Revenue Sharing

Many are suggesting that teams share revenues in some ways. That, no doubt, means that the highest revenue producing teams carve out a piece for lesser teams to share. The Riders certainly will be subject to this as they are the highest grossing team in the CFL.

Are Rider fans in favor of this?

“Revenue” doesn’t mean a lot, you have to subtract expenses from revenue.
Your revenue from your job may be $60,000 a year but by the time you deduct your mortgage, groceries, utilities, car payments, taxes you might be breaking even.
If you are talking about sharing what’s left after teams expenses including players/coaches salaries, front office salaries etc then all 9 team will be sharing Zero dollars.
But sharing revenue makes no sense at all

Kent Paul, Roughriders chief financial officer:
"We’d expect to see revenues decrease by 30 million and expenses decrease by 20 million, so the net impact would be a 10 million dollar loss,”
The team will almost certainly use up its entire $7.6 million stabilization fund, leaving the club needing help to see a return to the field in 2021.

Why would you share with rich teams with owners who have billions of dollars, they can fork out a little more on trying to get more people in their own ballparks. It’s called promoting your product. These are rich owners who know how to do this, they didn’t get rich sitting on the sidelines.

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Exactly, share the Riders revenue with MLSE in Toronto?

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The fundamental argument for any sort of revenue sharing in any league is that the home team would have no revenue (e.g., tickets, concession, radio, parking; add local/regional TV for other sports) if the other team wasn't there to play them ... what sources to include and at what percentage are the endless variables for leagues to debate.

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I think that the argument here is that teams in different jurisdictions may or may not have different restrictions on how many tickets they're allowed to sell this year. Even if all the stadiums are allowed to open in August, some could close again at a moment's notice. In particular, BC's and Ontario's governments have been very unpredictable in their multiple lockdowns these past couple of years. If say in Ontario decides after Labor Day to limit outdoor gatherings to 150 people again for some stupid 14th wave variant, three teams revenue will go in the toilet. So to safeguard against this, for THIS SEASON it's a good idea to add up all of the gate and divide by nine. We're all in this together. I'm all for that.

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Profit sharing or revenue sharing? Not every team's expenses are the same.

For example, if the Riders are paying more to rent out Mosaic than Toronto is to rent out BMO, how is it fair for them to not meet some of their own expenses at the expense of Toronto?

I would suggest that the main parts of any team's payroll be paid
thru a central fund by the league itself .

Players , coaches and staff be paid thru a central system where all teams pay in thru national sponsors , media rights deal etc ..... .

So if any team is in trouble the team can be taken over in. a orderly fashion number one and number two it reduces this would actually happen in the future .

The money to run the team with other expenses such as travel , rent for the stadium , game day staff should be paid by the individual teams thru their revenue stream , local sponsors , local radio deal , game day receipts , concession etc ..... .

True and good point. Of course they could work that into the math, though. But I’m PRETTY sure that none of the nine teams pay rent. I could be wrong, but I know that 10 years ago only the Skydome charged the Argos rent. The other eight (or seven at the time) teams were rent free.

I’m pretty sure that all pay rent albeit in different ways.

You can read the Balance sheet of the Riders and the Bombers:

The Riders pay $1.4 MILLION to the City of Regina (rent)
The Bombers $4.6 MILLION
Not sure what the other teams pay but the Als have to rent the stadium at McGill.
The Ticats, the Redblacks and MLSE (Argos) have to pay rent for the city owned facilities

I'm not opposed to revenue sharing. I remember the days when the Riders were one of the smaller teams in terms of revenue. In the back of my mind I'd rather see a healthy CFL, over a rich team with no league to play in.

Agreed … teams make nothing from ticket sales unless there is another team to play … shouldn’t be 50/50 (IMO) but maybe 20% into a revenue sharing fund

Allow the league revenue to shelter under a non profit and use that fund to pay the fundamentals of the league and nothing more and persue everything under the pursuit of amateur Canadian football and they will instantly receive benefits up the yeehaw .

The three community teams still benefit from their trust and the private can now blossom under their own marketing .

The only thing the CFL does need is a better auditing system and that can be easy enough to do if the core part of the league is transparent thru a non profit set up .

The private teams still remain private for profit but they no longer present a problem if an owner is disingenuous in their approach to the league's best interest by hiding or reallocating funds that should be for the team .

The team evaluations will go up as they become stable and the regions or city embraces the team better because it no longer is a league with a story about going belly up every other year .

This attracts infrastructure and friends with political influence .

The NFL rule for revenue sharing is 35% of ticket sales - all teams put in the 35% of ticket sales and then it’s divided equally.

That might work if the players weren’t paid, but this is a professional sport for grown men earning a living, not an amateur sport providing opportunity for youth or students. There’s no way that setting this up as a society would fly, and even if if by some miracle it did, labelling your own brand as a charity would kill its legitimacy with the casual fan.

Is that what the NFL does? That’s it?

They split all their TV money equally, regardless of market and audience share. I’m pretty sure the CFL does too.

yes i believe that is correct in the NFL and TSN monies in the CFL. I’m not sure how RDS in Quebec is handled though.

I am just stealing ideas that already work . The Canadian entertainment business already use it but it’s on a one of mostly . The media and much of our news is already garnering money set up that way .

Maybe I am not explaining it well enough but it’s used to help with major sponsorships and tax related issues .

Now again the Private teams are for profit .

They remain a for profit enterprise .

You maybe confusing a simple charity for let’s say feeding the hungry to a non profit enterprise like Football Canada or a film fund in Canada that pays big bucks for celebrity X to make a movie here .

That pursuit of amateur Football makes that part of the league self-sustaining and stabilizes the messy part of employee /contract issues .

The teams still remain private for profit except for the three community teams .

The pursuit of Canadian football from a soley a entertainment business to a entertainment business with the core value to expand Canadian football domestically is not a very large jump .

The strict budgets for employees to balance the league is nicely set up now .

Some non profit businesses pay extremely well ; many people make a great living at it .

They pay their employees very well .

The players are just employees of the league with the sole purpose to entertain in order to garner a return for the pursuit of propelling the league and thus Canadian football .

The league itself is set up for it with strict structural budgets .