty clear cut that people are both hardcore fans of both the Knights and the Leafs. I don't think anyone here feels any conflict over that. I'd also mention a big part of this is because alumni like Tavares/Marner/Kadri have ended up playing for the leafs.
The logical thing to do would be to cooperate with the NHL, or at the very least give a golden offer of being a farm team for players better than AHL calibre needing midlevel competition.
I would think it's very reasonable to assume a successful C league would get about triple the TV revenue of CFL. That'd be about 120 million per year, roughly 10 mill per teams.
I don't think the question is could it work.
It's a question of whether or not the middle tier markets like London starved for division 1 league, would give up on the OHL. You need this to happen across multiple arenas.
Saskatoon-QC-London-Kitchener-Hamilton-Victoria to me are the 6 markets you need to have a full ownership commitment. You need 6 owners who are on a 30 year time frame, who are specifically looking for something greater than a minor league franchise.
If you don't get all 6 markets, I think it's a waste of time.
That being said, it might already be too late.
The CPL, CEBL, and CFL are all leagues targeting those exact same mid tier markets.
