Originally Posted by
jloome
I respect your passionate support for grassroots football.
I disagree entirely with this.
We are a major world economic power with 35M citizens. Nations half our population and a fraction of our spending power support much better professional leagues, and so could we.
The biggest thing holding back Canada from competing with things that are American or British is that we think ourselves as small and sparse, rather than large and powerful.
As far back as the NASL, teams in Edmonton, Toronto and Vancouver were routinely drawing 10,000-plus crowds, because back then, there was no competition from cable tv sport and Euro soccer. So what fan base there was that existed, turned out.
Now, we have a sophisticated soccer audience. I said prior to FC Edmonton being formed that if it followed the route it wanted to take --as inexpensively and grassroots as possible -- it would fail, because this city once won five Stanley Cups in a row and its residents do not consider themselves minor league, or spending money on minor-league offerings.
I also said two years prior to TFC's first game that it would be a massive success, even as others were pointing out how so many Canadian leagues had failed.
All it took was the most basic level of proper professionalism: a football stadium, enough experienced foreign players to give it credibility, enough up and coming locals to make it look promising.
What people will NEVER financially support to a self-sustaining level here is bottom-tier professionalism. They barely tolerate the CFL and it has more than a century of tradition.
A Canadian league could ABSOLUTELY compete with MLS, for TV viewers, for players. We would probably never get to quite that level, but there's no reason we shouldn't get to that third tier, similar to Greece, Switzerland, Denmark etc.
But it won't happen unless they properly capitalize; they need a big-money major backer like Adidas or Nike, they need a capital buy-in plan to help build facilities (and create jobs! This was almost a Stephen Harper policy once, and came with a last bill review for the session from being on the order paper) and they need to study and learn from smaller community-based team models that nevertheless make enough money to support professionalism.
If they took that approach, it would probably take several years to put together and it would dramatically change it from a 'grassroots' approach to a professional one. But that's what is really needed. We could be at League Two/League One level in less than a decade, better than USL (although frankly, USL is improving so quickly, it's basically a proper third division now, with foreign players on every roster, dev loans etc).
A lot of the difficult in this occurring is that business people here are absolutely accustomed to traditional notions of pro sports only existing in the biggest cities. But as Canadian Junior Hockey and AHL hockey have shown, you can keep interest high enough to make a profit and keep operating in smaller places.
I'd like to see a proper Canadian league, but also use the popularity of football as a low-cost sport to push for a national stadium plan. I'd like to see Lloydminster and Sherbrook trying to get promoted to the top division. If you can support professional football in Luton, in Derby, in Blackpool, you can support it in London, and Moncton, and Red Deer.
But it only works if it's entertaining, fast and professionally presented from day one. And that takes a MASSIVE financial investment and planning, largely meaning a commitment for most of it to be foreign-owned and funded by billionaires and large corporate sponsors, or even nation-states.
... part of The Bradley's inner circle?
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