|
Brockleigh -> RE: Ottawa gets CFL team... (4/28/2008 11:05:49 PM)
|
quote:
The CFL should try to bring in two teams at a time for scheduling balance. If Halifax doesn't get moving, would Quebec City be an option?
While the CFL has gotten much better in terms of credibility, that doesn't mean they do anything with any degree of common sense.
quote:
It would be nice if the Canadian government would help some of the cities build stadiums - not fund them entirely, but help out.
There was an initiative that was in the planning phases back in 2002 to help cities build stadia, but that died with the Chretien government.
quote:
Quebec City would be the best choice if there was a stadium. That's the biggest hold up with getting more CFL teams. You need stadiums of at the absolute minimum seating of 25,000 seats and 30-35k to make any sort of worth while profit. And there simply are none left in the country. Anytime any public figure or developer brings up the idea of building a 35k seat sports stadium there's huge uproars about not spending that money in the health care system....it drives me up the wall but anyway...
Your Saskatchewan Roughriders made a profit of $1.7 million last year with a stadium that holds 28,500. It can be done.
quote:
You could expand St Mary's stadium in Halifax only if you knocked down a facility building that butts up against one side of the field. I lived in the Halifax area for a couple of years and a new CFL sized stadium was always the hot potato. To make it viable you need to cover it so it can be used all year long as a convention centre or for concerts. That adds more expense and again.. people want to use the money for other things.
Something the intrigues me is the FargoDome where the University of North Dakota plays football. It's a dome that holds about 25,000 and was built in the mid 90's for $48 million USD. Even with the labour rates in Canada and inflation over the past 15 years, you could probably get something like that done for under $90 million Canadian, which really isn't bad, relatively.
quote:
On a side note, does Hamilton have the television rights to London and Windsor?
No.
quote:
There is no way I would be cool with Ottawa receiving tax money for yet ANOTHER friggin' team.
That's what you're getting. The south stand at Frank Clair stadium was condemned and needs to be rebuilt, and as it's actually a city park, that's who'd have to pay for it.
quote:
The idea with this group is to turn over the land to the developers and let them build whatever it is they're going to build. Then tax them. The developers own the team, the stadium, the parking, the hockey arena (which is attached to the building), etc.. and get all the revenue, and then the city gets their property taxes.
That's still being negotiated, while the expansion franchise is conditional upon a suitable stadium. So right now, the city is on the hook.
quote:
The Windsor idea intreaged me.Were the team would play out of the pontiac silver dome.I believe with some alterations a CFL field would have fit into it.The team would have been registered in Windsor to get around American Labour laws.The only major problem I could see it was the Gliebermans proposing it.
It's a good idea, but I know what an absolute pain it is for Canadians crossing the US border to go to Buffalo Sabres games, and I can't see a sufficient number of Americans going through that kind of hassle to make a Windsor team worthwhile. Windsor, without Detroit, would be the smallest market in the league (behind Regina)
quote:
Frankly I see Quebec City (an ownership group is already in place) and London getting CFL teams in the near future.
Quebec, yes. London had two expansion applications shot down, one in the 60's, one in the 70's. Both were shot down by the league, as it was worried the league would be too Ontario-centric.
quote:
Does Hamilton have a large enough base if London or Windsor received a team?
Windsor would likely draw more from Detroit than from Hamilton.
Windsor is 3 hours away from Hamilton, and is not a significant, or even an ancilliary revenue source for the Hamilton Tiger-Cats. London, maybe, but the amalgamtaed City Of Hamilton has a population of 504,000 people, with another 325,000 in the Burlington-Oakville area. Hamilton has enough fans on it's front doorstep.
quote:
It would be nice to see more CFL teams, but there would have to be some really strict revenue sharing and cap rules in place for small market teams to have a chance.
Hard to do. Teams are known for treating their teams and markets as fiefdoms, and won't agree to anything that might impact them negatively in the least. Again, attitudes are changing, but teams have not, by and large over the past 15 years, been terribly receptive to anything that might be long term beneficial to the league at large if it it hurts their team short term.
|
|
|
|
