CFL commissioner lays out ambitious vision of growth
Commish brings new energy, a reformer’s zeal and a centralized business plan to the job
Others have tried and failed, but as he confronts the many and varied problems facing the CFL, know one thing about Randy Ambrosie.
He doesn’t come to the battle short of ideas.
“There are (over) 100 million fans in Mexico,” says the league’s commissioner over lunch at a downtown beanery. “We have to stop thinking small. I think that’s part of what’s happened to us. We’ve been small and we have to think big. Part of that is reaching out to the international community. That, to me, is part of building the CFL on a more ambitious platform.”
Mexico, you are forewarned, but that’s just a start.
Take, for example, the possibility of a franchise in the Maritimes and what that could mean to the CFL. Ambrosie certainly has. “This is a big idea,” he says. “Having a CFL team in the Maritimes isn’t just about football, it’s about opening the door for the Atlantic region to so many things.
“Imagine Labour Day. Calgary-Edmonton, check. Winnipeg-Saskatchewan, check. Toronto-Hamilton, check. Montreal and Ottawa. Now you have the Coast Bowl (between the B.C. Lions and the Maritimes team) and it’s about so much more than football. In one weekend, Canada gets very small.”
We could go on, and Ambrosie certainly will. But you get the idea. The commissioner is approaching his first anniversary on the job, and while others have wilted from the CFL’s challenges, the 55-year-old Winnipegger sees only opportunity.
What he does with those opportunities remains to be seen, but one thing is clear: Ambrosie brings a new energy and a reformer’s zeal to a league that needed both. If his plan for the CFL actually works, so much the better.
“We have to build some strategies about creating more stability on the rosters,” he says. “Are we doing it well enough? Well, everything can be done better. I think if you start with that fundamental notion that good enough isn’t good enough, you set a higher expectation.”
Good enough isn’t good enough. That might be the league’s new motto. Earlier this week, the former offensive lineman ducked into Vancouver before flying to Winnipeg for Thursday night’s season opener between the Bombers and Eskimos, and therein lies a story. This was Ambrosie’s second availability in the Lions’ market in four-and-a-half months.
His most recent predecessors — Jeffrey Orridge, Mark Cohon, Tom Wright — appeared here as often as the Winter Olympics.
As you may be aware, the Lions are also facing issues — most notably a dwindling and greying fan base — that are common to other CFL teams. But Ambrosie sees something different in the Lions’ plight. Without much prompting, he offers that “the best part of my job is there’s so much low-hanging fruit.”
He then begins to describe how he’ll pluck that low-hanging fruit and, suddenly, his ideas don’t seem as farfetched. As long as anyone can remember, the CFL has operated as nine, sometimes eight, separate fiefdoms under a weak, ineffectual king.
The league office, such as it was, existed largely to maintain a presence in Toronto’s corporate community, but failed to create a central authority for the league, a place that offered both a plan and a vision for all nine teams.
Ambrose is trying to change that.
This off-season he toured the offices of the major North American sports leagues and was struck by the NBA’s model, pioneered by former commissioner David Stern in the 1980s.
“The NBA found 80 per cent of their business plan applied to every market, then they customized the last 20 per cent,” said Ambrosie. “We had nine plans and then there was the league plan. I said, no, there has to be one business plan.”
To that end, the league is now formulating a model that identifies the best business practices and metrics for measuring their success.
Ottawa, for example, has succeeded in breaking down the wall between millennials and the CFL. How have they made their brand cool in the nation’s capital?
“Not everyone has to build their own widget,” says Ambrosie. “Maybe we can build one widget that applies to all teams.”
The league will also be more active in the Grey Cup presentation. In the ’90s, the league started selling its flagship event to the host city, which would then reap the profits. That model has existed ever since, but the league will now be more involved and marketing and selling the game while grabbing a larger share of the pie.
Ambrosie has come along at the right time to sell this new pan-CFL vision. The league has done well by its TV deal with TSN, extended through 2021 at $40-plus million annually. But it hasn’t expanded its audience or revenue streams since that deal was first signed in 2013.
Ambrose has some thoughts on that. Citing the rule of seven — by growing a business seven per cent annually, you’ll double it in 10 years — he believes he can double CFL revenues in short order. Watch out if he secures the Mexican market.
“It takes discipline,” he says. “You start with a vision. If you don’t know where you’re going, any path will do, and that doesn’t work in business. You have to know what you want to be when you’re grown up.”
He knows what he wants the CFL to be.
“We live in a world today that’s in a state of disruption, and that disruption is going to create opportunity,” Ambrosie said. “In that state of disruption, there will be winners and losers.”
Go ahead. You argue with him.