WHY CFL 2.0 WILL WORK
By: Roger Kelly
American Football International
SWEDEN – CFL 2.0 will work.
You may not think so right now. In fact, you may be raging against it. Scoffing at it.
But people are talking about the Canadian Football League now. They weren’t before.
Inside and outside of Canada’s borders, suddenly football people are aware of the CFL again.
There’s a buzz that wasn’t there before. In Mexico. In Europe. There are 27 Mexicans and 9 Europeans headed to CFL training camps in a few weeks.
‘Who cares?’ you say.
If you want the game to survive, you should care.
If you want growth, you need change. The CFL needs growth and CFL 2.0 definitely is a change.
When Randy Ambrosie coined the term CFL 2.0 in 2018, he knew he was triggering a change. Football purists, coaches, scouts and general managers don’t like change, unless it helps them win, tomorrow.
Yep, there are issues. How do you fit all these new players onto rosters? How many Canadian jobs are in jeopardy? Will these players adapt to the rigors of training camp?
Hey, European coaches have their own issues. Who compensates a team for the loss of one (or two in the case of the Potsdam Royals) of their top players? Do you add a designated Canadian spot on a European roster to compensate for the loss? There are plenty of questions that need to be answered.
And they will be, in time.
The marketing opportunities are limitless. Canada is a land of immigrants. When Mortiz Böhringer, a club player from Germany, was drafted by the Minnesota Vikings in the sixth round of the 2016 NFL Draft, Minnesota became the most popular NFL team in Germany, maybe even Europe. Although he stayed on their practice roster for two years, his jersey was a top seller in Germany and his popularity soared. Not just in Germany but also among all the German descendants living in the United States.
Imagine getting that kind of interest for a European player in the CFL.
The game needs growth.
In 1991, the BC Lions and Toronto Argonauts played a memorable game at BC Place Stadium in front of almost 55,000 spectators. The Lions with Doug Flutie beat Toronto and Rocket Ismail 52-41 in double overtime.
How do you get crowds like that again?
Through growth.
The CFL has now taken a pioneering role to trigger growth. The NFL experimented with the World League of American Football and NFL Europe marching through Europe to set up shop, but it was a money-losing proposition and folded in 2007. This is different.
Late last year, Ambrosie turned to the federations in Europe and asked how they could work together. No one had ever done that before. The reception he got was incredible. Austria, Germany, Finland, France, Italy and the others jumped at the chance. Remember that football is not new to Europe. These countries have been playing the game for the past 40-50 years.
They have a clue. And now, suddenly, the world’s second professional league had come calling and was listening.
Now there is a pool of talent available that no one realized was there before.
There are 1,200 football teams in Europe alone. Germany has over 50,000 players, coaches and participants as well as five divisions of football while France has roughly 22,000 and Great Britain and Austria upwards of 20,000. And the numbers are growing. And that’s just four countries. Mexico has 60,000.
Add this up and this leads, ultimately, to growth.
Most people don’t know that international athletes make up 20% of all NBA players and 25% of all MLB players. But only 1% of all NFL/CFL players. The CFL has to take the game outside of Canadian borders.
Imagine a German native starring for the Toronto Argonauts. What would that do to ticket and merchandise sales?
Attendance numbers in the CFL have been falling for years.
CFL 2.0 is the first step on the road to rejuvenation.
