The CFL has an Issue

Edit: In an early version of this, it was mentioned that every market had a 24/7 sports talk radio, this has been rectified

Tune in to ANY sports talk show from the USA and you will hear them talking NFL, having NFL players both past and present on their shows daily. The NFL understands it. Get the players on the air and people will start talking NFL. I live in Airdrie (just 10 minutes north of Calgary) the local station is Sportsnet The Fan 960 & I can not tell you the last time I heard of any CFL player on that station. Yes I get it, it’s the NHL season and hockey is the # 1 sport in Canada (hell they are 1 2 3 4 5 top sports in Canada) but come on, do you think if the CFL head office said hey teams supply 5 players every week that can go on Canadian sports talk station, these stations wouldn’t jump on it?

I listen to The Rod Pederson Show daily and he has a CFL guest on almost EVERY DAMN DAY. How can Rod get this done? His team goes out of its way to track down these guys and gives them a voice. I recently heard Shawn Lemon, Richie Leone and Andrew Harris appear on Rod’s show. If the CFL refuses to promote themselves, if teams refuse to promote the league, why would fans bother with it? When was the last time you went somewhere, and they were talking CFL? You hear NHL talked about, the NFL is on everyone’s lips. It’s very rare to hear anyone chatting CFL, we need to change that. We need fans to start telling everyone how great this league is. We need to ask the local radio stations to have CFL players on. Post about it on your social media, and talk about it at work. I am telling you if every CFL season ticket holder spent 2 hours every week chatting CFL with their friends you would be amazed how quickly the CFL rating on TSN would go up. Invite your friends to games. Once a football fan sees a CFL game they will be hooked. I am going to upset a lot of Lions fans but look at the Saskatchewan Roughriders, their team is talked about 365 days a year. Don’t give me they do not have anything else to talk about. Yes, they do, they talk farming, they talk hockey, they talk curling. They love talking Rider football. It is the culture; every other team should look at how the Riders have done it and mirror them. The new owner Amar Doman is doing an amazing job making a Lions game an event rather than just a game. Hopefully, the new Montreal owner follows this system.

The one biggest issue the CFL has sold its soul to TSN. With only one network broadcasting the game the other stations have no incentive to promote the game at all. This needs to change, unfortunately, it won’t until the contract is up in 2026. Hopefully when they renegotiate the league has someone with marketing knowledge running the show. They need to bring the CFL into 2027 with a huge deal that includes TV radio and streaming.

The last issue that needs to be dealt with is 9 teams. You need to expand. I use to be the guy that said keep in all Canada!

I am slowly changing my mind. We need more teams and where is football bigger than the US of A. Do it slowly and intelligently but do it, again this will not happen until 2027. Why? With the TSN contract being split amongst 9 teams evenly why would the owners agree to a smaller chunk? That wouldn’t be good business. 2027 isn’t that far away, now is the time to start the process and make it the league it CAN be!!