Lions try to stay strong in face of dire news
President says team has ‘held together very well’ despite signals the CFL’s future is in doubt
The weekly “happy hour” Zoom conference call, held Fridays by the B.C. Lions, might be better termed as the “mental health hour.”
Employees of the 66-yearold franchise have laboured away with a dark cloud of uncertainty hanging over their season for months, only to have CFL commissioner Randy Ambrosie send a lightning bolt into their midst with his sledgehammer plea to the House of Commons Thursday: “Our most likely scenario is no season at all.”
His plea of $30 million upfront, followed by another $120 million should the season be cancelled, was followed by an ominous warning the Canadian league’s existence could hang in the balance.
For the Lions, it meant business as usual, but business in the COVID-19 era is anything but.
“I think our team has held together very well,” said Lions president Rick LeLacheur. “We’ve done a lot of Zoom calls and conference calls with everybody working from home. We’ve tried to be very cautious with all our employees, just not the work level, but the health and well-being of everybody.
“I think overall (morale) is fairly good, but we all recognize there’s a lot of unknowns out there, and it plays on everybody’s minds. And not just with the B.C. Lions or the CFL — I’m sure everybody’s going through it. There are a lot of ‘what ifs?’ and unfortunately we just can’t answer those questions.”
The original question remains: How many games will the Lions play this season, if any?
But the larger one is: will the government rescue the league which, according to Ambrosie, lost $20 million collectively last season?
The B.C. government has stated there will be no gatherings of more than 50 people in the province until a COVID-19 vaccine is procured or other, equally effective solutions are found. That means no football, soccer or concerts at B.C. Place or Rogers Arena for the foreseeable future.
Major League Soccer’s Vancouver Whitecaps are in better shape to weather the financial storm than the Lions because of a centrally-owned league structure, but the novel coronavirus pandemic’s economic freeze has laid bare the vulnerability the CFL team was already facing.
The Lions, along with Montreal and Toronto, have lagging attendance and revenue. The three community-owned clubs — Winnipeg, Edmonton and Saskatchewan — are on solid financial footing, with Calgary, Ottawa and Hamilton not far behind.
But the gate-driven nature of the league has made it illequipped to handle the economic crisis caused by COVID-19. If the worst-case scenario of no games and no bailout occurs, it could spell the end of the CFL and the Lions.
“I’ve been to 15 straight Grey Cups now. I’ve met people from way across the country. I’ve realized that CFL fandom is a family,” said Brian Wawryshyn, a longtime Lions supporter and popular podcaster.
“When you go to a Grey Cup you see people wearing all sorts of different jerseys and you never see a fight, you never see any arguments. It’s just people, it’s just Canadians getting together in celebrating something that is uniquely Canadian. And I think it would be a real tragedy if that was lost.
“This league has a 100-yearplus history in this country. And I think that needs to be considered as part of our cultural history.”
Much like other sports, a possible lifeline might come in the form of a truncated schedule and hub-city format, where all the teams temporarily relocate to play televised games in closed-to-the-public venues.
That was the most recent solution for MLS, which might have its teams play in Orlando once COVID-19 restrictions are loosened.
“This situation has just changed so much in six or seven weeks that who knows where it’s going to be as we get deeper into the calendar. And we’re just going to make sure we’re prepared for whatever the scenario is,” said
Whitecaps CEO Mark Pannes.
Pannes feels the pain of his CFL counterparts, a league whose standings he tracked in the newspaper, and whose stars — like Boston College’s Flutie — he followed growing up in the same Massachusetts metropolis.
“The CFL is a really cool institution. I think all of us just want it to thrive,” he said of his B.C. Place Stadium co-tenants.
“We obviously want to see them be a robust and healthy league. That’s better for Canada, it’s better for the professional sports industry, for the sport media industry … just all around. We’re a better world with the CFL in it.”
There are a lot of ‘what ifs?’ and unfortunately we just can’t answer those questions.”
Rick LeLacheur, president, B.C. Lions