there’s a lot of things that we all talk about here on the forum but also are hearing from the media and the “CFL” experts out there…
Let’s take a really good deep look into the CFL, it’s present, past and what it needs to do in the future to grow and ensure all 9 teams (and maybe 10 one day) are healthy, attendance grows, TV contracts get bigger, etc. ?
I have said this for years that the CFL really needs to improve how they market their teams as well as their star players to the fans. There has been improvement but not every team does a good job… Plus the league is really missing out on so many opportunities by not marketing the hell out of their star players!
How do you get people in the stands? marketing! how do you increase TV viewership? Marketing!
this league has really ignored the one area that could increase income, their fan base and growth of the young impressionable kids out there.
there are so… many… areas… that the CFL could be out there!
the Flag Football leagues for kids in the provinces.
TV commercials
Player representation in cities and outlying towns.
hosting Football camps for the kids with players as the coaches. there are a lot of young kids in Minor Football everywhere and sending the players out to these towns and cities and having weekend football camps during the summer (or holidays) with the players involved… a Golden Opportunity!
Basically copycat what Doman does. Bring in big acts for the home opener, especially in Edmonton, Calgary, and Toronto. Lions are getting out to schools and pubs. Has to be more of that plus get on the local news.
Be willing to bus in college age students. Pay players to help in out of town markets to get ratings up. Hire social media influencers to talk up the league. Have a CFL store online and get people wearing your merch.
Nothing will change as long as the owners operate like a Mafioso group. We don’t even have public data on player salaries! In 2025 that’s insane. The owners want to run this league like it’s the 1970s. They aren’t interested in genuine partnership with players. Look at the Purifoy suspension debacle. Look at any number of cases over the past few years, including the decision to change footballs over the objections of kickers, who then had to make a very public stink just to get the league to back off. Look at the owners sitting on the news of a massive cap increase until it was too late for teams to budget differently. GMs didn’t even know about it. That is also bananas. You can’t expect a league to grow like that, irrespective of what marketing is or isn’t done.
A flat increase to the league minimum starting salary would also help attract more talent and prevent players from retiring prematurely to pursue more stable professions. As would a real commitment to honouring multi-year contracts FROM THE TEAMS themselves – right now, players opt for one-year deals because that is the only leverage they have, knowing that they can be cut on a whim in year two. Less personnel turnover = better connection with fans.
But the league has shown time and again that they value fining players for saying things they don’t like in the media over protecting all players and growing the game.
The stupid marketing money loophole.
The stupid cap loophole where teams that spend over the cap under 100k to play more Canadians only pay a fine and then get rewarded for exceeding the cap with more draft picks.
Seriously, a child could punch holes in all of this. It’s ludicrous.
That’s a dangerous term.
Far too many sport properties (including the CFL) have tried this with little to no success. Remember the new league logo? Expensive and what did it get the league? Nothing. They need to fix the fundamental problems with the league. A rebrand is useless unless you actually change how you do business.
If the league sees itself as a “big league” , then it needs to start acting like one.
They need to stop playing games and link the salary cap to league revenues (like it was for 50+ years until the foolish PA bargained it away to save Canadian O-lineman jobs)
Ditch the ridiculous marketing money provision which downplays how much star players get because it’s secretive which provides the rare double whammy of causing the league to spend more, but not gain the benefits of promoting how much their stars are making. Amazingly incompetent.
tighten some of the “quirky” rules that is a source of ridicule for young potential fans.
fix the darn schedule!!! Both release it in a timely manner, and use the same CANADIAN service that has other major sports leagues use.
implement REAL league revenue sharing.
Use those funds to allow teams to sign a marquee player or increase the operations cap to attract top coaching talent north.
make decisions that are best for the league; lose the silos and sense of “fairness.” Your stadium seats 25,000? Don’t have enough hotel rooms in your city? No Grey Cup hosting for you. We need to beam out the large crowds to the world, to show the league is a force to be reckoned with and should be taken seriously.
come up with an operations standard for all CFL venues. Make sure the product always looks good from a presentation point of view. This covers everything from field conditions to broadcast positioning, to team introductions.
come up with and NFL Films or 30 for 30 type program. There are tons of stories in the league that have never been told. No better way of marketing your players off of the field and make them a marketable commodity.
stop the never ending player carousel. Allow teams to go above and beyond the cap to a certain extent to keep their star players or to match offers from other teams. Keep the player NFL options, but place the player on a special list so they don’t come back to league after a few training camps in the NFL only to come back to the league as a free agent.
better manage the ratio. Kill the confusing current rules. Set a number of Canadians on the starting roster and go with it. Also don’t allow teams to stack all non imports on the O-line. A 3 on offence 3 on defense while only allowing 3 of those to be on either the offensive or defensive lines.
seek out more than one broadcaster. Sign a better apparel deal league wide. Pay officials an actual livable salary so you get officials that work year round doing just officiating. Nothing else.
alter the neg list so that once a team puts a player on the list, they have one year to sign them before they become free agents again. No more teams being allowed to have players on a list for 5 or 6 years when someone else might have an interest in them.
