Please concert to english if you can and hite lite important points,re: stadium, owner and proof it could happen, I hope you are right, it`s a natural. Spider*
I was recently in Quebec, and stopped by PEPS stadium to have a look. It looked as though some major construction was going on, I assume in preparation for the upcoming Vanier cup. What these articles have said is that on June 12th of this year, the federal government approved funding to put funding into the university of Laval, but unfortunately not into increasing the capacity of the stadium. Another article said 72% of people favoured a team in Quebec.
I also picked up from this article that the university is reluctant to share the stadium with a professional team because they are afraid the universities team will become 2nd rate entertainment in alot of peoples eyes, and less people will attend the games and the university will lose alot of media attention.
This Cristina St. Mairche is still actively pursuing placing a team in Quebec, and is piecing together a team of European investors. From I believe the 5th article it says the city of Levis is considering building a stadium.
It will never happen in our life time unless we get a goverment thats willing to put up money for a stadium. Theres no way anybody is going to invest 150 million dollars on a stadium where they only make maybe 2 million a year back in profit.
That'll probably be the only way your going to get expansion in the CFL. I am thinking that won't last for too long either, being that we're Canadian, what do we know about football. I can see some Americans getting into it but most of them won't just by the mere fact it's from Canada. "I'm not going to watch Canadian football, I only watch the stuff we play over here in North America.," I can see it now.
there is a greater chance of mike vick owning a puppy and the montreal canadiens hiring an american
english-speaking head coach than there is CFL openinup up shop in Quebec City or Laval or Wherever, it aint happening, plus there isn't enough talented non-import players available to fill out quebec and ottawa, because you'll end up with a sad sack 2-16 squad.
Hey! I just found out the NFL dumped some money into the Cowboys new Stadium in Arlington, how come we're not doing that here? You wouldn't need to dump as much money into a stadium but heck maybe we could get some expansion out something like this.
The NFL has had a stadium fund for a while. They have invested in other stadiums that have opened in the league in the last few years as well.
I can't see the CFL doing this, as CFL owners don't have anywhere near the money NFL owners have, nor do they have the enormous tv contract to make franchises so profitable. What I would like to see the CFL do (I know that I've said this before) is offer any expansion city the opportunity to host three Grey Cup games over a five year period. The games would generate revenue to cover alot of the costs of stadium construction. I bet it would come much closer to breaking even than the Winter Olympics will in Vancouver. It would make it much easier for politicians to sell the public on taxpayer investment in a stadium. It would make expansion franchises more profitable and therefore more valuable. The CFL publicly making an offer like this would show that they care about reaching out to fans in non-CFL cities, and would likely increase tv ratings and merchandise sales even if a deal couldn't be reached anywhere.
The only downside is that cities would have to wait a little longer to host a Grey Cup, but the only city that hasn't hosted a Grey Cup in a long time is Hamilton, and that is a stadium issue more than anything else.
That might be true in the beginning, but it’s pretty easy to have a 2-16 squad without adding extra teams, so it’s not because of a paucity of quality non-imports. If anything, it’s because there isn’t enough development of players, which the addition of new franchises would help with. A team in Ottawa, for example, would likely enormously help the re-spawning of the football program at Carleton U (my alma mater), which would give them two Universities to draw talent from (Ottawa U being the other one). Similarly in Québec, there are several quality institutions already in existence that could provided players. More opportunities for Canadian players means more students playing the game at the university and college level, more pro teams means better support and development of players over the long run.
I think all it takes is 1 team stepping up and actually building a new stadium, setting the bar for the rest of the league and then I think you'll see some new projects actually heating up. A lot of the current stadiums in the CFL are ancient, the original infrastructure was built a long time ago and they've just renovated them enough to keep them from falling apart. Eventually if the league wants to move forward and thrive these stadiums will need to be replaced.
I could definitely see that being the case cause you’d have to think that a CFL team would take away some fans from Laval due to extra cost/time to attend both games. With that in mind, you’d also think that there would be some construction/O&M/equipment cost sharing, stadium rental fees, economic spinoffs (student employment) and the possibility of package deals for both CFL/Laval tickets that would make this a financial gain for the university.
With that in mind there is a case to be made that university programs in cities with a CFL team seem to not do well (In the last 20 years only 25% of the teams in the Vanier Cup come from CFL cities - this is counting Saskatoon as a not CFL city even though many might consider it to be). So if that was reason it might be a valid. Not sure if anyone has any ideas on why this seems to be the case. I would think that being the biggest game in town makes the team more high profile, which draws in players, which makes the programs better.
That's a tough one for sure. Not sure what the answer is there except that maybe the Grey Cup should be played between the winner of the CFL vs the winner of the CIS. This would be interesting and might lead to improvements in university stadiums across the land. Ok, I'm just sort of kidding here but I wouldn't want to do anything to hurt Laval or any university program out there if a CFL would actually do that? You have to remember that I have read before the NFL does look to the NCAA as a competitor for dollars and sponsorship deals. Maybe the CFL looks at the CIS in a similar way?
