Great News for the CFL!!!

CFL Talk
1

There has been a lot of opinion thrown around about the state of the CFL.
Some of it is just opinion.

Lets look at some facts and some opinions.

  1. Most CFL teams are on solid ground. :thup:

B.C. , had a hugely successful Grey Cup , in , 2011. Season tickets and attendance should be up in , 2012.
Edmonton , made money as usual and is a model team for the CFL.
Calgary , is on even better ground with a bigger partnership with the FLAMES.
SASK. , is just killing and has the 2013 Grey Cup , in , 2013.

The CFL WEST is fine. The CFL EAST should improve.

Winnipeg , is in the black and they made millions. This should continue.
Both HAMILTON and TORONTO have vastly improved teams [on paper any way].
We know that the 2012 Grey Cup in T.O. , is almost sold out and that both teams are selling more season tickets.
The BILLS series was a complete disaster for Rogers and killed any chance of an NFL team in Canada. :rockin:
The ARGOS are working on a lease with Rogers.
The situation Montreal is a ? At least they have about 24,000+ real football fans. [Fans who pay to see games]
I think that they were unfairly targeted by some one writing some of their games were not sell outs because there were single tickets left. :thdn:
Well , EVERY arena marks sell outs by how many pairs of tickets are sold.
So the next time that you hear that a rock concert is SOLD OUT , you can get a great single seat usually.
Some bands release new seats just before the concerts after the stage is set up.
Even if the GREY CUP in Toronto , is sold out you should be able to get single seats at the box office.

  1. T.V. ratings...

Even though T.V. ratings were down last year I believe that they will GO WAY UP this year. :thup:

Still , the CFL is the most second watch sport in Canada behind hockey.

  1. We have no Commish problems and every team was under the cap. :cowboy:

Any other GOOD NEWS?

2

Ottawa is coming back

3

CFL ratings were down a bit last year, but they were still on par with the NHL on TSN.
Nothing else outside of hockey touches CFL average ratings per game.
Not baseball. Not the NFL. Not basketball. Not soccer.

Only question is will the CFL get what its worth from the networks.
I say Cohon already has a deal in place that is going to vault this league into the next level.

And with a big Tv deal, finding buyers for expansion franchises will be that much easier.

4

All hopefully true :thup:

5

Difference is there are four networks willing to pony up for NHL hockey rights, that's not the case with the CFL. Should be but it isn't :frowning:

6

True but how is this GOOD news? :wink: [just kidding]

I think that if our Commish is smart he would wait until the end of the 2012 season.
I believe that the CFL ratings will be way up and TSN was making a big deal about CFL ratings being down in , 2011. :thdn:
I guess TSN is playing hardball but if the ratings go way up the Commish will have a little more to offer.

Sadly , the CFL is the most under-rated / under valued sports T.V. property in , Canada. The NFL is the most over-rated / over valued in , Canada. Do you think that CTV and TSN make money showing regular season NFL games? They loose money but having the NFL is a status symbol for them. For TSN , they have to show NFL games [and NASCAR] because 30% of TSN is owned by ESPN.
In the U.S. Hockey is the most under-valued team sport.

7

That's why I am not sure the future of CFL broadcasting runs through TSN. CFL might do very well with its own network and having one game a week on a one of the national networks. I'd pay 100.00 a year subscription to have an all Canadian football network. Have a game of the week on CBC and the rest on its own network, Subscription package would also include streaming access. They could sell subscriptions anywhere in the world.

All they would need is around 120k subscriptions and repatriating advertisers to cover their production costs and equal what they get from TSN. They could also include a discounted subscription with season tickets.

One thing is for sure there is a lot of pressure on Cohon to get more money for broadcasting rights. Braley is counting on it and it is a necessity for the league to balance the books of the more difficult markets. Either that or the league will have to change its revenue sharing formula.

8

I agree with you benji, as he appears to be a shrewd businessman.
I hope he does get the upwards of $50M per year which you and I have been saying for quite sometime and the league justly deserves.

9

The CFL should also ask the CBC if they want to bid for the TV rights because last time they didn't even ask them.
However , I don't know if the CBC can afford it.
I hope that TSN gives the CFL what it is truly worth. Having great T.V. ratings in the 2012 season is a must. :thup:
The another great thing is that the CFL greatly helps TSN / CTV with it's Canadian content regulations and making money for their T.V. sponsors. TSN / BELL would be really dumb to loose the CFL and the GREY CUP.

10

On the topic of a CFL television network, that's far more complex than it sounds at least on a financial basis.

One chief challenge is that the league would have to subsidise the programming throughout the year and and not only during and around the season (mid-June through November) when it would run presumably heavily in the black.

Consider the experience down here in the US, and with the NHL as a heavy number one I doubt seriously that a CFL Network would fare near as well.

Down here in the US each league also runs its own network, but only the NFL makes something positive out of it. No one I know cares about the other league networks, though I would not doubt the NHL network is popular up there.

Cable subscribers pay a little extra to have the NFL Network on their TVs on a sports tier that goes already on top of inflated cable charges for mostly crap TV (otherwise as you can obtain readily and freely online if you know where to go). I am not sure the network gets really too much traffic but for around he draft coming up in the next few weeks and during the season from September through the beginning of February.

