For Justin Trudeau, one of the deeper challenges in battling the pandemic is to preserve the qualities of our way of life. It is little good to economically recover if socially we do not.
Which is why the dilemma of the survival of the Canadian Football League, seemingly trivial in this time of untold tragedy and disruption, has more meaning that can be first imagined.
The clock is running down on a critical question: Should Trudeau save the CFL?
It is a problem fraught with all sorts of policy considerations, identity and generational issues, and relevant questions about how wealthy business owners ought to be treated.
Of course, no assistance ever ensures endurance.
It may be a modern conceit of Canada to believe it can still stage a league in the shadow of the National Football League, with safety concerns about play, and a gradual but clear aging out of the audience.
The CFL had profound pre-pandemic challenges that only deepen with the reality that large gatherings are some time away from resumption. The league cannot, as can the NFL, depend on television revenue to ride out the temporarily emptied stadiums. Its TV contract with TSN is crucial to its success, and while it is soon up for renewal, it cannot serve as a financial backbone.
In normal times – remember those? – the league would be in training camps by now. But it can’t possibly with the border closed and effectively half of its players – and most of its marquee draws – on the other side of it and player safety in the pandemic an open question.
Its 2020 season, if it has one at all, will be at the very least delayed and curtailed, with games into December if a Grey Cup is to be awarded. The league has been considering a limited attendance at games to permit physical distancing. The locale for the final game would be shifted to the home of the team with the best record among the two remaining playoff squads. The traditional Grey Cup Week would be mild by comparison.
But this is by no means an acceptable business model. The league commissioner, Randy Ambrosie, has led a campaign for up to $150 million in federal assistance. In return there would be a clear long-term presence of the federal support in almost everything the league does, seemingly short of Trudeau’s image on the jerseys. The owner of the BC Lions, David Braley, believes there is a “very good chance” the league will fold if it misses even one season.
Tempting and visible as this support might be, Trudeau has some optics on his hands in agreeing.
Several of the team owners have deep pockets, even if they’re displeased with their emptying, but the CFL is a bigger brand than its actual wealth might suggest. The league itself has attendance troubles in the country’s three largest markets of Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver, and even the strengths of Calgary and Edmonton are not what they were.
Public perception of sports franchises generally devalues their contribution to a community’s identity and pride and doesn’t typically recognize the latticework of suppliers, sponsors, employment and engagement.
We don’t realize what we have until we lose it – just ask the folks in Quebec City what they lost or remind those in Winnipeg what they missed when National Hockey League teams left, much less the American markets that lost football, basketball or baseball franchises.
There is a lot of imprecise spending underway in the battle against COVID-19. No one can expect roughly one-quarter of the GDP to be sprayed and splayed without lots of it slipping into cracks.
The question that must beguile the government is whether the hundreds of billions of dollars in support to date and in the near future should somehow exclude a traditional entity embedded in our national identity. We are in the two-minute-drill phase, but not the typical long-lasting CFL version – this one has very little time left for even a Hail Mary pass.
Can it politically afford to deny the visible support? I don’t see how.
Kirk LaPointe is the publisher and editor-in-chief of Business in Vancouver and vice-president, editorial, of Glacier Media.