I agree with a lot of what you said in your post, but I will also say that until and unless teams honour contracts they sign, player movement won’t stop. There is absolutely no value in most cases for a player to sign a multi-year deal, because they can so easily be cut in year two if the team finds a cheaper option. So players are now signing one-year deals unless they are star or elite players. Shopping their services is the only bargaining tool they have. It’s not the NFL where the salaries are absurd, and these guys have to support families.
I agree with everything that has been said. The problem is that these issues are only important to the football fans. The occasional fan doesn’t care about the nuts and bolts of the game.I can only use my experience as a barometer. The people I know only have so many hours to spend watching sports and entertainment , so they will watch the best in that sport. I don’t watch AHL hockey or AAA baseball because I want to watch the best leagues.The CFL is up against the NFL, NHL, MLB, NBA and other entertainment events. Unfortunately the CFL is way down in the pecking order, especially here in Toronto. We have talked about this to death. The CFL is a little league, it will putter along like it always has.
In the new streaming age of 24/7 live games the CFL has to do more to compete for people‘s money and more importantly time
Just in local CFL markets theres CanPL, CEBL, various baseball leagues, let alone concerts and other events. It makes a difference, in Edmonton the stinger and river hawks average about 5000 people a game. Thats a potential 10k who may have gone to the elks who now struggle to make 20k per game.
The people in control of the league have to recognize that the CFL is a minor league and it will stay that way. I honestly think making the rules consistent with the NFL will make people more interested in the CFL, I don’t think Rule changes will cause growth, but I do think they will stop decline
Unless there’s a whole bunch of superstars or amazing highlights in the league, we should probably lower our expectations with the prestige of the league itself and just be happy games have over 10,000 people
Teams rely on the beer and food for income. People can easily eat and drink before or after a game if they don’t like the prices.
Games usually start after 7PM, who eats then?
The Argos had $4 draft beer in the stadium a couple of years ago and it didn’t make any difference to attendance. Argos also have $20 tickets available which is almost a give away but doesn’t make any difference to attendance.
The Argo owners along with high paid marketers have been trying to figure out how to increase attendance for the past 10 years.
You can’t drag young people to the stadium. The CFL is not cool and it’s not the top league in their eyes and you can’t change that.
Common denominator…“Toronto”…
If food, drinks & merch were at a reasonable mark-up, they would sell more of each, would be more enticing for a family of 4 to get through the day in the neighborhood of two to three hundred, including the food, beverage and souvenir. $35 for a baseball cap is ridiculous.
I go to both Elks and Riverhawks games. The atmosphere at Riverhawks games is far superior, the food is better, and a good time is had by all . Hopefully the new and improved Elks draw a much bigger crowd.
I agree with almost all of this as well and the overarching theme that this league isn’t professional enough. The details are important and most often the league misses the details.
I don’t believe in or agree with the multiple broadcasters, there’s simply not enough games and you can’t make people have to search to find you on television, however a serious streaming partner and not TSN+ would make alot of sense.
Everything about the marketing within Canada screams “we’re a second-string league”.
Look at the way player trades and signings are reported on 3DownNation, for example.
Player X signs a $100,000 CFL contract, he “spent time” with 3 NFL teams (code for: bottom of the roster) and has made $1,200,000 in the NFL.
So, in reality, a Canadian club can only offer a quarter (if that) of what someone would make not just “in the NFL”, but at the very lowest limit of being an NFL player - yet some fans want to delude themsleves that the CFL is the NFL’s equal?
Any foreign potential fan reading that who is used to seeing NFL players sign for high six figures, if not outright millions, would laugh at a league whose top-paid QB is earning slightly more than an experienced NFL punter.
Speaking of foreign fans…WHERE is the CFL’s exposure outside Canada? CFL+ streaming is a start, but argubly you’d have already needed to know the CFL even exists to take advantage of it. Look at any mainstream media and the American football coverage is wall-to-wall NFL. NCAA coverage exists but needs to be searched for, however this searching isn’t hugely problematic (ESPN UK, for example). But if you knew nothing about the CFL, you’d have real issues even finding out there WAS a CFL to follow.
We are not the NFL’s equal. We are much better than them. Our game is far superior. Maybe not as much as much hype but that’s about all they do better .