To All The Sports Reporters Who Cover The CFL...

Exactly. Again, a KID from Yahoo Sports dug into the numbers a few years back. I’m sure it wasn’t easy and I’m sure it took time, but it’s doable. And that’s what reporters do.

If BCE reported a big loss, you better believe financial reporters would be digging into every number.

If Trump says he never talked to Russia, Bob Woodward is asking questions and finding the truth.

But somehow sports reporters get a pass. They get to crank off fluff like :

“Maple Leafs fans excited about John Tavares joining the team”

and cash a cheque.

Re : “As for “real” reporters finding out the other info you want them to, I’m not aware of any private companies that answer such questions even if they are asked.”

That’s fair. But, if that’s the case, why are they telling us how much the team lost?

If you’re going to leak the losses, give us details. If not, shut up.

And, if you are a reporter and your are going to report it, ASK TO SEE PROOF.

The amount the Argos lose for MLSE is peanuts, not even a story really but that’s how desperate some sports writers are these days to find stories in sports. A couple of Blue Jays starters are about a whole CFL team salaries and yup, the Blue Jays are going to lose a lot of money this year despite decent attendance for a crap team. Of course fudging numbers for the Blue Jays is hidden stuff as well but we don’t hear about this, of course. But those stories won’t get published.

What drives me nuts about the CFL is :

  • The Argos can have $18M in revenue and lose $10M

  • The Ticats can have $22M in revenue and break even.

  • The WBB can have $32M in revenue and make $4M.

  • The SRR can have $45M in revenue and make $5M.

  • The B.C. Lions draw flies but if David Braley gets a Grey Cup every 7 years, he manages to make enough money to cover the losses for those seven years.

There is NO consistancy to the numbers.

If I was a sports reporter who covered the CFL, I’d be bugging L.T. EVERY DAY to see the Argos balance sheet.

AERIAL Blue Jays attendance is PAPERED by online ticket resellers like STUBHUB. They buy up huge swaths of unsold tickets for every game then they resell them. But I hear Stubhub bought fewer this year because they couldn’t unload them. Thus Jays attendance is down almost ONE MILLION this year and even that is UNDERSTATED. A few more losing years and with NO NEW stadium in the future are we seeing the BEGINNING of the EXPOS? OH we can always HOPE!

I hope.


To the Jays credit, they came up with some interesting ideas to draw fans.

The Star Wars Day was clever and worked.

Wow.
I now understand how you got your post count to over 12,000 in less than three years!
:o

every time I see this title, I start to think To All The Girls I’ve Loved Before… :slight_smile:

Look, I grew up playing and loving baseball, I hope for the success of the Blue Jays as Canada’s only major MLB team. Sure their owners have not given much time to the CFL over the years but that’s a separate issue, as far as the Blue Jays doing well as Canada’s only MLB team, I wish them the best of success next to my Detroit Tigers who are my favourite MLB team.

Eventually I do think the Blue Jays will be in trouble without a new stadium but the bowl is working quite fine now, you put a winning product on the field and the fans will be there in huge numbers.

I’ll embrace the Blue Jays as Canada’s team as soon as they start fielding a largely Canadian roster. Once they do so, I’ll enthusiastically support them, win or lose.

:slight_smile:

Actually, I was going to name the thread To All The Reporters I’ve Hated Before but I thought better of it.

CFL teams will never release detailed financial statements, so there would be zero point in asking. Even the players (you know, the ones who actually played the biggest part in accumulating those revenues) were successfully rebuffed by the owners when they asked, so to think an owner would ever give full access to a reporter is downright silly.

Re : “CFL teams will never release detailed financial statements”

Last time I looked, the SRR, the Edmonton Eskimos and the Winnipeg Blue Bombers all release detailed financial statements.

Re : "to think an owner would ever give full access to a reporter is downright silly. "

Not silly. That’s a reporter’s job. A parrot can regurgitate what someone tells them. A reporters is suppose to confirm / dig / get details on what is being said.

Re : “Even the players (you know, the ones who actually played the biggest part in accumulating those revenues) but were successfully rebuffed by the owners”

That sentence is a mess.

Even if–maybe especially if–reporters can’t get access to real figures from legit sources, then they should at least be asking, and printing, the important questions about what’s going on behind the reported numbers.

When they don’t do that, but instead just report those numbers without question or investigation, they’re not doing their jobs as journalists.

Amen, brother. Amen.

Re: “Last time I looked, the SRR, the Edmonton Eskimos and the Winnipeg Blue Bombers all release detailed financial statements.”

Perhaps you should check again, because they don’t.

Re: Not silly. That’s a reporter’s job. A parrot can regurgitate what someone tells them. A reporters is suppose to confirm / dig / get details on what is being said.

What is or is not a reporters job, is irrelevant. They can’t “dig” where someone has total control of the situation and will never grant them access. A reporter could no better confirm in depth financials than they could confirm what someone is “really” thinking when the pose a question to a player or coach. Only the person answering the question truly knows the answer and if the aint sharing, the reporter (and everyone else) is S.O.L.

Re: That sentence is a mess.

Agreed. Has been changed.

Good point. At least they could report what’s going on behind the numbers.(or at least theorize whats going on behind numbers).

Too many times during the last collective bargaining session, reporters just seem to parrot whatever anybody from the ownership side was saying without questioning things too much.

Hey! I said the same thing and you ripped me. :wink:

Anyway, like I said, it’s UNFAIR to CFL fans to say the Argos lose $10M per year without giving details. It makes the CFL look bad. It makes CFL fans feel lousy. And if you are going to say something like that, you should back it up.

Sadly, sports reporters don’t see this as their job. They’re too busy being parrots and writing fluff pieces.

Think the reporters just don’t have a incentive or are cleared to dig any further .

For too long the story for the CFL is who is folding this year .

There is huge story in Toronto surrounding ownership and nobody is touching it .

When you have the head guy at MLSE say the Argos have friends in high places you know there is a story .

But nothing years later .

You hear C and S wanted to make a deal with Rogers with the Bills as part owners .

NO followup .

You hear Braley squashed the York U stadium . No follow up .

Tannenbaum is sitting in front of Williams and doesn’t ask about his interest in the Bills and what that would have done to the CFL . You know they are being censored .
Williams with the CBC would have asked that; with TSN nothing but cheerleading .

Bell is going over the top with the NFL yet the CFL can’t get on CTV for the biggest Canadian sporting event of the year . Nothing ; no reporters going there at all .

As I said before, if I was a betting man, the BIG losses of last year were likely costs that could have been paid down in future years, but were accounted for in 2017 to get Rogers on board as owners.