For the wealthy and growing NFL, also I doubt even its own television network is a profit centre. The NFL Network is used, as has been done extremely successfully, for sake of immense clout in negotiations with the networks for carriage of games. Essentially it is an asset for market share for the entertainment and advertising dollars.

Once the NFL Network hit the airwaves about 2003, and even then for very few subscribers, basically they stuffed ESPN in its rightful place and marginalised ESPN's clout to gouge cable rates let alone most of its content and coverage since. Now of all the networks, ESPN's NFL coverage sucks the most though still has the highest ratings because it is available in the standard cable packages. One need only remembers the previous crap quality of Sunday Night Football on ESPN as has drifted over to Monday Night Football to see the result whenever ESPN should touch the NFL or most any sport for that matter.

If the NFL Network did not weigh in with its network back in 2003, there would be no doubt in my mind that ESPN would strangle the NFL coverage into submission with their northeastern-biased entertainment slant and largely crap coverage of the actual game. For quite awhile you see, ESPN was the ONLY reason to even get cable and they knew it. Essentially with the likes of ESPN what we would have with the NFL is the same thing that has happened to college football such that for the most part there is a coverage monopoly and deteriorated overall quality of coverage let alone the BCS fiasco. Notice what ESPN could not help itself in doing with the NBA with Lebron? With Tebow now in their backyard, how much more incestuous will ESPN be for sake of all things Tebow like they did with Jeremy Lin?

Would TSN end up doing the same thing up there before too long with the CFL without a CFL Network as a counterweight? They seem to be doing rather well so I am not so sure TSN would behave like ESPN though ESPN is a part owner.

Better than a CFL Network per se` might be a share in an existing sports network alternative to TSN and then privileged access to CFL content such that that network would be a counterweight to any tendency of TSN for its CFL coverage to go down the arrogant and too geographically-biased road of ESPN down here.

11

While there will/should be a substantial increase in what TSN is paying to carry CFL games,we have to be realist. It will definitely not be a 212.50% increase to $50 millions.

As I wrote on a few occasions, I expect the new deal to range between $27 and $30 millions. It would be great! With such an increase between $450,000 and $550,000 would go to the players.

Richard

12

For the teams to get an extra million a year and Ottawa to get its share, you would need the deal to be worth around 12 million more a year. Is that realistic ? I'm thinking five million extra a year is likely the most the league can expect.

13

The CFL TV numbers are a very close 2nd to the TSN hockey numbers.
Now if one says we should get the same value, all of the hockey pucks go crazy here and it is like a religion as there is no way the CFL is valued close to the NHL contract?
Says who?
But the TSN NHL contract is in excess of $100M annually!
So please tell me as the most valuable and number one summer property on television, why can’t we get at least one half of the numbers?
$50M is not out of this world and especially as an argument can be made how the league has not received proper value in the last 2 contracts signed.
With proper and shrewd negotiations to include “Negotiations 101” by the commish and this time bringing all potential suitors to the table, the leverage of this can hopefully create a bidding war to up the ante.
I certainly would.

14

How can we compare with the NHL? There are 1,230 NHL regular games compared with 72 in the CFL. I know,not all of these games are on TSN,but I am sure that they have more than 72 televised games. RDS does 18 regular Als/games whereas they televise 82 for the Canadiens.

In order to increase the TV deal, TSN would have to increase prices to Sponsors; we cannot assume that it will be in excess of 200%,unless the TV ratings were to increase by 50% or so.

I still think that the new TV deal will not be less than $27 millions; presently the teams receive,from the League, roughly $2,0 each a season.-TV deal and other revenue- With a $27 millions deal,each team would/will receive roughly $3.0 millions a season.

Richard

15

TSN gets 3-4 games per week over the course of the NHL season, so that comes out to somewhere in the area of 60-80 games probably close to the middle, which is about the same as the CFL’s 72. TSN also gets some hockey playoffs, but if they don’t get a round with a Canadian team, their ratings are generally crap. TSN does however have the CFL playoffs in their entirety which includes a Grey Cup audience in the 5 million range.

Now, given that there are almost the same number of games, and TSN gets about the same viewership for NHL and CFL, I’m starting to think it’s actually more and more reasonable to aim for something in the $50 mill range. I think a lot will depend if they are pushed by any other competing network though.

16

It seems to me I read somewhere that the Grey Cup audience peaked at 11 million. Lets not sell the event short for TSN. Those are huge numbers.

17

They usually report it in average audience for ratings charts which is why I mentioned the 5 mill figure.

18

These are all interesting posts. :thup:

19

Splitting the Grey Cup game as a seperate property might help Cohon’s negotiating position. That’s an interesting idea.

20

Cohon, for the first time (he's usually VERY conservative when he speaks about the league) has publicly stated that the league expects no less than 25 million per year for it's new television deal. Cohon is a smart man and I think he's more than willing to play hard ball and get the league a fairer contract. If he can't get more than 25 million per year, Cohon will not be renewed. That's why he got a 3 year extension.

I think the new tv deal will be around 30-40 million dollars a year and will be split between TSN and CBC.