National Post (National Edition)
CFL start would need fannies in the seats
PAYING CUSTOMERS ARE LEAGUE’S SUSTAINER
Amid the talk of the various ways in which professional sports might be able to restart their seasons absent the presence of fans, with baseball bubbles and basketball bio-domes and hockey played in remote isolation, there is one league that has been noticeably absent from such discussions.
The Canadian Football League has not been floating any notion of playing in hermetically sealed buildings. The short explanation for that is it would be close to impossible for the CFL to operate without paying customers in the stands. And that means, as much as the public-health situation over the next few weeks will be crucial in determining whether any organized sports take place in 2020, they will be even more meaningful for the CFL and its fans. With public events suspended in Calgary and Toronto through June, and as of Friday through August in Quebec, the CFL doesn’t just need to see continued declines in the growth rate of COVID-19 infections across Canada, it needs a dramatically improved public-health picture. It needs governments and their health experts to be comfortable with the idea of large public gatherings by the fall — and for CFL fans to be comfortable taking part in them.
The Hail Mary pass is an overused metaphor, but since this is a story about football, it seems like the right one to use. The clock is winding down, and the CFL desperately needs to complete a big play.
Just before Easter weekend, I spoke with Randy Ambrosie, the CFL commissioner, and Brian
Ramsay, the executive director of the CFL players’ association, in separate interviews. Each acknowledged that the league and its players are in an awkward waiting phase, where the prospects for a 2020 season of any length will be largely dictated by forces outside of their control. When the announcement came last week that the league’s June start would have to be pushed until at least July, a direct result of the public-event bans in Calgary and Toronto, it was the only decision that could reasonably have been made.
Neither side, at least for now, is imagining a season without fans in the stands. Some of that is for intangible reasons, the connections between the fan base and the CFL in its best markets, but there would also be complicated logistical barriers to playing football in empty stadiums amid a pandemic.
Where a basketball team can get by with a dozen guys, CFL teams have a 46-player active roster and up to another 12 on the practice roster. Each team also has dozens of non-playing staff on the sidelines, and staging a game requires dozens more officials and operations staff from the league. With so many people involved, it would be that much harder to to ensure no one was a coronavirus spreader. And, where a sport like baseball is apparently considering playing games with some kind of physical-distancing measures in place, such would be impossible in football, where close contact happens all the time on every play.
It’s also true that customers in seats are an essential part of the CFL’s business model. Three of the league’s nine teams are publicly owned — the Winnipeg Blue Bombers, Saskatchewan Roughriders and Edmonton Eskimos — and as such must disclose their finances. For the 2018 season, the last for which financial details have been disclosed, those three teams collected between 45 per cent and 55 per cent of their revenues from gate receipts and game-day concessions. With each of those teams reporting an operating profit of between $1.4 million and $2.6 million in that season, it is evident that without ticket sales, or without a massive cut in operating expenses, the franchises would operate at steep losses. The picture would likely be the same in Ottawa and Hamilton, where attendance has been strong, while franchises in Toronto and Montreal would at least be used to receiving a smaller portion of revenues from game-day sales. As sliver linings go, that isn’t much of one.
Where some pro leagues get the bulk of their collective revenues from national and local broadcast deals, the CFL could not rely on television money to buoy them through a season of empty seats: the community-owned teams report between 10 and 20 per cent of their revenues as coming from the league’s national broadcast and sponsorship deals. Simply having CFL games on television wouldn’t be enough to keep teams from losing piles of money.
Does that make a fall-to-early winter sprint of a short season more likely? It might, but with the league already on hold, whatever happens will have to be worked out with the players’ association. It will not be easy. The teams will be looking to significantly lower their expenses — the biggest of which is payroll — if many games, and their accompanying revenue, is lost. But the players make modest salaries in pro football terms, with a few exceptions. Football is a dangerous game; how much of a salary cut would some players be willing to take before the risks outweigh the benefits?
The CFL has one significant thing going for it, which is that it has long shown a willingness to innovate. There are bright, successful people involved throughout the league. But they are going to need all that creativity and those smarts to find a workable way to play football in 2020. And, not a small amount of luck.
Sometimes, the Hail Mary pass is completed.